How to be a Man

by Steve Pavlina

What does it mean to be a man today? How can men consciously express their masculinity without becoming cold or closed-hearted on the one hand… or wimpy and emasculated on the other? What’s the most loving way for a conscious man to express himself?

Here are 10 ways to live more consciously as a man:

1. Make real decisions.

A man understands and respects the power of choice. He lives a life of his own creation. He knows that life stagnates when he fails to decide and flourishes when he chooses a clear path.

When a man makes a decision, he opens the door he wants and closes the doors he doesn’t want. He locks onto his target like a guided missile. There’s no guarantee he’ll reach his target, and he knows this, but he doesn’t need such guarantees. He simply enjoys the sense of inevitability that comes from pushing the launch button.

A man doesn’t require the approval of others. He’s willing to follow his heart wherever it leads him. When a man is following his heart-centered path, it’s of little consequence if the entire world is against him.

2. Put your relationships second.

A man who claims his #1 commitment in life is his relationship partner (or his family) is either too dishonest or too weak to be trusted. His loyalties are misplaced. A man who values individuals above his own integrity is a wretch, not a free thinker.

A man knows he must commit to something greater than satisfying the needs of a few people. He’s not willing to be domesticated, but he is willing to accept the responsibility that comes with greater challenges. He knows that when he shirks that duty, he becomes something less than a man. When others observe that the man is unyieldingly committed to his values and ideals, he gains their trust and respect, even when he cannot gain their direct support. The surest way for a man to lose the respect of others (as well as his self-respect) is to violate his own values.

Life will test the man to see if he’s willing to put loyalty to others ahead of loyalty to his principles. The man will be offered many temptations to expose his true loyalties. A man’s greatest reward is to live with integrity, and his greatest punishment is what he inflicts upon himself for placing anything above his integrity. Whenever the man sacrifices his integrity, he loses his freedom… and himself as well. He becomes an object of pity.

3. Be willing to fail.

A man is willing to make mistakes. He’s willing to be wrong. He’d rather try and fail than do nothing.

A man’s self-trust is one of his greatest assets. When he second-guesses himself by worrying about failure, he diminishes himself. An intelligent man considers the prospect of failure, but he doesn’t preoccupy himself with pointless worry. He accepts that if a failure outcome occurs, he can deal with it.

A man grows more from failure than he does from success. Success cannot test his resolve in the way that failure can. Success has its challenges, but a man learns more about himself when he takes on challenges that involve risk. When a man plays it safe, his vitality is lost, and he loses his edge.

4. Be confident.

A man speaks and acts with confidence. He owns his attitude.

A man doesn’t adopt a confident posture because he knows he’ll succeed. He often knows that failure is a likely outcome. But when the odds of success are clearly against him, he still exudes confidence. It isn’t because he’s ignorant or suffering from denial. It’s because he’s proving to himself that he has the strength to transcend his self-doubt. This builds his courage and persistence, two of his most valuable allies.

A man is willing to be defeated by the world. He’s willing to be taken down by circumstances beyond his control. But he refuses to be overwhelmed by his own self-doubt. He knows that when he stops trusting himself, he is surely lost. He’ll surrender to fate when necessary, but he won’t surrender to fear.

5. Express love actively.

A man is an active giver of love, not a passive receiver. A man is the first to initiate a conversation, the first to ask for what’s needed, and the first to say “I love you.” Waiting for someone else to make the first move is unbecoming of him. The universe does not respond positively to his hesitation. Only when he’s in motion do the floodgates of abundance open.

Man is the out-breath of source energy. It is his job — his duty — to share his love with the world. He must wean himself from suckling the energy of others and become a vibrant transmitter of energy himself. He must allow that energy to flow from source, through him, and into the world. When he assumes this role, he has no doubt he is living as his true self.

6. Re-channel sex energy.

A man doesn’t hide his sexuality. If others shrink from him because he’s too masculine, he allows them to have their reaction. There’s no need for him to lower his energy just to avoid frightening the timid. A man accepts the consequences of being male; he makes no apologies for his nature.

A man is careful not to allow his energy to get stuck at the level of lust. He re-channels much of his sexual energy into his heart and head, where it can serve his higher values instead of just his animal instincts. (You can do this by visualizing the energy rising, expanding, and eventually flowing throughout your entire body and beyond.)

A man channels his sexual energy into his heart-centered pursuits. He feels such energy pulsing within him, driving him to action. He feels uncomfortable standing still. He allows his sexual energy to explode through his heart, not just his genitals.

