I was chatting with my wife the other day about what keeps me from success, or let’s say greater success and started to consider, given that I have no obvious outward hindrances, that maybe the only thing holding me back, was me.

I have seen the enemy…and it is us.

If I am remembering my Samuel Beckett correctly.

Then I came across a cool article by Steve Pavlina about the Fear of Success. The article boiled down to a simple exercise.

Ask yourself what would happen if you were to completely succeed and attain your goals.

On the face it seems silly, but it isn’t a trivial question.

Think about Robert Kiyosaki for a moment. I’ve seen many examples of people personally attacking him…heck, I’ve even been personally attacked just for saying that I enjoyed his writing.

It’s easy to assume that a successful person is somehow immune to these kind of attacks, and it’s true that many of them develop a “thick” skin and coarseness to keep out the pain of other people’s attacks.

When I met Robert last Spring it was clear that he was a sensitive and vulnerable person and I’m sure that on some level, when people attack him, he feels pain.

Another more personal example, was when Problogger reviewed my Real Blog Videos. In the comments, some people took me to task for trying to exploit people by charging for what should be free information.

Looking back now, it really hurt and I can see that, since my next product would likely be susceptible to the same criticism it has kept me from moving forward. Of course I came up with many other reasons for why I wasn’t working on the project, but I can see now, the main one was pain avoidance.

The Exercise

If I succeed here’s what the result will be [I've marked each with a + or - to indicate whether it feels good or bad]:

+ I won’t ever have to worry about money any more.

- People will be jealous of me.

- People will criticize me and what I do.

+ I’ll be able to do cool things with my money like donate to charity and help out friends.

+ I’ll have freedom with my time…to do what I like.

- I’ll get lots of attention.

+ I’ll have lots of doodads and toys.

- Friends, relatives and tacky people [Internet marketers] will try and beg, take and borrow money from me.

Somehow we convince ourselves that “success” is equal to eternal bliss, but I realize now that that concept is a myth. Life is simply not about freedom from pain, I’m thinking that the very best we can do is to chose to pro-actively chart our course or be the victim of life’s whims.

I’ve always believed that what manifests in my life is determined under the surface. It isn’t our actions that determine our results, it’s the motivation that determines everything.

Pain avoidance as a motivation is like driving with the brakes on. It looks like you’re really trying to reach your goals, but really you are in complete control of trying not to reach them.

It is also worth noting that the pluses and minuses will have different strengths to influence the balance of the fulcrum, or different weights.

For me the “-” of “I’ll get more attention” is very powerful. I love to fly under the radar and go unnoticed. Now it is not too difficult to see that this is at odds with being the CEO, or any sort of leader, of a company.

I’ll have to either learn to let go of this fear, or it will likely continue to keep me below my full potential.

When looking for the solution to a problem, I’ve always found it useful to assume we are the most brilliant genius imaginable. From there anything is possible and the only efforts are put towards hindering our potential.

Jon Symons
Scoping out the real enemy, so you don’t have to…but you still should.

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.

Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing

Since this is the first “Rich Dad Wednesday” on Art of Money I thought I’d go back to the first Robert Kiyosaki book that I ever bought…Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing. I picked it up for $1 at the charity book sale…ironically at my workplace.

I’m on Investor Lesson #2 What Kind of World Do You See?

1. The more security you need, the more scarcity there is in your life.
2. The more competitive you are, the more scarcity in your life.

Either of these ring true?

Let’s start by defining ‘scarcity’….my definition is that scarcity exists if I don’t have everything that I would honestly enjoy in my life.

I like to keep my definitions simple:

Would I be able to enjoy a vacation condo in Banff? Yes.

Do I have one? No…therefore there is scarcity in my life.

Am I competitive? I used to pride myself on being competitive and I still do see it; when I made niche sites we knew that if we had a lot of outbound links on our pages that it would lower our click through rate.

Believing that we were competing with other sites for visitors is a belief in scarcity.

The security one is trickier. I would have never have told you that I was seeking security, because I was never materialistic, but I realized that it really doesn’t matter what kind of security that you seek. For me, I was seeking emotional security…I didn’t care about what was going on in my life, as long as it didn’t feel bad.

Tough to take the kind of initiative and risks required to build a successful life when you are valuing the avoidance of anything, and that’s what security really is.

So I have limiting beliefs…now what?

In the book Robert outlines that when you believe in scarcity you are only seeing one half of the financial coin. The half of “not enough money.” But he tells of the other side of the coin, albeit a difficult one to conceive of if you haven’t tasted it but the other side of the coin is: “too much money.”

For me just the thought that their is a world where not only is there no scarcity of money, but there is too much money is a tough one to get my head around…but I’m willing to give it a try.

Over the past 30 years, the nation’s total income share earned by the wealthiest 20 percent of all households increased from 43 to 50 percent.

During the same period, the income share of the poorest 20 percent of households dropped from 4.5 percent to 3.5 percent. So the economic pie slice for the richest households increased, while the slice for the poorest households dropped.

This would seem to illustrate Rich Dad’s theories.

