Category Archives: Compound Interest

Shine Your Light

Shine Your Light

Be An Example To Others

I saw this interesting question on some financial web site the other day.

It was one of those questions designed to seem simple, but with an unexpected answer. The idea being you’d click through to read more about their financial services.

The question was about interest rates, something people generally don’t know much about.

Some say this is on purpose, so bankers can take advantage of more people.

For example, one way to describe a loan is “renting money.” Meaning they give you money, then you give them the money back, plus interest. Since you’ve got to pay them every month, like you’d pay your rent, it’s basically the same concept.

Yet they don’t use this. I mean, if you borrow a pencil from your friend at school, you just give it back when you’re done. If you borrow a library book from the library, you give it back, there’s no cost.

Yet when we “borrow” money, we have to pay extra. Maybe those bankers from centuries ago did this on purpose!

I’m sure you’ve heard that expression that we aren’t physical beings having a spiritual experience, but we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

We are eternal, but we are in our bodies for only a blip of a split second.

Why?

Maybe we’re “borrowing” our bodies, or the matter that makes them up, from the rest of the universe.

Are we here just to have fun? Or do we have a larger purpose?

Is it a free ride, or do we need to “pay rent?”

If so, to who?

Many different religions teach us that our higher purpose is to serve others.

Reminds me of the story of the talents, from the New Testament.

To those who are given much, much is expected.

But what does this mean? What is expected of us? How can we serve others the best?

Maybe by figuring out how to maximize our skills, so we can participate in society by helping to create something that will best serve the most people.

After all, you’ve got a great light within you. Are you going to keep it hidden, or shine it so all can see?

Not only shine it, but make it as bright as you can.

How will you do that?

Maybe that’s the purpose of life itself. To not only shine your light for all to see, but spend your precious little time here maximizing it’s brightness.

Of course, this can be frightening. Not everybody is interested in our light. The world’s got plenty of problems.

But then again, maybe it wouldn’t if everybody would simply shine their lights.

Why not set an example?

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Kundalini Activator

How To Generate Momentum

Start Slow And Keep Pushing

Start Slow And Keep Moving

A lot of people feel lost these days.

Meaning they’re working some of job they don’t really like, earning income that’s just barely enough, and not sure of the future.

No question, this is a crappy situation.

A few decades ago, all you had to do was show up, do a good job, and you’d get paid.

Not so much any more.

More than ever, it’s up to you to make your own way. This ain’t fair, but it’s the way it is.

Luckily, there’s plenty of opportunities. All kinds of ways to freelance, start your own business from scratch, and get something going on the side.

The secret of creating your own thing is that the process is the exciting part.

Once you make that first dollar, you’re hooked. That feeling of creating something with only your thoughts and the physical tools you have right now is a pretty fantastic one.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they’ve got to hit it big right out of the gate, but few people EVER find success this way.

Even the greats from history took time.

But once you get started, something else will happen.

That job that sucks so much won’t suck so bad any more. Because it won’t be the ONLY thing you’ve got going. 

Instead of thinking about it as your ONLY hope for survival, you’ll suddenly see it as a temporary “crutch” to help pay the bills until you get your own thing going.

Even if you just spend a few minutes a day on your “project,” your mind will shift.

Your spare time will be spent not with worry, but with hope and expectation for a better future.

You’ll actually wake up in the middle of the night with ideas. Ideas you can put into action.

All it takes is that first step. Then another. Then another.

Then you’ll have something few people ever experience.

Self generated momentum. Created by you and sustained by you. To create your future.

Once you get a taste of your independence, you’ll never look back.

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Prosperity Generator

Why You’ll NEVER Reach Your Potential

Your Potential Is Infinite

Keep Getting Better

Once upon a time the Earth was a barren wasteland.

Then somehow, life began.

The first life forms were simple. But they grew.

They learned to interact from their environment. To take raw material and transform it into both energy and themselves.

As they grew and evolved, they started cooperating with each others. Bees and flowers, animals and seeds, plankton and whales.

Then humans showed up. Same story.

Take the very basic raw material from their environment, (lower order wealth) and transform it into more useful things (higher order wealth). Trees into houses. Skins into clothing. Stones into jewelry.

Then humans began interacting with each other. Trading things. Exchanging things. The amount of “stuff” or “higher order wealth” took off.

So much they had to come up with a different way than just trading.

Money was invented. 

Then the party really got started!

Societies, buildings, churches, hospitals, theaters, museums, factories, stadiums, burrito machines, etc.