7. Face your fears.

For a man, being afraid of something is reason enough to do it. A man’s fear is a call to be tested. When a man hides from his fears, he knows he’s fallen out of alignment with his true self. He feels weak, depressed, and helpless. No matter how hard he tries to comfort himself and achieve a state of peace, he cannot overcome his inner feeling of dread. Only when facing his fears does a man experience peace.

A man makes a friend of risk. He doesn’t run and hide from the tests of fear. He turns toward them and engages them boldly.

A man succeeds or fails. A coward never makes the attempt. Specific outcomes are of less concern to a man than his direction.

A man feels like a man whenever he faces the right way, staring straight into his fears. He feels even more like a man when he advances in the direction of his fears, as if sailing on the winds of an inner scream.

8. Honor the masculinity of other men.

When a man sees a male friend undertaking a new venture that will clearly lead to failure, what does the man do? Does he warn his friend off such a path? No, the man encourages his friend to continue. The man knows it’s better for his friend to strike out confidently and learn from the failure experience. The man honors his friend’s decision to reach out and make the attempt. The man won’t deny his friend the benefits of a failure experience. The man may offer his friend guidance, but he knows his friend must fail repeatedly in order to develop self-trust and courage.

When you see a man at the gym struggling to lift a heavy weight, do you jump in and say, “Here… let me help you with that. Maybe the two of us can lift it together”? No, that would rob him of the growth experience — and probably make a quick enemy of him as well.

The male path is filled with obstacles. It typically includes more failures than successes. These obstacles help a man discover what’s truly important to him. Through repeated failures a man learns to persist in the pursuit of worthy goals and to abandon goals that are unworthy of him.

A man can handle being knocked down many times. For every physical setback he experiences, he enjoys a spiritual advancement, and that is enough for him.

9. Accept responsibility for your relationships.

A man chooses his friends, lovers, and associates consciously. He actively seeks out the company of people who inspire and challenge him, and he willingly sheds those who hold him back.

A man doesn’t blame others for his relationship problems. When a relationship is no longer compatible with his heart-centered path, he initiates the break-up and departs without blame or guilt.

A man holds himself accountable for the relationships he allows into his life. He holds others accountable for their behavior, but he holds himself accountable for his decision to tolerate such behavior.

A man teaches others how to treat him by the relationships he’s willing to allow into his life. A man refuses to fill his life with negative or destructive relationships; he knows that’s a form of self-abuse.

10. Die well.

A man’s great challenge is to develop the inner strength to express his true self. He must learn to share his love with the world without holding back. When a man is satisfied that he’s done that, he can make peace with death. But if he fails to do so, death becomes his enemy and haunts him all the days of his life.

A man cannot die well unless he lives well. A man lives well when he accepts his mortality and draws strength from knowing that his physical existence is temporary. When a man faces and accepts the inevitability of death… when he learns to see death as his ally instead of his enemy… he’s finally able to express his true self. So a man isn’t ready to live until he accepts that he’s already dead.

How to Be a Woman?

Now who will write “How to Be a Woman”?

I’ll tell you what. If you can write the “How to Be a Woman” article, go ahead and post it on your site, and email me a link to it. Next week I’ll make a post linking to all the quality submissions. Erin and I will select the article we consider the most insightful, and that link will be given special prominence at the top of the results post. So basically the prize is a permanent link and free traffic.

I’ll only link to new articles I believe offer genuine value to the reader (i.e. interesting, original ideas), so don’t bother submitting a sloppily written fluff piece or an old article just to get a link. I’d rather link to 5 thoughtful articles than 50 mediocre ones. If you can write reasonably well, you should be fine.

There are no requirements for how you format such an article (you don’t have to follow the ten-item format above). You can use any personal style you like, including writing a strictly humorous piece. The main consideration is how much value and insight you deliver.

Let’s give this a deadline of about 4 days, so all submissions must be received by 7pm PST (that’s GMT-8) on Tuesday, May 13. I’ll post the results as soon as Erin and I have had sufficient time to review the submissions. I’ve never done this before, so I have no idea how many submissions we’ll get, but I imagine it will be somewhere between 1 and 50.

You don’t have to be a woman to submit a “How to Be a Woman” article, but there’s a good chance it will help.

P.S. If you happen to be offended by all or part of this article, you should be able to find plenty more articles that offend you in the Archives.

