Wealth and Personal Development
The more I think about, and especially the more I write about, personal development and growth, the more I begin to realize that true self improvement comes about through good old fashioned hard work and serious introspection. Presently, there is a popular offshoot of personal development that could be labelled ‘personal prosperity development’; it’s not really improving one’s self at all, it’s an attempt to achieve wealth. Having more money makes you a person with more money, it does nothing for your personal growth. Take latest craze involving the law of attraction for example. The underlying theme of this movement is acquiring wealth, otherwise, no one would be interested and the secret would not have enjoyed the popularity that it has. I’m hoping that this obsession with getting something for nothing will end soon, probably not, although people should soon start to see nothing happen when they write “I want $20,000″ down on a sheet of paper.
Common working people look at the wealthy and cannot begin to figure out how they achieved their wealth. They have a vague idea, but as for the mechanism of that wealth, they are ignorant. People flail around desperately, grasping everywhere to find the secret to wealth building so they too can cash in on the abundance they observe. Not knowing how or where to start, they turn to the quickest solution; magic. That’s right, I said magic. People are searching for a magical method of attracting wealth into their lives. Right now, prosperity is being preached to the North American populous relentlessly. The preachers always become prosperous, but the followers, so desperate to find the secret, have always come up with the short end of the stick. People are searching for the trick of the rich, they believe that a lucky few people have somehow been able to ‘tap into’ a realm where money and material wealth comes flowing in non-stop with very little effort. Without an easy explanation, people have surmised that this wealth attracting method must lie in the mind; the way in which these people think. This smacks of a ‘Cargo Cult.” The Cargo Cult phenomenon was first noticed in the Micronesian and Melanesian islands of the south pacific during the two world wars. The war effort brought military outposts to remote islands whose inhabitants may have had no contact with western technology. Soldiers brought material goods and technological devices that the native islanders had not experienced, therefore, they determined that these goods must have been produced via magic. Furthermore, the aboriginal peoples determined that these goods were actually meant for them as gifts from their ancestors, but that the white visitor had somehow intercepted the goods through some form of magic. To me, this is eerily similar to the modern day notion promoted by ‘the secret’. The rich people we do not understand have a secret way of thinking that they have stolen from the Gods and they will not share it with the rest of us. Just as we can see that the native peoples of the south pacific made decisions based on misinformation, we too are basing our prosperity building decisions on a cerebral notion of non-action that will not work. Our efforts are being misdirected. Rather than relying on tried and true wealth generation methods, we look to magic! I suppose that this can be attributed to ignorance and a current cultural virulent overblown sense of entitlement. The best that the laws of the universe can do for you is to set your mind up to think in a method that will send you in the right direction to achieve wealth; but its going to take a lot of work. If you were to interview the worlds richest people I would bet they will not tell you that the law of attraction is responsible for their financial success. They would probably say that they just did what they loved to do and everything else followed. To acquire wealth we have to learn how; simple as that. If you don’t want to spend the effort learning to be wealthy, you will not be wealthy. Wishing, visualizing, and other methods of non-action will not get you anywhere!
Lacking the knowledge to achieve wealth through their efforts many people turn to what they see as the easiest route to their dreams of the Ferrari in the driveway and the cottage in the Hamptons. The internet and the bookstores are overflowing with methods that scream ‘easy money’, none of which are easy. I have been lured into clicking on that promising link even though I should have known better, its just so intoxicating, that lure of money for nothing, maybe this time it’s for real! When an author writes a book about earning money effortlessly, they may be earning more money from the sale of that book than they earned from the actual technique they are promoting; such is the appeal of finding wealth. The author’s methods may have worked for them and probably took years to develop, so it was not really effortless, they also had to work hard to write that book. The author may love to write and not view writing as work, but it’s still an enormous effort to publish a book. Stephen King is an immensely wealthy author. He didn’t get rich just sitting in his office merrily writing away and sipping tea, he worked his ass off! The same goes for wealthy people. Even the infamous heiress Paris Hilton, likely has a work schedule that most of us could’nt keep up with, or wouldn’t want to. True, some people win million of dollars or have enormous trust funds and spend their days in luxury, but we are not them so forget about them. They are the anomaly so they can be ignored; we are not them, and to sit around and hope to be is a fools errand.
A new term has popped up lately regarding making money on the internet, ”passive income.” The problem with this term is that the word passive implies that dollars will be flowing in to you with no effort on your behalf. This is nonsense, quite likely a false term coined by the MLM indsutry to hook members below them in the pyramid. Do you know how much work it takes for a single individual to build a high traffic web site or blog? Its a gargantuan effort! You could literally promote your work constantly, and still not be guaranteed high traffic and high click through rates on affiliate products or pay-per-clicks. Most people do the work because they love it, not so much for the money; the money is gravy, but it takes time and continuous effort to produce valuable material or to acquire a product to sell. There is nothing passive about it. If you were to publish a website or blog and never work to promote it you will get nothing. Passive is a definite misnomer; there is no such thing.
In reality it’s a certain lifestyle design that we want, not money. We see the money as providing the lifestyle, but its really the other way around. Money cannot make you be a certain way, you have to be it already. Say you want to be a rich painter. The term rich painter puts the rich ahead of the painter. This order of thought implies that you will be a painter only after you are rich. You need to be the painter first, then you will work on the rich part. Take a pen and paper and write out the lifestyle that would make you happy for the rest of your days. Not some crazy crap like owning four homes around the world, and a private jet, blah, blah, blah. Be realistic. The former statement is a four letter word in the personal development literature now-a-days! Be realistic, the sky is not the limit. You do have limitations that you will have to work within, and if you think you don’t you are setting yourself up for a string of disappointments. If you only want to work four hours a week, you are going to have to be satisfied with what four hours of work is going to get you! If you are terrible at math and do not enjoy science you will not be a famous brain surgeon. If you do not enjoy getting your hands dirty you will not be a tradesman, if you don’t want to spend 300 days a year on a tour bus you are not going to make it as a pop star, and if economics and business bore you beyond belief you are not going to make a killing in the stock market. Look for what you enjoy and start from there. If you do not enjoy what you are doing, you will not put forth the immense effort that wealth building requires, and when you love what you do, immense effort is called fun!
The simple fact remains that you cannot learn to swim by reading about it or watching a DVD. You are going to have to get wet! You are going to choke on water and wear yourself out many times over before you can actually swim a stroke; the same applies to anything in life. Nothing comes without an effort. The trick to enjoying life is finding that enjoyment in the effort. We all know of wealthy people who could have retired years ago and we wonder why they are still working. Its obvious, they love what they do, and it just so happens they are getting paid to do it. All we have to do is find something that we enjoy doing and then figure out how to get paid for it.
The guaranteed and most simple path to wealth in life is this: do not chase money. Be content with who and what you are. Strive for good things to happen in your life, but do not strive for things. When you have food in your belly and a roof over your head, you have enough. There is a paradox to having; the less you want, the more you have. There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.
Reader Comments
Dennis, “The preachers always become prosperous…”
Yes, and often they become prosperous by preaching. Reminds me of those who have found the “secret” to investing on wall street and get rich telling people the “secret”. Their first secret is usually to sell other people the secret.