Article 7: Values are the Foundation of Wealth

When you find something to be valuable, it is a reflection of your values. All of those things which you find valuable in your life form your system of values.

It is this collection of values, most of them reflecting our beliefs and those we grew up with, that we use to make decisions everyday about the tradeoffs in our lives. More work vs. less time with the kids, more exercise vs. less dessert, being honest vs. lying to get what you want etc. This is one function of our system of values. You will make choices between these kinds of things based on what is most important to you at a given time in your life. Read more

This Book Will Help You to Lose Weight, Find True Love and Make Money

…not necessarily in that order.

Awhile ago a friend of mine told me that nearly all self-improvement books talk about one of three things.

Guess which three things? If you took notice of the title, that would be a good guess. These are all dimensions of your overall wellbeing, which along with anything else that is important to you, is how we decide if we have a high quality of life or not.

If you are overweight, it is easy to perceive your life as miserable. However, in all but the most extreme situations, you can do something about it.

It is very simple - Eat better quality food, less food in general and exercise more.

Dont have any friends? Not yet hooked up with your soul mate? What are you going to do? Sit around and wish that these people walk into your life? No, you have to be a better friend, you have to be worth someone wanting to know you. You have to like and love yourself before someone else will.

Dont have any or enough money? I have seen several instances lately of people saying (to everyone they know, everyone that is listening): I dont have any money, please give me some.

I dont know how that is working out for them … I doubt very well. I think of money as another form of wealth for which, like the other examples above, it is required to offer some kind of value for what you want. This goes back to Articles 2 and 3 about energy exchange and our inherent potential for wealth. If you want money, you need to offer someone value (in any number of different forms to get it). You need to invest it and take the risks associated with the return you expect on your investment.

No matter what kind of wealth you are talking about, you need both the desire to change and be able to make the decision to change.  Then you need to take action.

The nice thing about developing your Wealth Manifesto is that all aspects of your life, everything you want, can be attained using one systematic approach.

The Wealth Manifesto: Try it, you’ll like it!

Article 4: From Survive to Thrive …

I have always liked “wordplay.” This is everything from knowing and appreciating the origins of words, alliteration and rhyming, playing Scrabble, etc. This comes out in my writing because it makes it interesting to me and is a part of the challenge and joy that writing brings to me. My interest in this can be seen in one of the raison d’etre’s of my book regarding the word ‘wealth’ - when I discovered that it is derived from a word that meant ‘wellbeing,’ it moved me one more step down the path of discovering just what “being wealthy” was all about. The same process then evolved with another word that is getting a lot of use these days: thrive. This of course works out nicely with a word that contrasts with (and rhymes with) thrive: survive.

Damn … I’m having fun all over again.

Thriving is the ultimate attitude to adopt if you want to become wealthy. Here are some definitions of the word “thrive”:

- To grow vigorously: FLOURISH
- To gain in wealth or possessions: PROSPER (from the Latin prosperare meaning “to cause to succeed.”)
- To progress toward or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances, as in she thrives on challenges

I also believe that one of the crucial steps towards unlocking your purpose is learning to thrive rather than survive. Many people, as you know, are barely surviving; they will have a hard time seeing their life as wealthy, now or in the future. To experience and accelerate wealth, it’s important to get beyond focusing on lower-level needs and raise our sights towards growth and prosperity. In short, we must learn to thrive. This is the 4th Article of The Wealth Manifesto:

The journey to wealth will transform your life from Survive to Thrive.

Thriving is far better than merely surviving. Of course, thriving is pretty tough when you are having trouble surviving. Since it is often the case that money takes care of nearly any issue that has to do with the lower level, physiological needs associated with survival - food, shelter, security … even sex - I think money is important (within reason). This is why I make the connection between your Wealth Potential, your ability to be fulfilled as a person and the ability to generate income. It is going to be very difficult for you to fulfill the valuable role you have on this Earth if you are lacking in the physical needs common to all human beings. You are here for a much bigger reason than to live in scarcity.

The path from surviving in fear to thriving in love can be challenging but it is the path of least resistance that we all must ultimately find. You are moving towards wellness and grace and away from that which causes you pain. This will put you on the path to who you were meant to be. This means the path to wealth is not only consistent with finding your purpose, it is your purpose.

I’ll finish up today with a favorite quote (found of course in my book The Wealth Manifesto )

Love is the only wealth that man absolutely needs.
Love is the only wealth that God precisely is.

- Sri Chinmoy, Indian philosopher and guru

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.