What Really is Wealth?

by Stan Sarkauskas,

Q. A group of our friends was sitting around the other night and we had a question. What is wealth? We thought we would ask you and find out your opinion.

A. What is wealth? That is a question most of us don’t ponder very often, but we should. I have my own definition for wealth that I have simplified over the years. Wealth is freedom! I believe that wealth frees us from worry, worry about how we will live and eat. Wealth frees us from the worry about how our children and grandchildren will live and be educated. Wealth frees us from the concerns of educating the next generation of our blood line.

So my simple definition of wealth is freedom!

It is the freedom to live the kind of life that is meaningful to each of us without compromise. I have found that the amount of money needed for each individual or couple varies depending on each person’s definition of wealth.

So it only makes sense that wealth is NOT defined by how much money you have. If you are still worried, then regardless of how much money you currently have, you are not free and if you are not free, you, by definition, are not wealthy.

But for most of us, wealth is not only about the type of lifestyle we will have, but about subsequent generations. If your investments continue to grow, even as you receive all the income you need to support your lifestyle, you will be able to leave your financial freedom to subsequent generations and provide freedom to others. And that ability is my definition of “wealth”, regardless of how many or few dollars are involved.

So how does one become wealthy? It all starts with a plan, then implementation of a plan and ultimately a great advisor that will keep you from making big mistakes, especially when it appears that the entire world is in a state of panic.

If you really want to achieve wealth, you need the professional services of a great adviser. No one would try to do their own brain surgery, even if they were a surgeon. No one should try to make financial decisions about their own lives without the assistance of a great financial adviser. Why? Because of the emotional factor and fear. A good adviser will see the truth, beyond the fear and around the emotions that surely are tied to such decisions.

So here are the 5 keys to wealth;

1. Be an owner and not a loaner.

2. Don’t panic: the key to wealth in equities is not to panic out of them.

3. Don’t try to time the market: you can’t and don’t need to.

4. You can’t predict but you can plan: month in and month out, patience and discipline should be your core values.

5. Don’t try to go it alone: hire an adviser whose primary function is to help you be better than you are.

The Entertainment Blog

How To Save Money

Consider yourself first when it comes to saving money. Get yourself turned on to the idea that your financial future will be prosperous as a result of your efforts.

Set aside 10% of your income, just for you. By that I mean set them aside on a savings account with higher interest rate then your normal account.

What is important is that the money is out of reach. If you save them on an account where you have easy access, you will more easily spend them. Get them out of your life! Not in your pocket!

You can also be well off saving in funds. Pick safe funds when you pick, do not go for high risk investment funds or you might end up resenting your saving plan.

Be also careful with credit cards, as a consumer you are better of with no credit on your account. This does not mean that you should not use plastic cards. You can easy use a debit card that does not allow you to withdraw more than you have on your account.

Let the planning of saving and budgeting be fun and be creative with it. Do not look at it as something you have to do, then it becomes very heavy and you might end up felling poor since you have to deprive yourself from all ‘The good things in life’.

Now, watch out for this one. The ‘I deserve it’ mentality lets you spend money like crazy without thinking of the consequences.

You might think that you have done well for a while, so now its time to spend money again. If you follow that impulse you will have great difficulties in saving anything. You need to be consistent with your financial planning and not go in fits and starts about it.

Remember this: all the good things in life are not necessarily expensive. If you plan ahead and prepare yourself a nice lunch box instead of going to the restaurant you can actually save a lot of money.

Stopping yourself from buying things on impulse also gives you a lot of power and personal financial freedom, because you have money left over for the things that is really needed. Plan your shopping ahead and stick to the list.

Next time you come home from shopping try and recall what you actually went out to get. Most probably you will see that you have ended up buying something that you did not plan. Plug these leaks and you will prosper!

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.

Benjamin Franklin

Too Many Ideas Are Bad For Business

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan


The Risks of "Idea Addiction"

