America is going downhill for one very simple reason: people seem to not be able to tell the difference between the disease and its symptoms. It almost seems to be common wisdom for people to think that treating a symptom of a disease is the same as treating a disease. In short, if the symptoms do not longer show up, the disease is gone. It’s a mental dis-ease, but nobody seems to think much of it. It almost seems like people are brainwashed into believing into the above truth.

It works so well because of one reason – convenience. America is obsessed with convenience and comfort. The more of it – the better. And for every obsession there are those that cater to it. Except there is one simple thing that is wrong with comfort – it makes you weak. One person at a time it makes a nation weak. We can already see the results of this destructive thinking.

PROBLEM: America is getting increasingly dumb. This is a tough one to swallow, but it is the truth. Instead of increasing the education standards and making students study and think, we lower those standards. Everybody seems to get higher GPAs, pass tests with highers scores and everybody seems to do better.

All of that at the cost of learning and knowing less.

More and more people are going to college with lower quality education. Educational institutions are more concerned about taking a dollar from you or the government than about admitting quality students, which are increasingly rear.In the process, the schools get paid, the private loan companies get paid and the students get screwed.

In the end, you have college graduates who know and do less than high school graduates in less developed countries than the USA. Everybody is so focused on satisfying people’s egos and avoiding hurting their feelings in the short term that they forget that they are hurting not only the individual, but the nation as whole in the long term.

SOLUTION: Increase the standards of education on all levels and let kids fail. We just have to understand that the purpose of an education system is to teach, and not to give passing grades for kids who don’t try. Only by failing you learn. In a sense, we need to deflate the educational system. So what if that students will be getting lower grades? That is not the purpose of education. Education is supposed to be challenging and difficult so that when we come out of school we are actually know a thing or two. Overtime, the students would get used to higher education standards and everybody would be fine. If you ask for more you get for more, if you ask for less then you get less.

PROBLEM: America is getting increasingly unhealthy. It is the results of people reaching out for the pill, falling prey to false advertising about quick weight loss diets and constantly looking for the easy way out. Instead of making the life long choices about their nutrition and exercise, people focus on the quick fix. Even in this day and age where information is abundant, advertising and the dream of the shortcuts seems to get the best of us.

It is convenient.

It is convenient for the food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the fitness industry, the health-care industry, the insurance industry. Finally, it is convenient for the consumer. Yet, the consumers are the ones who end up complaining about increasing health-case costs. If you haven’t lived under a rock, then you should have heard about the health care reform that is trying to take place. Yet, it is all BS. Reforming the health care system for an unhealthy nation is the same as lowering taxes for the poor.

SOLUTION:Education. Teach people about nutrition and exercise from an early age. Make fitness classes mandatory and physically challenging. Teach people from young age about how to make the right choices about their nutrition and exercise. That is all there is needed to create a healthier and happier America.

That will automatically lower the cost of health-care.

The health care right now is expensive for a reason: there are tons of unhealthy people. That automatically raises the insurance costs because more and more people are falling in the increased risk group. The focus should on prevention of disease, rather than the superficial treatment of it later. It’s no rocket science, and it bothers me seeing people not solving the problem the right way.

In the end, it is all about making the right decisions. However, it is hard to learn how to make the right decisions when nobody around you is making the right decisions.

So in the end, it all comes down to education, experience and values.

The state where America is today is reflective of it’s education, experience and values. That is the real disease – lack of all three. If we were only focused on helping people make the right choices and showing them how to make the right choices, we would not have nearly as many problems as we do today. It is funny, how a nation with so many resources and so much potential can end up in state like this.

What about you? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you treating the disease instead of the symptoms? Answer that go ahead; you might be surprised with what you find. Remember, one person at a time, a nation can become stronger or weaker. It is up to you.

How important is money to you? What does it mean to you? How much time in your day do you spend worrying about money? Is being rich one of your goals in life? Do you know why?

These are all important questions that you should answer for yourself.

I have come to the following conclusions in my quest to understand the world of finance:

• Money is not real
• Money is a side effect of living your purpose of life
• Rich is a state of mind
• Money reflects value
• Money is a tool, it is means to an end, not vice versa

All of the above conclusions have lead to understand that worrying about money is pretty silly. I am not mocking people who are struggling financially. I am just saying that many people are focused on the wrong issue. Most people are unhappy because they have the means and the ends confused. If you continue worrying about acquiring more money, then you will end up leading a poor life. I can almost say that with certainty.

