Category: Old age of my youth – 2018

FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2018

13:18

I’m reading another wealth mindset book (You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth, by Jen Sincero). I wonder, for the record, why I reckon I, too, can join the “lucky” few who make enough money to become financially independent.

Here are the reasons:

1. There’s a massive amount of money in the world (according to one source, 80 trillion dollars), with a massive amount of money (about 5 trillion dollars) ready for people to channel towards them. (Remember: money doesn’t know you; it doesn’t care where it ends up.)

2. I’m smart enough to learn what I need to learn.

3. I own and have access to incredibly powerful tools and resources – a computer, a smartphone, stable high speed internet access, and bank accounts.

4. I’ve developed various skills over the years that increase the likelihood of financial independence – the production, publication and distribution of text and other material; self-confidence to engage in conversations with strangers; basic knowledge and understanding of financial markets, including how to open accounts, trade, and manage capital; how to sell, market, and advertise products or services on the internet.

5. I know I’ll be able to do even more good things with more money than I do now. I know I’ll be more of the good I already am.

6. I have already confronted many obstacles in my subconscious that have prevented me over the years from taking the right steps to make more money, and I have started deactivated them. I have a strong suspicion more obstacles lie in wait. I know that I will also identify these obstacles, deactivate them, and replace them with beliefs that will strengthen my efforts to be more successful. I know that because I find it interesting to discover and confront these obstacles, although it is emotionally uncomfortable, because I know I end up with interesting notes about it.

7. I understand that you don’t have to think about making money because all the money you can ever dream of already exists. I also understand that you need to make yourself receptive to it, view yourself as worthy of it, and take action to receive it.

21:15

Again important to mention when talking about money:

1. You are a programmable, and already programmed, organic robot. This programming includes the language you speak, the cultural practices with which you fill your life, how you dress, the type of jokes you make, the sport you play, the religion you adhere to, and your preferences in food and drink.

2. Your view of adult life, your expectations of how your life will be as an adult, your view of how one makes a living, the income class you expect to find yourself in as an adult, your relationship with money – are you a spender or a saver? are you smart with money or are you wasteful? is it a struggle for you to make money or is there no limit to the amount of money you can make? – are all also part of the programming you received as a child.

3. If you want to improve your life and possibly also the lives of other people, money is an invaluable resource.

4. Words are important. How you speak and the words you use affect what you believe and how you feel and ultimately what you do.

* * *

Jen Sincero, the author of You Are a Badass at Making Money, mentions in her book that every person has a relationship with money and that it is a useful exercise to write a letter to money as if it were a person. I think this can also work as a dialogue:

[…]

MONEY: If I can do so much for you, why don’t you have more of me?

ME: I’ve put in a lot of effort to have more of you in my life, but few of my efforts have paid off.

MONEY: Other people don’t try so hard and they have more of me in their lives than they can spend in a lifetime. Why do you think I spend so much time with them, and so little time with you?

ME: I’ve always thought people who have so much of you in their lives are either lucky, or they do things that impress you. I’ve been very lucky about some things in my life, but not with you. And I have clearly never done anything that impresses you.

MONEY: Am I currently in your life? How much do you see of me now?

ME: I see enough of you to stay alive and live fairly well, but not enough to do other things I’d like to do. You’re not enough in my life to sustain me if I were to be in an accident, or to last me to old age. I would definitely want much, much more of you in my life.

MONEY: You wanted to become a hermit at one stage. What was that about?

ME: I think I didn’t want a relationship with the world. Or maybe I resented the fact that I needed you so much in my life, but had so little of you. I might have not wanted a relationship with you at all.

MONEY: Do you want to be a hermit now?

ME: No. I know it would be a very limited life. I would mean very little to other people.

MONEY: What would it mean for you to have a good relationship with me, to have as much of me in your life as you need – to even have me in abundance in your life?

ME: I’ll be more relaxed. I will experience things and see places that I now just know about. I will be able to better assist my parents. I will have a better relationship with both my sisters, but especially with my older sister. I will teach other people – including people close to me – how to improve their relationship with you. I will be able to assist animals in need. I will share you with people who will assist me in my endeavours.

(Just had an insight. In this conversation, you speak to “someone” whose power is unlimited – indeed, “someone” with power over life and death. However, it seems to be a challenge making this “someone” happy. And sometimes this “person” is present in your life, and sometimes not. There is no doubt that you’d like more of this “person” in your life, seeing that “he” can enable you to do so much, he can give you so much protection, and he can empower you to experience so many good things. Is it just me who seems to be confused between money and “God”?)

______________________

SATURDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2018

On the idea of blueprints you received from your parents (see December 2017’s “Upgrading my financial intelligence” and “Confronting my blueprints – and fixing them”):

1. My blueprint was not failure, it was struggling.

2. Like any set of active beliefs, this story of the blueprint isn’t just a factor during your childhood. If you continue to confirm to yourself that “it” is simple how it is, the blueprint keeps its hold on you. It is indeed like religious beliefs that you don’t grow out of. As long as you keep believing something is true, keep seeing certain “truths” in your life, it will remain true for you, no matter how old you are. [20/11/18: If everyone grew out of their blueprints, no adult would remain a follower of the religion to which their parents exposed them as children.]

