

7 Things 'We Should All Be Millionaires' Taught Me About Adopting A Millionaire Mindset
xoNecole's I Read It So You Don't Have To is a recurring series of self-discovery that breaks down self-help books into a toolkit of takeaways and tips that are meant to assist you in finding the best life you can live. Take what works for you, and leave everything else where it is.
Since we first started to count, women have been indoctrinated into thinking we are inherently bad with money. When it comes to women and finance, there is a recurring theme: women are large, careless spenders. The vocabulary employed in commercials and periodicals, as well as in television and cinema, all reference this idea. Men learn how to generate money, while women learn how to spend it. Just like that. Therefore, it is understandable why women think they are unsuccessful at accumulating wealth given this deeply ingrained notion.
But contrary to what its marketing team has led us to believe, we can accumulate wealth, and earning seven figures in the next five years is not impossible. We only need to put in the hard work. Let's examine the book, We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers in this subsequent reading for the "I Read It, So You Don't Have To" series.
As always, take from this reading what you need, and leave the rest where it is.
1.Unlearn the Limiting Beliefs You Have About Earning More Money
Dispelling the idea that you can't be a millionaire because you spend money carelessly is the first step to securing the expansion of your empire. The next step is acknowledging the real reasons you have not become a millionaire. One of these reasons is obvious, patriarchal America was not built, and is not functioning, to ensure the success of Black women. It is working even less to ensure that Black women of the LGBTQ community and even plus-size women don't succeed. The final step is to acknowledge that despite those reasons, your potential to earn is solely determined by you.
Women routinely accept payment that is less than what they are worth, provide their skills for free, fear the discomfort of failing others, fear the discomfort of saying no, lack boundaries, and constantly prioritize the needs of others before our own. No matter which of these reasons is preventing you from achieving your financial goals—or if there is another factor at play—you must stop deceiving yourself about your financial difficulties and determine the truth of your bank account.
2.If You Want To Be Wealthy, Make Decisions Like a Millionaire
Make a choice as to how you will fulfill your desire to become a millionaire. You must start making million-dollar decisions if you want to get wealthy. To do this, you must comprehend what you really want, what you ought to be doing, and how you plan to get there. Make million-dollar decisions by using the "We Should All Be Millionaires" acronym below.
Want: What are your objectives? Check-in with your own inner wants instead of searching out other people's perspectives. What would you choose to do if you knew that every decision you made would lead to the intended result?
Should: When you think about your decision, what "should" come to mind? What should you do, in your opinion, to succeed? Do you actually believe these things, or are these just others' beliefs?
Action: What action are you going to do to move in the right direction? Identify the first two or three steps that must be taken to succeed.
Body: What do you think about doing this? How do you feel about this? Are you feeling energized? Or does it make you anxious? Is it somewhere in the middle? Since your body is the best judge of who you are, listen to it and use it to guide your decision.
More: How would this choice or course of action help you achieve more? What will this option allow you to have more of? This will become your primary reason to keep going when you feel discouraged or unmotivated. What advantages would this decision give you?
3.Manage Your Time Like a Millionaire by Creating Boundaries
You cannot have a thriving net worth and be popular with everyone. So, let go of the institutionalized people-pleasing. The plain fact is that women perform the majority of work across all fields, particularly in domestic tasks. This hinders our ability to accumulate riches. Not to mention, women are treated unfairly in the workplace. These pervasive cultural problems involving women's work result in weariness, depression, and a sense of inadequacy.
Therefore, to protect yourself from the feeling of never being enough and the mistreatment of others, establish boundaries that are clear to all parties. Say yes to what you want and no to everything else. After all, setting boundaries without enforcement will only result in the same outcomes.
4.Build a Team That Supports Your Millionaire Mindset
Build a squad! You are the people you choose to be around. Find a community of people that share your values and inspire you, then start interacting with them. You can discover new strategies and tools to support your millionaire habits within this new community that you might never have thought of or wouldn't have known without access to it. Not only that, but others who belong to this group may become contacts or even friends who can help you open doors to new chances. If the community you desire does not exist, create it yourself.
