Tag Archives: Wealth

The Farmer’s Advice

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

I met a couple of my buddies for lunch the other day. Some guys I hang out with sometimes. We were talking about the recent economic conditions, and how messed up they are for everybody. Our particular industry that we are in is slowly spiraling down the drain. A few years ago, in this one particular niche, there was plenty of demand that would easily support any old shop that decided to open up. You didn’t need much experience, or even business knowledge of savvy. If you just sold this particular product, you could make money.

Things like that happen all throughout a normal business cycle. For any particular product or service that is offered by a bunch of different companies, it can be tough to separate the exceptional services from the mediocre, and even the lucky. Whenever there is a general economic boom, you could swing a dead cat a hit a slew of successful businesses.

Similarly in the stock market. In the roaring nineties (and even as far back as the roaring twenties), anybody with half a brain could, through some real experience, convince themselves they were a savvy investor, as pretty much any tech stock, especially Internet stocks, were doubling every couple months as a matter of course. Of course, then the bubble eventually burst, and wiped out a lot of so-called “savvy” investors.

So it is with any market boom/bust cycle. On the boom side, anybody can set up shop, make tons of cash, and convince themselves they’ve discovered the secrets to a successful market. But the true winners are the ones that survive the bust and continue to make money.

Like the particular industry my friends and I are involved in, ten years ago, any housewife without any education could set up shop and make a decent profit. But with the economy shrinking, as many peoples disposable incomes, making some purchases are no longer no-brainers. People are actually forced to make some hard choices how they spend their money.

We noticed this old guy sitting next to us, and he was kind of going alone with our conversation. He wasn’t eve’s dropping or anything, it was just a quite café without a lot of other people, and he seemed to be nodding along with certain parts of the conversation. Slowly he kind of joined the conversation.

That in and of itself is an interesting thing. There’s the guy who shows up to a few people who are talking, and interjects himself rudely, and tries to hijack the conversation. Perhaps you’ve seen this guy at a party or a bar. Then there’s a guy who happens to be in the area, and slowly over time, your conversation circle slowly expands, like some kind of social amoeba or something.

Anyway, this old guy happened to be a farmer, and he was telling us how farmers every year must make a tough decision on what to grow. Because the planting time to the harvest time is quite a few months, a wrong decision can have some pretty harsh results. If you belong to some kind of system where the government offers some kind of guaranteed protection, where they’ll buy your stuff at a certain price, this isn’t such a big deal. But they only offer a certain price for certain products. And the government price is usually on the low side. So while it’s safe to farm that way, at least in this neck of the woods, it is anything but lucrative.

Which is why many farmers attempt to grow things not on the government approved list of guaranteed purchases. While this is entails a lot more risk, the rewards are much better. The rub is that you have to predict six or eight months ahead of time what the market will be like. Of course, if you grow some kind of product that is always in high demand, then you’ve got yourself a good business. But then again, there’s always competition for that same product ever year.

So you’ve got to not only accurately predict what the market demand will be, bit you’ve got to have a pretty good handle on your competition as well.

There’s much more that goes into farming that just planting seed and waiting for them to grow. This farmer was telling us that they too, experience the same boom/bust cycle. Somebody will start to grow a new crop, and it will do very well. Then the next year they’ll be even more demand, and more farmers growing that same product. But then a few years down the road, the market will be saturated, and they’ll be more supply than demand, and the farmers that joined in too late in the game will be left holding the bag. Literally. A bag of product that they can’t sell.

The secret, he said, (which we listened to intently, as this was some old guy who’d been around the block a few times) was to always be aware of your circumstances, and your abilities. He said a lot of farmers get stuck in growing the same thing year after year, and get dependent on market demand. When market demand turns sour, they have no place to go. But those that are always successful always keep something hidden in their back pocket. Always have an idea in the back of their mind for a new crop or a new product in case the market suddenly turns.

To some people, a field of dirt is a burden that can only produce corn or wheat or whatever you’re used to producing. But to others, a field of dirt is pure magic, and will grow whatever seeds you plant. If you keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities, and choose wisely, and plant the right seeds, you will have an extremely lucrative harvest year after year after year.

