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WEALTH: Wealth Motivation To Double My Income
The Lottery of Wealth Most people believe that wealth is a lottery, that cards were shuffled and then randomly dealt and some received an Ace, whilst others received a Two or a Three and some get the Joker. They further believe that this is just luck - like the lottery, and so those lucky people with Aces should be willing to hand over a portion of their wealth to those unlucky people with lower cards. Closer examination reveals a different truth, and one which is unpalatable to the general public. It is not a truth they wish to hear. The truth is that with a few exceptions, the wealth creators were not dealt Aces randomly by fate. They worked at their success by making correct choices on a minute by minute, day by day basis. Let me explain. Everything you are and have today is the exact summation of countless thousands of little choices and decisions you made from the day you were first consciously able to make such choices. And stating it simply, those choices were mainly between action and inaction. Or putting it another way, between action and laziness. I'm not talking big, life-changing decisions here. I'm talking about tens of thousands of day by day, minute by minute choices like "shall I get up or lie in bed for another half hour?" "Should I read another chapter of that textbook or go for a beer instead?" "Should I try a little harder to get this job right, or just turn it out in a sloppy fashion?" Thousands upon thousands of little things going right back to school days when you decided between completing a home work assignment or watching TV instead. As Jim Rohn says, "Everything matters." It is the small choices which matter. The little day by day disciplines which build into an inexorable force propelling you towards success and wealth. After a lifetime of always choosing the easy option, the lazy way out, the least amount of work, the mediocre will have the temerity to call you 'lucky.' They will then demand 'their' share of your wealth - the wealth you built by numerous small daily disciplines, each one requiring you to forgo immediate gratification of your desires. If anyone ever accuses you of being 'lucky' just reply: "You're right. And you know what? The harder I worked, the luckier I got." Whilst your friends are watching soap operas or down the bar, you will be working late nights, forgoing instant pleasure, striving to create new values, new products, new ideas which will move mankind forward. Your reward? The masses will consume your products or services greedily then complain bitterly that they are substandard or a 'rip-off.' They will actively seek out minor flaws and then attempt to sue you. They will moan about how expensive your products are, demand refunds, compensation, and justice. They will support punitive taxation measures designed to extort from you the money they have paid for your products and redistribute it to the 'needy.' Blaring tabloid headlines will expose you for 'exploiting' the masses. They will demand and support tough laws and sentencing to make sure you are kept firmly in your place. Worse... They will say how lucky you are. How you got all the breaks and they had none. How it isn't fair. How they had that idea years ago and so the rewards really belong to them. How the 'rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.' Whilst vilifying and despising the rich and successful, they will be frantically completing a lottery ticket in an attempt to join them.
How to Become Wealthy By Creating Values Every honest man and woman should earn their own living in the free trade of values with other humans. One of the best ways to become wealthy is to create values which didn't previously exist. Read that statement again, because it encapsulates the rational selfishness philosophy. If you merely trade values, then you make a living but do not become wealthy and empowered. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, if that is what you want, but creativity is the key to riches. As an example, imagine we are on an island together with ten other families. Let's trade values. I'll fix your hut roof for two hours, whilst you husk coconuts for me for two hours. Fair? Sure. No problem.Tomorrow, I'll fish for my family and your family for five hours as long as you collect firewood and water for your family and my family for five hours. Okay? Yes. No problems here. There's nothing wrong with this way of going on, and we could exist for centuries like this. In fact this is exactly how primitive societies did (and still do) operate. But there is no progress.Why is progress desirable? Because without it we are all still working for sixteen hours a day in mindless, numbing physical toil - just as people did for centuries, just as they are still doing now in many parts of the world. The fact that we swap jobs (trade values) doesn't actually improve our lives very much apart from a slight efficiency due to division of labor. Now, let's create some values. Assume all ten families spend three hours a day collecting fresh water from the distant mountain stream. As an 'entrepreneur' you see a way of greatly improving the physical comfort of your family whilst also greatly improving the physical comfort of every other family on the island. Indeed, you intend to create an honest, tradable value which will make you wealthy, but also make everyone else better off too.This is the essential point about getting wealthy through creating an honest value - everyone benefits. Note one vital principle here. You are not motivated by altruism to improve the lot of others. You are solely interested in improving your own lot, and that of your family. You are acting selfishly. How can you act in any other way? This is what gets you out of bed in the morning.You are rational, because you know that the only sustainable way of becoming wealthy is to create something of lasting benefit to others (an honest value) otherwise they won't 'buy' it. The only alternative is for you to use force to enslave the population of the island to your desires, or to con them out of their values. Okay, so what are you going to do? Through your ingenuity, your creativeness and your honest toil during