You Only Get What You Know November 30, 2006
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Creativity, Health, Goals, Personal Growth, Psychology, Beliefs, Wealth , add a commentIf there’s an area in your life you’re struggling with and you can’t seem to find a way to deal with it, I want to give you another perspective on how to start tackling it. First you need to realize why this has happened and secondly, what the solution to it really is about. So think for yourself what the biggest problem area in your life currently is. It could be your health, weight, wealth, social skills, self discipline, self esteem, motivation, habits, emotions, anything. Just picture it and then break it down to the following two steps.
The first step is understanding that what you currently know is what has ultimately led you into this troublesome position or state. Think about this for a moment. What you were brought up to believe, what you define as real or accurate in your reality and what you know about this issue are the core reasons you’re stuck where you are. If all you know about wealth is being poor, then you don’t see other options and opportunities. You just can’t see anything else than poverty. Or maybe you can see it, but not as a potential part of your existence. If all you know about health is buying more drugs whenever you get sick, then you simply don’t see other options of taking care of yourself. If all you know about your low self esteem is that you deserve to feel miserable about yourself, then again that’s the single most influential reason which limits your shift into a higher level of consciousness.
The phase between step one and step two is therefore realizing that what you currently know about your issue cannot take you out of this situation. What you know is exactly what initially led you there and keeps you trapped inside it. If all you know about generating income is having a job, then that knowledge simply can’t help you make a shift into creating other sources of income. If all you know or think you know about health is that your genes dictate your present fitness and immune system, then you’re giving up your control. And if you know the earth is flat, you can’t live on two hours of sleep per day or investing is risky, then you simply can’t use your current knowledge to neither prove the opposite nor even want to see the opposite.
The second step means going out there and challenging what you currently know or think you know about your problem. You have to get more insights, more information to help you on your way. But successfully overcoming your issue is not an attainable result if there is no will. Close-mindedness knows no options and knows only one answer, while there are always many answers to any given question. The tricky part is finding the answer that gives the best result in your life and that’s where education, knowledge and awareness comes along and gives you more alternatives to choose from. Being open-minded is living in a model of reality that works for you now, but it’s not attached to you since you have the ability to discard it anytime when an improved one comes along. This means that also smaller portions of your reality, the problem you may be facing today is within your power to re-evaluate once you decide to learn more about it and learn how to solve it.
So remember that you can’t get further in life than where your knowledge and imagination can take you. Where you are now in all the different areas of your life can’t be exceeded by what you know and think you know is true.
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14 Lessons on Money November 29, 2006
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Financial Literacy, Goals, Society, Independence, Personal Growth, Productivity, Beliefs, Responsibility, Wealth, Work, Assets, Investing , 7 comments1. Money is an idea. In other words, money is what you think it is. It’s whatever your own reality is telling you that it is. If you think having a lot of money is evil or a topic you shouldn’t talk about then that’s the kind of relation you’ll have towards money. If you think money is fun to acquire and you love talking about how to get better at it, then that’s the role it plays in your life. I’m not saying one relationship towards money is better or more accurate than another. That’s entirely up to you to choose. But make sure it really is a choice and not something that you automatically accept as being true based on what you were brought up to believe that money is.
2. Money is exactly as important as you make it. Continuing on the previous insight it’s again a question of your own context. If you think money is an unimportant part of your life, then becoming rich isn’t important either. If handling money in a productive way is important to you, then financial abundance is a logical and natural goal to achieve. However, there’s a difference between being broke and not wanting to become wealthy, and being broke and not knowing that you have the power to become wealthy. Everyone has the potential to make a shift in their relationship towards money.
3. Money doesn’t make you rich. Money has the power to make you both rich and poor. Being rich, poor or middle-class is a question of mind-set. The way you handle money simply shows what kind of a mind-set you’re equipped with. A perfect example of this is when somebody acquires a great sum of unexpected money. Poor people will just end up poorer and rich people will end up richer.
4. Money doesn’t solve money problems. This is closely linked to the lesson above. There are certain people I definitely would not lend money to because I know it would make more damage than good - for both of us. The person would only get further in debt and have an even poorer mind-set, I would suffer from having my money jeopardized and our relationship might suffer in the end even though the initial intention is of a good nature - to help a friend in need. Giving money simply doesn’t help, but giving advice that proactively eliminate money problems in the first place is easier and a more productive way to help.
