I would like you to participate in a quick little experiment right now. I want you to open up the calculator on your computer right now or use a desk calculator if you prefer.

Ok, now I’d like you to think about your best friend in this world, or the person you talk to the most on any given day. This may be one of your siblings, friends, spouse, etc. I want you now to take your best guess estimate of how much money per year that person makes and plug it into the calculator. It doesn’t have to be exact. If they make around $40-$50k/year for example, just plug in $45,000.

Ok, now click the plus sign and enter in the approximate income level of your next best friend or person you talk to most often. This may in fact be a co-worker you hang out with at work, go for lunch with etc. even if you don’t consider them a “best friend”.

Ok, now click the plus sign again and enter in the next best friend’s approximate income. Think of people you would invite to your birthday party or a BBQ. Someone you talk to a few times a week perhaps.

Ok, now think of two more people you talk to on a regular basis and add their income in as well.

Ok, now you should have a number in there. Let’s say that the numbers you put it were $42,000 + $50,000 + $46,000 + $60,000 + $18,000. Your total would be $216,000.

Ok, now take that number and divide it by 5. What number do you get?

The example above was $216,000 which equals $43,200 if you divide it by 5.

That number that you have in your calculator right now is the average “wealth mentality” of your circle of 5 best friends or people you spend the most time with. Is that number higher or lower than the amount of money you’d like to ideally make per year? If it’s lower than what you’d like to make, you’re going to have to make a change. Let me explain why.

The average “wealth mentality” of your circle of best friends affects your thinking every single day whether you like it or not. You simply can’t get away from it. Every comment, every remark, every reaction, every joke, every statement gets sucked into your subconscious mind where it penetrates your daily habitual thinking patterns. Every time one of your buddies says “Dude…” you become more likely to say “Dude…” yourself. It’s inside your head.

If you want to be wealthy and make lots of money you’re either going to have to change who you hang out with every day OR you can do what I did; I added a couple of multi-millionaires into my circle of friends without telling anyone. I would go to work, go out for lunch with my “average mentality” buddies, but then I would get home and I would sit down and have a conversation with a multi-millionaire every night. We wouldn’t just talk about any random thing either, we would talk about the absolute best of the best advice they could give me. In fact they spent a lot of time thinking about the advice they would give me before ever talking to me. Some of them it took years and even decades to come up with the very specific advice that they could give me. You see, I only had about an hour a night, sometimes even less to talk to them so I made sure that the stuff we talked about was the really juicy important stuff about being wealthy. We didn’t talk about weather. We talked about all kinds of stuff my friends would find way too boring to talk about. Most importantly, the subject matter didn’t even matter as much as just getting around their way of thinking, their positive tone, their vocabulary, their habits of speech and thought etc.

What’s great about this is that each millionaire only charged me $20-$100/each to talk to them. Some even less.

If you haven’t already figured it out, I’m talking about books here. I’m talking about expanding your circle of friends to include multi-millionaire thinking by reading books. Think and Grow Rich. The Science of Getting Rich. The Spirituality of Success. The One Minute Millionaire. You name it, it doesn’t really matter what books they are as long as they are coming from people who are positive and wealthy. There are countless titles written by multi-millionaires that are available to you for $20 or less, or even free if you own a library card.

Remember that calculation you made in the beginning? The example I had came out to $216,000 before I divided the number by 5. Take that number and add $1,000,000. Ok, now take that number and divide it by 6.

Do you see what happens to your “average wealth mentality” when you add just 1 millionaire to your circle of friends? My example jumped from $43,200 to $202,666. Slight difference huh?

Let me just take a random person you might have heard of. Joe Vitale from The Secret. Have you ever read his blog? Take a look at this entry he made on his blog a while back. Don’t read the article, but instead click on the two pictures in the blog to see them a little better. What do you see in the background and all over Joe’s desk?

http://blog.mrfire.com/marketing/office-feng-shui/

BOOKS! He’s got more books than he can fit on his bookshelves! I have 5 full sized bookshelves in this room alone and there is not a single empty spot on any of them.

Have you heard of Steve Pavlina of StevePavlina.com? He’s a very successful Pro Blogger who makes over $400k/year from his blog. This is a quote form his blog: “Since the early 90s I’ve been reading about a book a week, so that adds up to quite a few books.” – Steve Pavlina

By my calculation that’s +700 books in the last 15 years or so. I’m not sure where I’m at right now but I think it has to be somewhere around +500 for me.

HINT: THERE IS A PATTERN HERE.

Through my reading I’ve had the privilege of meeting and getting into the thinking patterns of hundreds of multi-millionaires. I am absolutely convinced that it is one of the biggest factors why I have been able to build my wealth over the years, and I am also sure that the same thing has happened to the thinking of people like Joe Vitale and Steve Pavlina. By getting around successful people we adopt their ways of thinking. Books are the easiest and most cost effective way of doing that.

So, how much time do you spend in the thinking mindset of multi-millionaires per week? What percentage is that of the time you spend with your other friends?

Hmmmm….Something to think about, huh?

P.S. Unless the average wealth mentality you calculated is well into the six figures already, reading this blog entry just bumped it up.