In this article, I will share with you the tools I used to subdue my tail-enders sufficiently to allow me to successfully move to what I wanted. I imagine that you are once again asking yourself: "When is this guy going to give me some tips on how to make more money? He's told me I don't earn enough. He's told me that I've been conditioned to be an employee and to build someone else's dream. Well now I'm interested in saving for retirement, so when is he going to tell me what to do to earn more so I can save more?"

I understand how you feel, and as with nearly everything in life, you have a choice. You can trust me on this and learn from my experiences, or search out the experiences of others and learn from them, or you can strike out on your own into, what may be for you, the unchartered waters of wealth building. I leave that entirely up to you.

To immediately dash off to on a strategy or a program of wealth-building without some clear understanding of your self-images, how it was developed, and the incredible power it wields over your entire life is, in my opinion, like never starting at all. As I've stated earlier, your mind runs on automatic pilot most of the time and while on automatic pilot, your self-image is not going to allow any new thoughts, images, or habits to enter with which it (your self-images) does not have a strong affinity. You must consciously introduce what you want, including more money, to your mind and you must consciously and diligent see to it that the new information gets past the self-image, and is accepted at the unconscious level of your mind. I guarantee that without this life-changing knowledge, I would still be unhappily sitting around my house blaming anybody and everybody for getting booted out my six-figure job income and making everyone around me miserable.

Well, let me climb back down from my soap box once again and keep my promise to share with you the tools I used to subdue the tail-enders that challenged me. There are three tools: EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique, a rubber band, and the act of overwhelming the tail-ender. They have been listed in no particular order or preference. I've used each of them with equal success at various times on my journey.

Overwhelming the tail-ender or other negative thought was the first tool I used because it was the only one I knew at the time, and I actually stumbled upon it. I was reading an article on hypnosis and the author was talking about something called the Law of Reversed Effect. He stated that when an affirmation is accompanied by doubtful or negative thought (a tail-ender), the mind will usually react inversely to the intent of the suggestion. He suggested that one should gently bring the affirmation before the mind again and again, in other words overwhelm them, and the doubtful or negative thought will gradually subside and fade into the background. I took overwhelm to the extreme. On some days, I'd repeat an affirmation over two hundred times a day, but I succeeded in driving the tail-enders out of conscious thought for the most part. Even when one re-appeared, I no longer felt "threatened" by it.

The use of a rubber band was a variation on the overwhelm technique. I would place a loose-fitting rubber band on my wrist. Whenever I became aware of that a tail-ender or a negative thought I was seeking to counter was present, I would quickly pull the rubber band about 4 inches away from my wrist and let go. After getting over the shock of the sting of the rubber band slamming against my wrist, I would verbally or silently admonish the tail-ender or other negative thought for intruding into my day, telling it to leave and begin to immediately to repeat the appropriate affirmation in an overwhelm manner.

Over time I noticed that negative thoughts like tail-enders, were always accompanied by emotions, sometimes very strong emotions. The position of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is that all negative emotions are caused by disruptions in the body's energy system. The founder, Gary Craig, developed a system of tapping certain points on the body in a prescribed manner that gets rid of the disruption and brings the body's energy system back into balance. Once the disruption has been corrected, I freely proceed to repeat my affirmations, generally without the re-appearance of a tail-ender or other negative thought. You can learn more about this very powerful tool at the EFT website (www.emofree.com).

Remember, you do not have to live on less in retirement. No matter where you are right now financially, you can build and enjoy a Million Dollar lifestyle retirement.