To expand your resources in the present and make the best possible choices for the future, click on the link below:

Powerful Metaphysics

Powerful Metaphysics

The Dangers Of The Wrong Mindset – And How To Overcome Them

Scarcity or Abundance – Which One Are You?

There has been much written, spoken about, and talked about regarding the difference between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. These two seemingly ubiquitous concepts can change your perception of reality itself. But do we really understand what they mean?

I can understand the mechanics and philosophy and process of baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I can even study material, research methods and techniques, and even publish books on how to make chocolate chip cookies, but until I smell and eat them, I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

The funny thing is that the language I use, the illustrations I use in my descriptions of making and eating cookies will be the same whether I have experienced the or not.

It’s easy to think you understand he concepts of scarcity and abundance, but until you experience them firsthand, they are two completely different worlds. One objective, looked at from the outside with only an academic understanding, and the other subjective, from the inside, from an experiential feeling of what it’s really like.

One quick test to see if you really have an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset with regards to money. How do you feel about salespeople? Car salesmen, door-to-door salesmen, time share salesmen? Do you love them or hate them?

If you truly have an abundance mindset towards money, that is if you really feel deep in your bones that money is plentiful, and you will always have an avalanche of money, then you will never feel threatened or put off by salespeople. You will welcome them. You will enjoy talking with them and seeing what they have to offer.

What good is money if you never spend it? If you truly believe that there is an unlimited amount of money in the universe, then you will never feel a lack. And when the salesman comes knocking you will never fear that he or she will con you out of something. You will never feel as if you are getting a raw deal on anything.

Take air for example. Most everybody naturally has a deep, unconscious belief that there is plenty of air in the world. Enough for everybody. We don’t even thinking about worrying about getting enough air to breath when we wake up in the morning. We don’t get into fights with our loved ones over how we are going to be spending our precious air.

If somebody we don’t know walks into the coffee shop we are passing the time in, we don’t suddenly get worried that they will take our precious oxygen. (Of course if they are smoking that is something different altogether).

Likewise with money. Very few people have a true sense of abundance when it comes to money. Sure we all like to proclaim to each other that we have an abundance mindset. We believe in the Law of Attraction. We put down others when they exhibit what we judgingly call “scarcity thinking.”

But when the salesman comes knocking, or we walk into a car dealership, if we are the least bit nervous, or put off, or fearful of our pocketbook, then we are living, breathing and feeling scarcity.

Most people think that once they get plenty of money, then they will stop their scarcity thinking. That is backwards. That is like saying you want to go on a diet, but you are going to lose weight first, then you’ll start to diet and exercise.

That is the great paradox of human nature and how we perceive reality. We spend our childhoods learn the have-do-be mindset. We have something, then we are motivated by our possessions and then it shapes our personality. We are born completely blank, and we have to be given thoughts, ideas, and behaviors, as we grow older. We absorb who we are, how we behave, what we get from the adults around us.

But when we become adults, we must make a shift from the have-do-be mindset to the be-do-have mindset. When we are children we are because of what we have. As adults, we must learn that what we have is a result of what and who we are.

As we grow up, our personalities and behaviors reflect our environment. But as we grow older, we must learn that our environment becomes a reflection of who we are.

The simples test to who you really are on the inside, beneath all the posturing and affirmations and efforts and appearances is to simply look around you. What does your house or apartment look like? Your friends? Your relationships? Your bank account? They won’t change, unless you do.

Change yourself first and your environment will follow. It may take some time, but it will change. Don’t give up.

It’s easy to blame the world. But that is the reaction and thinking style of a child. Children blame the world. Adults take responsibility and change themselves, knowing the environment will change accordingly.

No, it’s not easy. And yes, it can take a lifetime. But what else are we here for except to shape our own reality?

Abundance Or Scarcity, Independence Or Dependence?

Which Mind Set Do You Have – Rich Or Poor?

The other day I was talking to my neighbor. She was telling me about all the stress her kids are giving her. Not bad stress, just normal mom stress. Her youngest just entered junior high school, and her oldest is a junior in high school. I don’t remember what age the middle one is, but she is somewhere in between.
They are all girls, and they are all very pretty. They get a lot of attention from the boys at school.

