Category Archives: Uncategorized

How A Rich Dancer Handled Risk

Dance Your Way To Riches

Don’t Wait Too Long!

Many people have all kinds of negative voices swirling around in our heads.

You think of doing something, and then that doubt pops up.

“What if it doesn’t work? What if you look stupid?”

One of the reasons that voice is so hard to ignore is we convince ourselves it’s trying to “help” us.

“Well, it’s better I didn’t. I wouldn’t have liked it anyway.”

“Wow, I guess I dodged a bullet!”

Many people retreat into the world of the “enlightened skeptic.” They find comfort in the philosophical notion of pointing out how “wrong” everybody is.

“Well, there’s no conclusive evidence that’s going to work, so I’ll sit back here on my throne and let everybody else make those foolish mistakes. I know better.”

Problem with that is since these types are ALWAYS waiting for proof, any time they find proof it’s MUCH too late.

There was an old stock market trader who made a couple million over a couple years. He was a dancer, and traveled the world. He only used telegrams to get updates. (He wrote a book called “How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market.”)

Once a guy asked him for as stock tip, and he gave him the one he was looking at.

The guy that received the stock tip wanted to “make sure.” He did some research, studied the company, studied the economy, etc.

Finally, he contacted the dancer, and said he was ready to buy some of that stock.

The dancer said, “Well, if you would have bought it when I told you, you would have made 200% already. I don’t think it’s going to go up any more!”

As Dale Carnegie was found of saying, “The sure thing boat never gets too far from shore.”

Meaning if you ONLY take action when you feel it’s safe, you won’t ever get much more than most anybody else.

Which ain’t much!

Does this mean you need to put EVERYTHING on the line, every single time? Not at all. Take that stock market dancer guy. He would buy a stock, but ALWAYS sell IMMEDIATELY if it went down just a little bit.

Meaning he knew how risky it was, and he would GET OUT if there is any danger. 

Sure, you need to take risks. But not jump off cliffs without parachutes, or jump into the shark tank at the zoo.

Small risks. Talking to strangers. Expanding your comfort zone. Spending an hour or so a week looking into what kind of business you might start.

Hanging out with more like-minded folks who are ALSO doing things to improve themselves, rather than forget themselves.

Do this, keep moving forward, and success is certain.

The Chicken Burger Strategy

Chicken Burgers

Release Your Inner Entrepreneur

Many people shy away from the idea of being an entrepreneur.

Maybe they imagine sinking a bunch of money into a business, only to have it fail. Maybe they imagine going into a bank to get a loan, only to get laughed out of the building.

Maybe they’ve expressed an interest to their friends, who replied with something a little less than kind or supportive.

But in reality, everybody is an entrepreneur, all the time. It would be impossible to be alive if you weren’t.

How so?

First, think about what an entrepreneur does. They build a business. How? They take some kind of material, either real material or information, mix it around, and then turn around and sell it.

Whether they are turning chickens into chicken burgers, or taking researched information and turning it into Kindle books, it’s the same process.

They look out in the future. They compare an imagined better future than the present. They calculate what it would take to make that future happen. If they believe in themselves and their skills, they take action.

If they are persistent, they keep taking action. The more action they take, the more success they realize.

Sound familiar?

This strategy is hard wired into every single human.

It’s how you learned to walk. It’s how you learned to talk. It’s how you learned to do anything you can do now, including reading these very words.

Present state. Imagined future state. Action. Feedback. Action.

This is who you are. This is what you do.

Why not use this built in success mechanism to make some money?

Chances are, you already have. Even if you’ve gotten a regular “job” in the past, that’s how.

Only the person who had faith in you was your employer. They figured they spend the money and time to train you, believing you’d start bringing them MORE money than they were paying you.

If they didn’t believe this was possible, they wouldn’t have hired you.

If you’ve learned to walk and talk, and if you’ve ever made an honest nickel in your life, this is PROOF that you ARE, right now, a successful entrepreneur.

If you want to increase abundance, prosperity, and wealth, all you’ve got to do is KEEP DOING what you’ve been doing your entire life.

Just keep expanding your comfort zone. Keep looking for more opportunities. Keep getting more feedback that will make you even better.

And NEVER, ever stop.

The Chainsaw Strategy

Cut Out Resistance

Speed Up!

