Wealthy Goals

I want to talk about goals … look at it as a belated conversation about New Year’s resolutions if you will. A resolution is typically nothing more than a commitment to a goal. In my coaching practice, I often talk to people about how to get balance in their lives. They feel overwhelmed with work, don’t make enough time for family or themselves, etc. One of the first things I try to find out is what they do to identify goals. A high percentage of the people I work with actually do pay attention to their goals and have some kind of system they use to identify and track them. This is actually not that surprising. A good number of my clients are self-employed and as such have a higher than average level of motivation and have been working on self-improvement, increased productivity and such more so than the general population. However, it doesn’t matter how aware you are of what should be done, it’s whether you do it. The challenge is, that like many other things in our lives, its the tools you use that are the ones that count.

I have the same issues myself - I get into hyper busy mode and forget about the goals and routines I have committed to and just keep pushing through whatever is on my plate. I’m supposed to be setting an example for others and helping them in their lives and sometimes don’t have my own act together either. Hey, I’m human. And besides, ‘being perfect’ is not on my goals list…

In any event, we need to make the effort to use some kind of system for identifying goals. I have found that one of the best things is to make sure you have goals in all dimensions of your life. Since my philosophy is that everything we are can be categorized into one of the various dimensions of our overall wellbeing (or more specifically, wealth), this is how I suggest people set up their goals.

When you list out the various things in your life that you attach value to, you have identified the dimensions of your wealth that are the most important to you. These then become the categories of your goals. I create a table in MS Word (you can of course use anything) that looks like this:

————————Year ———|———Month ———|———Week———–

Physical:

Spiritual:

Intellectual:

Relationships:

Family:

Service:

Fun:

Business:

Investments:

Etc.

When you fill this out, keep these guidelines in mind:

1. Create higher level goals for the year.
2. Derive more detailed goals from the yearly goals for a given month (may require that you break it down on a separate page to identify “month-size-tasks” for particularly challenging goals).
3. Update Sunday night each week. Save a unique file for each week for future reference. Break down tasks to be listed here that can be accomplished in no more than one day.
4. For each day, write down the things that you will commit to accomplishing in that day. WRITE it down on a note pad or something that can easily fit into your pocket or purse. Don’t enter it in a computer or your PDA (a planner is OK if it is handwritten). Writing it down makes it more real. Once you have written it down, make sure it is something achievable in this day and that you mentally are committed to getting it done. Prioritize the items. Make sure there are not too many. It’s real easy to make a list that you never complete (done that a few times haven’t you?). If you can, avoid doing anything else in your day until the short list is finished off

The nice thing about this is that anything you come up with that is important to you can evolve to something you want to track as a goal you are committing to achieving. This method keeps all the dimensions of your wealth in “top of mind” prominence asking for your attention.

These categories are what make up your quality of life: don’t ignore the list.

Mark T. Rafter, Author
The Wealth Manifesto: Transforming Your Life from Survive to Thrive
(Pre-publication release now available at The Wealth Manifesto

Article 2: Wealth is created by the transformation of energy

There sure is lots of talk these days about energy: the cost of energy, the need for renewable energy, saving and conserving energy, investing in energy - not exactly new subjects but they sure are getting a lot of attention. What’s the big deal anyway, why is energy so important?

Well, for starters, all living organisms rely on energy to grow and reproduce. Whether it’s radiation from the Sun causing photosynthesis in green plants or chemical energy from food firing the metabolism of animals, we all depend on energy to survive. From the astronomically huge world of galaxies to the infinitesimally tiny world of subatomic quanta, energy relationships are perfectly balanced to provide us with the world we live in. Everything is energy. Energy is everything. Energy is the currency of wealth, literally and figuratively a factor in all aspects of our lives.

Energy is the subject of the 2nd Article of The Wealth Manifesto: Wealth is created by the transformation of energy.

If you look back at some of the previous blogs, I have been talking about wealth, how it works to define all the dimensions of your wellbeing, the stuff that you do that makes your life worth living. The nice thing about having all aspects of your life operate under one concept such as wealth is that it means all aspects of your life, whether you are trying to generate more income, have more friends or get in better physical shape are governed by the same fundamental laws. And a lot of those laws have to do with energy. Consider a few examples.

The 1st Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed (meaning into other forms of energy). If you want to be paid more at your job, you have to demonstrate additional value to your employer so they will compensate you with additional cash. Money itself is potential energy because it can be used to get whatever you want (at least among the things that money can buy). Your additional hard work, brainpower, creativity … whatever it is that you do to add value is converted into the potential energy of money.

Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion states (simply) that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you want to have more friends …guess what? You think that is going to happen without being a better friend yourself? Nope … not going to happen. You need take action - expend energy and effort to be a friend - to have that energy come back at you (the opposite reaction because it is in the opposite direction, towards you) in the form of more friends.

This works at the quantum level too, where intentionality aligns our thought energies with our feelings to help minimize entropy (taking into consideration the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics) and create the reality we want.

These universal laws are found the realm of common “rules of thumb” and spiritual teachings as well. “What goes around, comes around” - is more than just a saying, it is an everyday version of the 1st and the 3rd Laws I just discussed … you dont need to have a degree in engineering to know that you only get out of something what you put into it. Finally, there is the one Rule that everyone knows from their religious upbringing. It doesnt matter if you are a Christian or a Jew, Muslim or Buddhist, or hardly ever went to church, everyone knows some variation on:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

This is the way the world goes ’round and it all ultimately comes back to energy management (way more important than time management, by the way). Learn how to manage your energy and you can have all the abundance, in whatever form, that you desire.