My neighbor is of the opinion that girls should be able to make it in the world on their own without having to rely on their looks. Here in Japan that is still kind of a not so popular idea. Many girls today are still taught from a very early age that if you were pretty and feminine you can expect to get a decent husband. Being a housewife is still a dream for many girls here.

Which is exactly why my neighbor is concerned. Her daughters are all pretty smart, they consistently do very well on standardized tests, which are pretty much the norm here. If you can’t do well on tests, it’s hard to succeed here.

Getting into a university here is much harder than the west. But once you are in, it’s fairly easy. College life here is fairly relaxed. Most people focus on getting into a good university starting around junior high school, or even sooner. Many top high schools here have strict entrance examinations. Many people consider public schools here to be substandard. If you can’t get into a good private high school, then you are going to have a second rate career, and a second rate life.

There are many who think that children getting into a good high school or university, especially one of the top universities, is nothing more than a status symbol for the parents. Many of my friends have noted that parents whose children are in good universities are very quick to point this out to their friends (whose kids are in “lesser” universities.) Of course, not everyone is like that.

Progress is bit slow here in that regard, but there still is progress. When my neighbor was in high school, most girls aspired to go to “finishing schools” for lack of a better term.

These were schools that girls from upper class families went to learn proper etiquette, and traditional Japanese customs like flower arranging and the proper wearing of a kimono. All in the hopes of attracting a potential wealthy husband.

It has been said that Japan lags behind the west by twenty years or so when it comes to things like human rights and equal opportunities. It seems that more and more couples here are facing the harsh reality that in order to raise a family, both parents have to work.

There was a “golden” time in the United States after World War II where families could easily survive on one income. That was when they made TV shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” “Father Knows Best,” “Happy Days,” and all those other shows from the fifties where dad went to work and mom was a happy homemaker. Most economists agree, and are backed by a lot of data, that that was just a temporary set of conditions that made it easy to survive on one income. Most of the time before that, and most of the time since, and likely for any foreseeable future, it’s going to take two incomes to support a family.

Not to say that situation might never happen again, but it’s better to realize that good times that are based only on a coincidental confluence of events never last. The best times are the ones you create yourself, based on a thorough understanding of the environment in which you live, and you skills to maximize that environment.

I heard an interesting quote the other day that the difference between rich people and poor people is that while poor people look for problems and excuses, rich people are always on the lookout for opportunities.

Poor people are always worried about the economy, while rich people are only concerned with their own economy that they can control. While its nice to live during times of low inflation, low interest rates, double digit yearly stock market returns, it’s never a good idea to depend on them.

Those that tend to be rich figure out a way to make things work for them regardless of the general economic conditions.

Which is why I think my neighbors daughters will be ok. Whenever I’ve spoken with them, they seem to be able to be flexible in their thinking, and focus always on their ultimate objectives, regardless of the meager expectations that society puts on them. They seem to have pretty good expectations of themselves, which no doubt, will carry them a long way.

How The Church Became a Powerful Force In Europe

This morning I came across an old man that I see sometimes when I’m out walking. Usually he doesn’t say anything, he merely grunts, or sometimes nods his head a small fraction of an inch.

This morning, however, he was different. He stopped and said good morning, and his body posture indicated he wanted to speak to me. So I naturally acquiesced, realizing the opportunity to speak a perhaps wise old timer. Maybe he was going to let me in on some of the secrets of life only available after several decades of successful living.

“You walk every morning, huh?” He said.
I nodded.
“How far?” he asked.
I replied that I wasn’t sure, but judging by the time, perhaps three or four kilometers.
“That’s good. You’ll live a long time.” He then described the neighborhood that I live in, telling me about the people that live here.

My neighborhood is surrounded by small, privately maintained rice fields, and apparently they have been in the family for at least two or three generations. Land is expensive, and usually a son will get married and then live with his parents, and eventually inherit the land.

It’s an interesting way to pass on wealth, through family bloodlines. Back in the old old days, it was important to from alliances with several families, and marriages were very strategic, in order to protect land ownership. Nowadays it doesn’t seem to be that way anymore, even here in Japan. Most people when they grow up don’t wish to inherit their families rice field. They’d rather move to Tokyo to get an office job.

