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Meme, defined
meme
/meem/ [By analogy with "gene"] Richard Dawkins's term for an idea
considered as a
replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people
into propagating them much as viruses do.
Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in
a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than
others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two
ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent
idea.
The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of
mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a
religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex".
Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and
presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by
selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological
evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea
congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.
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A 'meme', according to the American
Heritage Dictionary, is "A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural
practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from
one mind to another". A meme is an idea, a perspective, a learned
behavior or point of view that informs and contextualizes pretty much
everything we do. In other words, if you learned it and it shapes you,
it's a meme.
In a
sense, we don't generally choose the memes we express- they occur as social
contracts, as 'how the world works'. They also appear as points of
view. Ultimately, memes persist from person to person by virtue of
some benefit a person gets out of having it, even if having it also brings
accompanying costs.
There’s a hundred and one memes about money that determine how you relate to it, and determine how money enters and leaves your life. When you
think about it, you are the result of your beliefs and attitudes, and the
life you've created is a reflection of how you act on your thoughts, beliefs,
and attitudes. In short, your financial reality is based on your
identification with your financial memes and myths.
The power of myth
We commonly refer to something as ‘mythical’ as a way of dismissing it, of
invalidating it. Less common is the notion that myths are memes that are
particularly compelling. An idea
can only assume mythical proportions if it holds a certain power or truth.
Myths are powerful because somewhere in you they resonate, they
support (or possibly contradict) a belief
you may have about something deep down. Myths are most powerful when
they resonate, whether positively or negatively, with something that is true
for you.
We instinctively create our own memes and myths- they are powerful teaching
tools, they are an effective mechanism by which we convey a set of shared beliefs,
constraints and taboos across
a culture. One downside they present is that if you passively
receive your beliefs you don’t get to choose them for yourself- and
the belief that worked for someone else may not fit you as well as one you
might have chosen to serve your needs. You wouldn’t wear hand-me-down pants that didn’t fit you, why accept hand-me-down
points of view that don’t
serve or empower you?
The
purpose of this article is not to change your mind or to give you a new point
of view. It is intended to help
you see how your views and perspectives may have shaped your past, give you
some insight into the costs and benefits associated with some common
perspectives about money, and to empower you to use
that information to author your own perspectives, to create an empowered present
and future in this area.
There are a number of predictable pitfalls to be
encountered in this process:
- Some memes persist because they're resistant to other
memes, for example. Baked in to the notion of some points of view
is the idea that other perspectives are invalid or wrong.
- Many memes provide a benefit we may be unwilling to give up (even
when the associated cost is steep).
- We often identify very strongly with our points of view and have
difficulty separating our perspectives from our selves.
- We often cannot distinguish our views from reality.
The following is a list of common sayings that can wrap you up in personal
conflict. For each, there is a partial exploration of what might be
lurking underneath it. Each of them might be true for you, or not.
Whether they are or not is not the point here- the point is that they aren't
fixed- they are mutable, you can change them like you can change your
clothing. The question becomes this: What world do you
want to live in? It's all myth/meme/perspective, and you're the author.
Many of these, if they resonate for you, are the decisions of a much-younger
you. By examining them anew, you give yourself the opportunity to create new
ones that serve you.
The list:
“Money is the root of all evil”
This is a declarative statement,
masquerading as an interpretive statement- that is, it declares money to be a
certain way when this is just one of many possible angles from which to view
it.
The payoff for this one is obvious: you get to cast
yourself up on the moral high ground, and make those money-grubbing people
wrong and be in a world in which you are morally superior to them. For
those of us jealous of others financial successes, this can be sweet indeed.
The costs are more subtle: Inside this view,
perspectives in which money is good or constructive must be invalidated, or
else the payoff is threatened.
Money can be anything we declare it to be-
a tool in your hands, power in your pocket, a ticket
to freedom, take your pick- it is what you make of it. If you make it into
'the root of all evil' (which we do by projecting),
you'll look for evil everywhere you think money is.
