Assorted Notes

THURSDAY, 1 MARCH 2018

Personality (given), circumstance (given), culture and religion (both given) programmed me to a great extent* to, at least initially as an adult, not pursue material gain.

What was I programmed for? “God”, “The Truth”, “Stay on the Right Path”, play your part in helping people “see the light”. The pursuit of material comfort, money and status was of lesser importance. Not my choice, mind you, but how I was programmed. Or, I certainly had a choice, like when the reverend tells you to choose between Jesus or Satan when you’re sixteen years old. It’s a choice, all right.

I say that initially personality, circumstance, culture and religion programmed me – or as one religious leader loved to say, compelled me – to do certain things and not others, because eventually I did try harder and harder to make money, and I spent more and more time on it. But, what was my training for it? Did I learn about investments at school? Was I exposed to successful ventures at home as a teenager or young adult? No, and no. What I was exposed to was parents who worked themselves into a stupor to make enough money to pay rent and school fees, and to buy food and clothing and other necessities, but if “God” decided “he” wanted to test you to see how you would respond in a certain situation, “he” simply rolled a stone in your path and then you stumbled. That was my education. That was what I was exposed to.

Of course, I have been deprogramming myself for years. But let’s not imagine we grow up in a vacuum. Yes, you move on and you improve yourself and your life despite psychological stones that had been rolled in your path when your brain and personality were still taking shape. But let’s not imagine who you were as a teenager did not influence how you thought when you crossed over into adulthood, and that decisions you had made then don’t still have an impact on your life twenty years later.

* I know “to a large extent” is a weasel phrase, but we are talking about indoctrination and the influence of the environment on the psyche here – not something you can measure like ingredients for a cake.

[I seem bothered in this text, and in a few other pieces before this one, and after this one. Actually, I was. And I’m not in the habit of discarding notes I wrote in a bad mood when I feel better. They are just as much part of my truth as notes where I’m positive and happy.]

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WEDNESDAY, 21 FEBRUARY 2018

14:37

I know how to make money … in one sentence: Place on several markets hundreds, even thousands of products specially made for you by other people.

Note: If you try to manufacture hundreds or thousands of products yourself to save money, you’ll never be as successful as you would be if you pay other people to execute your instructions with you perhaps putting the cherry on the cake.

18:31

The aim should be to produce the largest amount of products in as little time as possible, without compromising quality or value for the consumer.

What it comes down to for me is simple: A small, skilled team of freelance workers.

SUNDAY, 25 FEBRUARY 2018

A thought caught me offside today: “You have to tend to your business.”

No matter what you do for money, you have to pay attention to your business. You should do this if you teach English classes (preparation, checking homework, taking care of your mental and physical health), if you sell teaching material online (you need to look at reviews, answer queries, get clients or potential customers on your email list), if you trade in foreign currency (training, tracking the markets) or if you sell physical products on AliExpress or Amazon (again, you need to check reviews, answer queries, track orders, research new products, delete some products and add new ones). You should also do that if you produce your own literature and hope that more than a dozen people download or purchase your books.

For a few hours I was worried because I know I don’t have a good record with tending to your business.

Then I realised: If tending to your business is something mystical that you’ll be lucky to get right no matter how hard you try, then I’m indeed in trouble. But if tending to your business is something that can be systematised, I’ll be okay. I know how to take action. And if it’s not on someone else’s orders, in my own time, in my own workplace, I can keep it up week in and week out.

In other words, no reason for panic or worry.

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THURSDAY, 4 JANUARY 2018

The book I’m currently reading – Harv Eker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, and the few I finished recently – Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Scott Adams’s How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, and Mark Douglas’s Trading In the Zone – presuppose two things, and expect of you to accept these two things if you want to lead a better life:

1) People have the ability to create an environment where certain (positive) results will be more probable, and

2) people are not only programmable animals, you can program yourself to abandon certain ways of thinking, to replace certain habits with better habits, and to replace certain beliefs with other beliefs that will enable you to achieve better results, and just maybe end up leading a happier and more productive life.

TUESDAY, 23 JANUARY 2018

When I write, translate, or edit a piece, I’m in my comfort zone. When I have to read it one last time and publish it, I’m uncomfortable, and I want to postpone this final step.

When I do research for a product, I’m in my comfort zone. When I have to produce the product, I’m still in my comfort zone. When I have to take the product to the market to sell it, I’m not in my comfort zone.

When I had to research affiliate marketing many years ago, I was in my comfort zone. When I had to write product reviews and beckon people closer to read my reviews, I was not in my comfort zone.

When I have to learn about currency trading, I’m in my comfort zone. When I need to enter live trades and monitor them, I’m not in my comfort zone.