5. Everyone has money problems. The poor, the middle class, the rich, the government, the church, the old, the young, all the companies, everyone has money problems. Simply having or not having money isn’t free from responsibility to think things through. It’s just a question of which problem you rather have - the problem of no money, or the problem of too much money. Different financial situations simply have different degrees of money problems. Having more money in contrast to having less money is usually much less urgent and problematic to deal with.
6. The lack of money is the root of all evil. This statement is much more accurate than the statement that money is the root of all evil or even that the love for money is the root of all evil. Think crimes, riots, unsafety, emotional instability, selling drugs and weapons, poor health care, ignorance due to poor education and much more. People have to address their primary needs to live, and the more basic they are, the easier the leap is to give in on their values and break the law.
7. The link between money and happiness. Money alone does not dictate happiness or unhappiness. There are happy and unhappy rich people just as there are happy and unhappy poor people. However, unexpectedly not having any money would make me unhappy and unexpectedly getting more money would make me happy. But these are temporary feelings and have nothing to with the overall happiness towards life as a whole. Therefore, it’s pointless to generalize rich people as unhappy or even relatively unhappy compared to their wealth and make this notion stop you from becoming rich. You alone choose the level of happiness and the general opinion about this issue is nothing else than what you think that other people are thinking.
8. Money isn’t linked to personal values. Having a lot of money or having very little money doesn’t relate to what kind of values a person has. But, money has the power to take those values from within and out into the daylight. It has the power to reveal a person’s true nature and intentions once the bets are getting higher. The tough thing about it is that if the values and intentions are bad, they might not show up until it’s too late. Accordingly, a truly good-natured person might not show their worth either until the money sums are getting really significant.
9. The more money you get, the more money you end up giving. If you think being rich is seen as hoarding money and being greedy, then remember that it can’t be taken into the afterlife. It doesn’t matter how much money you make during your lifetime, every single penny will be passed on to others sooner or later. The richer you are, the more money you keep circulating out from your expense column into someone else’s income column. Eventually it will all go into other people’s pockets, but that’s not as important as the lessons you can give in life or lessons you can give on how to handle money.
10. Money comes to those who know how to handle it. This is a question of education. The better your education about money is, the more it will flood into your life. The school system doesn’t teach it and whatever you think is right is what your family has passed on to you. It’s up to you how financially literate and intelligent you want to become. People knew the very basic laws of how to handle money as far back as 4000 to 6000 years ago and they are just as valid today.
11. Money doesn’t have to require effort. You can generate income both from trading your time and effort for it as well as not trading your time and effort for it. This is the concept of either working for money, or having your money work for you. But, you can do both until you’ve reached the point where you don’t have to work for money, a.k.a. reaching financial independence. It’s also important to note that people who are financially free don’t automatically equate as being either productive or unproductive towards society. Being free from having to work for a living can both mean that such a person is now doing no service to others as well as being actively involved in helping others 24/7 to the best of their ability.
12. Money has the power to give both security and freedom. Sometimes I stumble upon the concept that freedom and security are each others opposites. I’m not saying that this statement is incorrect, but I want to emphasize that money, or more specifically financial independence has the power to give both security and freedom in life. There’s the freedom of doing what you want as well as the financial security of not being concerned of how to get along and stretch your pennies.
13. More money doesn’t mean you have to work harder. With most of the lessons gone through, this is a bit of a summarizing statement to the previous ones. It’s the ‘working for money’ model of reality that enforces the notion that in order to get more money, you have to work harder. It states that the income is directly proportional to how much you labor. One step past this is to start skewing that proportional scale to a greater leverage, but the ultimate step is acknowledging that generating income might not need any form of labor or effort at all.
14. Money is infinite, not limited. This statement is to bust the myth of fixed resources. More money to you doesn’t mean less money to others. Money and wealth grows and expands for every minute and becoming wealthier isn’t just about receiving other people’s money, it’s also about creating more money and abundance all together in the world. Destroying things of value is what eats up wealth while creating assets is what feeds more wealth.
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