Yes, there's a lot of people out there who
are willing to do bad things for money- the question we're concerned with
here is what does having this perspective do to you? Choosing a good
relationship to your money is important because your relationship to a thing
determines how you experience it. If you think about it, in this sense
perception is everything. Your reality is actually the sum of your
perception. ...which means that when any of us talks about
money, what we're really talking about is our experience of it. Is
money actually dirty/clean/wonderful/powerful/honorable/wicked? No, that's a
quality of your experience of it, not a quality of money itself. Money is
just a thing, inanimate. Your experience of it, however, is an incredibly
powerful thing- it can be motivating, empowering, or unempowering,
demoralizing- and the astonishing thing is that all you need to do in order
to choose your relationship to a thing is to acknowledge that there's a
difference between that thing and your relationship to it. The relationship
is a part of you that you project upon that thing, and you can choose it at
will... because it's yours. You own it. You chose it once, does it serve you,
or do you serve it?
So, is money dirty? From a certain perspective, sure. If you limit your view
to that perspective, that's what you'll see.
Money can also be plentiful, abundant, it can be about freedom, choice,
empowerment, value and goodness- and if you choose these relationships to it,
your perception of money will change... and if that change empowers you or
makes you happy, that can only be a good thing.
The biggest challenge of this process is in the fact that we're all kind of
invested in our perception, in our relationships with things. We identify
ourselves by them. We feel that if we change our relationship to a thing,
especially a thing we relate powerfully to, that somehow we'll become someone
we're not. ...but to be honest, you're not who you were yesterday. You're
constantly reinvented, a day older and smarter each day. There's no danger in
simply trying on a new perspective- the worst that can happen is that you'll
discover that you like this new one better. Are you really you because you
focus on the negative (or positive) aspects of a thing? No. Does your focus
on the negative aspects of a thing serve you? Not really- generally what you
focus on expands in the context of your perception. All you get when
you focus exclusively on the 'evil' of money is a habit of looking for evil-
and generally, we find what we look for.
“Rich
people are Greedy"
Again, the upside to this perspective is clear: you get to
make those rich people wrong, and yourself right. Any perceived
financial shortcomings can be justified by saying "but at least I'm not
greedy"- and you get to pretend that the reason you're not as rich as <those
guys> is because you're morally superior and above it all.
Some of the costs associated with this view: in some
sense, being poor becomes a point of pride, and you must choose between your
pride and your financial success (which makes your pride very expensive).
In addition, within this view, perspectives in which wealthy people are
anything but morally inferior must be invalidated, or else the payoff is
threatened. This effectively stifles the introduction of differing
perspectives or memes in this area, thwarting growth and evolution of your
thinking and that of those around you.
Interestingly, it’s
terribly difficult to make money if you’re not generous in some measure.
In an open and free market, there must be value for both participants of the
transaction, or they wouldn't engage in it. The easiest way for anyone to
become wealthy is by creating a means by which to create the most value for
the greatest number of people possible, at the least possible cost. If
your product or service doesn’t give your customer enough value for your
price, they will go elsewhere and you will not make money. If you’re
not generous with the value you create, if you’re not constantly looking for
ways to deliver more value to more people for less money, you will find it
much more difficult to become rich.
It’s easy to look past the value someone’s offering you and see that they’re
also benefiting from the transaction. It’s easy to resent that, especially
if you think they’ve got enough already. But what does that do to you?
…it puts you in a position where in order to be happy, you’d have to change
the other person, and that’s a lot harder than changing yourself. …and
while it may be ‘right’, in your mind, to think of people who make more money
than you think they need to as ‘wrong’, ultimately this belief does not serve
you- what it does is engages your ego into the situation- and your ego wants
to be right more than it wants you to be free. If this is the belief
you’ve chosen, you’ve positioned yourself to choose between being right and
being rich.