3. I have a new blueprint: I, Brand Smit, do not have to struggle. That I believed for years that was how it was supposed to be was a mistake. My parents never intended to teach me that particular lesson. Certain things happened, but I was never meant to internalise them as the Holy Truth.

WEDNESDAY, 24 OCTOBER 2018

I am caught between a rock and a hard place. I have made it a habit the last few decades to dig deep in my soul for all kinds of secrets, for all kinds of interesting things that make me who and what I am and that make me do what I do.

For example, I have begun thinking about the programming I received as a child in terms of adult life expectations, and more specifically programming about money. What I’ve discovered was that I received a few lessons that made the likelihood of eventual financial success slimmer than it could have been. (For example, that my life was part of a cosmic game between Good and Evil and that I had limited control over my own success, or that my own success was subject to this cosmic game – if the Cosmic Game Master found it necessary for me to be a complete failure, there wasn’t much I could do about it.)

The problem? Most of these lessons I learned from my beloved parents.

Here’s the rock: I would like to dig deeper, to better understand myself, and to understand what I need to change to do better in the future. And the hard place: I may discover more things that might put my parents in a bad light.

A possible conclusion: My parents are just ordinary people. Of course they made mistakes, as their parents had made mistakes, and their parents’ parents before them, and so on. What is important is that these “erroneous lessons”, this “erroneous programming”, were meant to help – and it could have, had things ended up working differently.

Therefore, if I dig deeper, I may discover mistakes my parents had made, but all that reveals is that they are just ordinary people who tried their best. This is a conclusion which I, and I believe my parents, can live with.

______________________

WEDNESDAY, 8 AUGUST 2018

19:23

I, Brand Smit, am grateful for the hundreds of people who read the pieces I have written.

I, Brand Smit, are grateful that I own 90% of my own time and can use it as I see fit.

I, Brand Smit, are grateful for the opportunity to teach other people what I have learned on the long road to success and financial well-being.

19:58

People should stop saying you have to THINK of a solution, or THINK about what to do. Your task is to optimise your situation. Eat healthy foods that positively affect your body; shower when you need to shower; comb your hair (if you have any) and do what you need to do to feel physically good; do light exercises; drink enough water or tea (or coffee if you prefer); make sure the room is cool and pleasant (or warm enough in winter); get busy with things you need to do, and make sure you get enough downtime in between. The answer, or the solution, will COME to you.

20:27

You think hard about what you’ll leave behind of your existence. Will there be anything worth cherishing, or would it be as if you were never here?

I have in the past been severely bothered to leave proverbial tracks in the sand that other people could see. But there is another way to look at it. There are people in this world who do much harm and injustice during their earthly existence. They don’t leave much behind that can be considered good by any measure. Any accountant who is worth his salt will conclude the final figure is a bold, red negative.

Considering this nasty reality, it suddenly doesn’t sound so bad to leave a ZERO on the final score sheet.

SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2018

As you think, so you do.

How you think affects the results you produce.

Source: You – when you realise how true it is.

______________________

WEDNESDAY, 8 AUGUST 2018

How long was I programmed about money and making money, and about my role and place in the world before I said, “Hold on! What’s going on here?”

The answer: For a long time. At least 25 years, but the same operating procedure continued because I didn’t replace it with another way of thinking about things. Even when I went through a period of intense self-examination, during which I critically considered what I believed in and how I went about doing things, I never went far enough to truly reprogram myself.

I learned how other people made money and tried to take the same or similar actions. But it’s like teaching someone a few Russian phrases and then dropping him in the middle of Siberia expecting him to be an effective spy. He won’t fit in because he’s not from that environment. He wasn’t programmed into, and for, that society. He may succeed in producing sounds which other people will recognise and to which they’ll respond appropriately, but to really succeed in his mission he’d have to receive much more intensive training.

For two decades, I was taught to trust in “God” for guidance in my life. “God” would send my life in a particular direction. “God” knew where “He” needed me. “God” would take care of me; I just had to be patient. Then, one day, I realised that I no longer believed in “God”. Oops, now what? Two decades of programming that the world works in a certain way, that my place in the world is determined in a certain way, and suddenly – nothing. You’re on your own. Good luck.

I have done okay in almost three decades of adult life since that traumatic turn – not great, but there are definitely some positives in my good column. But I will find it difficult to argue with someone who’s of the opinion that I have just been slogging it out the last two and a half decades as well as I could.

Fact is, I can do better, but I would have to go deeper than before, especially with regard to my relationship with money, and how it affects my place and role in the world – or how I think about my role and place in society.

______________________