what should be your rest period, you are going to create a neat piping system of bamboo cane which brings water down from the stream right into the village.You plan, you scheme, you work and sweat and toil. You sacrifice your leisure and a portion of your life. You take risks - it might not work. You place yourself in danger - the mountain is steep and slippery. Of course, you need to conduct a market survey, so you gather all the villagers together and say this:"For centuries the women have walked two miles a day to that hill with their water jars to fetch the daily water for their families. You all know that each family spends three hours a day in this pursuit. If I could bring you the same water, here, into the village and you could collect it in five minutes instead of three hours, would each family work for one hour a day on various tasks dictated for my family?" Now of course the resounding answer would be "Yes!" Note the vital point here: everyone is a winner. Each family gains two precious hours a day for nothing - absolutely free, for zero effort on their part. They can use this time to grow more crops, fix up the hut, or whatever else they want to do. The net effect is that their lives are enriched and their standard of living rises, all due to your ingenuity, risk, and discipline.In return for your effort, ingenuity, skill and daring, you become a wealthy man. How? Because you now have ten families working one hour a day for you and so you can 'retire.'In other words, because you created values for others which they willingly bought from you, you have freed yourself from the need ever to work again. There is no money on our island, but money is merely a token of so many units of human labor.There are several important points here. Firstly you did not force anyone to do anything. This is not slavery. The man who says that modern work is slavery is a fool who has never felt the lash on his back. In fact you freed the people from two full hours of soul-destroying donkeywork each and every day of their lives, and the price you charged them for these two hours was - zero.Secondly you did it for you, not for them, and you're proud to admit it. You're also proud of your water system. You're trying to add filtration and perhaps design an automatic coconut husker too. Furthermore, you are proud of your wealth and your achievements. It makes you feel good to be alive. You know you created something of lasting value, and you're receiving the rewards which you are due. These rewards spur you on to greater efforts which will make you wealthier and improve the living standard of all of the villagers. Also, no villager is prevented from following in your footsteps, and so you act like a hero or heroine leading others on to greater efforts. Perhaps another villager will be inspired enough to start making boats in his free two hours - the two hours which you created for him and gave to him free. Now we can all go to where the fish are plentiful - by 'renting' his boats, of course. Instead of spending three hours fishing, we now spend one hour, and pay him one hour in rent. So we are all better off to the tune of another hour a day, with no drop in living standards. In other words, we work less hard for the same amount of fish and fresh water. Or, of course, we can choose to work the same hours as before and get more fish and fresh water. In other words, everyone has become wealthier.
"Believe That You Deserve To Be Wealthy" You are lost if you do not believe that having money is a good thing. You need the self-confidence and focus to follow your dream and this will be fatally undercut if you have the wrong philosophy of life and money.No amount of effort on your part will overcome a faulty philosophy. If, deep down, you believe that wealth is a sin or that money is dirty, or wicked then the first step is for you to correct this error or give up all hopes of wealth for you and your family.What is a 'wrong' philosophy with regard to making money? Anything which could be described as altruistic, socialist, collectivist, communist or any one of its thousand manifestations no matter what the label, no matter what the disguise, no matter what the smoke screen. Without exception, every self-made millionaire I have met was a rugged individualist. Most of them despised government, although many were clever enough not to say so in public. And believe me, there were approximately zero socialists amongst them. A socialist, whatever he calls himself, is someone who believes that brute force should be used to loot from the productive, in order to provide handouts for the unproductive. No matter how you disguise it, or make it look fancy, that's the plain truth of the socialist doctrine. I believe that it is impossible for you to attempt to get rich if you have some nagging doubt that money is the root of all evil, that Capitalism is bad or that wealth should be divided up amongst the needy. You have surrendered the philosophical high ground if you sign up for any of these positions. Let me apologize in advance if you find this a little heavy. It is my sincere wish that you read this article and stay with me. Later articles are far easier.The teachings I produce in order to help people have a better life aren't merely plucked from the air, randomly. My views are based on a solid, 'from the ground up' philosophy of life - a thing which few people have in our compromise age of mixed economies. It is a powerful thing to have a coherent philosophy of life. Without this, you react to life's events with a series of random, mood of the moment responses which are often contradictory and self-defeating. You pick emotions and opinions from an array of ill-considered viewpoints and hand-me-down beliefs.In contrast, a coherent philosophy empowers you. The correct thing to do in all situations becomes obvious - it is merely a question of being strong enough to do it, which is not always so easy! No thief, no con-man, no criminal will ever come close to stealing the amount of wealth taken from you by force due to bad philosophy. I am, of course, talking about state theft of your life efforts. If you do not believe such theft is wrong, your wealth-generating efforts are doomed.
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