Nobody succeeds alone, despite what some people would have you believe. Because of your full-time job, interests, hobbies, relationships with family and friends, and, well, sleeping, time can be the largest obstacle to you generating wealth. Create your own team to reclaim your time. Hire a professional assistant to assist you with a variety of tasks for a few hours each week. By doing this, you can free yourself some time to investigate your financial objectives without the pressure of having to handle everything by yourself. Do not overthink this procedure or convince yourself that it is merely a waste of money.
To assure your ultimate financial and time freedom, figure out how much you can afford to pay for the support. Keep in mind that occasionally spending money is necessary to make money.
5.Determine Your Vision and Value To Achieve Success
What kind of life do you envision? What are your objectives? Make them compelling by being specific, specific, and appealing. Make your goals interesting since it is what motivates innovation, zeal, and action. The four steps that determine your visions are:
- List the improvements you'd like to make to various elements of your life;
- Carry out the necessary calculations so that you have a realistic understanding of the costs;
- Come up with 25 ideas for boosting your income quickly;
- Decide on the first improvement you'll make.
Think carefully about the millionaire version of yourself. Then, start acting like that now (without going into debt).
After choosing the concept that will help you raise your earnings, understand your worth. The price of women's imposter syndrome is in the millions. In order to advance in their careers or recognize their genuine worth, women who have imposter syndrome frequently work for free, at reduced rates, or without receiving any compensation. They do this while they wait for someone to recognize their efforts.
Decide on your worth instead, and set your prices accordingly. Set a price for your concept and multiply it by two. When offering your goods or services, accept nothing less.
6.Create an Effective Money Management System
Scarcity breeds more scarcity, and trying to live on a shoestring budget will only make you unhappy. Therefore, if you want to become a millionaire, you don't need to cut back on that daily latte or monthly subscription. Instead, create effective systems, rather than goals. Goals are helpful for giving direction, but systems are helpful for actually moving forward. Create a system to keep an eye on your finances. Avoid outsourcing your money management and decision-making; take charge of them yourself.
Set up a strategy to keep tabs on your credit score, daily spending, and net worth. Consider doing some investigation and setting up a business company and business bank account. Quit listening to those who tell you to wring every last penny out of your paycheck or who whine about your debt. Instead, recognize that in order to compete in the global market, you will periodically need to go into debt and work additional hours in order to increase your earning potential.
7.Start Building Your Millionaire Empire
Now that you have all the tools at your disposal, follow Nike's motto and "Just Do It." Find out what it's like to be able to earn money whenever you want. So, set a 10-day goal for yourself to earn a certain amount of money. What precise sum do you ask? Imagine you have ten days to obtain a certain amount of money for a crucial bill or expense. Write down this amount and increase its total by 30%. In 10 days, you want to have this number in your bank account. If this number is not high enough for you, try participating in WSABM's $10,000 in 10 days challenge.
Pro Tip: If you can afford it, join the We Should All Be Millionaires: The Club. For anyone prepared to build wealth, this club is your online community classroom. Regardless of what is standing in your path to being a prosperous millionaire, this club, which is devoted to seeing you succeed, provides a vast array of tools, educational and training programs, live weekly coaching, and a squad that can assist you in becoming the success you know you are capable of being.
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Taysha Robinson is a writer and high school English teacher, based in metro-Atlanta. A self described philomath, you can find her reading books and articles of every genre, attending educational conferences, and hiking wherever the terrain will allow.
Smile, Sis! These Five Improvements Can Upgrade Your Oral Hygiene Instantly
This article is in partnership with Sensodyne.
Our teeth are connected to so many things - our nutrition, our confidence, and our overall mood. We often take for granted how important healthy teeth are, until issues like tooth sensitivity or gum recession come to remind us. Like most things related to our bodies, prevention is the best medicine. Here are five things you can do immediately to improve your oral hygiene, prevent tooth sensitivity, and avoid dental issues down the road.