Many large systems exist for many different reasons, otherwise they wouldn’t continue to exist.

Take the western educational system, for example.

It started out during the Industrial Revolution, when everybody was destined to work in factories. You can say it was designed as a factory worker factory.

Obviously, not many of us work in factories, yet the educational system is the same.

Why?

Well, one powerful question from Economics is to ask, “Who benefits?”

For one, big businesses benefit. For them, the educational system acts as like a free farm system. They scoop off the top 5% or so to work for their corporations.

The unions are another beneficiary. They get all the automatic union dues from teachers. The educational system also employs huge amounts of people, that wouldn’t get the same benefits elsewhere.

It also serves as a daycare center for those parents who don’t want to deal with their kids every day.

With so many people benefiting from the system (except maybe the students) it’s easy to see why this still exists.

Humans are the same way. A lot of our functions and “systems” are there for different reasons.

Whenever there was some kind of new skill developed from evolution, if that skill could be used in a lot of different areas, nature kept it.

Like our hands, with fingers and a thumb. We can hold stuff, throw stuff, scratch ourselves, climb, and do all kinds of things. (Even pick our nose!)

Our imaginations are another powerful tool. We can use them to pass the time, imagine a few different scenarios, play them out and see which one works best. Listen to rich metaphorical stories packed with meaning and extract many different lessons.

One of the reasons humans took over the planet, instead of say, Penguins, is because of our flexibility.

We can live in vastly different areas. We developed a sexual division of labor (hunting and gathering).

We took our basic needs (food, shelter, companionship, safety) and could fulfill them in ways we are still figuring out.

Compare that to penguins, who can only live on the ice and eat fish!

The best way to maximize ALL your gifts is to use them toward a bigger purpose.

When you’ve got all cylinders going at once, your communication skills, planning, imagination, creativity, all toward a singular goal, way out in the future, that’s when you start to really enjoy life.

Think of your whole mind body system like a chainsaw. At low speeds, it’s pretty sluggish, sounds like crap, and not very efficient.

But at higher speeds, everything is working together, a well oiled machine slicing through everything it comes up against.

Boolean Dream Generator

How To Overcome All Obstacles

Overcome All Obstacles

When I was in college, I had to take a course in electronics.

One of the thing we studied was Boolean Algebra. I was basically the logic of electronics.

If you had two wires going into a switch, the current in each of the wire would determine the output. Since these were digital circuits, the current was either “on” or “off.”

If they were both off, it meant one thing. If they were both on, it meant something else. If one was on and one was off, it meant something else.

All digital circuits are built like this. This is how you can take binary numbers (only 0’s and 1’s) and create a huge picture on your screen with all kinds of colors, or rich sounding symphonies, or beautiful motion pictures. 

They say our brains are like that. A whole collection of circuits, switches, and relays.

Maybe, maybe not, but it’s good way to think about things.

Napoleon Hill talks about a “Burning Desire.” Meaning if you have a desire big enough, you can get anything.

Why is this?

Consider all the obstacles you’ll come up against. The bigger your dream, the more obstacles you’ll likely face.

However, so long as your “burning desire” is STRONGER than any one of those obstacles, they will be easy.

If you only have a “so-so” desire, (or like most people have, a wish) then those obstacles will stop you dead in your tracks.

This is why people with only weak wishes seem to always wonder why life is so difficult or unfair.

And those with MASSIVE burning desires wonder why others haven’t discovered how easy it is.

How do you build a burning desire?

Visualizing is one way. But again, most people don’t do this nearly enough. They think about their desire maybe once or twice a day, and then think they’re done.

They speak of putting their intention “out there” somewhere, and expect the magic wish fairy to give them their dreams. All wrapped up in a nice box, with their name on it.

But if you spent some time, every single day, for twenty or thirty minutes, visualizing your desire with all your might, with the strongest emotions you can muster, something would happen.

No, your dream wouldn’t suddenly poof into existence right in front of you.

But your motivation would SOAR. Suddenly all those obstacles that were stopping you before would seem like NOTHING.

The path to your dreams would seem easy. Mechanical. You’d wonder why others don’t see how easy it is.

Sure, you’d still have to get out there and interact with the world, maybe for a while.

But it wouldn’t be hard. It wouldn’t be scary. It would be fun. Exciting.