I think it’s pretty accurate to say that there is limited money in my comfort zone, and that there is no restriction on the amount of money that can end up in my bank account if I can manage to venture outside my comfort zone.

* * *

As I was jotting down the above-mentioned thoughts, I remembered a piece I wrote in 2007 entitled “Expanding your comfort zone” (a reminder of my tendency to want to lecture other people while occasionally failing to do the right thing myself):

“What you need, is to EXPAND your comfort zone. Start doing things differently. Take new actions, even if they are strange at the beginning, and even though you stare back at your comfort zone like a child staring back at his mother on the first day of school.

But as you take these first steps, imagine becoming comfortable taking them. As you talk to new people, or do new things, or start running with new ideas, imagine these actions becoming PART of your comfort zone. Imagine a day when all those wolves that now roam outside your cosy circle run beside you like protectors, like part of your inner circle.

Isn’t that the more natural thing to do?”

* * *

One of the ideas in the Harv Eker book that I like is that getting rich is not just about making a lot of money. It is primarily about becoming the person you need to be in character, personality and outlook on life. He believes the fastest way to get rich and stay rich is to improve yourself: “The idea is to grow yourself into a ‘successful’ person.”

TUESDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2018

21:54

I crave my comfort zone. That’s why I easily sneak back to where I’m comfortable. I quietly ignore what I have to do outside of my comfort zone.

23:09

What I’m trying to say is: The way I work is still inadequate. From time to time, I’ll do things outside my comfort zone, but instead of broadening this area with repeat actions, I quietly sneak back to the old boundaries of my comfort zone.

What I need is a system where you repeatedly take actions that are initially uncomfortable, for at least a few weeks, until the limits of your comfort zone have actually been moved. (It’s as if there is an agent inside my head that would say, “He wants to move the boundaries of his comfort zone again. If everyone stays calm and work together, it’ll be over within a week or two. Don’t kick up too much fuss if he wants to do something strange. Say: ‘Oh, yeah, that’s great, let’s do it!’ or something. As I say, everything will be back to normal soon.”)

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FRIDAY, 29 DECEMBER 2017

What does it mean to “make” money? Do you bake it like a cake? Do you cook it? Do you throw a bunch of ingredients together and call it “money”? The phrase is misleading. No wonder so many people struggle to make a living!

First of all, what is money? Money gives you the ability to get the things you need or want.

To earn a living, most people are happy to accept a position at an institution or a company, and then to earn a fixed salary for decades. Sometimes this salary is sufficient; sometimes not. If it is not enough, people think very hard about how to make more money. If they go through times when they’re not in the employ of an institution or a company, they think about it even harder. Failure is often the order of the day.

Here the value kicks in of seeing something you’re struggling with in a different light. Think about how you can create value and how you can provide it to the people who need or want it, and who are willing to pay for it. Don’t think of “making money” – think about creating value. Think about providing a valuable service. I believe most of us can come up with more ways of providing value than we can come up with vague ways of making money. To give value to others is also something that comes naturally to many people.

Of course, if you already provide value but you don’t deliver enough of it, or you don’t do it on a regular enough basis, you won’t earn enough money from it to get what you need or would like to have. Many people also find themselves in situations where they provide something that can be provided by dozens or even hundreds of other people, maybe even at a lower price.

Another way to obtain money is to master some game well enough to win more than you lose. People who hustle on the stock market play a game. They themselves may differ from this view, but at the end of the day it’s only a little less or a little more complex than Pacman, or Bubbles or any other game you play on your phone. Some people will argue that no money is involved in such games. Think of poker. Every year, millions of dollars are pushed across poker tables. Same with other card games like Blackjack, and other casino games like Roulette. These activities are all entertaining, and yet untold amounts of money exchange hands. In a similar vein, just because there’s a lot of money involved in the buying and selling of shares doesn’t make it less of a game. The same can be said of the foreign exchange market.

Ask yourself if it’s easy for you to make money. Now ask yourself whether you have mastered at least one game well enough to win more than you lose, or to play it well enough to record a new high score or reach a new level every now and then. I count myself among the masses that have always found it hard to make money. But I can think of many board, card, and electronic games that I have mastered quite well over the years. I’ve also tried my hand at speculating on a few markets. I can confirm that the idea of losing money is terrifying, but the actions you need to take to succeed are not much more complicated than succeeding at Super Mario, for example – maybe even easier, as any person who has ever played Super Mario until the final mushroom can testify.

My advice for myself and for other people who hope to improve their financial affairs is to be honest about the amount of value you provide and to how many people you provide this value, and if necessary, to make changes, or to change to a whole new market. And if you don’t see yourself in the value business or you simply want to widen your options, I suggest you familiarise yourself with a “game” that you might not find much more complicated than a good round of chess.

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