Resenting rich people is a trap, not only because it makes you unhappy over
something not in your control, but also because it will prevent you from modeling
their behavior- you don’t want to become like someone you hate, right?
Your ego would never tolerate that. If you became like someone you
hated, wouldn’t all your friends hate you?
It’s a trap, and it will give you reasons that will keep you from becoming
successful with money.
The truth is that most wealthy people are admirably generous- not only do
they create and deliver value to as many people as they can, as a group they
give more, more often to charities and causes than any other group can.
Another truth is that we’re easily blinded to this by jealousy.
"Rich people don't care about the
poor"
This is another variant of the 'rich people are morally
inferior' meme.
How, precisely, would someone demonstrate
care? By opening one's checkbook and paying them? There are
problems that money just can't solve, and although it may be difficult to
swallow, being poor is one of them.
At the bottom line, lack of money is a symptom, rather than a cause, of
poverty. People who are financially strapped are that way for a reason,
and giving them money will never touch that reason- all it will do is enable
them to avoid solving the problem that's making them poor.
If your idea of caring is to treat the symptoms of a problem, this is
probably a theme in your life that recurs- do friends and family borrow from
you? Come to you with problems? Are you uncomfortable with saying
'no'? Is 'generosity' a big part of your self-concept?
If you can see where throwing money at the
situation won't make a difference, there's no virtue in throwing money at it.
This scenario is a life lesson- until you can say 'no' and be comfortable
with yourself, people will come to you because they know you can't- your ego
is ransoming your self-worth for your money. Now obviously, there's no
virtue in only saying 'no' either- the point here is that it's a choice,
rather than an obligation. If you think it's a good idea, give as much money
as you can afford, and take all due credit for 'helping'... but understand
that if a problem can't be solved by throwing money at it, that there's no
virtue or care in throwing money at it. In the case of poverty, money
can solve secondary problems like homelessness and hunger, but it cannot
solve the problem that got the person into the situation in the first place.
By the same token, it's inappropriate to feel bad for someone who is poor-
first of all, it doesn't help them, second, it harms
you. You're here to have your feelings, not someone else's- and
while simply being human makes empathy inevitable, if you choose to feel bad
on their behalf, you're really doing nobody any favors. It's possible
to do constructive things without being motivated by self-punishment, after
all. We use feeling bad as a substitute for doing something to make a
difference.
'Care' can be demonstrated in ways that are not harmful to one's self.
Rich people generally didn't become that way by harming themselves
needlessly, or by throwing money at problems that money just can't solve.
“Money doesn’t grow on trees/Money is
scarce”
Obviously, money doesn’t grow on trees… but what is meant here is that
getting hold of it isn’t as simple as walking out the front door and filling
a basket with the stuff. Money is the measure of value you create and
deliver to others- and people like to resist being measured, especially if
they think there's a risk they won't measure up to whatever expectation they
have.
One benefit to this view is that you get to invalidate any
measure that might, in your view, make you look bad.
We all heard this from our parents when we
wanted something and they decided that it was an inappropriate use for their
money. We might even hear it coming out of our own mouths when we feel
that we don’t have enough money to get something we want.
This is the voice of defeat, telling you that something is impossible.
…but what does this belief do to you?
If you believe it, you will validate it. You will be ‘right’, and your
ego likes to be right. Your ego gets a lot of validation out of being right, and your ego will make it tough to question this belief-
and if you validate this belief, chances are that it will become true.
The reality is that money itself is a
made-up thing, used to measure the value of whatever it is that you create
and deliver to others, and therefore money is potentially infinite.
“Money is something I don’t have”
If this is your identity, if it is how you view yourself, it's tough to go
against- it feels a lot like proving yourself wrong, which can be a bit
painful. Your subconscious doesn't like that kind of pain, and will push
you relentlessly in order to validate it. From your subconscious's
view, if this myth is part of your reality, it is necessary to be rid of your
money in order to demonstrate self-love.
In truth, however, you are not your money
and your money cannot define you.
