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Enlightened Wealth by Morris Kaplan
Every human has two brains – well not two physical brains, but essentially, two operating circuits in the same brain. There is the rational part of the brain which governs the rational thoughts we have; and the motive or irrational part of the brain believed to be responsible for driving our emotional responses to situations. When the motive part of the brain overrules the rational part, it results in us sometimes making dumb decisions.
One of the biggest motivators of human behaviors is reward and the bigger and closer the reward that people get the more likely they are to change their behavior. The desire for instant pleasure is powerful – witness smoking, drinking and the eating of junk food. In recent US research, 15-year old students were asked if they wanted a $30 gift voucher today or a $50 voucher in a month’s time. Not surprisingly the young students took the lower value voucher now. The more astounding outcome was when the experiment was repeated with adults, the results were more or less the same. So what’s going on?
We can conclude the emotional core of the brain was driving the responses. Clearly personality, belief, and emotional responses are powerful drivers in decisions around money.
Most people fantasise about wealth and abundance, freedom from money worries, the financial capacity to choose where to live, the freedom to outsource – housekeeping, cleaning, gardening, child care, private education. Yet only a minority ever achieves anything even resembling financial freedom.
Most people assert that they want wealth, yet behave in a way that denies them this outcome. They don’t take the first steps towards wealth creation. Because they can't wrap their minds around the idea that one little, average person like them is entitled to wealth. The good news is there is more than enough money flowing around the world for all of us to enjoy financial freedom. And another thing: the pursuit of wealth is not evil - it’s our birthright!
There’s a job to be done. Most of us need to change the wiring of that part of our brains which make dumb decisions around money.
Building net worth
If you want abundance in your life you need to be thinking about the successes you already have. Wealth is driven by the motive part of our brain, not the rational. Ergo, self esteem or self worth needs to be in harmony with our dreams and wishes.
You can't control external circumstances (interest rates, real estate prices etc). But you can bulk up your personal resources. Recent studies of self-esteem support what I’ve believed for over 30 years of work in the wealth creation industry. Positive self esteem is not a causal factor, it’s a result. That is, when I succeed at something, my self esteem improves, creating a cycle of success. The acquisition of skills enables us to perform better – or in new areas – thereby creating success, enhancing self esteem, and building the motivation to acquire more skills. The more you do something, the better you become at what academics call “enacted mastery”.
If financial freedom is elusive it may well be you’re being impeded by heavy luggage bequeathed by your (even well-intentioned) parents, siblings, friends, spouse and role models. By exploring one’s beliefs around wealth (including your “rules” around money, for example, that debt is universally bad), one is then in a position to face off the baggage. By throwing out the baggage, you’re throwing out negative belief, allowing you to be free to build your skill sets to at least give you a fighting chance to achieve financial freedom.
When we speak of net worth, we are usually referring to the net difference between the assets we own and the amount of money we owe. In our workshops, coaching and programs we speak of enlightened net worth. Here your net worth includes the values of all the intangibles that go to make up who you are.
On the asset side of the ledger, these would include your education, your experience, your network of friends and associates, connections with members of your golf or tennis club or church group and so on. They also include your courage, your determination, your creativity, your emotional and physical strength and your capacity to receive criticism.
The process of building net worth is a two-fold one: of bulking up the asset side and, on the liability side, ameliorating the subversive forces that limit your potential. Beliefs and fears are as real as walls and pits. Resources however are at hand. Focus, or pay attention, to what has worked, what is working and what may work. To help become clear on this, I suggest listing everything that works or has worked for you - and only what works.
When you pay attention to the positive things in your life, not just positive thinking, but focusing on the positive, that's what you'll get more of in your physical experience, and in your emotional experience (putting that motive part of the brain into positive gear).
Your bargain is: you have to act on your dreams or nothing will get done. I think we all need coaching. And I think we can all benefit from learning in new ways. New ideas can present wonderful opportunities. We don't know what the beliefs are because they are what we think all the time. Somebody else, a coach on the outside, can listen to you and feedback to you what your own thoughts are.
The mindset of a winner is full of dreams and visions not fears and self doubts. Your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions are all-powerful.
Morris Kaplan is a Byron Bay-based retired stockbroker and author of 5 Years to Financial Freedom (Hardie Grant Books), one of Australia’s biggest selling wealth creation books He is a contributor to Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Property Investor. He has also facilitated management programs for some of Australia’s most successful companies including Nokia, Flight Centre, and Summerland Credit Union.
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