1) Go Easy On the Rough Brushing: Brushing your teeth is and always will be priority number one in the oral hygiene department. No surprises there! However, there is such a thing as applying too much pressure when brushing…and that can lead to problems over time. Use a toothbrush with soft bristles and brush in smooth, circular motions. It may seem counterintuitive, but a gentle approach to brushing is the most effective way to clean those pearly whites without wearing away enamel and exposing sensitive areas of the teeth.
2) Use A Desensitizing Toothpaste: As everyone knows, mouth pain can be highly uncomfortable; but tooth sensitivity is a whole different beast. Hot weather favorites like ice cream and popsicles have the ability to trigger tooth sensitivity, which might make you want to stay away from icy foods altogether. But as always, prevention is the best medicine here. Switching to a toothpaste like Sensodyne’s Sensitivity & Gum toothpaste specifically designed for sensitive teeth will help build a protective layer over sensitive areas of the tooth. Over time, those sharp sensations that occur with extremely cold foods will subside, and you’ll be back to treating yourself to your icy faves like this one!
3) Floss, Rinse, Brush. (And In That Order!): Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it”? Well, the same thing applies to taking care of your teeth. Even if you are flossing and brushing religiously, you could be missing out on some of the benefits simply because you aren’t doing so in the right order. Flossing is best to do before brushing because it removes food particles and plaque from places your toothbrush can’t reach. After a proper flossing sesh, it is important to rinse out your mouth with water after. Finally, you can whip out your toothbrush and get to brushing. Though many of us commonly rinse with water after brushing to remove excess toothpaste, it may not be the best thing for our teeth. That’s because fluoride, the active ingredient in toothpaste that protects your enamel, works best when it gets to sit on the teeth and continue working its magic. Rinsing with water after brushing doesn’t let the toothpaste go to work like it really can. Changing up your order may take some getting used to, but over time, you’ll see the difference.
4) Stay Hydrated: Upping your water supply is a no-fail way to level up your health overall, and your teeth are no exception to this rule. Drinking water not only helps maintain a healthy pH balance in your mouth, but it also washes away residue and acids that can cause enamel erosion. It also helps you steer clear of dry mouth, which is a gateway to bad breath. And who needs that?
5) Show Your Gums Some Love: When it comes to improving your smile, you may be laser-focused on getting your teeth whiter, straighter, and overall healthier. Rightfully so, as these are all attributes of a megawatt smile; but you certainly don’t want to leave gum health out of the equation. If you neglect your gums, you’ll start to notice the effects of plaque buildup, which can irritate the gums and cause gingivitis, the earliest stage of gum disease. Seeing blood while brushing and flossing is a tell-tale sign that your gums are suffering. You may also experience gum recession — a condition where the gum tissue surrounding your teeth pulls back, exposing more of your tooth. Brushing at least twice a day with a gum-protecting toothpaste like Sensodyne Sensitivity and Gum, coupled with regular dentist visits, will keep your gums shining as bright as those pearly whites.
Masterdating: A TikTok Dating Trend That We Should Totally Get Behind
Imma tell y’all what — it seems like not one week goes by when I don’t see some sort of so-called term that has me like, “What in the world?” For instance, when I first stumbled upon “self-partnering,” honestly, I laughed. Then shared it with some other single people as well as married folks I know. And I kid you not, every individual was like, “What the heck does that mean?” When I told them that it was yet, one more way to seemingly define single living, basically everyone’s follow-up was, “Oh, brother.”
Why can’t (more) singles just be single and be okay with that? Good Lord. Why does there need to be some sort of relational play-on-words to make it sound like we’re with someone — even if we’re not?
Now masterdating? Even though it’s not even close to being a “real” word, it’s something that also brought a laugh outta me — although it was then followed by a genuine smile. The laugh because I almost immediately caught the play-on-words. The smile was due to the intention behind it all.
If you’re not familiar with what masterdating is and you’re curious about why you should even care, take a few moments to at least skim through what it’s about and why I think participating, as a single person, is a pretty cool (and effective) concept.