“Money isn’t important”
If you choose to neglect your ‘unimportant’
money, you’ll certainly be free of it.
There’s a significant difference between focusing on money and neglecting the
rest of your life and the things you value. Unfortunately, this myth
seems to equate focusing on money with neglecting other valuable things, when
this is never true.
If your interpretation of this myth leads you to neglect your financial
health, sooner or later your poor financial health will become a
problem. Money is like a friend- if you don’t treat it right, it’ll go
away.
This is a question of balance- certainly, there are other things that are
important, but your financial health is important too! Getting rid of
your money won’t help you value your friends more, it will just leave you
without money and that can put other strains on your relationships.
If you focus *only* on money, you won’t do well- your friends will rightly
think you’re out of whack. If you ignore your money, you won’t do well
either- you’ll have none. Somewhere in the middle is a balanced,
functional place.
“Money
can’t buy happiness/Money won’t make you happy”
Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can’t hurt.
Lack of money, on the other hand, can suck.
Money means different things to all of us- power, safety, freedom,
independence, stature, control... and these ideas form the roots of our
relationship with money. We begin to equate money with those things.
The trap here is that when we equate the outer symbol, money, with our inner
value, (power|safety|freedom etc) we’re tempted to
try to control our experience of the inner value by manipulating our money,
which doesn’t work. For example, if you view money as ‘power’, you’ll
use money to control your environment- you’ll spend your money in ways that
give you the feeling of control, but which won’t really give you control over
the inner game. Eventually you’ll figure out, after spending a LOT of
money on controlling your environment, that money can’t do the job- all
you’ve been doing up to this point is spending your money to avoid
confronting your fear of being out of control. At this point, most
people will conclude that the problem was the money, and they’ll find a way
to get rid of it, in the hopes that without all that money and power, you’ll
somehow get over your control issues. Of course, this is kind of like
trying to get over your control issues by letting go of the steering wheel of
a car- there’s a very slim chance it will work, but I wouldn’t bet on it, and
the consequences are almost certain to be dire.
In a very literal way, this statement is entirely true- you can’t buy
happiness with money. At the same time, the statement is ambiguous and
a lot of people come away from it with different conclusions- that money is
unimportant, or that money is the problem and getting rid of it is the
solution.
This is a statement without balance.
“I can’t afford it”
If you believe that you can't afford it, it will become true because you'll
never try to get it. It's really that simple, and this myth puts you on
the back foot. Rather than trying to see how you can become the person
who can create or have this thing or this success, it reinforces your
self-identification as a static, unchanging being in a world where the only
constant is change.
“If I were
rich, my friends would resent me”
Friends who resent their friends' success aren't friends, straight up.
Friends who block friends' attempts to succeed financially are called enemies
in places where diplomacy isn't all that important.
We have difficulty differentiating our perception from
reality, because our perception IS our reality. Many of us have
less-than-empowered perceptions of money, of success, and of people who seek
it. They view those who seek success as somehow being responsible for
their situations, of course they'll try to prevent
you from being the person they're angry with, because they don't want
that. They want to like you. ...but it's clear that if you become
successful you won't be the one who caused their discomfort, they're simply
projecting their discomfort on you.
If you conform to their desires, you're letting them down, and that's not the
work of a friend. If they become uncomfortable with your desire to
succeed, you know for a fact that you'd be doing them a favor by succeeding-
you'd help them get past that blocked part of themselves.
If you hold yourself back from success in order to 'be accepted by your
friends', you're doing nobody any favors. You're letting them down, and
worse, you're failing yourself by not trying to succeed.
“Money corrupts people/Money has a taint to it”
We’ve all had bad experiences with people out to make money- telemarketers,
solicitors, random folks trying to do business with you when you weren’t
looking for an opportunity… and for me it felt dirty, my feeling was that the
other guy wasn’t interested in valuing me as a person, he was more after my
money. I felt devalued, and concluded that the other guy’s priorities
were out of whack. I thought that I couldn’t trust this guy because he
was motivated more by making money than he was in being liked by me.
