Secrets of getting prosperous

We humans seem to be part animal on one side, and part angel on the other. When I watch the Discovery Channel, namely National Geographic, I’m often struck by how similar animals’ behaviours and motivations are to our own. They act on lust, hunger, power, love and anger, just as we do and somewhere inside us is the ability to create great works of art, discover new worlds, and understand the universe in ways we could never imagine.

It is this conflict between our two halves that dominates much of our lives. On one side, we have our base animal instincts pulling at us which most people succumb too anyway. On the other, our higher faculties of reason try to motivate us to do the right thing and think long term. It’s these higher faculties that take time and effort to develop. 

The best way of doing this is to learn the habit of giving up one pleasurable thing for another. Specifically, you should learn to put off immediate gratification in anticipation of an even greater reward in the future. Your base instinct is to consume whatever comes your way as soon as it arrives. A resource not consumed is usually a resource wasted. Food not eaten or shared straight away will almost certainly go bad or be stolen. Yeah, if you’re name was Simba and you live in the African safari and have a father called Mufasa it’d be alright. It’s this inner-belief that drives people to consume today and forget about tomorrow. Those who buy things they can’t afford on credit are following such instincts.

The classic way to give up one pleasurable thing for another and train yourself is through savings. Rather than spending all your income today, put some aside for tomorrow and invest it. Learn how to sacrifice today’s desires for tomorrow’s reward. The more you can control this aspect of your life, the more successful you are.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

When it comes to making more money, a lot of people think about working harder or working more. They equate the amount of money you get with the amount of effort you put in. But this isn’t really the case. For example, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have made more than 10,000 times as much as the average American can expect to in their lifetimes. Do you think this is because they’ve worked 10,000 times as hard? Of course not.

In fact, I meet people all the time who work much longer and harder than I do, and yet are fairly poor. On the flip side, I know people who are well off who are actually pretty lazy. Clearly, the secret of high income and wealth hasn’t got much to do with how much work you put in. Instead, it boils down to how much that work is worth. The easiest way to think of it is as an hourly rate. What’s your hourly rate and how can you increase it?

If you’ve got no skills or qualifications and you work in Burger King as a burger-flipper, then your rate is probably around $5 an hour. You put in an hour’s work and you get $5 in return and that’s it - you’re not getting any more money out of that time you invested. It’s basically spent.

I encourage people to get skilled-up through pursuing formal qualifications. A lot of people look at going to university and think: Why put in all that work for no pay? But they’ve got it wrong. Time spent getting qualified at university will probably pay off an incredible amount. For many, it turns out to be the best-paid work they’ve ever done, it’s just that pay comes later and not immediately like burger-flipping does.

Taking the time to learn about investment can also pay off hugely. Let’s say someone spends a hundred hours reading about investment strategies and researching the market. They then manage to save $100,000 and invest it wisely. Over five years they can turn that $100,000 into $300,000 with little effort.

Intellectual property can also be very well paid, especially if it becomes popular. J.K. Rowling wrote her Harry Potter novels back in the 1990s. Go into any bookshop in the Western world and you’ll see lots of those novels displayed prominently. Look on people’s bookshelves and you’ll almost always find at least one of them. I don’t know how much work she puts into promoting those books these days, but I imagine not much. She probably still makes millions a year out of the work she did some 15 to 20 years ago. That’s a pretty good hourly rate.

Think of work not in terms of salary or bonuses, but instead in hourly rates. How much are you going to get paid for that hour of work you’re putting in? What type of work could you be doing that pays even better? These are the types of question financially savvy people ask themselves. Meanwhile, most of the world’s workers putting in a hard day’s grind for a small amount that gets spent almost immediately. What a waste.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

There are no easy answers. The idea that we can walk through a secret door and solve all our problems is a seductive one. Nowhere is this more dangerous than in the game of money. Let’s face it, dealing with our financial situation just blows. You have to work forty hours maybe more a week just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. The bills never stop coming in - tax, phone, credit card, utilities.

If asked: “What can I do to make you more happy?”, most answer would be: “Show me the money”.

The promise of easy money is a seductive one. To think that all you have to do is something clever, without a lot of work being involved, and the cash will come flowing in, what could be better than that? Unfortunately, there is a large number of people out there who know this human weakness for easy money, and take advantage of it. They promise big rewards with little risk. Some are sleazy and obvious con-men. Others dress themselves up as stable and conservative financial institutions. But whatever image they try to project, the message is always the same - fast money, low risk.

If you anyone making such claims, no matter how reputable or smart they appear, alarms should immediately go off in your head. Despite the hopes of many people, risk and reward are strongly connected in any type of investment. The higher the reward, the higher the risk. This law holds true whether you’re talking about bonds, shares, property, or any other financial products.

High reward with low risk is simply too good to be true. And if that’s how it sounds, then it probably is.

Even if you find yourself being convinced by the easy, riskless money one of these institutions is promising, ask yourself one simple question. If this person was really smart enough to find a way of making tons of money with little risk, what does he need me for? If you’re going to invest, do it conservatively. Don’t believe the stories of easy riches, or you’ll find yourself soon separated from your hard-earned money.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

We all want to be better people. We want to be smarter, wiser, stronger and more beautiful. Look at any magazine rack in any supermarket, and you’ll see that self-improvement is on a lot of people’s minds. Given the choice, we all have things about ourselves we’d like to improve. If you don’t, stop reading and start your own blog.

