Couple of things here I wanted to jot down for you on how you can drastically improve your portfolio’s return that are somewhat oblique in nature, yet will have a more profound impact than many things you do directly.

Here is jot number one. At the urging of one of my Mentors, I have begun a Morning Ritual that I do every morning, Monday through Saturday.

For me, even just a few months ago the very idea of developing any type of repetitious rituals was abhorrent.

This is perhaps because I hate to be bored and growing up I had associated habits or rituals with negative things, i.e. drugs, alcohol, or even worse, did I mention boredom?

Nevertheless, because I respect him and he happens to be one of the smartest guys I know, I made a commitment to listen to and do all of the things that he had agreed to teach me 100% to the best of my abilities. So, when he said I had to start introducing some rituals in my life, I listened to him. In this case, his definition of a ritual is a “thoughtful repetitive action that produces a positive outcome” which made sense to me.

Much to my amazement, all of the good things that he said would happen because of my doing my Morning Ritual has come true and my business has benefited from it just like he said it would.

Let me give you a run down on what I am talking about. I used to wake up, run around, grab a cup of coffee and dive into my day as fast as I could and deal with whatever was on my desk right away. Does that sound familiar? Well, I do not do that anymore.

What I do now is before I am bombarded with my day, I take time to stretch and wake up a bit. Then I grab my perfunctory cup of Java and a bottle of water and drink the water first to replace what you lose from just breathing all night and take time to enjoy my coffee. I do not gulp it down and hurry off. I had forgotten how good coffee can taste.

I then grab a good breakfast, and then I grab a good mind feed book that I read for about 10 to 20 minutes. I read things that are positive and informative and that get me thinking. Then much to the amazement of myself and to those that know me, I workout for about 20-30 minutes ( I love to work out but never in the morning), hop in the shower and then get dressed.

After that is done, I then take about 10 minutes to chill and settle the noodle and I am even throwing in some breathing exercises in there too. Then I visualize what I want to accomplish during the day.

The other thing I threw in there is that I write down exactly what I am going to do the night before and stick it on my bedroom door so I see it as soon as I wake up. Just going over it in the evening before I go to bed seems to allow it to sink into my subconscious and lets me not worry about things.

This whole process probably only adds about 45 minutes to my morning, but in return, I swear to you I am getting about three hours extra production out of my day versus before I started doing this.

So even if I had taken a whole hour out of my workday to do my Morning Ritual, I would have still have a net gain of at least two more hours of pre-Ritual production.

If I was not doing this and seeing the results, I would have still been skeptical. Because while intuitively I think we all understand that it makes sense that if you are in shape physically and mentally your are going to perform better. What I did not realize is just how much better my performance would be, or how much better I would feel.

If you have been thinking about taking some time for yourself, to exercise and get ready for your day, the only thing I can say is do it, you will be glad that you did!

Some Old Sayings Hold Truth

The Olde Saying that I happen to be referring to is this one concerning stocks. “Sell in May and Go Away” and I think they about have it right.

In looking back, I am pretty sure that I have lost more money in the market from May through August than during any other time of the year. There are many reasons for it, but the oh so very scientific one that I use is “Spring or Fall Fever” depending on which Hemisphere you are in.

The markets are going to turn into a washing machine over the next four months and I would just as soon stay out.

But, that being said, I will be showing you some other investment alternatives that I like that have nothing to do with the markets and forces you cannot control, so stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 3:20 pm and is filed under 20 Percent Plus Returns, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.