Creating A Wealth Mentality

CREATING A WEALTH MENTALITY

The best way to create a new mindset or mentality is to change the diet we are feeding our mind. Our minds cannot go on idle mode for long. There is something always going on. It is said that we think more than 60,000 thoughts a day (some say 90,000). Whatever the correct number, there is a lot of activity going on there, some at the sub conscious level – the sub conscious mind, where our core beliefs reside. The sad thing is that more than 90% of our thoughts are old thoughts, from old thought patterns. Thoughts is mind food. Other inputs include the senses, especially sights and sounds. If we keep thinking the same thoughts (like most people do), we keep holding the same beliefs about ourselves and keep acting in alignment with those (old) beliefs, hence we keep getting the same (good old) results.

To change our mindset or mentality, we need to change our inputs. There are many ways to do this. Reading, listening to tapes, attending seminars, changing your environment, changing your friends or peer group, getting a mentor etc. In summary, you simply have to change your input, period. You have to change your diet, and start putting in healthy thoughts, thoughts that will support your wealth mentality. We think 60,000 thoughts every single day. By starting to think new thoughts, the old will be displaced, until the new becomes habitual.

I have always wondered why we often try and fail. Consider New Year Resolutions, we create new goals backed by good intentions, but we hardly go the distance. Our noble intentions get sabotaged by old thought patterns. We try to achieve new things powered by old thought patterns, the old us attempts to achieve stunts the new us only can. We are in effect attempting to achieve beyond our current capacity. The best way to go about it would be to upgrade our capacity before attempting to achieve at the next level. In effect, it means you need to become the new you before you start attempting to perform at the new level.

To illustrate, let’s assume Tom, a high school track star has a goal to win an Olympic gold medal. Enrolling Tom in the next Olympics would be setting him up for failure – guaranteed. That makes sense. For Tom to stand a fighting chance, he has a lot of work to do. He needs an Olympic class team made up of a coach, psychologist, physiotherapist, nutritionist etc. He needs to get into a boot camp and step up his game big time. The routine will be grueling and he will be tempted to quit many times. He may have to train for at least 4 years. By the time Tom hits the blocks for the heats, it will be a new Tom, not the high school starry eyed local champion. He would have run in world championships and have posted times close to the world record.

Tom does not simply set a goal and start competing in the Olympics (the way to make New Year Resolutions and get on with it). He went to work on himself to become an Olympic athlete before running Olympic races. To become wealthy, we have to be wealthy on the inside first before we can manifest wealth on the outside. We have to read and listen to messages that reinforce that mindset or mentality until it becomes second nature. We have to think big, dream big habitually. When you form the habit of reading at least one book a month (print, eBook or audio), you gradually grow to two a month, then one a week. You will get to the point where you can’t be caught without a book. Waiting no longer becomes a pain because you have some reading to cover while you wait. Time becomes precious, something not to be wasted. You begin to look at activities based on what value it will add towards attaining your goals and what returns it will bring. Wasted time is that which there is nothing to show for it in the future.

Creating a wealth mentality brings rewards much more than wealth in financial terms. It affects every other area of your life, motivating you to achieve more and become more in an upward spiral of personal growth and development.

Having made up your mind enough is enough, you are ready to commence the journey to turn around not only your finances, but your life in every aspect, if you are ready to continue paying the price in personal growth and development. Like someone said, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The reason the teacher seems to appear is because the student is ready. In reality, the teacher has always been there. The student’s focus was somewhere else.

Your current mindset has taken you as far as you can go, maybe a little bit more if you are still in motion. If you have stopped moving ahead financially, it means you have come to the last bus stop. The bus is not going any further. If you want to you further, you need to come down and join another bus. If you want to move further financially, you need a new mindset, a new mentality – the wealth mentality.

Your mindset determines your results. Your mindset controls or directs your thoughts like the course of a river. Your thoughts determine your actions. Your actions determine your results. So it is logical to say your mindset or mentality determines your results or reality. When you look at your life, what you see was created by your thoughts. If you keep working harder without changing your thoughts, you keep getting more of the same. It is like trying to find your way around in Lagos using the map of Ibadan. If you increase your speed, you get lost faster. You need the right map.

A poverty mentality cannot produce wealth. You cannot become rich through consumption. You have to produce, and that flows from a wealth mentality. If you try to produce with a poverty mentality, you cannot sustain the effort because you are wired for instant gratification. Delayed gratification is alien to your nature.

You need to create a wealth mentality if you want to become wealthy. It is only when you change your mentality that you can switch your focus permanently from:

Consumption to production,
Liabilities to assets,
Taking to giving,
Competition to cooperation,
Individual to team,
Lack to abundance,
Limitation to possibility etc

RICH DAD CONCEPT TO ABSOLUTE WEALTH

Robert Kiyosaki is undoubtedly one of this era’s best known authors on personal finance. His Rich Dad series have released the mental shackles most people were through. From Rich Dad, Poor Dad; Cash Flow Quadrants; Retire Young, Retire Rich etc. You find timeless wealth creation principles and information that would challenge your mindset. I gave my book, Retire Young, Retire Rich to a friend last week and just two days ago, she called me and begun quoting some portions of the book to me. Isn’t it impressive? Today, I share with you some of the many gems gleaned from this book, Cash flow Quadrant. Enjoy

• It does not take money nor a good formal education to achieve financial freedom. Most of these wealthy men do not have college degrees or are perhaps college drop outs: Thomas Edison: founder of General Electric; Henry Ford: founder of Ford Motors, Bill Gate of Microsoft, Ted Turner of CNN, Michael Dell of Dell Computer, Steve Jobs: founder of Apple and Ralph Lauren: founder of polo. 

• It takes a dream, a lot of determination, a willingness to learn quickly, and the ability to use your God-given assets properly and to know which sector of the cash flow quadrant to generate your income from.

• More than anything, it is the internal difference of our core values, strengths, weaknesses and interest that affect which quadrant we decide to generate our income from. Some people love being employees while others hate it. Certain people love investing, while others only see the risk of losing money. Most of us are a little of each of these characters being successful in the four quadrants often means redirection some internal core values.

• Money is important; yet do not spend your life working for it.

• Rich dad thought that it is foolish to spend your life working for money and to pretend that money was not important.

• Learn to have money and people work hard for you, and you can be free to do the things that are important.

• There is a difference between being rich and being wealthy. The definition of wealth is the number of day you can survive, without physically working and still maintain your standard of loving, wealth is measured it time not dollars or cedis.

• Ultimately it is not how much money you make that matters, but how much money you keep and how long that money works for you. Every day I meet many people who make a lot of money, but all of their money goes out the expense column.

• The idea of go to school and get a safe secure job was a good idea for people born before 1930, today everyone needs to go to school to learn to get a good job, but we also need to know how to invest ,and investing is not a subject taught in school.

• People who take risks change the world. Few people ever get rich without taking risks.

• Financial freedom might be free, but it does not come cheap. Freedom has a price; freedom’s price is measured in dreams, desires and the ability to overcome.

• Even if you do not have much money it is important to invest in your education for when the changes come, you will be better prepared for them. The game and rules are different for each of the quadrants … which is why I recommend education over ego.

• Knowledge is power all you have to do is wait for the opportunity to use the knowledge and then you will have the money.