To put it simply, improvement usually requires some form of suffering. You’re not going to be able to speak French like Eva Green without hours of boring study. You’re not going to get a body like Tyson Beckford without painful sweat-sessions and diets. You’re not going to become a great conversationalist or a raconteur without going through a few embarrassments on the way. Indeed, the very things we want to improve are so much on our minds because they are so difficult.

Take riches, for example. Even poor Westerners are pretty well off historically speaking. Sixty years ago, televisions, refrigerators, and even electric kettles were considered luxury goods. Nowadays, not being able to afford to own one puts you squarely in the poverty-stricken camp. Sadly, it’s how we’re doing relative to our peers that determines how “rich” we are and not our absolute level of wealth. A Lexus owner feels destitute if he lives in a street full of Bentley drivers.

The same is true of beauty, knowledge and many other areas of improvement. It’s how we’re doing compared to our neighbours and friends that really bothers us. And you can bet that most of those people are working hard to maintain or improve their status.

If something is easy to achieve, it’s probably not worth that much in this particular game. Having to suffer to gain something puts up a barrier to entry. It means only those willing or able to put in the effort required are going to get to the top of the pile. Improvement and suffering are tangled together in a way that’s almost impossible to pull apart. Their very nature requires them to be.

So if there’s something you want to be better at, accept that you’re probably going to have to do some difficult things to achieve that improvement. It’s the nature of the game, and understanding what’s required to play will take you a lot further. As the title suggests, the biggest room at home is of course, ‘room for improvement’.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

The Peter Principle was first introduced by Laurence J. Peter in a humoristic book (of the same title) describing the pitfalls of bureaucratic organization. The original principle states that in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their “level of incompetence”. The principle is based on the observation that in such an organization new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank. This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder can go on indefinitely, until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent. At that moment the process typically stops, since the established rules of bureacracies make that it is very difficult to demote someone to a lower rank, even if that person would be much better fitted and more happy in that lower position. The net result is that most of the higher levels of a bureaucracy will be filled by incompetent people, who got there because they were quite good at doing a different (and usually, but not always, easier) task than the one they are expected to do.

The evolutionary generalization of the principle is less pessimistic in its implications, since evolution lacks the bureaucratic inertia that pushes and maintains people in an unfit position. But what will certainly remain is that systems confronted by evolutionary problems will quickly tackle the easy ones, but tend to get stuck in the difficult ones. The better, smarter, more competent, more adaptive a system is, the more quickly it will solve all the easy problems, but the more difficult the problem will mean it finally gets stuck in. Getting stuck here does not mean “being unfit”, it just means having reached the limit of one’s competence, and thus having great difficulty advancing further. This explains why even the most complex and adaptive species (such as ourselves, humans) are always still “struggling for survival” in their niches as energetically as are the most primitive organisms such as bacteria. If ever a species would get control over all its evolutionary problems, then the “Red Queen Principle” would make sure that new, more complex problems would arise, so that the species would continue to balance on the border of its domain of incompetence. In conclusion, the generalized Peter principle states that in evolution systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

Getting out of debt is a little like going on a diet or quitting smoking, it requires an entire attitude change. Most people get into debt in the first place because they’re financially irresponsible. Now that the pain of their bad decisions is starting to bite, the want to escape. But like going on a diet for a month, there’s little point in being financially responsible for a short time. You may get thin, or out of debt for a few months that way, but what you really want is to be in a good position long-term.

The problem faced by many of those who find themselves in debt is that they are living a lifestyle they don’t have the resources to sustain. Changing to a more modest lifestyle is difficult for anybody. If you’re used to catching taxis everywhere, then switching to taking the bus is going to be tough. If you’re used to an expensive tropical island holiday once a year, then something cheaper is likely to seem squalid.

Lifestyle cutbacks are the key to getting out of debt. It is unrealistic to imagine you can keep living like you have while spending less. It’s simply not possible. The good news is that such negative lifestyle changes are temporary. If you accept financial responsibility, and put yourself on a more sustainable path, then in the long term you will enjoy a far better and less stressful lifestyle.

If you accept that your lifestyle will reduce for some time, but you are determined to see through the painful period for a more satisfying life on the other side, then you are likely to succeed. The practical advice needed to get out of debt is well known - try to bundle your different debts into one low interest loan, cut up your credit cards, arrange to make payments as soon as you get money etc. If you are determined to succeed in this enterprise, you’ll likely find you can easily get good practical information on how to go about it.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

Much of our lives are spent deciding how to invest our resources. Families decide whether to move into a bigger house, or save their money and stay in the current one. Workers ponder what they should do with their holidays. Of course there’s also the more obvious fields of investment. Where should you put your retirement funds? Should you put a windfall into shares or property?

