I follow several blogs. A great many of them are success-oriented. The interesting things they all have in common is that everyone is programmed from birth to be what they are now. We all believe what we’re told between the ages of 0 and 6. Our personality is set by age 6, and everything we do and think is what we’ve been told to do and think. We put ourselves in bad places mentally and physically by our attitudes on life:
- “Eat Drink and be Merry because tomorrow we Diet. Wait… Die?”
- “Life’s a Bitch and then you DIE.”
- “When you Die you can’t take it with you.”
- “You’ll never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul.”
The gist of this is that nothing we do on Earth matters, so you might as well enjoy your stinking life in your paycheck to paycheck job with your boring spouse and your over-scheduled kids. Who wouldn’t want to take an automatic and shoot everyone in sight?! There is no hope in this view of life. But some people actually enjoy life. That’s just wrong on so many levels. They should feel guilty for how much time, freedom and money they have. They should spend it on us because we have no time, no freedom and no money. Why can’t we become people with time, freedom and money? Because money is evil, or the root of all evil or the love of money is evil or something from that book that has the gold lettering and 2″ of dust on it.
- “Money can’t buy you happiness.”
- “Life would be better without money.”
- “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
- “The poor will be with us always…until they all die of course.”
It’s true–money can’t buy your happiness. Neither can NO money. Money represents trade. I trade what I have in goods and services for what I want from someone else’s goods and services. I cannot trade music lessons for carrots, but I used to trade it for 1 gallon of fresh milk (directly from the cow to me! I had to pasteurize it myself) and 2 dozen brown eggs. I trade what I have in talent and time for a substitute type of currency (little pieces of paper with pictures of famous people on them) that I can use to trade for carrots. I don’t have to find someone with carrots that has an interest in guitar lessons. Much handier. I can trade information on finances with someone that wants to trade information on history. Although it would be mentally attractive, I cannot make stew with historical information.
Turns out, I was programmed differently. I have suffered from that all my life. One of the most asked questions in my family as I was growing up was, “What do you think?” Silly me. I thought everyone had this kind of discussions at home. I was an outcast because I actually thought that what I thought was interesting, in-depth, and had some sort of worth to the people who surrounded me. I was wrong. I found out I had been programmed wrong…bad code. People were people and just wore different skins and hair. Some were good at thinking, some were good at working with their hands. People were fascinating creatures. We don’t all think alike or believe alike or act alike, and that makes humans interesting. Somewhere, sometime, some people became aware that since not everyone thought alike, some must be right and the rest wrong. Oops. And since I didn’t think like that, I was wrong and was ridiculed for it.
Let’s just settle this here and now. I’m right. Now let’s go on from here. There is more than one way to accomplish things. It is ok to make money. It is ok to enjoy yourself. It is ok to want freedom and time to do things. Work is fun when you contribute to your society. There is no one way to do that. It’s like Paul described the church in the bible (1 Corinthians 12:12). The reason the rich get richer is because the rich think differently than the poor. The rich trade thoughts and innovation for money, the poor trade time and effort. The rich look for assets–things that provide multiple income streams. The poor look for a 52″ flat screen and diversion and put their money into liabilities. So you could have a large bank account and still be poor because you look at the money as an asset instead of a tool to accumulate assets. You could have a 0 bank account and be rich because you can trade your time and effort for an asset that brings in money regardless of your attention to it.
Jim Rohn says that every child should have 2 bicycles–one to ride and one to rent. The child doesn’t have to ride both bicycles, and doesn’t even have to ride one. He might rent both of them! Then he could use the money to buy a 3rd bicycle. See? He now has a revenue stream. The maintenance and repairs on the bikes might bite into the revenue stream, but it wouldn’t stop it. Sooooo, the kid with 0 money goes and does odd jobs for the neighbors to earn money to buy the 1st bicycle. He rents out the bicycle because he can’t ride it while he’s doing the odd jobs. He has an active income stream from his own efforts, and a passive income stream from his little brother who rents the bike from him. The kid now uses the profit to buy a second bike, and now can ride further around the neighborhood to do odd jobs and increases his territory. He enlists the help of one of the neighborhood kids to do some of the work, and though they split the profits, the kid still has to rent the bike to get to the jobs. If kid II doesn’t figure out what kid I is doing, he continues with this arrangement as long as Kid I continues to get jobs and rent him the bike. Kid I becomes fairly well off. Kid II has money for movies and snacks. Which one becomes rich? Kid I’s little brother is without a bike since Kid I rents it out to the neighborhood boy to help with his business. Kid I’s little brother gets his own bike the same way by selling lemonade on the corner. Then he adds cookies to the stand. Then he boxes up some of the cookies and sells those. Then he hires a neighborhood girl to run the stand and opens a 2nd stand in the neighborhood down the street. The children in that household have figured out what assets are.
Was I programmed like this? Why, yes, yes I was. I cannot bring myself to work for others. I do not have a 6 figure income. I have been to Europe 3 times since I was married. I have been in every state except Hawaii and Louisiana. I paid cash for the $1450 repair on the car for a compressor. I have investments that grant me multiple streams of income. I am not rich because I have a big bank account, I am rich because I have multiple assets. I have time, freedom and enough money to do what I want.
Once you are aware that where you are you programmed yourself to be, and where you want to go is also programmable, write the program!!!
Measureable progress 