The Halloween Economic Theory

Halloween Economics

Trade Stuff For Better Stuff

When I was a kid we used to go trick or treating on Halloween. Knock on doors, get candy.

It was pretty fun. We’d spend a couple weeks before hand coming up with some costumes to wear, usually homemade, and usually pretty crappy.

The best part was when we’d get home, and trade all the stuff we didn’t want, for the stuff we did want.

It’s one thing to get free stuff, it’s even better to exchange that free stuff for even better stuff.

Of course, it wasn’t really free. We had to go out and get it. No kid in their right mind would show up without a costume. I suppose that was kind of an unwritten law of Halloween economics. People would get to see these cute kids come to their door, dressed up in costumes, in exchange for spending a few hours and a few bucks on a bag of candy.

Everybody looked forward to it. There was even that unwritten rule that if you left off your porch light, it meant, “do not disturb.”

We kids expected that, and the people that didn’t want to participate didn’t have to.

Later on, I was hard up for some cash, so I answered an ad in the newspaper for a sales job that promised daily payouts.

Being young and dumb, I figured it was perfect. Only it ended up being a door to door sales job, in the bad part of town, selling really cheap kitchen tools like spatulas and cutting boards.

After the second big dog chased us away, I’d had enough.

Same structure, but different results. 

One was fun, exciting, and something we looked forward to all year long. The other was a very short lived horror show.

This is what happens when you compare a job or a career you’re right for, and one you’re not right for.

The one you’re not right for sucks. You feel like crying every morning when the alarm clock goes off. You can’t wait until Friday so you can go home and forget anyway you can.

On the other hand, when you’ve got something going you love, it’s the opposite. You love the people you work with, and they love you. You’re happy to see each other. You actually look forward to doing what you’re doing.

And when you get paid, it almost feels like it’s free, since you don’t really feel like you’re doing any work.

Then just like kids on Halloween night, you can trade that “free stuff” for even better free stuff. Trading that money for what you want.

If you haven’t found that ideal income stream yet, it’s out there.

Waiting for you.

Hidden Wealth On The Moon

Hidden Wealth On The Moon

The Byproducts of Wealth

Many people are put off by an objective of “making money.”

Perhaps you’ve mentioned to your friends or family about wanting to earn more, and they gave you some flack.

After all, money can’t buy happiness, money can’t buy love, money can’t buy health.

These are all absolutely true. But it misses the point.

Money is a RESULT. 

How do you get money? You’ve got to interact with the world. You’ve got to listen to the unending needs of others, and figure out a way to help them fulfill them.

You can do this alone, or with others. You can make something, or help make something.

The bottom line is you simply cannot get money without helping people FIRST.

When President Kennedy made the decision to go to the moon, it was a matter of national pride.

There weren’t any resources on the moon. No oil, no water, no gold, no coal. Not even any aliens (allegedly, lol).

Just a big rock. Swirling around the Earth.

So why did we go? (We humans, not we Americans…)

Because it was there. Because it was a worthy goal. (And to get there before the Russians!)

AND because along the way, there were MASSIVE amounts of inventions nobody could expect.

All kinds of new technology. (Even if you believe it was faked, there was still plenty of stuff invented along the way).

Making money is the same way. Sure, when you make your millions, you won’t be any healthier. You won’t necessarily be happy. You might not have any better relationships.

Or will you?

If you DO get better at all those things, it won’t be BECAUSE of the money sitting happily in your bank account.

It will be because of the skills you learned along the way. The interpersonal skills. The communication skills. The skills of delayed gratification. The skills of taking risks, learning from the results, and charging on ahead with better skills the next time around.

When we focus on rich people, we tend to focus on those in the news. Celebrities, inventors, artists, athletes.

Not the “millionaire next door” type. The type who has a SOLID relationship with his or her family.

The type who has a deep appreciation for life, and all the wondrous things still yet to discover.

The type who know that ANYTHING is possible, so long as you never give up.

Making money is not about making money. It’s about all the things you’ll do along the way.

The personal growth, the inner demons you’ll obliterate, one by one. The fantastic people you’ll meet and the lifelong relationships you’ll build.

If you’re ready, check this out:

The Virtue Of Profits

Coming Out Ahead Is The Prime Directive of Life

Always Come Out Ahead

One way to control people is by changing the meaning of the words they use.