All based on the same process.

Take lower order wealth, transform it into higher order wealth.

And take the created higher order wealth, and exchange it for potential wealth, or money.

Create the wealth that other people want, and trade for the wealth that you want.

But storing up the energy of potential wealth.

Prosperity.

The very process of that began when life was first created is still happening.

Mixing thought, action, and wealth to create more and more wealth.

Are you participating fully?

The truth is that you’ll NEVER fully reach your potential.

Why?

As more and more people participate, there will ALWAYS be more and more stuff created. Which means more opportunities to make more stuff, and get more wealth energy (money).

Which will call for more skills, and more applications of those skills. 

You will never reach your potential because what you are capable of can ONLY continue to increase.

How far will you take your skills?

How much will you express your ideas?

How wide will you share your talents?

Your Auto Pilot Brain

Your Set And Forget Brain

Can You Really Set And Forget?

There’s a huge desire in us humans for “auto pilot.”

Meaning we don’t like to think, so we’re always pretty easy to sell if whatever is we’re buying is “automatic” or “hands-free” or the ever popular “set-and-forget.”

After all, who wants to sit there and watch something if we can be doing other things, while that “thing” is busy taking care of business on its own?

Often times this is presented in business terms as “turnkey,” meaning all you really need to do is press a button and watch the business run on its own.

To be sure, this is a highly desirable trait, and very marketable if it actually works. Nobody wants to buy ANYTHING (business or not) that’s going to come with a complicated set of steps and instructions.

But since it’s such a huge marketing trigger, it’s often times abused.

Check any “work from home” forum in the “business opportunity” section and you’ll find endless “systems” being sold that are heavy with these terms.

Automatic. Autopilot. Turnkey system. Hands free. Set and forget. Push button simple. Etc.

Unfortunately, anything regarding business involves one very important, and often left out, aspect.

Other People.

No matter what kind of business you are in, you need customers. (Unless you’re the government lol).

And these customers all have limited funds. Which means they need to CHOOSE to buy your product, service, or whatever it is you are offering.

They don’t HAVE to.

And any kind of system that GUARANTEES profits, is also, by definition, GUARANTEEING that somewhere out there there’ll be people to buy.

And as I’m sure you can guess, this is highly unlikely. Unless maybe you’re selling water in the desert, or something similar, and you’re the ONLY game in town.

Does that mean that the ideas of “auto pilot” and “prosperity” are mutually exclusive?

Absolutely not.

Because the auto pilot is NOT in the business model itself. It’s in your BRAIN.

Humans are hard wired to learn.

In fact, we’re hard wired to learn, and then take whatever we’ve learned, and drop it down into our subconscious. 

Which means we’ll be just as effective, but on auto pilot.

Like riding a bike, playing an instrument (if you can) typing, driving, etc.

The best part is that ANYTHING related to prosperity is related to other people.

And humans come pre-programmed with a HUGE set of tools that allows us to talk to others, find out what they want, and then use our creativity of figure out how to help them get it.

And get paid.

Of course, this requires a bit of conscious action, a little bit of uncertainty, and the belief that you WILL succeed.

But once you get started, you’ll see how quickly it can become automatic.

Simple And Easy Skills

Social Skills Are The Most Important Of All

Improve Your Social Skills

Some things are simple, and some things are easy.

What’s the difference?

One way to think about this is that simple things aren’t complicated to understand and only take a few steps.

Easy means that it’s not emotionally difficult to carry out the steps, whether they be complicated or simple.

For example, walking up and talking to attractive people or potential clients is simple, but not easy.

I mean, you walk up, use some kind of an ice breaker, develop rapport, and see if there’s any mutual interest right?

Yet for many of us, that can be the most difficult thing to do.

And the funny thing is we usually convince ourselves we’re NOT doing it because we imagine that it’s complicated. So we read books on communication, go to seminars on dating, all because we don’t want to avoid the big gorilla in the room (or in our brains):

We KNOW what we need to do, we just can’t get ourselves to do it.

On the other hand, some things are pretty complicated, from the number of steps, but are pretty easy for a lot of people.

Computer programming, engineering, medicine, flying planes, cooking complicated recipes, coming up with interesting characters and plots, playing musical instruments. 

These require an intense amount of concentration, focus and intelligence.

But once you’re practiced enough, these things can be easy. Routine even.

I had this roommate once who was studying to become a physical therapist. As part of his training, he had to observe several joint replacement surgeries. Incredibly complicated.

