Many or most of us have started from zip – nothing. This is where I am today.

Let me give you a quick rundown of my situation:

• I am a 24 year old guy and I am worse off financially than when I graduated from high school.
• I still live at home with my parents.
• I am $58,121.51 (not including interest) in college loan debt – I pay $515.72 every month.
• I never earned a college degree, despite spending five years in college (community, public, and private)

• I have two jobs – one full time as a dishwasher in a restaurant (only 30 hours), and one in a department store as a cashier/customer service associate, only one day a week. Neither job has offered any signs of possible raise or advancement.
• I make enough (at the moment) just to pay my loans, buy gas and food, (and pay for several online endeavors such as this)
• I don’t own the car I drive – I am borrowing it from my Dad.
• The list goes on.

So in other words, I am starting from zip.

The Mid-mid Life Crisis

In August I will be 25 years old. By this age, most people have had some success in life. Whether it being that they have started a family, graduated from college, and/or begun their career. Most people are going somewhere or have something in their lives.

I imagine myself as a 35 year old guy still living with my parents. Working at the same department store and/or restaurant. Maybe some other entry-level job. At the same time my monthly student loan bills are dramatically higher. It is a truly frightening idea that I hope never happens.

These ideas and the feelings I have about my job at the restaurant have sparked somewhat of a mid-mid life crisis. I decided that I have two choices: either I continue on my current path of living with my parents while working at teen-jobs, or I turn onto the path of success and happiness.

Decision Time

It has become absolutely clear that I cannot continue on my current path. I need to change lanes and head onto the path of financial security, success and happiness.

There are so many ways to gain financial security, but the trick is to remain focused on only one at a time. My problem is that for all of my life I have been scattered. Whenever the going gets tough, I give up and move onto something else. I have never set any major goals for myself, and everything is short term.

As for the different options of how to gain financial security, I have decided that the best way to make things happen is to start earning a passive income, or an online income. I will also apply to jobs too, so I can earn a little more income while working on and improving my writing and internet skills. But in the long term, I really want to become the next Pat Flynn from http://www.smartpassiveincome.com or the next Glen Allsopp from http://www.viperchill.com.

Passive Income

If you want an excellent description of what passive income is, check out the following link: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/passive-income-101/

In general, building a passive income means writing valuable material on the web to help others, and getting compensated (either with money or links). The initial work may take quite a lot of time – whether it is writing an ebook, article, or sales page – but after it is posted or published, it will constantly bring in a stream of income.

Pat Flynn is the man; he truly knows his stuff. As he said in the above link, building a passive income is very hard work. I believe him, and I am going to go for it. I will start my endeavor with techniques in the above link.

I will also optimize this blog using the techniques in Glen Allsopp’s free report, How to Build a Blog with 10,000+ Subscribers. You can get your own copy at the bottom of http://www.viperchill.com.

How Will I Get Myself to the Other Side?

A month ago, give or take, I received a call from a telemarketer who tried to scam me. He kept asking for my credit card information, while trying to sell me a marketing package of some sort. Instead of hanging up, I kept on listening to see if I could pick up why scam artists are so persuasive. I wanted to learn more from him than he can learn from me. All in all, here is one of the things that he said, which resonated in my mind for days:

If you don’t do something today, you will be in the same situation next month as you are right now.

 

Wow! That is powerful. This must have been his secret sales weapon. This statement is what put me into a state of mid-mid life crisis.

Later that night I sat down and thought what am I doing with my life? I realized that I am stuck because of all my bad habits. I do the same thing pretty much every day, every month, every year. And as the scam artist said, this is why I am in the same situation. So I began to look up everything I could on habit. I went to http://www.zenhabits.com/ (not http://www.zenhabits.net) and found to the right an advertisement for the book The Habit Factor®: An Innovative Method to Align Habits with Goals to Achieve Success. (Please note that the above link is an affiliate link and I do earn commission – not affecting the price of your book. Here is a non affiliate link if you prefer not to send me commission: The Habit Factor).

I bought the book and read it throughout the week. The book is beautiful. The author, Martin Grunburg, illustrates the method of how to become successful using habit. Successful people are successful because of their habits. Please read the book – the book forms the basis for this blog.

I will use the techniques listed in the Habit Factor to get me on the right track – go from zip to somewhere else. I won’t discuss his techniques in detail (read the book) – but I will show my progress on a weekly basis using his tracking sheet.

I will also show how his methods either increased my income, improved my skills in a particular topic, or improved me in general.

Tracking Improvements

As the Habit Factor is all about improving one’s self by the use of habit, I will track everything that has to do with a blog, starting from zip.

I have poor writing skills. It takes me a great deal of time to write articles/post, so I will also keep a tab on how long I spend on each one. At the end of every month I will show how my writing improved.

I will also show every week how close I followed my habit schedule.

Article Time Report (#1)

Here is the first report! As you can see, I spent a lot of time on this first post! There is a lot of room for improvement!

[spreadsheet 0AvSEsjyil-vadE5lQktNd00yRkR3WEhwZDhNZVhqN3c 572 258]

Thank You!

Thank you for reading my first article! Please let me know what you think. What are your habits?