Cheers to your (energy transformed and delivered) wealth!

Zen, Motorcycles, Mud and Quality

That should get someone’s attention. This is not one of those “MAN BITES DOG!” headlines … these things are actually very definitely connected….

Anyone that read books by Vonnegut and JD Salinger in High School back in the ’70s probably came across Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. It is a semi-autobiographic, road trip, father-son bonding book about Pirsig and his son Chris. It’s is about Zen, some about motorcycle maintenance. And a good bit about Pirsig’s emotional and mental breakdowns that led him to spend part of the early ’60s in and out of mental institutions (with Electro Shock Therapy thrown in as well). But the book is really about is Quality.

Which is why I was assigned the book as a text for a Ceramics class. Read more

Values and the Dimensions of Wealth

If wealth is multidimensional, how do we find out what those dimensions are? Are they the same for everyone? How do we prioritize?

To create a more holistic concept of wealth, each of us must look at our system of values. We must identify and prioritize the things in our lives to which we attach meaning. After all, how can you create a Wealth Manifesto and declare your intention to become wealthy if you don’t know what being wealthy means?

Our system of values is fundamental to who we are. Values guide us in deciding what kind of food we eat, how we discipline our kids, how we behave in business negotiations, the amount of time we spend learning, the role of spirituality in our life and just about everything else we do. Even the most basic day-to-day decisions are reflections of our values, whether we acknowledge this or not. Values determine how we prioritize what is important, where we put our energies, and how we focus our intentions. Values lay the foundation for how we define our wellbeing and provides us with the “why” when we set goals for ourselves.

In short, our values provide us with the “categories” of our wellbeing and are the guidelines we use to measure the breadth of our interests, passions, and in short, the Quality of our lives. The more dimensions of wealth/wellbeing we are involved in, the more rich our lives are, the more the possibilities for growth and the more we will learn to truly live to the fullest extent possible with our time here on Earth.

There is one final thing we have to discuss: How do you assess your wealth? Well, financial wealth is pretty easy. Everyone who has some amount of money knows how to count. Money is easy to value. Someone with $1.6M is clearly more financially wealthy than another person is with $1M. What about peace of mind? The “value” of your relationships? How do you assess time with the family vs. more time at the office?

You prioritize based on your system of values. How you determine that a particular activity is giving you what you want, what you need and what you are typically hoping to experience is through Quality (that’s why it called Quality of Life!).

The way that we experience value is through Quality. I’ll talk more about that next time.

Cheers to your wealth!

The Dimensions of Wealth

In the last post, I talked about wealth having many dimensions and not being confined to the financial domain. Somehow the idea of wellbeing was hijacked a few centuries ago and the ‘wealth=money’ idea entered into popular thinking. I see this changing. I started in on the idea of wealth beyond money going on 3 years ago. I just saw an interview in Inc. magazine with Bill Zanker, one of the guys that founded the Learning Annex. They were talking about real estate and how with the market downturn the attendance at the Learning Annex seminars for real estate investing was waning. The interviewer asked him what was next (or something to that effect) and Zanker said they were putting together something “…called ‘How to Attract Wealth’ - It’s different from getting rich. It’s a different mindset.”

There a bit of jumping on the bandwagon here with the popularity of things like the Law of Attraction and other new thinking beliefs such as was seen in The Secret. That’s fine … anything that gets more people thinking outside the religion-specific Dogma Box is OK by me.

Back to wealth. OK, so there are many dimension…what the hell does that mean. The different dimensions of wealth are identified by our system of values. This is how we identify and include what is important in our lives as well as how we prioritize and make decisions (often in the form of some kind of tradeoff). What specifically are those dimensions? They can be very high level: financial (yes, it’s still very much in there), physical (fitness and health), relationships, spiritual etc are all aspects of our wellbeing. If you want to go down another level, you can start talking about things you want to do or learn about but dont take the time (e.g., musical or artistic wellbeing). It can be specific relationships: with your kids, spouse, or parents. Your relationship with God is apart of your spiritual wealth.

Wealth covers everything about our lives. This is the first thing we have to understand before we can keep the dialog going. And I could talk about it all day long ….
Let Bill Zanker know I’m ready.

Article 1: Wealth is the Quality of Your Life

That title sounds like a quote or something, doesn’t it? It’s supposed to: it is the 1st Article of The Wealth Manifesto: Transforming Your Life from Survive to Thrive, my upcoming book on creating Quality of Life based income. Let me start with a simple question:

Are you wealthy? Well, are you?

Before reading any further, think for a minute about what “being wealthy” means to you. Close your eyes and imagine that fabulous wealth is yours. Where are you standing? What are you doing? What’s going on around you? Who you are with? What is your state of mind?

Done? When imagining wealth, you may picture yourself on a yacht in the South Pacific, throwing a big party in your Park Avenue penthouse at Christmas time or golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. Others imagine thrilling lives filled with momentous events such as climbing Mt. Everest, ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange or traveling into space. The vision is frequently accompanied by a substantial sum of money in the bank.

Whatever you might imagine, one thing is clear: while wealth includes money, it also involves great people and places, peak experiences and the time, freedom and health to enjoy them.

With that in mind, please take another moment to really imagine what wealth is to you. Finished? Good.

I want you to know that just by doing this simple exercise - by visualizing what you really want in life - you have already initiated the chain of events necessary to achieve wealth. Visualization is a part of intention, the first step in manifesting wealth and the beginning of your Wealth Manifesto.