From this I concluded that this guy’s greed blinded him to the good in me,
and I didn’t want to be regarded by my friends in the way that I regarded
this guy. I chose not to be like that guy.
But what did my chosen response do to me?
It did a lot of things, and I’m not proud of any of them. It blinded me
to the value of the opportunity being offered. It made me unhappy,
resentful, and righteous. It got my ego involved. It closed my
mind and reinforced my opinion that business and money were dirty. And
I avoided them- the only way I was able to get money was to work for other
people who *were* willing to ‘dirty’ themselves. In the end, I got
exactly what I created- the problem was that what I created wasn’t what I
wanted.
…but what really happened there? What happened was that *I jumped to an
inaccurate conclusion*. This guy wasn’t a very good salesperson, he was
pushy, he wasn’t listening to me, in short he was
probably operating from his own unempowered context
and didn’t know how to do better. He seemed forced,
contrived, maybe not genuinely happy. I concluded, from this (and a
dozen other experiences like it) that business and sales were activities that
required you to prostitute yourself for money. I concluded that I could
never trust anyone who had a profit motive. I concluded that if I never
had a profit motive, that people would therefore trust me and value me and
take me seriously in precisely the way I didn’t take that sales guy
seriously.
…now these ‘conclusions’ that I drew were ridiculous. While this guy
may or may not have been operating from a bad place, I assumed that all sales
people did the same, which is not true- I now know many very happy and
successful sales and business people. I figured that unhappiness was
the driving force behind business, which is not true. I figured that I
would find happiness by avoiding business, but all that did was to make me
into an employee, and an underpaid one at that, for
a long time- it didn’t make me happy, it just closed doors in my life.
The problem with my conclusions was that they didn’t serve me- but boy, did
they ever shape my life.
I now understand that when I offer other people opportunities, that some of
them may experience the same challenge I used to- they may think I’m a
shallow jerk- but I also understand that if I offer true value and honor
them, not only am I capable of delivering the value I want to, I may also be
able to help them out of the trap. By connecting with a clear purpose
and with joy, rather than through fear or desire, I can become successful
with my integrity intact.
“I’ll save money when I have enough”
Any amount of money you save, no matter how small, is enough to save.
The habit of saving money is more important than the amount.
I got in the habit of putting pocket change into a jar when I did
laundry. In the course of a year, the amount of change in the jar grew…
into over a hundred dollars. This was little bits of money at a time, a
quarter here, a couple dimes there… but it became a
habit. It was effortless, and it piled money up. Habits are
incredibly powerful things.
I’m now developing other habits- like putting 10% of my income into ‘spendable savings’ right when I get paid… and putting 10%
into my ‘financial freedom’ fund, and another 10% into an account earmarked
specifically for having fun with so I’m not tempted to raid my savings, and
another 10% is earmarked specifically for education purposes.
At the same time I’m motivated to reduce my ‘necessities’ spending because I
want to put more and more into the fun, freedom, and savings accounts.
Also, at the same time, I’m motivated to increase my income- for the same
reasons. I want to put more into those accounts!
I’ve found that earmarking specific money for specific purposes and putting
that money in specific accounts gives me enormous control over my money- I
won’t overrun my fun budget because it’s got a finite amount of money in it,
and I don’t want to raid my spendable savings
because it’s on it’s way to becoming a nice truck for me. I’ll never
spend my financial freedom money either- it’s going to grow and become the
basis of my retirement income stream. These activities, as they become
more and more habitual, they become effortless. They become ‘normal’.
In short, the habit of managing your money (which includes saving and
investing) can not only pile up money, it can also focus and clarify what
you’re doing with it and what you want it for. If you don’t manage it
because you think it’s too small to bother with managing… you risk waiting a
long time before ‘enough to manage’ will come along. As your income
goes up, your context for money expands too- remember when a quarter meant a
lot to you? As your income grew, $5 started to mean less than that
quarter did back then, right?