I was reading an interesting book about land and wealth and families, and how it had a dramatic effect on the evolution of religion in Europe. Rich and powerful families would own lots of land, and do their best to keep it in the family. Quite often the most powerful landowners were often the same people that were in the government, so if you didn’t own land, you were pretty much at the mercy of those that did.

Marriages were strictly controlled, and the power and wealth of the time was effectively kept in the hands of the few. But when the Church became more and more popular, an interesting struggle began.

On the one hand, you had kings and monarchs that could protect their wealth and power through bloodlines, and marriages selected to keep the wealth in the family. Strategic marriages were extremely common in those times, and often times you had marriages between cousins to maintain the family power.

On the other hand, you had the Church. The Church had no method like bloodlines or arranged marriages to maintain its power. But eventually, the church became the de facto governing power in much of Europe.

This happened through the development of moral laws, primary to control the sexual behaviors of people. By controlling the sexual behavior of people, the church basically controlled those arranged marriages that he kings and nobles used to protect their bloodlines. The church enforced all kinds of moral laws regarding whom you could marry, effectively limiting the power of the monarchs to choose their own bloodlines.

Soon the church was dictating through its enforced moral laws, which families were marrying who.

An interesting way this happened stems from the idea of the “first son.” Generally, the first-born son was the inheritor of the father’s wealth, and the second son was generally left to the good graces of the first son, which generally weren’t very much.

So another interesting thing happened which gave the Church even more power. The groups, which entered into the monastery, or priesthood, and soon became the group that was dictating moral law to the rest of society, were these second sons.

The second sons that were being shut out of the family fortune, were collectively entering the church to create moral laws to diminish the wealth and power of individual families, and increase the wealth the and power of the church.

And that is how the Catholic Church quickly became the most powerful force in Europe. By effectively controlling the sexual behavior of others.

Change Your Bait to Catch More Success and Wealth

I went out to eat the other day in an Ethiopian restaurant that is near my neighborhood. It is one of those things where you pass by on a regular basis, but you don’t seem to take the time to come inside and find out what might be interesting. When you stop and consider how many opportunities that are around you like this one, you can’t help but wonder how you can possibly fit them all into your life. Which is one of the reasons I finally decided to go in and check the place out.

The waitress was pretty friendly, and I guess the restaurant serves mostly Ethiopian expats, or second generation Ethiopians. Not like your average sushi restaurant on the corner of pretty much every mini mall, where you will see the normal lunch crowd that you see in any other restaurant. The wait staff seemed to recognize me as a first timer, and were appropriately friendly and welcoming to me. She asked me if I had ever eaten Ethiopian food before, and since I hadn’t I went by her recommendations.

Probably more interesting than the food was the waitress. She went through plenty of struggles to get where she is now. Most people who were in her shoes might have given up much earlier. But she kept pressing on, until she got an opportunity and seized it with all her skills and abilities.

When I was a kid I used to build these models. Sometimes cars, but mostly planes, specifically WWII planes. It didn’t matter from what country, any plane would do. One thing about the models is how they all came with detailed schematics. You could lose yourself in the minute details of each particular part your were working on, or you could look at the larger schematic, allowing you to take a broader look at things. Sometimes when you get a bigger picture of how things fit together, it’s much easier to fit the individual parts together.

I had an uncle once that I used to visit when I was a kid. He would take me fishing for catfish on this small lake. One of the reasons catfish are different from other fish is that when they bit into your bait, they don’t’ make a big deal. If you don’t check your line every so often, you could have a fish on there and not even know it. So they key is to always check what’s going on, and see if you have something, even though it doesn’t seem like it. Another thing he told me was how important it was to change your strategy if you weren’t getting what you wanted. Some people would show up to a lake, throw in a line, and then complain if the fish weren’t’ biting. Others would change their bait, change their position on the lake, and even change their fishing poles. Those guys would always go home with a basket full of catfish.

And probably the best model I ever made was of a Japanese Zero, the ones they used in the pacific war. The thing that made it so easy was that not only did they have an exploded view of the entire plane, but also they had an exploded view of each individual section. That gave you the capability of taking a step back and getting a bigger perspective on many different levels. That model came out looking really good.

So next time I go back to that Ethiopian restaurant, I’ll have a better idea of what to order for all those reasons mentioned above. And I know now exactly how friendly and welcoming those people will be.