If you should not focus on money, then what is it that should focus on? You need to focus on the real source of wealth, which gives rise to wealth. You should focus on creating genuine value in your life.  Worry about that. Try and figure out a way how you can create value for others. That is the true source of wealth – value.

How does that help? Here is how. If you focus on creating genuine value for others, then you will just know that riches are surely to follow soon after. With that in mind, you won’t have to worry if the economy is rising or falling, or if the dollar is becoming stronger or weaker. You won’t even have to worry if you lose your house or your savings because you will always now that you have never lost the source of that wealth: yourself.

You are the biggest asset in your life and you should invest the most time and effort into fine tuning your ability to create value.

The big question, then is not how to get more money, but how to create more value. So, how do you create value?

1. Understand yourself. You should be the person who knows you the best inside out. That will require time and effort. It will require you knowing what you like and what you dislike. You will have to figure out what drives you and what depresses you. You will have to know your strengths and your weakness. Only by understanding yourself, you will be able leverage your strengths and your passions to figure out where you fit in the world. Moreover, you will be able to figure out your underlying purpose in life.

2. Follow your life purpose. With a clear image of where you want to go in life, you will naturally dedicate yourself to your ideal and become and expert at what you are trying do in life. If you try and do anything else but what you absolutely love, then your whole being will resist  and it will ultimately lead to unhappiness and poor life. If you follow your passion, then you will just know what to do and where to go. You will able to make choices and decisions so much easier. There will be a clear distinction in what you need and do not need in your life.

That is all there is too it. Surprised? You should be.

I was going to write more about transferable skills, marketing and branding and so on. Yet, it does not really matter. It does not matter if you understand what rich or wealthy and poor really mean. They have little to do with money. Remember, correlation does not imply causation! Rich and poor are simply states of mind.

Being rich means doing all the things that you always wanted to in your life. What else could anybody really want in life? After all, even those who acquire a lot of money, what do they do with it? They usually spend it doing the things that they want to do. It might be going on vacations, spending time with the family or learning something. Yet, it is crucial to understand: you don’t need to be rich dollar wise to do the things that you enjoy.

All you need to do is make the right decisions by understanding yourself and following your life purpose. That is the real difference between the true rich and the true poor. With these new definitions of rich and poor, reread the article and see if it makes more sense now. Go ahead and do it. It might change your life.

With that in mind, this would be a more appropriate picture:

QUESTION: Are you still worried about money?

_____________________

Image (top): Delox – Martin Deák

Image (bottom): dotbenjamin

I have been writing on a regular basis for four months now. Writing is a form of self examination, a way to express the ideas and thoughts that matter to you the most. Given enough time, you will start noticing reoccurring thoughts and ideas, which will eventually form patterns.

I would like to share one pattern that, I believe, is the root cause for people’s unhappiness in their life. It is a simple, yet powerful observation. I am not trying praise myself here. I truly believe that the following observation holds a lot of weight if fully understood.

People lead unhappy lives because they cannot tell the difference between the means and the ends.

To be more exact, people think that some means are the ends. If we were to understand things for what they are, our lives would be much simpler. To make things clear, let us define means and ends.

I look at means as tools, which help you achieve your ends or goals. Let us assume we are building a house. House is our end, it is our goal. It is something that we want to accomplish. In order to do that, we are going to need a variety of tools: bricks, cement, wood, hammers, nails, glass, etc. Pretty simple stuff.

However, for some reason, when it comes to our personal lives, we are in the fog as to what the tools are and what the goals are. Actually, most of us are in the fog because we have no clear set goals of what we want to accomplish in our lives. That is why misinterpret some of the tools to be our goals. Only if we took the time to figure out what it is that we want to accomplish in our lives, then the distinction between means and ends would be clear.

Ends would be something that we have defined ourselves as a specific measurable and objective goal  that we want to achieve and means would be everything else.

I know it all sounds a bit complex, but let us look at two of the most common misinterpretations that people make.