The habit, not the amount, is the key here. If you’re in the habit,
managing and saving money won’t feel like work. If you’re not,
eventually spending everything you’ve got will feel ‘normal’. In
effect, *that* will become your habit.
“You need a break to become wealthy”
Wealth is not an accident, it's a function of your actions in your financial
world- and your actions are directly shaped by your thoughts, feelings, and
beliefs around money, value, and business. We've all heard stories
about how lottery winners manage to lose all of their winnings, and how
multimillionaires who lose everything tend to
rebuild their wealth within years? Wealth is not an accident, nor is it
a function of luck- it is a function of your actions in life, and your
motives. We use 'you need a break' as a way to avoid being responsible
for how our lives turned out.
“The economy is too bad to get rich now”
There's more than one way to build wealth, and the key is to understand that
there's always an investment that's good right now. When stocks
go down, bonds go up. When interest rates fall, stocks go up and homes get
cheap.
If the economy is 'bad', that means it's time to sell your bonds at a profit
and buy stocks at a discount. ...or refinance your mortgage to pay
lower interest rates. Profit is made on the purchase and income of a
property, as well as the sale price. If the market is down, buy
low. If the market is up, sell high. If you're not sure where the
market is right now, position yourself such that you make money no matter
what.
The simplest way to make money no matter what is to have control over the
process of buying low, adding value, and selling at a profit. If you
buy cheap parts and sell a product worth more than the cost of the parts,
you've got yourself a system of creating wealth that will work in any
economy.
“You need a scam to get rich”
The payoff to this one is simple: you get to invalidate
anything you don't want to do. The costs, again, are less-visible:
If you honestly believe that the only way
to make money is in unethical behavior, you will not look for ways to make
money. Your mind is closed. Opportunities
for business exist, they’re out there everywhere… but inside of this view, you ‘know’
that none of them is acceptable for you.
This belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you buy into it. If you
think there must be a scam involved, you won’t look at your legit
opportunities, and then the only way left for you to become rich would be… by
using a scam. Your belief will create it’s own
validation.
Clearly, you’ve made a judgment about unethical behavior- you don’t want to
do unethical things, you don’t want to be seen as unethical- good for you,
don't change that. Your values are fine, but your view is closing
doors- the truth is that you can
become rich by doing something that excites you, and there doesn’t need to be
a scam involved or anything. All you need to do is fire on all pistons-
make money from your job, manage the money you’ve got, create passive income
streams, save, and invest. Hit all of these and educate yourself about
how money works, and you’ll discover that investing, starting side
businesses, creating value and making a profit on it are not only not
unethical… they are moral.
Huh?
If you have a skill or a service that offers people value and you don’t let
anybody know about that value, aren’t you really denying them the chance to
get it? If you have the secret to an engine that runs on water and you
don’t let people decide if they want to buy it from your business, aren’t you
taking away from them that choice? Aren’t you a greedy fink for keeping
it to yourself? Aren’t you ripping off the whole world?
People can always get money, but they can’t always get what you might have to
offer. Offering your value to people is a moral thing to do. They
may decide they don’t want it, but a) you don’t know they don’t want it yet,
and b) it’s the offering, just as much as the
delivery of value, that counts. If you don’t offer, you *can’t*
deliver. If you contribute value to the public experience, you’ve
enriched the public and that’s a good thing. If they’re willing to pay
you for it, completely honorable- remember, every transaction needs value on
both sides- there’s no inherent virtue in being poor.
“Money
is a burden/Money is a big responsibility”
If you think of money as a burden, you will
find a way not to have that burden- our minds are like that. You’ll
pass on business opportunities, you’ll stick with your current job because
it’s safe, you’ll avoid modeling the behavior of successful people, you’ll resist learning how to make money easily.
Instead, you’ll limit your experience with money to that of working for other
people, working for the bank, working for the tax collector, and in truth you
will only relate to money in the sense that it is a burden.
