I Want You Rich!
There’s several reasons I chose to title this article, I want you rich. First and foremost, I want you rich because if you have sufficient finances so that you can choose to do what you really want to do in life, more than likely you’ll be a better person for it. Sure there are exceptions, but with financial independence you have the opportunity to look within, find your passions and actualize the talents and dreams that make you uniquely you. And if you&rsre focused on actualizing yourself, you probably will be happier, more intentional in the way you live life, and more ready to contribute to others. And all of that will make my life and the lives of everybody who encounters you better.
I also want you rich because I know what happens if you spend your life working for money. Working for money makes you the servant of money and it your master. Then if you are typical of most people, you mostly work to pay your bills, to keep up, to survive, to try to save a bit, etc. Life becomes increasingly about money, about consumerism, about consumption. And that will sell you short. But if you are rich, if you are financially independent, then money works for you. And that frees you to focus on other things.
Working for money puts us at the lower level needs on Maslow’ Hierarchy of Needs and that means we are not living much of our life at the level of self-actualization. The difference is between living in a world of deficiency and a world of abundance. In the deficiency world we assume there’s not enough for everybody, that there’s scarcity, and that we have to compete in a zero-sum game. That means that when anyone gets more than we, we feel as if we have lost something.
So I want you rich in order so that you can live at a higher level of consciousness, a higher level of human experience. I want you rich so that there are more people living in the world of abundance and who think about contributing, making a difference, and making the world richer in every way.
I also want you rich in more ways than just finances. I want you rich in creative thought and problem-solving thinking. I want you rich in heart, in caring for others, in using your emotional intelligence to bring solutions to our hurting world. I want you rich in health, time, relationships, effort, effectiveness, creativity, joy, etc.
As I write this I have just returned from Europe giving presentations on wealth creation. I flew to London for the NLP Conference where I spoke about how to NLP can make you a millionaire and after the conference I went to Avignon France where I conducted a three-day Wealth Creation training. And I began that training by telling everyone that I wanted them rich. Rather than give out Certificates for attending the training, I told them that the day their financial independence would be the Certificate that they had become a Wealth Creator and would demonstrate to me that I had transferred the skills and competencies of a wealth creator.
In fact, just three days prior to flying to England, I happened to see Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki on a couple of interview programs talking about their new book, Why We Want You to Be Rich. So I headed down to the local bookstore to read it. While I didn’t find anything new from their previous books, they did offer a new explanation. They said they want you and I rich because the middle class in the USA and other countries is shrinking and democracy only survives long-term with a large middle class. Ah, another reason.
There’s one more reason. I want you rich because the very process of becoming “rich” in the sense of financial independence is actually the very process for living a rich and meaningful life. Sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? Yet it’s true. For years I’ve been researching the strategies of first-generation rich, self-made millionaires. At first I interviewed some people, then I discovered that longitudinal studies and focus groups with multi-millionaires had been going on for decades and that there was a rich data base of information about how they do it.
What the research shows is that most self-made first-generation rich millionaires use their work as the foundation for becoming financially independent. They find something that they love doing, develop their skills, find a niche, develop their financial and business intelligence, add value to others through their skills, create a business, and persist at it for about a decade. On their way, they use frugality to enjoy what they do have; avoid compulsive spending, use self-discipline to manage their money by saving, budgeting, and investing.
From the outside, it doesn’t seem very glamorous. It certainly doesn’t fit the Hollywood images of the “rich and famous”. It certainly doesn’t capture the imagination as the poor person who suddenly wins the lottery. Yet on the inside, the people who work the “get rich slow” method first get rich inside by finding their passions, follow their dreams, and over a period of time learn how to handle money to make it work for them.
How different with the typical lottery winner. Research about them shows that five years after their win, 90 percent of them view it as one of the worst things that ever happen to them. Five years later, the great majority have none of the millions left and have to return to work for someone to pay their bills. What was the problem? They were not rich enough inside to handle the money, the money handled them!
The strategy of becoming rich in creativity, in adding value, and in creating a business speaks of what I’ve designated inside-out wealth. Such a person isn’t using money, status, wealth, etc. to prove anything and especially not to become a somebody. They look at money as a scorecard on how they are playing the game. And the game? The real game? The inner game? The richness of their mind, emotions, talents, skills, competencies, and creativity.
This is what I mean when I say that the very process for creating wealth, becoming financially independent is the very process for living a rich and meaningful life. In both, we move to the level of self-actualizing so that we can be and become all that we can and in that process which seems so psychological, we actually discover how to be so valuable that in the marketplace we have great value to others.
So, as you can see, as a psychologist and entrepreneur, I want you rich for lots of reasons. I want you to win the inner game of your passions and dreams so that you can simultaneously win the outer game of financial success. In this, the inner and the outer work together. The good news in this is that you don’t have to give up yourself, your integrity, or your intelligence to play the financial game. In fact, to truly win you need these things — yourself, your integrity, and your intelligence!
Having now presented the Wealth Creation training and these secrets of wealth building in the USA, England, Europe, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and so on, I can tell you the biggest things that keep most people from becoming wealthy, financially independent, and a true wealth creator. What is it? It is the “get rich quick” mentality that leads to such impatience that those on the right path just don’t persist. They impatiently jump from one thing to another.
It is also the separation of inner and outer wealth so that a person fails to see that the basis of becoming wealthy lies in the inner wealth that we have to give. We get rich by giving. We give of our creative mind and heart when we find problems and hurts that need solving. Wealth creators solve problems. They add value and by adding value, make themselves increasingly valuable.
And perhaps most important, they fail to take decisive and effective action on what they know. Most people know so much more than they are doing in terms of finances. So instead of closing their knowing-doing gap, they keep thinking that there must be some high flautin’ secret and so keep looking for it. Yet what they do know that they could do that would improve their financial status, they do not do.
I want you rich and trust that you’ll enrich yourself on these thoughts and then begin to look at yourself and your talents and begin to ask the wealth creation question of yourself, “How can I add value here?” “What can I give of my mind, heart, and actions that would enrich . . . this situation, person, business, etc.?” Do that and you’ll begin to close your knowing-doing gap and take an important step to your financial independence.