This was one of the central ideas in “1984” by Orwell. Slavery is freedom, war is peace, etc.

Governments have even tried to do this in recent times. Taxes are really membership fees. Political parties are families.

There’s a common metaphor of a bunch of crabs in a box. Most of them are too lazy to do anything about it, even though they know they’re probably going to be eaten at some point.

One crab decides to escape, but instead of helping him, or copying him, they all climb on and pull him back down.

Now, they’re probably not trying to pull him down. Rather, they’re too scared to try on their own, but they don’t to get left behind, so they just grab on and hope he pulls them ALL to safety.

As you can imagine, this happens in society ALL the time. If you’ve ever tried to break out of your financial rut for example, you’ve realized you need to do things differently.

Maybe save your money instead of blowing it every weekend with your buddies. Maybe you’ve made the “mistake” of telling them your plans. 

And instead of supporting you, like you’d hoped, they may have said things like, “What? Are you crazy? It’ll never work! Just come hang out with us and forget about starting your own business!”

Just like the crabs, they’re not hoping you’ll fail. But they’re terrified of being left behind.

After all, if you try, and succeed, what does it say about them?

They’d rather pretend it’s impossible, rather than try, take a risk, and succeed.

One of the most “changed” words is “profit.” Governments tell us it’s evil. People tell us companies are evil because they “chase profits.”

But consider this. Every single living organism MUST live profitably.

Consider a “biological balance sheet.” If any organism “spends” 1000 calories a day, but only consumes 800 calories, they are running at a net loss of 200 calories per day.

Which means they’ll be dead soon.

On the other hand, any organism that spends only 500 calories, but eats 1000 calories has a surplus. One that allows it to lounge around and relax in the sun. Find some other sexy organisms and use that surplus to make baby organisms.

Organisms, people, societies, all work the same way.

Profits are simply essential to survival. You can’t eat more than you produce. It’s mathematically impossible.

But the idea that “chasing profits” is bad is also impossible.

That’s basically the same as saying “staying alive and building a surplus” is bad.

Who says nonsense like this?

Those crabs who are too scared to be left behind, and power hungry types that want to keep you stuck.

If you’re ready to give those guys the finger, check this out:

Taking, Receiving, and Achieving

Don't Be This Guy

Are You Begging For Free Stuff?

There’s a lot of things we want, and a lot of things keeping us from getting it.

You could say that’s due to the ever present laws of economics.

A bunch of people with unlimited wants, surrounded by things in limited quantities.

However, this isn’t necessarily true. Sure, there’s the win-lose model, where people think in order to get something, it has to be because somebody else DOESN’T get something.

And as you may have suspected, these types of people tend to have a funny way of ending up in charge.

Those of that are more enlightened realize that there’s plenty of ways where EVERYBODY can come out ahead.

Not necessarily at the same rate, or to the same destination. But it’s DEFINITELY possible (and has happened plenty times before in human history) where EVERYBODY ends up getting more than they did, individually, before.

Then there’s the theory that those things we want are hard to get because it’s in the process of getting them do we go through the necessarily self-growth that is required before enlightenment.

If all we had to do was to show up and “receive” then life would be pretty boring, and everybody would be pretty lazy.

It’s only when you dig deep, and overcome those internal issues (that we ALL have), can you really appreciate the beauty that life has to offer.

Think about some of the things you’ve achieved, vs. some of the things you’ve simply “received.”

Sure, those things you passively “received” felt good, but that feeling didn’t likely last. If you were to look at something, now, that you “receive” a year or so ago, that good feeling  might be gone. (Unless, of course, it has special meaning and came from a loved one that’s no longer with us.)

On the other hand, think of something you’ve achieved. Something that took work, effort, and time.

Something that you’ve achieved many years ago. Chances are, when you think of that now, it brings to mind considerably more profound feelings than free gifts that were passively received.

Now, imagine something that you may have “achieved” but it was at the expense of somebody else. 

If you DO have something like this, it creates a completely different feeling. Perhaps one of fear. Fear of being called out, fear of having it taken away, fear of somebody doing to you whatever it is you did to get whatever it was. (Real or if you’re just playing along in your imagination.)

Clearly, things you’ve achieved, on your own, based on a win-win model creates the best, the most profound, and the most lasting positive feelings.