If you think of money as a burden, it will become a burden to you, even if
you manage to become wealthy. You’ll end up working hard to keep it,
rather than finding ways for it to maintain itself and grow by itself,
because if you ‘know’ that it’s a burden, you won’t look for ways for your
money to be easy. In your mindset, having your money be
a burden will be ‘normal’, and you’ll eventually get tired of this. If
you really believe that your money is a burden, you’ll find ways to get rid
of it, when really it’s not the money that’s the burden, it’s your belief
that money is heavy that is the cause of the burden. Money isn’t the
cause or the solution, it’s the product of your
inner game. Your beliefs are what create your perspective. It’s
your belief, not your net worth, that is in control
here.
Obviously, money doesn’t have to be a burden- if your money works for you, it
can lighten your burdens. If you invest and create passive income
streams, your money can create ease and abundance in your life. If you
believe that it can be a tool to accomplish what you want, you will find ways
for it to do that- if you do not, you won’t.
Again, this myth is a powerful and self-fulfilling thing.
“If I
really try to become rich and fail, I’ll be crushed”
The unspoken part of this statement is that we'd rather never experience
failure than expose ourselves to the remotest chance of success... and on
it's face, that sounds reasonable- until we poke a little bit at just what it
is we're afraid of- at which point it becomes manifest that what we're afraid
of is rooted firmly in unreality.
If we try to learn how to ice skate and we
fall down, we get back up and try again. No big deal, people fall
down. If we try to become rich and fail, what's the difference?
What are we afraid of? To make a long story short, we're afraid of
confirming our unspoken fear that we're not good enough or that we cannot
succeed, and this just doesn't have any basis in actual reality.
If you never try to become rich, you'll
never become rich and the result will be exactly the same as if you'd tried
and failed... with one exception. When you try, you give yourself a
chance. If you don't, you've guaranteed yourself failure. You've
got a choice to make: give yourself some chance or zero chance. If the
thinking that's keeping you from trying involves a risk assessment, which is
riskier- having some chance of success, or zero chances?
The truth is that failure is only a bad thing if we don't learn from
it. If we don't try, we'll never learn what we need to learn in order
to get it right. If we don't learn and grow, we'll never become our
potential selves.
“It’s better to give than to receive”
Whoever tells you this probably either wants you to give them something, or
to feel bad about receiving something.
I don’t mean to sound cynical here- giving is a good thing, something I enjoy
quite a bit- but there’s nothing wrong with receiving either. To say
that one is better than the other is simply creating an imbalanced
perspective. Neither is better than the other, if you think about it-
neither *can* be better than the other- for every gift, there must be a
recipient. Being a bad receiver doesn’t make you a good person, or for
that matter, a good giver- it just makes you uncomfortable about receiving.
If you’re uncomfortable about receiving things, you’ll find ways not to-
whether it’s gifts, income, anything. You may avoid profitable
situations that deliver value to others, simply in order to avoid
receiving. An important skill to have, if you want to become wealthy,
is in being able to receive as gracefully as you give.
"The Rich are getting richer, while the Poor are getting Poorer"
Statistics tell us that the top fifth of income earners in the US in 1995
took home 48% of the income in the country, up from 43% in 1980. Over
the same period, the bottom fifth of income earners brought home 3.7%, down
from 4.3%. If we look at the numbers, the rich 'gained' 5% while the
poor 'lost' .6% of the pie. ...of course, in 1980 the pie was $3.2
trillion, while in 1995 it was $4.5 trillion, in adjusted 1995 dollars.
From this perspective, the real income of the bottom fifth went up by
15%. So which is it? Are they gaining?
Losing? Does it matter?
What’s interesting in the context of this
discussion is this question: “What does meme do to you? What do you get out of this belief? How does this belief benefit/harm you?” Does
it reinforce your idea that it's impossible to get ahead,
does it confirm for you your belief that everything is hunky dory?
