In kung fu there is a saying, “A strength over-extended becomes a weakness.”

A profound concept, no doubt. Let’s look at how it applies outside of the martial arts realm.

Suppose you manage EVERY detail of your day – and feel you must work from a list ALL the time.

This will help you get more things done – but it will reflect in your body as stiffness, aches, pains and inflexibility. Your mind needs time each day to unwind – to sit in silence with no plan, no agenda. Just breathing and paying attention to life itself. Time in which to feel that no one is home.

When I’m in China I will often sit with a friend for a meal, talking – or simply sitting and sipping tea, for hours. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. And these are some of those most profound moments of my life. Afterward I come up with ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise manifested if I was fixated on “time” and my schedule.

Rigidly sticking to the concept of “time” and never making room for spontaneity or synchronicity leads to stiffness, rigidity and pain. It’s an important strength, being able to manage one’s day and time – but if you’re too rigid, too strong – relationships get shattered, others feel neglected.

You’ve gained nothing.

The key is staying in the middle. Neither being to strong – or to lackadaisical. It’s having segments of your life that are controlled and others that are relaxed.

If everything is controlled by Father Time – then Mother Nature will make you pay a price. She will force you to relax when you least expect it. Better to plan on relaxing in advance.

As a martial artist I have routines I follow with great devotion and discipline.

It is not always the same workout – but often the same exercises. I have a plan for how many repetitions I will do each day – and I stick to it.

But even the same exercises are not the SAME if I delve into each with more feeling. If I dive DEEP into the experience of what I’m doing. If I really ground myself in the moment.

Some time ago, I planned on doing my evening routine at 10 PM – but I got engaged in conversation with a friend until late in the evening on the topic of “out of body experiences.”

It’s estimated that 25% of the population has one of these OBE’s sometime in his/her lifetime. Many get freaked out. Others are afraid to talk about it because people may think they’re looney.

So we spoke about this and other mysterious matters until after midnight. When he left I realized I still hadn’t done my final workout. So I went outside and began to train at 12:30 a.m.

Less than halfway through the form I was G-O-N-E. No concept of time. At least not accurate time.

I’d only been moving a short while, yet it seemed as if I’d been training for half an hour or more.

I continued to move – and time continued to feel distorted. A few minutes felt like an hour. Similar to the feeling of visiting Hawaii – and after one day you feel you’ve been there a week.

Since that evening I almost always have this same time distortion feeling when I train. Even if I time myself on certain drills, I’m so in the moment that time is like a foreign concept.

Around the same time I noted that this same feeling of time NOT being what it’s supposed to be, had entered other realms of my experience. When I sat to write a newsletter or article, there was no such thing as time. When I got up to speak in public – there was no such thing as 90 minutes or one hour.

Oddly enough, 90 minute talks turned into ones that were three, four – even five hours long. Without a break. And no one was leaving the room.

How could this be.

In the past I always spoke for 90 minutes then took a break. And I was a bit fatigued afterward. Now I spoke for hours and felt energized.

So strange.

The moral of the story, when a strength is over-extended, you get weakness. You get breakdown.

But when a strength is turned into a stretch – when you’re flexible enough to bend – you will not break. You’ll go further than you’ve ever gone before.

There’s a Chinese saying, “Bend with the wind to avoid the hurricane.”

Think of a tree that is rigid. A hurricane with easily dispose of it.

But a bamboo tree that bends with the wind – it will most likely be spared.

So it goes with your life.

Be strong where you are strong – but not too strong. Add flexibility into the picture and you may surprise yourself with what happens.

Best way to begin adding flexibility is to begin paying attention to your breathing.

Observe your inhale and exhale. Just watch. Do so no matter what you’re doing.

The second step is becoming keenly aware of your mental pictures and self-talk – and tweaking them to ones that are better.

The third step is moving without unneeded effort, resistance or struggle.

I’ll have a video for you to watch online very soon that explains this and more in greater detail.

In the meantime, make sure you are raring and ready to move into 2009 with the right mind-body set for success, prosperity and health.

Why not let me begin guiding you in the process with my best-seller, 101 Ways to Magnetize Money.

Happy New Year.

Matt Furey

Warren Buffett, one of the smartest and most successful businessmen of our time, was recently asked what he thought was the best investment anyone could make in these difficult times.

His answer was fast and simple …

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”

That could very well be the best advice Mr. Buffett has ever offered.

Never before have we faced such perilous times.

A free-falling stock market is jeopardizing the comfortable retirement of millions. Once rock-solid, mainstay companies are struggling to survive. Millions of blue- and white-collar jobs are on the line. In fact, a just-released government report talks about 533,000 jobs lost in November alone – the most in a single month in 34 years.

And many experts believe the worst is yet to come.

Nevertheless, there’s a small group of people who have risen above it all.

They’re folks who don’t worry about the stock market – or if their jobs are going to be there at the end of the day.

In fact, these people don’t even have “jobs” as most people know them. And I happen to be one of those people – one who doesn’t have a “job.”

On a typical day, people who think and act as I do, wake up, have a cup of coffee, do some exercise, get a bite to eat – and think about things they can write about.

And when we’re good and ready, we’ll saunter over to our laptop – and begin our so-called “work” day.

Picture this: In my world there are no alarm clocks buzzing. There is no such thing as rush-hour traffic.