But to the docs and nurses doing the surgery, it was pretty easy. Straightforward. They would listen to ball games on the radio, and talk to each other like they were hanging out at the local pub.

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is when we assume something is complicated, when it’s really simple.

As a general rule of thumb, anything that involves talking to and creating relationships (business, romantic, and otherwise) with others is pretty simple.

Since that’s what humans have been doing since day one.

Even building a business is based on relationships. Every cent you can get is based on your ability to figure out what others want, and then figure out a way to give it to them.

Sure, you might need to learn some complicated technical skills, but those will become easy after a while.

Then you’ll be in that wonderful place where you’re not only combing easy AND simple, but getting paid.

Get Started:

Prosperity Generator

Go Slow Baby!

Slow And Steady

Use Your Skills!

What’s the difference between somebody that doesn’t read and somebody who can’t?

Nothing.

Skills can be useless unless you put them into action. Now, some people tell themselves things like, “Well, if I wanted to I could, but right now I really don’t want to.”

Like they see an attractive person across the room. They imagine the best case scenario, and tell themselves they COULD do that if they wanted to, but for some reason, they don’t want to.

There are many variations of this, but they’re really the same. We see something we want, we know what action to take, but we are afraid. So we come up with a story to tell ourselves that keeps us from taking action.

It’s funny when we hear this from others, it sounds like pure BS. But from ourselves, it sounds totally logical.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that we imagine where we are now, and where we want to be.

Then we imagine some HUGE action that needs to be taken, in order to get what we want.

Then we imagine the worst case scenario, which is failing miserably.

And if we set our sites on what we want, and take action, and FAIL, what does that say about us?

Most of us would rather pretend that we’ll take action “someday.”

Only that day never comes.

There are two HUGE fallacies in the argument presented above.

The first is that there are WAAAAY more steps from where we are to where we want to be than we imagine.

The second that if we don’t get what we want RIGHT AWAY, we somehow “fail.” This is just nuts.

Imagine you wake up in the middle of the night, and you need to hit the toilet. You stand up, and fumble around on the wall for the light switch.

You slap around the wall until you find the outer edges of the fixture, then find the switch, and turn it on.

How many hand movements did it take? Probably a lot. Was each hand movement that DIDN’T land on the light switch a FAILURE?

Only if you somehow convinced yourself that the Earth was going to explode if you didn’t hit that switch perfectly the first time.

The TRUTH about humans and our interactions with the reality around is that EVERYTHING is like that.

We take action, we get feedback, and then based on that feedback, we take more action.

All along redefining our targets, goals and objectives.

We will keep doing that until we’re dead.

Life is a process. A journey. A path of self discovery and creation.

The small steps you take today will resonate FAR into your future. 

They don’t have to big steps. Whatever you’re comfortable with.

Get started:

Prosperity Generator

Up And Down The Hills Of Life

Get To The Bottom and Go Back To The Top

Earn Your Pleasure

I used to love riding up and down hills on my bike.

As I did, I’d always play “Helter Skelter,” by the Beatles, in my mind.

Especially the first part, which goes:

“When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
till I get to the bottom and I see you again…
Yea yea yea…”

I love going up, and I also loved going down. But I also love being up on top, especially if was a particularly good hill with a particularly good view.

Some of my friends would like riding on long, flat spaces. I thought that was pretty boring.

It was easy, as you didn’t have any hills. But you also didn’t get the views, nor the massive speeds you got riding back down.

The fastest I ever clocked was 53 mph, just coasting down this big long hills.

It’s hard to separate out best part, in my mind. All three (the climb, the view, and the ride back down) all have their unique pleasures.

There’s also these trips you can take in famous places, where they haul you and your bike up to the top of a mountain and then let you coast back down. Usually places like Hawaii or Costa Rica or other Island type resort spots with high hills.

I went on a canoe trip like that once. They drove us up river, and then let us ride the current back down for a few days. 

It didn’t take much work, so we just kind of relaxed and enjoyed the ride.

(and drank lots of alcohol!)

Now, that can be fun from time to time, but it’s also pretty boring. Since you didn’t really put in any effort, there’s not much enjoyment you can get out of it.

If you’ve got kids or know anybody that’s got kids, then you know it’s not such a great idea to simply give them whatever the want without the necessary feeling of “earning it,” especially as they get older.

This can create some pretty spoiled kids. (A lot of famous people like that these days…)

What about you? What kind of life do you envision?

A flat, stable ride that’s safe, easy and boring?

