Who Had the Greatest Positive Impact on Your Life?

For most people, their parents were the greatest influence on their lives. Certainly for the millionaires in my Rich Habits Study, their parents were their primary Success Mentors in life.

A whopping 74% of those millionaires said their parents taught them success habits that were critical to their later success in life.

They were the lucky ones.

The reality is that most are not blessed with parents who are focused on raising children to be successful in life. This is just a sad reality, particularly in poor households.

If, like me, you weren’t one of the lucky ones, you’re forced to find your success mentors outside your home.

The good news is that success mentors are everywhere.

They are in your neighborhood, at work, running local, community-based non-profits, in books and at school. They could even be parents of your boyfriends or girlfriends.

For me, I think books had a greatest positive impact on my early life. I read many books about successful people as well as self-help books.

Brian Tracy’s Psychology of Achievement helped me gain the confidence I needed to take and pass the CPA exam. When I was thinking about going to graduate school, once again, I whipped out Brain’s tapes and listened until I had the confidence to fill out the application for Graduate School.

I must have listened to Brian’s audio book program a hundred times. I even sent Brian a letter thanking him for mentoring me.

But the thing that had the most profound positive impact on my current, latter life was, without a doubt, the 233 millionaires and 128 poor people who I interviewed for my Rich Habits Study.

They literally taught me what to do and what not to do.

I often wonder what my life would be like if I had just one of my millionaires mentor me as a child.

Who has had the most positive influence on your life?

Was it your parents? Was it books, as in my case? Or, was it someone else?

What lessons/habits did you learn from them that you can share?