By John Forde
Are you addicted to ideas?I am. I admit it. I love the creative process. No, it's not just that I love it. It's that I can't escape it. Seriously.I carry an idea pad in my coat pocket in winter. In summer, no napkin within 20 feet is safe. I steal Post-its. At home, I fill one notebook after another.I have files on my computer more than 700 pages long, filled with capsules of ideas. For novels. For New Yorker cartoons. For screenplays. For non-fiction books and business books.Even the folder that keeps my "future Copywriter's Roundtable" ideas, right now, holds 2,238 items. Many that I've never had a chance to glance at a second time.In brainstorming meetings, I'm the guy you can't shut up. (Though now I know to ask more questions than to force answers on people.)Early in my career, I wrote two- to three-page memos filled with nothing but one bulleted idea after another. "Here's a sales promotion we could do..." or "This is a possible new product..." and "We should set up this protocol to speed up the design process..."Ad infinitum.I don't know if I impressed anybody else doing that, but I certainly must have impressed myself. Because I kept on doing it. Until I had a revelation: Ideas without execution aren't worth much of anything at all.And that's the point I was just reminded of recently, after stumbling across the website for the Behance Group, a company that develops "organization tools" for creative types in every industry."Ideas," one of their senior execs had just explained to a new intern, "are our greatest cost. If anything, we have too MANY ideas."Crushing news for the intern, who was bummed by not seeing many of her ideas light the rest of the company on fire. But just too true. Get engaged in anything, and the ideas will flow. What really tests your merits, though, is the ability to isolate the best of those ideas and actually make them happen.Behance has a process for moving ideas from ether to reality. They call it the "action method."It's pretty simple. First, at the end of every creative meeting, you need to decide which ideas are "action-worthy" and which are solid "backburner" projects. Fill up the backburner shelf, make a list, and save it somewhere. Now you're ready to focus.Second, you take the action-worthy ideas and - as a group - clarify and assign every single, relevant "action step" you can think of. Schedules, follow-up meetings, research, design. It all goes here. Culpability is the key. Get names and deadlines on paper.Third and last, you don't leave the room without creating or identifying your "reference materials." That is, you make a list, as a group, of what you'll need to make a project happen. Then you identify where it will come from. Be thorough when you make this list. Don't let a worthy project get derailed because you don't have the materials you need to make it happen.Do these three things, and you'll be a lot more successful than any pure, otherwise-inert idea-generator could ever be.

How To Live In Perfect Freedom

Dear Reader,

Not long ago, I was playing golf with a friend who is an attorney. Between shots he began telling me how much he detested his job.

"Why?" I asked.

"You have to understand my business," he said with a huff. "My day basically consists of writing nasty letters on behalf of my clients. Then we get nasty letters back. This goes on for a while until my clients realize how many billable hours they've run up. Then they start getting nasty with me. The whole business," he said with a shake of his head, "is kind of nasty."

"Why don't you do something else?" I asked.

From the look on his face, you would have thought I suggested he stop breathing.

"Do something else?" he said. "You don't understand. I live in a big house. I have two big cars. My wife and I like to take big trips. She runs up big bills. What am I gonna do?"

"I don't know," I said. "But it sounds like a big mistake to me."

The sad part is my buddy is a bright, talented guy. He's giving up a lot. With his experience and law degree, there are plenty of other things he could do.

But he doesn't believe that's realistic. Why? Because he can't tolerate even the thought of a temporary loss of status and income. And, ordinarily, that's exactly what it takes.

As the psychologist Laurence G. Boldt once wrote, "The life spent doing what you love is a different life indeed from putting your life out for hire to the highest bidder. The only way you can say it makes no difference is to say life makes no difference."

These words hit me between the eyes when I first read them seven years ago. At the time, I had spent 16 years working on Wall Street. It paid well, but I had grown increasingly bored with what I was doing.

I loved analyzing investment opportunities. But I'd grown tired of having the same repetitive conversations with my clients about their accounts every day. So I decided to write about the financial markets, instead.

My coworkers thought I had lost my mind. "Nobody gets to the point where he has all these clients, all these accounts, all these assets - and all these fees coming in - and then just walks away," one colleague told me, incredulous. "If you leave, you're going to regret it."

But I haven't. Not for a minute. If anything, I wish I'd done it sooner. The writer Joseph Campbell was right:

"If you follow your bliss," he wrote, "you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living… I think the person who takes a job in order to live – that is to say, just for the money – has turned himself into a slave."

That may sound harsh to some. We all have commitments and responsibilities, after all. But that doesn't mean change isn't possible. It hurts to spend your days doing something that is not really suited to your talents, especially when you know you could be doing far more than you are.

In a recent MONEY survey, 43% of boomers said the idea of a new job was appealing. "Now's the time to ask yourself," says financial planner Sheryl Garrett of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, "do you want to keep doing what you're doing for the rest of your life?"

Especially when work you enjoy is invigorating. It gives your life meaning and structure. You feel like you're expressing yourself, making an impact.

As the British historian and philosopher R.G. Collingwood said, "Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do."