Somebody to do all the work, while you get the benefits?

Or the ability to do the work, enjoy the view, AND the ride down?

And then, as Paul screamed, “go back to the top of the slide”?

Your life, your choice.

If you want it safe, it’s easy, but limited.

If you want somebody to do all the work, it’s pretty boring.

But if you want to put in the effort, your life belongs to you. And you’ll get much, much more.

What do YOU want?

Make It Happen:

Prosperity Generator

The Myth Of Your Potential

Can You Reach The Top?

Was Maslow Mistaken?

What does it mean to be “self-actualized?”

This, of course, comes from Maslow. But how did he come up with the idea, and how did he arrive that now famous pyramid?

If you’ve read about NLP, then you know about “modeling.” It’s the best way to learn something.

It’s how all of us learned to walk, talk, etc. We basically copied those around us.

The original NLP guys basically took this process and modeled how really persuasive people talk and behave. Then they came up with a way to apply this modeling model.

Which is why some call NLP the “study of excellence.” Meaning you see somebody doing what you want, and you simply copy them until you get it right.

And this is precisely what Maslow did.

He chose a lot of high performing individuals of his day, and simply tried to figure out made them tick.

He categorized them based on their level of “performance,” and came up with his “hierarchy.”

At the top, of course, is “self actualization.”

So, what were the people doing whom he labeled as “self actualized?”

Were they meditating in caves? Sitting in the middle of the desert in the lotus position while the rain mysteriously fell around them?

Nope.

They were doing things. Making things. Writing things.

Now, here’s a mind bending question for you.

If you were to go back in time, find one of those “self actualized” people that Maslow found, and asked them these questions:

“Have you learned all you will ever learn? Are your skills as good as they are going to get? Can you now rest, since you’ve reached Nirvana?”

What do you think they would have said?

I’m going to guess that they would have said a big, fat, obvious NO to all those questions.

Whatever project they were working on, I’m sure they knew deep in their bones there was MORE to do. MORE to create.

Think about this statement:

“Reach Your Potential.”

Is that even possible? Once you get to a certain level, then what? Retire down to Florida and drink ice tea?

Nope. Once you get to a certain level, WHATEVER that is, you just reach higher.

The truth is you will ALWAYS be looking to improve yourself, as you should.

Unless, of course, you’re HAPPY where you are now. You DON’T want any more.

Those “self actualized” people were DOING THINGS.

They were creators. Builders. Artists. Scientists. 

What do YOU wan to do?

Einstein’s Secret Weapon

Leverage This Double Edged Sword

Revealed Mysteries Of Mathematics

According to Einstein, what’s the most powerful force in the world?

Compound interest.

There’s a story of a clever scientist who did a job for a foolish yet rich king.

The king asked him how much he wanted in payment, and the scientist proposed this:

Day one you place one grain of rice on a chessboard square. The next day you place two grains on the next chess board square. Then double the rice grains each day until the board is filled.

No problem, said the king, thinking the scientist was an idiot.

64 Days later, the scientist owned the entire kingdom.

Why? If you double each grain of rice, each day, after 64 days, you’d have more rice than exists in the world.

Of course, compound interest can work the other way as well.

If you’ve got credit cards, for example, it doesn’t take long to get into trouble.

Plenty of people get so far in the hole they can barely pay the minimum payment, which amounts to ONLY the interest.

Which means their balance never decreases.

I know these aren’t fun ideas to think about.

Imagine if you were buying a pair of pants, and they didn’t show you the actual price, they showed you the total price after putting in on your credit card and letting the interest going up for a few years!

Why don’t they do this?

Why don’t they teach us about interest rates in school? 

Maybe they don’t want us to know. Maybe they want us to be debt slaves our entire lives.

Here’s something else to consider.

Suppose you increased your skills by a certain percent each year.

This works the same way as numbers, rice grains and money.

Let’s say your level of skill (in any area) was X.

And let’s say you increased your skill by 50% each year.

After the first year, your skill would be 1.5X.

After the second year, your skill would be 2.25X. 

Three years: 3.4X

Four years: 5X

In just four years (I know that seems like a long time) your skills in ANY AREA would be FIVE TIMES what they are now.

Money making skills, relationship building skills, business starting skills.

Maybe THIS is why they don’t want us to learn about compound interest.

Just imagine if you focused on ONE skill for the next five years or so.

What would be able to do then? What would your life look like?

Where would you live? Who would you spend your time with?

What skills do YOU want to learn?

Get Started:

Prosperity Generator