Tap Your Eternal Bliss

There is one powerful force in the universe that is so omnipotent it may very well precede all that exists. It underlies all matter and energy, and all thought. It is a verb, a noun and an adjective and a feeling all at once. Those who have been able to tap this source of energy have realized the incredible creative power that it has given them in their lives. Known about since before man could speak, this eternal energy has manifested itself in every facet of creation.

Appreciation.

To appreciate is to increase. To grow. To make bigger. To expand. Since the dawn of creation, the big bang, before there was anything at all, there was appreciation. Before the magical source that is, was and will be the entire universe split itself into matter and energy, all that was was appreciation. Some philosophers have argued that the whole purpose of the existence of the universe was this for this source energy to fractionate itself into so many seemingly separate entities was so that it could appreciate itself on many different levels.

What is the quickest way to make somebody happy? Let them know you appreciate them. There happiness will surely grow.

What is the quickest way to share and grow love? Appreciate it.

Do you appreciate money? Is money increasing in your life? If it is not, do you really feel an appreciation for money, or do you have some deep, unconscious belief on some level that money is bad, or evil, or you need to be bad and evil to get it? Get rid of whatever blocks you have, truly appreciate money, and it will grow.

Do you appreciate health? Is your health and body shape what you desire? What happens if you spend five or ten minutes a day, just sitting with yourself? Feeling your physical feelings, and appreciating your body, exactly the way it is. What effects do you think that will have on your health and well being?

Do you appreciate your relationships? Are they exactly how you like them to be? What would happen if you just sat with the significant people in your life and simply appreciated each other, exactly as you were? What effects would that have on your relationships?

Do you appreciate your sex life? Is it exactly how you want it to be? What would happen if during sex, you slowed down, and just appreciated the sexuality of your partner, exactly as they were? How much would that improve the quality of your intimacy?

How many other things can you appreciate, exactly as they are, and sit back and watch as the quality of your life vastly improves?

What happens when you realize that the ultimate source of love, power, and wealth, the magnificent foundation that precedes all, is you?

Bliss is only a thought away.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

“All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas – not money.”

-Robert Collier

“Wealth is the ability to fully enjoy life.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Would you like money? Would you like a lot of money? What could you do if a thousand dollars appeared out of nowhere, and you had only an hour to spend it? What would you do? Where would you go? How about ten thousand? A hundred thousand? How much money would you need to invest safely so you could spend the rest of your life doing what it is that you always dream you wish you could?

The core teaching of the classic book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, is that thoughts are things. Take a look around you, right now. Since you are reading this, you have a computer right? Before this computer existed, it was only a thought in somebody’s mind. Before the chair you are sitting in existed, it was only a thought. Perhaps not an altogether original thought. Perhaps the chair you are sitting in is a slight modification of a different model. Nevertheless, before it was a thing, it was a thought.

How about before there were computers? Somebody had a thought that they could do much better than what they had, right? How much money do you think there is in the world right now? Trillions of dollars? More? How much money do you think there was in the world five hundred years ago? Not nearly as much, right?

Where did it all come from? Thought. The power of thought.

The classic book Think and Grow Rich has been read by so many people it scarcely needs and introduction, or even a description. Written in a beautiful form, unlike many get rich quick books today, it requires the reader to discover for yourself what the secret is. Told in fifteen chapters, each devoted to a specific topic, Hill uses stories and metaphors so make it almost impossible not to miss the secret that lies within. So powerful is the principles in this book that later revisions (it was originally published 1937) were edited for fear of falling into the wrong hands.

That it was published first near the end of the great depression, and still managed to sell 20 million copies is a testament to the powerful principles that lie within. This book is simply a must have for anyone that wants to tap into the basic principles of abundance. And as Thoreau so eloquently stated, wealth is a lot more than money.

Of course, you don’t need to buy this book. If you simply google Think and Grow Rich pdf you will find many websites that allow you to download it for free. But there’s something about having this handy paperback to take with you whenever you want to skim through and read a chapter here or there. They are fantastically organized and can be read all at once or in short bursts of absolute wisdom. Even if you’ve read it before, I highly recommend that you either find your old copy, or buy a new one. Either way you absolutely cannot go wrong by learning and applying the principles in this book.

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