Time invested in exercise is great for your health. But spend a month not exercising, and you’ll be back to square one. Many purchases have a similar problem. We all know a new car loses value the minute you drive it off the block. But there’s one investment that stays with you almost your entire life. Every minute put into it improves your well-being, and will continue to pay back years later.

That investment is education. Once it’s in your head, it’s there forever. Sure it may fade a little, but it usually doesn’t take much work to bring it back. It’s usually reasonably priced in time and money. The more of it you invest in - the bigger the returns you get from it. There are very few educational undertakings that aren’t worthwhile. You should spend your life improving your own education and understanding of the world. Leverage off the learnings of others, and fill your head with interesting stuff.

Education is the world’s best investment. Put some of your own resources into it.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

Have you ever noticed how many people operate at way below their potential? The genius who works an average office job, the fantastic woman who dates losers, the talented artist who spends all day in front of the TV. Why do such people not put in more effort?

I think there’s something about humans that’s inherently lazy. We’re willing to put in just enough effort to get by, but not any more. It’s probably the “doing minimum to get by” problem. That person may not be happy in their relationship, but finding something better is just too much work. Even putting in the effort to improve their current relationship takes effort and a step outside the “comfort zone”. So they just coast on in a barely acceptable situation instead. The flip side of this coin is that when you challenge people, you can often be surprised at the results.

We’ve all been thrown into situations where we felt way out of our depth before. Whether it’s learning to drive, starting a new job, or hanging out with a new group of people. Suddenly we think to ourselves “I’m not up to this”. And boy does it sting. But if pushed, we can rise to the challenge. Seemingly insurmountable obstacles will be overcome. Yes it hurts, but we come out the other end a better person.

Sports coaches often see this at work. When I was younger, I used to do sprint training. I can remember the first few days of the training, the coach would insist I complete the program he set for me. That meant, among other things, a 3km jog just for warm-up. I’d never ran such a distance before and it was extremely hard.

In fact, there were times when I thought I might get a cardiac arrest. But the coach pushed me to keep going long after I would have given up if it was up to me. The social pressure made me complete the warm-up. Within weeks, I was running such distances regularly. I’d be doing kilometres of hard training without a second thought. I’d been forced to push far past my boundaries. And when the stakes were layed down, I found I could do so.

Look at areas in your life where you’re doing the minimum to get by. Then put yourself in a situation where you’ll be pushed to go way past the boundaries you’ve set. Circumstances involving social pressure are particularly good for this - jobs, courses, coaching and so on. Yes, it will hurt in the beginning. You’ll feel weak, hopeless and out of your depth. But you’ll come out of it a stronger person.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

One of the hardest ways to get rich is to be born into it. Of course, if you happen to come into this world as a Hilton, a Gates or a Buffet, then life is sweet. Since 99.99% of the population aren’t that lucky, I’m assuming you didn’t win that particular lottery. And speaking of lotteries, gambling is another very difficult way to get rich. Sure, some people buy a lottery ticket and win big, but most don’t. You can gamble your entire life and you’ll most likely end up broke rather than wealthy.

When I was younger, I thought the easiest way to get rich was to become famous through some kind of creative act. J.K. Rowling got rich writing novels, so why not me? I’m now much wiser and realize that the vast majority of novelists never even get published. Of those who do, most wallow in obscurity. Only very few make it anywhere near the best-seller list, and only one in a million will achieve any kind of serious wealth.

The same fate awaits the majority of musicians, software company founders, sportspeople and website creator. For every Yahoo that makes its owners billions, there are a million websites that lose money. Creativity is the most fun and rewarding way to get rich, but it’s also a very difficult way. The reason the media raves about and idolizes those who’ve built wealth through creativity is because they’re so rare. You don’t hear about the vast majority who wallow in obscurity and poor pay, because they’re not interesting. “Young genius makes $1 billion from website” is a great headline “Ten thousand young geniuses make nothing from their hard work” is not. I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep your dreams alive. It’s one of the best parts of life.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.

What’s the point? Yes, there’s risk in investing in the market, but the odds are that continuous, regular investing combined with the power of compounding will make you rich.

If you’re in the “instant gratification” generation, the idea of waiting 20 or 30 years to get rich probably sounds like a dumb idea. Sure, there are faster ways to get rich. You could win the lottery, or pick the next Intel or Wal-Mart Stores. But don’t quit your day job just yet. Your chances of winning big in the lottery run around 15 million to 1, at best.

Meantime, naturally, you would be sitting pretty if you had had the foresight to plunk significant cash into Intel or Wal-mart 20 years ago. But consider this: You would have lost money if you’d picked Advanced Micro Devices instead of Intel, and you’d be broke if you’d picked Kmart (which ended up merging with Sears Roebuck) instead of Wal-Mart. In both instances, your retirement plans would be history.

Here’s the bottom line, like it or not: The fate of your retirement, your comfort in older age, probably lies in your commitment to the concepts laid out in the paragraphs above. For the vast majority of us, wealth creation is a slow and steady and powerful process. The tortoise almost always beats the hare.

It’s not easy. But it’s very simple.

To accelerate your wealth creation process, check out Bob Proctor’s Law of Attraction.

To unleash the true potential locked up in you, check out The Power Performance Program.