In the US
we have an incredible mobility of income. A 1992 study done by the US
Treasury that tracked the income of 14,351 bottom-fifth families during the
period of 1979-1988 indicated that families were as likely to be in the top
fifth after 9 years as they were to remain at the bottom- the number was one
in seven, or 14%. Another way of
saying this is that 6 out of every seven households in the bottom quintile
moved out of the bottom quintile during this study. 5 out of seven moved at least to the 3rd
quintile. 3 out of 7 moved to the 4th
quintile during this study.
Why is income mobility so high? The most important factor is age, not
class. Young people make up the majority of those in the bottom quintile of
wage earners, and retirees (with low taxable income) are also pretty heavily
represented in the bottom fifth.
In a system where people are free, some of
us will land ourselves in that bottom fifth- given freedom, some of us will
make choices that don't put them 'ahead'. As long as people are free, everyone in that bottom
fifth has a crack at getting out- and what this really means is that these
'classes' of 'rich' and 'poor' are transitory and not really classes at all-
they're more like phases we all go through.
Are the rich getting richer? Who are the rich? Who are the poor? How does this apply to you and me?
According to the treasury, most of us change chairs many times before the end
of the dance- and all of this is probably only important to you in the sense
that the way you choose to interpret this data can help or hinder you- does
the fact that the top earners are moving faster than the bottom earners
encourage or discourage you from joining them?
Bringing it all Together
We can see that many of these memes create for us a reality that is limiting. Perhaps you don’t want those
limits for yourself any more. They may have been right for you once,
but maybe now you’re ready for a different view. How do we change our
view?
The good news is that you’ve just taken the first step. What you’ve
begun to do is to think about the way you view your world, the way your past
experiences and conclusions have shaped your present perspectives and
beliefs, and to question whether you know more now than you did when you arrived
at your particular belief. This process of revisiting your beliefs is
the first step toward putting the reins of your life into the hands of your
present self, rather than leaving them in the hands of your past self.
From here on, you’ll begin to notice how you
relate to your beliefs- you’ll begin to actively think about subjects that
normally you wouldn’t question. You’ll make it a habit to try to
understand and question your own beliefs, and odds are good you’ll
decide that some of your beliefs don’t fit you any more.
This journey will have some bumps in it.
Many of your beliefs came out of emotionally painful shaping moments of your
past, and the process of asking yourself ‘why do I believe that?’ will take
you down
some old roads to revisit some painful memories. I am grateful, now,
that I've begun doing so- I can let some of those memories rest now, rather than letting them
shape my present. You will shape more and more of your present through
conscious choice. Your ego will get in the way less- you'll be much less
interested in validating every belief you've ever had. You'll be much more
ruthless with your beliefs- they should serve you, not the other way
around. After all, who created who?
If you think about it, this could be one of the most valuable things you ever
do for yourself. Your beliefs come from conclusions you drew from your
experiences in the past. Your conclusions have always been colored by
your beliefs, and so your belief system, your personal mythology, is *your
own creation*- and it isn’t right or wrong, it is just what worked for you at
the time. You not only have the right to change it, you have the
obligation to change it if it doesn’t serve you. You may have been
meant to believe what you did then, but that’s no indicator that you were
meant to believe the same thing for the rest of your life. If you believe
that you’re here for a reason, if you believe that the Universe has a purpose
for you, try this idea on for size: You were meant to discover yourself,
in order to discover and serve that purpose. You weren’t meant to be
unhappy- this unhappiness is the Universe’s way of pushing you towards the
next lesson it has for you. Embrace it, go there with peace and
purpose, invent yourself every day with integrity and joy and watch- your
life will become lighter and easier as you get closer and closer to
fulfilling your purpose.
The practical upshot of all of this is that your habits are a function of
your beliefs. If your beliefs don't serve you, neither will your
habits. If your habits don't serve you, you'll spend a lot of your
energy working towards what you want, fighting against the force of your own
habits. If your habits serve you, however, success will become
automatic and effortless, whether you choose to focus on money, your
relationships, or whatever you do.
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