Fotinos Joel - The Prosperity Principles

Copyright 2020
by Joel Fotinos
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, llc. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Cover and text design by Kathryn Sky-Peck
Cover photograph iStock.com
Typeset in ITC Berkeley Oldstyle

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Charlottesville, VA 22906
Distributed by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
www.redwheelweiser.com

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ISBN: 978-1-64297-011-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Printed in the United States of America
IBI
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Alan and Raphi,
who make my life richer in every way

There are always many people who help to make a book happen. Many of those who work the hardest are at the publishing company. So I want to give a big thank you to Greg Brandenburgh, Christine LeBlond, and everyone at Hampton Roads. Thank you also to my family for their support in creating this book. And a big thank you to my teachers along the way for the education and inspiration.

This is a book to help you acquire the mindset to riches.

This is not a book about money. It's not a book about finances, where to invest, or how to beat the stock market. There are many books that deal with these topics, but this isn't one of them. This book could be more important than any of those books.

This is a book to help you acquire a mindset of riches. It's about creating a way of living where you aren't controlled by fear, inertia, or poverty. Instead, you are motivated by creative, positive action, and an open mind that is ready to receive. After all, what good is wealth if you don't believe you can achieve it?

According to research I've done over the years, as well as my experience and the experience of those I know, self-made millionaires think and act in certain ways that maximize their ability to both create and receive prosperity.

Self-made millionaires think and act in certain ways. I've found that self-made millionaires:

• Are positive.
• Are curious.
• Use their imaginations.
• Have a never-quit mentality.
• Turn their defeats, failures, and weaknesses into strengths.
• Make quick decisions (but are willing to change their mind if need be).
• Believe they can do it, whatever it is.
• Are engaged in their lives.
• Are consistent with their actions.
• Act with persistence when things get difficult or they feel bogged down.
• Do everything with passion.
• Are flexible when they need to be and firm when they need to be.
• Are focused on their goals.
• Ask for help when they need it
• Create meaningful rewards along their journey
• Work hard and play hard

That doesn't mean that every self-made millionaire is a master at each one of those things. It does mean, however, that they tend to value those qualities and learn to develop them in their own lives. You can do this, too.

This book is inspired by great prosperity teachings from classic bestsellers, most of them written about a hundred years ago. But it's informed by experiencesmine and those of people I've worked with for years now. It's the book I wished I had had many years ago; it would have saved me a lot of time, trouble, and years of struggle.

Since I work in the publishing industry, indulge me a moment. Let's think of your life using the metaphor of a book. If your life were a book, you would keep writing new chapters in the book of your own life. Each year, each experience would create a new chapter in your life story.

Interestingly enough, many of us are not very good authors. In fact, some of us are not authors at all; we let other people in ourlives, or the circumstances of our lives, create the content of ourlives. In these situations, we become passive, taking a back seat while other people take over and tell us what our life story should be. Can you relate to that? At one point in my own life, I was in a dark place and couldn't even see how I could participate in creating my own story; I felt that I was just somehow a character of some story that someone, or fate, had written for me.

And what's more, some of us are not even main characters in our own life story. While the title of your life should be The Story of YOU, it often really is The Story of Everyone Else Who Is More Important Than I Am. Family membersespecially parentstend to want to write the content of our lives, telling us what to do, what we should and shouldn't want for ourselves, and how we should act.

Another way this is true for us is that we can often spend so much time comparing ourselves to others that we aren't truly ourselves. Instead, we base our decisions and actions and self-worth on how they measure against others.

Think about the story of your life so far. Is it fascinating? Is it prosperous? Or are you somehow stuck in a narrative that seems to go on and on and yet goes nowhere. No plot. Just day after day of the same old same old. Weeks are roughly the same as the week before, months are like the months before, and each year is roughly the same year that we have been living over and over again.

Whether it's making millions, living in a beautiful home, driving the car(s) of your choice, having a healthy savings account and full financial portfolio, or whatever way you define success (and we'll be looking at that in more detail later on), this book can help you achieve it. Wherever you are starting from, it's meant to be a guide to help you get to more of what you wantand less of what you don't want as well. If you are currently in a comfortable place but want to go from comfortable to wealthy, then the principles in this book can help you.

Or if you are like I was at one time, struggling and in debt, then The Prosperity Principles can be like a lifeline to give you the help you need to believe in yourself and create the future you want.

While this book is aimed at creating more financial wealth, TheProsperity Principles can be used to create more of anything you want. This is an important point: your goal might be to make more money and become a millionaire, but the principles will also work to help you on your journey to create more love in your life, more joy, more peace, more health, more adventure, more anything. The principles are framed for money, simply because it seems like money is often what people focus on as the main thing missing from their lives. So use this book to create a more prosperous life... and use this book to create more in any area of your life!