Unfortunately, too many folks approach the job market thinking of nothing more than money, security, and benefits. I'm not saying these things aren't important. None of us would survive long without them.

But for a true sense of fulfillment, there has to be more than just money and security. As George Bernard Shaw said:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."

Some may call Shaw an idealist, a dreamer. Perhaps. On the other hand, this is not a practice round. This is the only life we get. You can work a job. You can pursue a career. Or you can choose a livelihood.

Ultimately, the choice is yours.

The Law Of Investing Nolonger Works

Diversifying your investments is like boarding up your windows against an approaching hurricane. It gives you some measure of protection, but isn't going to prevent the roof from falling in.

Diversification is one of the fundamental and unquestioned rules of investing. It's supposed to protect you from huge losses. But what if it doesn't? You could be facing potential disaster. Could conventional wisdom be so wrong? And if it is, what can you do about it?

The idea behind diversification is intuitively compelling. If you spread your investments around, chances are not all of them will get hit at the same time or with the same severity.

But it's not a bulletproof vest. You don't necessarily get off injury-free. And the flip side is that when the markets are going strong, your gains are somewhat curbed. But giving up some upside is well worth the price of not losing your shirt in a free-falling market.

Or so the theory goes. The only problem is, it doesn't work anymore. Or at least you can't count on it working.

Just look at the sharp January 22 correction and you'll see what I mean. When the U.S. market slipped the week before that, so did markets in Europe, Asia, the sub-continent, and Latin America. And the slide continued the following Monday, when the U.S. markets were off because of the Martin Luther King holiday. For a few days, even gold and silver fell. Oil didn't escape. Nor did blue chips, tech, and small caps. In other words, practically everything went down.

Then, after the Fed cut the benchmark interest rate 75 basis points to 3.5 percent, everything went back up. The China market ticked up. Europe and Asia made up some lost ground, and the U.S. market rebounded. Oil stayed down, but gold and silver, copper, nickel, corn and wheat, and cocoa all rose.

Yes, practically everything went back up.

The China market has since wandered down a bit, but you get the idea. If everything pretty much goes down and up together, what's the use of diversifying? Good question.

It seems that many of the correlations (corresponding and inverse) we've relied on for so long are deserting us. If you're sensing that the markets are getting more and more unpredictable, that's probably a big part of the reason.

Oil used to move in step with the market. (Because a thriving economy stimulates oil demand and allows the market to grow.) But oil prices declined as the Dow was reaching new highs over the second half of 2006, and went up last year as the economy showed signs of slowing down.

And gold is supposed to strengthen as the market goes (or threatens to go) into decline and vice versa. But the long-running bull beginning in 2002 saw gold go up. And, for a few days anyway, gold was unable to escape the recent downturn.

Why the heck are some of our most cherished notions of market behavior crossing us? Because the market has transmuted in some very fundamental ways. Four historic shifts have altered how the market behaves. As a smart investor, you need to know what they are.

1. The global reach of multinationals. Recent studies have shown that multinationals from different countries are becoming more and more correlated. It makes sense, doesn't it? They're in the same major markets, and the mix of minor markets they sell to in the developing world doesn't have much of an impact on their stock prices.

2. The world is drowning in money. Global liquidity knows no national boundaries in either its origins or destinations. It comes from China's enormous one-trillion-plus dollar reserves, the carry trade (from Japan, Switzerland, and elsewhere), petro-dollar countries, and cheap credit from both east and west. And it ends up wherever there's a quick (as opposed to safe) buck to be made.

Now I'm not saying that China invests the same way as Saudi Arabia. But all that money looking for a place to land has caused asset inflation in many markets and submarkets around the world. As these markets rise, investment flows into them at a sometimes furious pace because much of the money is leveraged. And at the first sign of the bubble bursting, the hot money leaves just as quickly.

3. Risk modeling reinforces herd behavior. Technology has made such synchronous investment behavior possible. As a common tool of institutional investors worldwide, computer trading based on risk models directs the flow of a great deal of money.

The problem is, the trend is toward more aggressive (and riskier) models, since they get the better returns... at least in the short term. It's not so bad that funds are getting into rising markets at the blink of an eye. What worries me is that they're getting so adept at fleeing markets first and asking questions later.

It's a worldwide meltdown waiting to happen, feeding on its own out-of-control momentum rather than reason (even besotted reason). That makes me very nervous.