Is there a world of too much money?

The chapter closes with another quote from Robert that rings true for me as well:

I came from a family that saw the world as a world of not enough money. My personal challenge was to repeatedly remind myself that another kind of world existed and that I needed to keep an open mind to see a world of both possibilities for me.

Can you see the both sides of the coin? Even entertaining the idea of a world with abundant money, changes EVERYTHING.

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.

After watching the Rich Dad / Rich Woman video that I featured in last night’s post I had an important realization about the path to fortune. And I’ll get to that in a second.

Here are some of the common inner dialogs [including my own] of a person who wants to be rich.

“If I had an income of $XXXX a month, then I would, of course give to charity or tithe.”

“When I start making twice as much as my expenses then I will be able to afford to save for my future.”

“Once I get ahead then I’ll start putting aside a contingency fund.”

“If only I had a new car then I wouldn’t be too embarrassed to a [whatever people with new cars do].”

“If I had a new laptop my business would be more efficient.”

In the video last night Robert and Kim said that they put money aside for saving, investing and tithing BEFORE anything else, even when their expenses were much greater than their income.

How can that work out?

To be honestly I don’t have a clue. It makes no sense in my mind. But in my heart there is something completely lovely about it.

In the Rich Dad books he mentions that most people operate in this manner.

If I could have [blank] I would do [something good] and then be [happy, content etc]. It is like trying to blackmail the universe. I admit it, the thought, “if I win I’m going to donate 50% of my winnings to a worthy charity” has passed through my head many times as I purchased a lottery ticket!

I’m willing to change as long as I get what I want first….mmm, sounds kind of like a two year old.

If you believe in a universe that is interested in you basic good, why would it cater to that kind of behavior? It won’t…that’s why the vast majority of people are poor, even if they have money in the bank.

Kim and Robert worked the other way around.

Be -> Do -> Have

Be generous, and adopt the way of a wealthy person irregardless of your financial situation. Then you will be operating as a wealthy person in the things you do. Naturally from this space you will attract opportunities to create wealth. You will be more inclined to do the things you love, since that’s how a wealthy person would spend their most valuable asset.

And that can only lead to success in life, which will naturally get you the toys and income to be able to give, save and invest even more.

Going with the current or against it? Me, I’ve been playing the me first game up until now but time for that to change.

Tithing, saving and investing when my bills outweighmy income is like committing to my own success. A determination sets in to make the business grow and to continue to enjoy the ways of a wealthy mindset.

Next step will be to calculate how much money I actually made last month and set aside 10% to each of tithing, savings and investing.

I am also going to put a portion of the tithing into something on the Internet, since that’s how I earn my living it seems fair to give back.

More coming soon on this important topic, anyone care to join in on the fun? Maybe we can start a “Carnival of Internet Tithing?”

Jon

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.

Not going to work has become somewhat ‘normal’ as I turn the corner towards the end of one month out of the rat race, but today I was thinking about what is different now than when I went to the office 5 days a week

Work 12 hour days — still the same.

Get up at 7a.m. — still the same.

Feel pressure to produce and perform — still the same.

Amount accomplished in a day — still the same.

So is anything different? Yes, my sense of freedom has expanded dramatically.

Now when you look at the things that are the same, you may be surprised, like I was that anything could change. Let’s deconstruct a little further.

What is different is just little things. I start work when I want rather than 8:15 each day, take breaks when I want rather than 10 and 3, I take lunch at about noon rather than 12-1 precisely. I don’t have to quickly close the browser when I’m watching a funny video and a co-worker or boss rambles into my cubicle. I don’t have to sit at my desk all day even if I would rather take my work to a café just to get a change of scenery.

You get the point I’m by now. Now don’t get me wrong, the place I worked was pretty good…it was not a bad place and my boss was the kind that never gave anyone any grief as long as they did their job. But it was still there, that awful feeling of being judged if you showed up late on a regular basis, and go work in a café, forget about it. If an executive walked by, you’d have hell to pay.

The funny thing is that these things don’t have any adverse affect on job performance, if anything I expect that there would be a positive correlation between a complete lack of structure in the workplace expectations and performance. If you’ve done any kind of decent recruiting job you’ve hired someone who understands responsibility they would probably become a better employee the more leash you gave them.

Now, if I slap on my employer hat, I know that it is easier said than done to trust your employees to that level. I cannot really speak from experience since I’ve always hired based on contract. It is a big leap of faith for an employer to let go of the rules.

The last thing that comes to mind is that it would be really fun, that kind of thing you do when you’ve won the lottery and no-one knows, is to just completely disregard the restrictive social norms of your workplace. Just act as if you were at home and, while maintaining your job responsibilities, just do completely as you please. Work in a café all morning, putting practice in the cubicle aisle, why not? Golfing on a nice day…you’ll make up the time in the evening. Would be a fun experiment to see how the
people around you react.

I’ll have to put it on my to do list for when I’m wealthy…get a job just to see if freedom can be maintained in a corporate environment [of course it's been done already].

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.