Expert Professional Advice

It starts now. Don’t wait to live a passionate life… the timing is never perfect and if you wait to have everything lined up neatly, you just won’t get started. Life is composed of sleeping, working, avoiding work, eating, intercourse, and waiting on lines/searching for a parking spot. That’s about it for most of us. The best days give us that feeling that we can do anything. And maybe you find that in your work or in relaxing, but I have to conclude that most people are not working on something that they are committed to because they believe in it and love it. Well then, are you working on something that will lead toward or prepare you for the work you were meant to be doing? Each of us is limited to 168 hours per week. How we allocate that time determines the kind of life we lead. And if your focus is on the financial part of your existence, those hours can be dedicated to doing what makes money now, putting effort into what makes money in the near-term, and doing what makes money later. Time is the ultimate equalizer; each of us is only allocated 24 hours in a day. Well, plans fail, conditions change, interruptions occur, so the way to survive is to have each of these efforts in place to pay off when the economic situation shifts to less favorable results. I met a guy at a trade fair that didn’t seem to have much traffic at his custom printing booth so we had time to talk. He commented that he’ll keep moving forward, the early 1990s didn’t look good as shifts were occurring in his industry but within a few years there was a resurgence so the only thing that mattered in his view was to keep going forward somehow in those rough times, because any business operator that didn’t is now out of that business and missed the lucrative buildup. His laid back demeanor is a good lead-in to one last thought; ease up on the path to bliss. We might think about and seek enlightenment as some form of perpetual bliss, but life itself is composed of us, and so, it will never be flawless.

The first step, and this is a biggie, is to stop doing all the things that contribute to that false sense of self because if you change your thoughts you change your future. The way we live tends to be more like some low-budget horror film rather than us scripting a blockbuster life. We are immersed in our habits of thought and habits of behavior that result in… the same old results. We’re transmitting our thought patterns by wearing our thinking the way we wear our clothes. Gurus will tell you to act joyful and successful and that affirmations lead to success… well, maybe for some people it kind of works because it interrupts the negative thought process but it isn’t a formula to an extended state of awareness. Awareness will cut through a lot of false starts and misguided thinking. If we can remain aware in the moment we can get a sense of liberation because our thoughts almost always seem to hold us back.

So-called experts can write or talk as much as they want but their words do not change people’s lives for the better. Words don’t leap off the page well enough and wrap around us in order to apply the pressure we need… to meaningfully engage us and move us consistently in a better direction. Judging by the number of personal finance related books released into the market it appears that people have an affinity for a solution but they’re stuck with books that promise quick and easy riches and then these books rarely deliver on anything more than common sense. If you wake up each day and rethink 90% of what you thought yesterday you’re suffering in a semi-permanent anxiety unless those thoughts were some of the happiest you’ve had or contributed to a sense of contentment. Thinking rarely helps, people seek happiness but when have they thought themselves into happiness? If you think that 90% of your problems can be solved with money then you’re not fully aware or thinking in broad terms. Everybody thinks they have problems, the person with $10 in their bank account and the person with $10 million – they just have different problems. A perceived lack of anything can make a person feel miserable. Gurus love to preach that becoming rich is a matter of deciding to be rich and acting on it. Not so. Deciding on it and acting on it is nothing more than a symbol of your thinking… and your thinking may be rather limited. You have to tap into the market, meaning that you simply have to understand transactions, your net profit times the number of transactions will tell the story of your wealth, or you have to get one person to pay you seven figures.

I received an email offering a free conference call about “Secret Sellers” along with a quote from some guru like, “Entrepreneurs must not be deterred by the fear of making a mistake.” This email went on about how some man and lady were going to show me a “no-doubt-about-it” goldmine of untapped motivated sellers… handpicked leads delivered right to my computer! There are plenty of desperate real estate sellers now… the ad never delivered on the “secret sellers” and how am I going to make my real estate fortune, by taking advantage of the misfortune of others? That’s the game… but, even if it wasn’t, these real estate hucksters are annoying… can they show me, step-by-step, what deals they did? I need a good laugh… I want to hear about any real estate gurus that completely messed up.

I had a discussion with a fellow from DC who said, “Is John Edwards kicking himself?” He claimed if John Edwards didn’t drop out he might be seen as the most reasonable candidate for the Presidential office. If he had stayed in perhaps people would have eventually gravitated to him as the best candidate to face and overcome McCain.

***update***

Or not, since his personal actions outside of politics became a negative focal point.

Women start businesses at around twice the rate of men. Single women are buying houses at twice the rate of single men. Women are helping other women advance in corporations. Perhaps when there weren’t as many women employed in influential positions there wasn’t enough traction, but now, women are running things. And if it continues, as it should, women will soon own most of the wealth (they already control almost all the consumer spending and control some business spending). Women are in touch with the pulse of business, so men, you no longer matter in the way that you used to matter as consumers… you go with other things as an accessory, and can act as an accessory to women moving through their ambitions.

It seems like that sometimes, doesn’t it? All these books by gurus, all this supposedly important collective knowledge and it seems we should all be better off… but it gets harder to find information that really matters. Everything is a sales pitch… but I know something inherently valuable… nobody knows the exact answers. They simply do not know what you think they know… they’ve just figured out that you’ll pay for what you believe they know. These so-called experts and gurus are lining people up to worship their religion… and charging admission for worship. Salvation is free; it’s the freedom to live as you please without devoting time to sales pitches from authors and speakers.