There are no bosses looking over my shoulder. Nor am I or people who do what I do asking anyone for a handout or bail out.

Truth is we don’t really even have to get dressed if we don’t want to.

Yet, the choices we’ve made to be lazy and stay at home doodling on our laptops has given us an opportunity to make more money than the average full-time “work-a-day” Joe or Jane …

$50,000.

$100,000.

$200,000.

Many (who choose to spend more time at it) are making $500,000 a year or more.

Better still, we’re making that kind of money doing fun and interesting “work” … using our minds and our
creativity, while providing an essential, very-much-in-demand service to a $2.3 trillion (and still growing)
industry that’s virtually recession-proof.

And it’s all because we took Mr. Buffett’s good advice LONG before he gave it:

We made a simple, yet all-powerful, investment in ourselves that will pay off us for the rest of our lives.

I highly recommend you do the same today. Especially today …

But how.

The best and fastest way is to take a good and enthusiastic look at the kind of resources I’ve studied along the way; especially those offered by my very good friends over at American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI).

For 11 years now, these folks have been giving fed-up, burned-out rat-racers a much-welcomed “second chance.” A second chance that leads to a high-paying career.

More than that, the careers AWAI offers are as much about lifestyle as they are about making a fortune.

Take the Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting, one of the most popular programs AWAI offers.

Here’s a work-at-home career where, if you can write in a nice, easy conversational tone – and you’re willing to learn the basic formula for writing a good, effective sales letter – you can make a very nice high-five-to-six- figure income from the comfort of your own home.

Many who have taken the AWAI copywriting program have not only been able to leave jobs they hated … but move to places they’ve always dreamed of living: mountains, seaside towns, even different countries all together. All they need to “work” is a laptop and a good Internet connection.

And, despite the economy, copywriters are still in very high demand, since they are the engines that drive the $2.3 trillion direct-response industry. Copywriters I talk to say the demand for well-written letters is higher than ever, as marketers tend to mail more often and more aggressively in down markets.

It’s virtually a recession-proof business.

Plus, the other great thing about mastering the art of copywriting is that it’s a financially valuable skill that will reward you the rest of your life … and give you a source of income well into your retirement years.

What better way to invest in yourself than to learn a skill that could earn you many millions over the course of your lifetime AND let you live your life “boss-free” on your own terms.

Another fast-growing segment of the writing market that offers exciting income and lifestyle opportunities is writing for the web.

Website landing pages, pay-per-click ads, email promotional letters, search engine optimization – these are the buzz-terms of the fastest-growing commerce opportunity in the world today. And anyone who sets out to become an expert in any or all of these areas will forever be in high demand with companies all over the world.

And the timing for this opportunity couldn’t be better.

Once a job handed to underlings, smart businesses are now realizing that to be competitive online these days, they need knowledgeable, qualified professionals to create powerful sales-driven web content. As a result, it’s estimated in the U.S. alone, businesses from Fortune 500 companies to local mom-and-pop shops in your hometown will spend $26 billion in 2009, strictly on transforming their website content.

Which is why AWAI teamed up with web writer extraordinaire Nick Usborne to create the ultimate “a-to-z” web-writing program, Nick Usborne’s Million-Dollar Secrets to Online Copywriting.

Whether you want to create an online business for yourself – or offer your expertise to others as a highly paid web-copy expert, this program gives you everything you need to master all the elements of a great website.

Nick, whose clients include such important online companies as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Disney reveals secret after secret to writing outstanding, effective and persuasive website and email content. After completing Nick’s program, you’ll be able to walk into any company anywhere, offer to transform their website into a finely tuned selling machine – and deliver.

And the rewards.

You can charge a thousand dollars or more a day for your services – often for writing a simple email note or a page or two of copy for a website landing page. And like traditional copywriting, you can do this from anywhere – and choose your own hours.

So, if you love to write … and you’d love to become one of the pioneer experts who’s very much in demand in this still “frontier” industry, then Nick’s program is the very best place to start.

So, there you have it. Two powerful programs from an organization I respect so much that I plugged them in my best-selling 101 Ways to Magnetize Money.

Take control of your future.

Take back your good life.

Invest in yourself.

And if you’re ready to do it now, AWAI has a very special incentive for you to move forward NOW …

Katie Yeakle, AWAI’s Executive Director, tells me this incentive is unprecedented. Never before has the company offered such a substantial reason for you to invest in one of their flagship programs.

But as Katie told me, these are unprecedented times.

Never before has it been so important to take steps to secure your personal and financial future than now. Who knows how long this economic mess will last. And who knows how it will affect you, your job and your income in the coming months.

I have known the folks at AWAI for years. They’re the real deal. Their resources are top-notch. They care about their members, and they’re whole-heartedly committed to your success.

I urge you to have a look at all their programs – and choose the one that interests you most.

There’s never been a better time to invest in yourself than right NOW.

Let me end this email with a question: Will you stand on the sidelines wishing you’d done something MORE when times got tough – or will you be able to look at your family and friends and say, “Look what I DID when everyone else was paralyzed with fear.”

Matt Furey

P.S. BTW, when I plugged AWAI in my book, they had no idea I was going to do so. I plugged them out of respect for what they have done to help so many, myself included. That’s why I am telling you again NOW.