@knotlukas Masturdate: a date w oneself
What’s Masterdating All About?
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Masterdating. Okay, so let the word marinate for just a moment. What does it sound like? Yeah…exactly. And since a huge part of masturbation centers around self-pleasure, it’s cool to explore how “self-dating” could produce similar (as far as pleasure is concerned in a broader sense) results. Because masterdating is all about spending quality time with yourself, pampering yourself, treating yourself— and yes, taking yourself out on dates.
Any of you who may think that masterdating is a consolation prize — and a pitiful one at that — for not being able to go out with another human being or get that dream $200 first date that social media was all in a tizzy about last year (bookmark that) — personally, I think that you’re the demographic who needs to try out masterdating first and the most. Why? Off top, I’ll share my three good reasons.
3 Reasons To Strongly Consider Masterdating
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1. It’s an intimate way to get to know yourself better. I’ve been working with couples for a pretty long time at this point and if there’s a pattern that I see arise, OFTEN, it’s that two people are oftentimes so busy trying to “find their person” that they didn’t even know who they were. As a direct result, they found themselves in a relationship with someone who only complemented the “kiddie pool version” of who they were.
That’s why it can be so beneficial to spend time getting to know yourself on the “deep end” of things: what makes you tick, what your passions are, what you want most out of life, what are your interests beyond obvious things — and masterdating can help you to discover all of this. Whether it’s traveling alone or taking out a weekend to drink some wine and journal, the more you get to know yourself, the clearer you’ll be about who complements you on a romantic and friendship level.
2. It will definitely help to boost your confidence levels. I guess since I’m an ambivert, I don’t really get why people freak out at the mere thought of going to a restaurant or movie alone. Personally, I think it requires a helluva lot more energy and gumption to wait around and plan stuff with other people (#Elmoshrug). However, whether you’re an introvert, extrovert, or ambivert, there’s no way around the fact that the more comfortable you get with doing things alone, the more your confidence levels will increase — no, soar — because of it.
One article that I read on the topic said that doing things alone can make you more creative, improve your mental health, and help you to be totally okay with being alone (so that you’re not “needy” for other people’s attention). A psychotherapist from a New York Times article on the benefits of spending time alone said, “Getting better at identifying moments when we need solitude to recharge and reflect can help us better handle negative emotions and experiences, like stress and burnout.” And when you’re able to stare negativity in its face without flinching, how could that not make you bolder, more self-secure, and hopeful about your life?
3. It will teach you to value your time more effectively. In every facet of your world, you’re gonna operate from a healthier place if you’re operating from a “full cup” rather than an empty one. When it comes to this topic, think about it — if you’re constantly waiting on someone to call you to go out or wishing for a dream date with some guy, all you’re doing is wasting precious time that you could be spending taking a cooking class or hell, hiring a chef to make you dinner at your own home.
Indeed, waiting has two sides to it: when it’s in the form of patience, it is indeed a virtue, yet when it’s wrapped up in the notion that you’re not really living life unless you have an audience…it is totally working against you. Choose wisely.
10 Solo Date Ideas To Help You To “Master” Masterdating
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So, what if you’re someone who has either never considered actually masterdating before or you don’t really know what to do beyond dinner and the movies? Here are a few ideas to consider:
1. Attend a workshop or masterclass that you’re interested in. If there’s something that you’ve always wanted to learn, sign up for a workshop or masterclass. The cool thing about this option is there are probably some in your city, as well as some that you can find online (like here) that are convenient and affordable.
2. Binge-read at a local coffee shop. Aside from their coziness and oftentimes inviting scents, I once read that a lot of us gravitate to coffee shops because we can be around people without having to actually socialize with them. So, if you want to “hang out” while still being able to enjoy a bit of solitude, take a book that you’ve been trying to finish to a local coffee shop, order your favorite latte, and sit in a big-ass comfy chair. Usually, you can sit there for hours, and the staff will be just fine with it (another bonus).