Not just in you, but in everybody involved.

Imagine if EVERYBODY on Earth was doing the same thing!

Tap Into The Global Brain

Picture

The Meaning Of Super Conscious

A few years ago I took an improv acting class. It was nothing like I’d expected.

We did all kinds of “in the moment” exercises, where we had to come up with something, on the spot, up on stage.

There were about 20 people in class. One of the exercises was the professor would shout out a shape, and all 20 of us would have to form that shape as quickly as possible, WITHOUT talking.

It was amazing how quickly we made some pretty complicated, 3D shapes. (Doghouses, planes, rose bushes, etc.)

It seems that humans are hard wired on a very deep level to communicate without words MUCH more effectively than we believe.

Studies show this is true as well. Up to 93% of the meaning of your communication is NON-VERBAL.

Facial expressions, voice tone, body language, subtle energy that they haven’t figured out how to measure yet.

All of this is so humans can communicate effectively. Clearly, we are VERY social creatures.

But we aren’t social just so we can hang out and pass the time.

We are social so we can do stuff. Build stuff. Create stuff.

There’s an idea in economics called “spontaneous order,” where you’ve got a bunch of diverse people, with diverse backgrounds.

You drop a problem into this group of people and they’ll figure out how to solve it. Pretty quickly and pretty effectively.

All WITHOUT some self important “leader” telling everybody what to do every step of the way.

The opposite of this is one of the main reasons why the space shuttle blew up back in the 80’s. A bunch of self-important NASA scientists who refused to share their power. Consequently, they ignored plenty of potential problems. One which ended up killing people.

All of the great inventions of human life haven’t been because some goof in charge decided to invent something.

They were invented because problems came up, and individuals working together figured out how to solve them.

Now, this is a hard concept to swallow for many, but none of these inventions (pretty much everything that exists today) would have happened without money.

Nobody sits around inventing things or solving problems just because it feels good.

All humans deeply want to be recognized for our accomplishments.

And the BEST WAY to do that, is to get paid what you are worth.

And when you overlap the deep powers of communication, your natural creativity, and seven BILLION people all with unlimited needs and wants, and you’ve got a MASSIVE and continuous growth of wealth.

Right here, right now, it’s never been easier to get in the game, and get some.

Metaphysical Life Force

The Ancient Power Of Life

The Ancient Power Within

Bees and ants are pretty interesting. They both are colonies, made up of individuals, but can also be treated as a standalone entity.

A brain center, flow of energy, waste disposal. When they get big enough, they split off and form two separate colonies.

Almost like a cell dividing and dividing until a whole new organism is formed.

All our DNA is the same. Meaning a DNA in one area will turn into an eye, while the same DNA in another area will turn into a finger.

The DNA somehow knows what to become, based on a myriad of environmental factors.

Many believe that human life on Earth is like one big organism. Certainly looked at on a meta level, it sure can look like one.

Many believe the “super conscious” is the collective unconscious of all “individual” entities on Earth past, present and future.

One really mind bender is if you consider the very first organism that crawled out of the sludge many, many eons ago.

It replicated, again and again and again, until we have the massive diversity of life that exists today.

All life seems to be imprinted with the same “prime directive,” which is to make more copies of itself.

In order to do that, it has to interact with its environment, interact with other like elements, and just keep on building.

Richard Dawkins wrote an interesting book called “The Extended Phenotype.” A genotype is the biological outcome of our genes. Brown eyes, black hair, etc. A phenotype is a non-biological outcome of our genes. Like a snail’s shell or a beaver’s dam.

He postulated that everything we have on Earth can be thought of as the “human phenotype.” All of our artwork, medicine, music, jars of peanut butter and sofas.

Which means making things is part of our DNA.

But not just making them, but making whatever we can, and then trading them for what we want.

The energy that connects all this, of course, is money.

Without money, that free flowing river of creative inventions simply wouldn’t exist.

It’s that metaphysical energy that connects people of different languages, different cultures, and different beliefs.

As soon as ancient cultures came in contact with each other, they started trading what they had, for what they wanted.

Luckily, it’s easier than every to participate. There’s an explosion in human need, as well as an explosion of ways to satisfy those needs.

All you’ve got to do is get in the game, and start playing.