4. U.S. and China rule. In the political and military realms, the U.S. dominates. But as far as investment goes, it's a bipolar world. Despite its huge economy and robust consumerism, the U.S. has to share the stage with China - with its huge appetite for energy, technology, and raw materials.

These two markets exert so much influence over individual companies as well as major country markets worldwide, it begs the question: Can we avoid a bear market if either of these two economies seriously stumbles?

I don't believe so. Let's imagine for a second that the U.S. can't control inflation at the same time as the economy encounters serious headwinds. Where can we invest? How about Australia? Their economy is commodity-driven and they don't rely that much on the U.S. to buy their exports. But they do feed China a big chunk of raw materials.

Safe bet, yes? Not exactly. China fills the shelves of American stores from Wal-Mart to Lowe's. If these stores begin milking their existing inventories and stop buying from China, China's economy would downshift from fifth gear to second virtually overnight. And Australia would have just lost its main customer.

The period culminating in the sharp January 22 downturn could have been the "perfect storm," a scenario in which markets everywhere crashed when the economies of China and the U.S. encountered big problems at the same time. It turned out to be a false alarm, but only because the Fed cut interest rates that day.

The real day of reckoning still lies ahead of us. But we did get a hint of what could happen to the markets... and to your portfolio.

China and the U.S. are supposedly dealing with opposite problems: China's economy is growing too fast, and the U.S. economy is growing too slowly. I don't buy that view. When you look a little deeper, you see that both are suffering from too much liquidity and asset inflation.

So what can you do about all this? A few things.

• Convert your holdings to cash.

You could take your money out of your IRA or 401(k) and put it into your savings account or a CD, but why subject yourself to the stiff tax penalties? Instead, look for money-market options or mutual funds that invest in short-term (1-2 year) Treasuries. If you're having trouble finding them, call up your IRA or 401(k) administrator and ask, "Do you have money-market accounts?" "Do you have 1-2 year Treasury investments?" Any decent 401(k) plan should give you a choice of several such cash offerings.

• Invest in funds that invest in dividend-paying companies.

Companies that pay dividends are the only ones that can withstand a sudden or serious market downfall and still fork over the cash. Since 1965, the cash payout of the S&P 500 has never fallen significantly. And in the brutal crash of 2001-2, dividends dropped just six percent (compared to the 50 percent downturn in profits).

Don't confuse "income" or "dividend" funds with funds that invest in dividend-paying companies. Income and dividends can come from bonds and other debt instruments too. Most of the funds I'm talking about come with even more specific mandates - like investing in blue-chip dividend-paying companies.

Most likely, your 401(k) or IRA will give you a choice of dividend company funds to choose from. In general, they're all safe. It's a matter of personal preference. But keep in mind that overseas dividend-paying companies could be a little more volatile than domestic ones.

• Go with what you know.

Even if what you know is one thing (which, of course, is the opposite of diversification). The business or sector you choose to specialize in may not be immune to a bad fall. But you'll have such a good feel for it that you should be able to see any downturn a mile away and get out in plenty of time.

In such circumstances, there's no shame in holding your investments in cash until the nastiness blows over. That's pretty much how legendary billionaire Warren Buffett invests, and it's made him more than $52 billion.

It's better than employing a diversification strategy that's showing signs of becoming less and less reliable.

How to Get Motivated to Work Out

How to Get Motivated to Work Out

By Craig Ballantyne

Sometimes you just don't feel like doing your workout. It even happens to me, and I'm a pro! But I know that I feel like a million bucks after my workout. And I know I can't let myself get "soft" and start skipping sessions.

I have to lead by example. But what about you?

If you are set on achieving your fitness goals, you've got to grit your teeth and do the job. So here are some suggestions to inspire you.

1. Reward yourself when you finish a workout. Treat yourself to a magazine, a TV show, some extra time with your family, some new songs for your iPod, or even a little extra time for yourself.

2. Punish yourself when you miss one. Skip the workout, put $20 into a jar to spend on home repairs. (Make sure your spouse controls the jar.)

3. Review your goals every day and every night. Keeping your goals fresh in your mind will help you stay on track.

4. Realize that the hardest part of the workout is often getting your butt to the gym. Once you get five minutes into it, you will be over the hump. So tell yourself, "I'll just go in and do one set of the first two exercises. Then I can leave." Next thing you know, you'll have done the entire workout.

5. Visualize yourself performing a great workout and finishing strong. Get yourself mentally prepared, and you will have better workouts every time.

6. Crank the tunes. Seriously. Nothing motivates like music.