3. Have a spa day in the next town. You can never go wrong with a spa day. And while going with a friend can be fun, sometimes there’s too much talking transpiring to be able to fully chill out and relax. So, go off of the grid, get a change of scenery, and hit up a spa in the next city (or town). There are lots of studies out here supporting that day trips or “daycations” can actually be really good for your long-term health and well-being.
4. See a community play. Some of the best solo dates that I’ve ever been on consisted of taking in some of the local arts in my city. What’s really cool about this particular option is, oftentimes, they are extremely inexpensive, if not totally free of charge (in exchange for making a donation or putting money into a tip jar).
5. Plan a trip. Whenever people say something along the lines of, “If you don’t expect anything, you won’t be disappointed,” I know that they low-key have some (additional) healing to do from past disappointments. There’s simply too much intel out here to support that anticipation (of good stuff) makes us more motivated and optimistic, keeps our dopamine levels up, and makes life more exciting overall.
Since traveling alone is more cost-effective, gives you the freedom to do whatever you want (when you want), and increases the possibility of meeting new people and having new experiences on your journey — why not devote a day this weekend to planning a solo trip? All the way around, it’s good for you.
6. Try your hand at your own “$200 date.” Uh-huh. Roll your eyes if you want to, but it’s real easy to talk left about how a man should be able to just drop $200 like it’s nothing…until you actually try to do it. So yes, while taking yourself out on this type of date could serve as a bit of a reality check, it can also “scratch the itch” of waiting on some dude to do it for you. It’s also way less emotionally draining because, at least when you’re taking your own self out, it’s guaranteed that you’ll enjoy the company…right?
7. DIY some pampering. When you get a chance, check out “5 Reasons You Should Unapologetically Pamper Yourself,” “Want To Love On Yourself? Try These 10 Things At Home.,” “I’ve Got Some Ways For You To Start Pampering Your Soul,” and “When's The Last Time You Actually Pampered Your Vagina?” The bottom line here is pampering is all about, not mere self-maintenance; it’s all about treating yourself to levels of EXTREME SELF-INDULGENCE. So, if nothing else tickles your fancy on this list, at least consider doing that, chile.
8. Feed your creativity. Something that I used to be really good at is art. That said, one of my goddaughters is insanely talented, so she has reminded me to tap back into it. Also, a big part of what got me into the writing world is poetry; I actually used to be a house poet at a local spot. Sometimes, my best quality time moments with myself have been revisiting these creative sides of me — and this is definitely easier to do (and enjoy) alone.
9. Try some stargazing. When’s the last time you took a blanket into your backyard, laid down on it, and just stared at the stars for hours on end? While some say that stargazing can teach you to be mindful, others say that being in that form of nature reduces stress, while others believe that looking up at the universe at night can increase your attention span. All solid reasons to give it a shot, if you ask me.
10. DO. ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING. Let me tell you something that nobody will ever be able to make me feel bad about: doing absolutely nothing. I’ve got data to back me up. Good Housekeeping shares that doing nothing can help you decide how you want to respond or react to certain things. I like howThe Guardian says that taking this approach helps you to regain control of what you give your attention to.
TIME magazine says that it can ultimately make you more productive.BBC offers up that it can help you tap into your ingenuity.Henry Ford Health says that it can make you kinder and a better problem-solver. So, if you want to invest in yourself, do nothing sometimes.
Closing Thoughts from the Lovely Javicia Leslie
While some of y'all may know Javicia Leslie from being the former Batwoman, I discovered her back in the day from the indie series Chef Julian (and yes, "Julian" was right to say that "Mo" looks like Tatyana Ali...the real ones know). Sometimes I'll hop on her IG to see what she's got going on and this story popped up within a few hours of me penning this...so, I took it as hella confirmation.
TREAT YO SELF. WAIT FOR NO ONE.
WAIT FOR NO ONE. TREAT YO SELF.
RINSE AND REPEAT.
_____
Sooo…what kind of masterdating plans do you have for this coming weekend? While going out with others has its perks, hanging out with yourself has a ton of ‘em too. Enjoy!
No…for real. ENJOY!
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