Do you ever feel
that you are a hamster in a spinning wheel, constantly trying to move forward
but no matter how fast your legs move, you are still stuck in the same place.
The most natural question that follows this statement is who is to blame? Well
it can’t possibly be you, right. You work hard every day, you pay your taxes on
time, you have done it by the book since you were young. You can blame everyone
under the sun; the president, the economy, your boss but really the person who
I believe is your biggest barrier to success is the very person you look at,
when you stair into the mirror.
The
system is not fair, but guess what, the system was not designed to be fair, for
the masses. Think about it, when you
were in high school and than in college what did they teach you? I know when I
was in business school at DePaul University they were constantly harping on me to get a good internship with a good firm. From there, you will have a sexy
enough resume to land you a quality starting position working in finance. And
the best part, if you work really hard one day you will be promoted…and the
hamster wheel just keep on spinning.
Countless studies
have been conducted in the past century that if you throw money at people
through a promotion or a bonus, it does not get that person any closer to
maintaining wealth. It is like a stock chart, you will see a bump in the arrow,
but eventually the line will come back down to meet its equilibrium. Why?
Because when your income increases the vast majority of people will increase
their spending habits. Most people will start buying nicer clothes, fancy
dinners, trips to Hawaii, because what else are you going to do with money
except spend it. Unless, of course you a saver, with a plan. These are the
people who are on the right path.
So
the million dollar questions becomes, how do you break the cycle and become successful?
That is a question with an infinite amount of potential routes, that we can
talk about as we move forward. But before we begin our search for success and
the ever-evasive alpha investment, you must first understand what money is. If
I ask you what is money and more importantly is money even real? What are you
going to say?
When
I was a boy I hated reading. My mind would grow bored and wonder and before I
knew it I would be lost and than I would grow frustrated and not want to
continue. In response to this, my father would force me to read for one hour a
day these famous stories in hopes of me one day finding a passion to read. I
remember reading stories such as
“I,Robot,” “The Great Gatsby,” “The Devil in the White City,” etc. but
none of them never truly interested me. It was not until the man made me read
“Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki,
that my interest in money became somewhat of an obsession. I have read
this financial book probably half a dozen times and it was not until the most
recent time I read this book, as a graduate student, that my mind was blown
away with the question of “Is money real?”
Money
is not real. I mean really, what is money? All it is, is a piece of paper
covered in green ink, with the picture of a dead president on it and in the
last few decades it has been transformed into numbers on a screen. But than why
are we as people so obsessed with accumulating all this paper? It is because we
as a nation, as every other nation does with their own currency, have made a
silent unanimous agreement that this paper provides value, and the higher the
number on the piece of paper the more valuable the paper is. The same can be done
for different types of rocks, cardboard, or wood. If we as a nation made a
unanimous agreement to give a pebble the same type of value to that of a $100
bill, you can bet your ass you would be outside right now looking for pebbles,
obsessively, as you do today, constantly looking to accumulate those $100
bills.
So,
what’s the point? Where am I going with all this? Unless you are surviving
paycheck to paycheck, and you have accumulated some type of wealth, through
savings, this is how you must think of money. Money is not real, so therefore
you cannot, nor you should not love it as you would a person. Because if you
treat money as someone you love you will never let it go. Opportunities for you
to become successful will come and go, but because you love what you have
accumulated or the things it has bought you, you will miss out, for fear of the
risk, and you will never escape the hamster wheel. Money is not real and if you
mistake it for being real you will remain stagnant. What money is, is a doorway
to that place you have dreamed of always going. Yes, save your money, but not
because you love looking at the numbers on a screen nor because you want to
spend it on things, but do it in preparation for the next opportunity
that will come your way. Do not fall in love with something that is not real.
“Work like there is someone working
24 hours a day to take it away from you.” – Mark Cuban