“Being happy is my goal”. I disagree. Being happy should never be anyone’s goal. Happiness is just an emotion. It is an important emotion, which only tells us that whatever we are doing now is good for us and it is important to us. I believe it is a mistake to chase “being happy” as the purpose of life. Happiness is a side effect of achieving your goals that you have set for yourself. Happiness is a side effect of following your life’s purpose. That is all. If we confuse happiness to be something that we must achieve, then we automatically doom ourselves for unhappiness. Do not make this mistake. Remember and repeat the following: Happiness is a side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

“I want to be rich”. I disagree. Being rich should never be anybody’s goal. Money is just a tool that can be used to accomplish our goals. Simultaneously, it is a side effect of achieving your goals and following your life’s passion. That is where true wealth lies: in becoming what you have always dreamed of becoming. If you make being rich as one of your goals, then once you achieve this “goal”, you will feel empty and betrayed. Please do not make this mistake.  Remember and repeat the following: Wealth is side effect of me following my life’s purpose.

I can promise you that if you understand and differentiate between means and ends, you will be able to lead a rich and fulfilling life. However, if you mistake means for ends, be prepared for the unpleasant.

Which road do you want to take? Which road are you on right now?

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”– Thoreau

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Image: thefost

Have you ever set out to accomplish a fairly vague goal such as becoming better at something. That something could be speaking, writing, socializing, networking, basketball, programming and so on. Since better is a very vague word, it is inherently hard to measure our progress or know how we are doing.

For example, I set out into the blogging world. I just wanted to share my thoughts with the rest of the world, help a couple of people. Nothing big. Then I started getting into it, as I realized vast opportunities that blogging presents. And then, I realized that if I want to make anything out of my blog, I have to improve my writing.

A tool of communication with the rest of the world! Sounds pretty important doesn’t it?

Well, as I progressed through my journey, I felt that I was getting better at it, but I was not sure. So I decided to ask for feedback. It’s one of the best choices I have made.

It does not matter what you are trying to get better at; you NEED to know how you are doing. Are you running a project and want to know if the customer is pleased? Are you working on speech and you want to know if it is coming along well? If so, then the best way to get better at something is to ask for feedback. Period.

Here is why.

• It will show others that you care. What better way to show others that you care about what you do than by earnestly asking for genuine feedback? Even if it is something that you are doing for yourself (such as blogging, public speaking, project management, programming, etc), by asking others for feedback you will get them thinking about you. Your friends, co-workers, or family will become more aware of what you are doing and often will help you improve faster by providing  you with additional tools, advice or just general support.

• You will know your own progress. You will be able to understand if the actions that you are taking are helping you or hurting you. Feedback will help you figure out if you are moving too fast, too slow, putting enough, too much or too little effort in achieving your goals. Often times, we will have an idea of how we are doing, but feedback can work as a “reality check” for us to maintain awareness of our actions.

• You will push yourself out of your comfort zone. Naturally, you will have to put yourself out there when asking for feedback. You might have to force yourself to talk to your boss, your spouse, your children, your coworkers, strangers and friends in order to get feedback about the topic that concerns you. How is that pushing myself out of my comfort zone you might ask? Well, if you are asking for feedback be prepared to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. Especially the bad and the ugly. But that is exactly why feedback is important. If everybody just told you the good stuff while hiding the bad, what good would it do to you? NOTHING. So expect and learn how to deal with criticism and remember that a failure just points to an area for improvement.

• You will push others out of their comfort zone. This is a tough one. Believe or not people are very nice. Most of  us will do the most we can to avoid any sort of conflict. That is exactly what you are doing when you are asking for feedback, HONEST feedback. I am going to say it again: ask for HONEST feedback. That means others will have to tell you the bad and the ugly as well as the good stuff. That in itself is a recipe for conflict. People are worried about hurting others feelings by telling them the truth EVEN when they ask for it! Be sure to emphasize honesty because if they will try to play a nice person and hold things back from you, then you  and the other person will lose on the opportunities for growth by putting yourselves into a conflict situation.

• It will open up channels of communication. Naturally, this will force you to communicate and even talk openly to people which you would generally not even say “Hi” to.  This can be a great conversation starter and a catalyst for new friendships. You might discover new friends along the way who will help you excel even further by being honest and resourceful.

I personally experienced all of the above effects of feedback by asking my friend and fellow blogger Oleg Mokhov to provide me with honest feedback on my writing. It’s great and one of the more overlooked resources for growth. Because of this important information that I am receiving from Oleg, I am able to write better and better growing my blog and attracting more readers and hopefully helping them improve their lives!

You can do it too! All you have to do is ASK.

_________________

Image: Don Moyer

We are all fully aware after we eat too much, drink too much, sleep too much, work too much and so on. We know because our body tells us so.

However, our body never really sends us a signal to stop consuming information. We are bombarded with information from the time we get up until the time when we go to sleep. Information comes in a variety of flavors: news, movies, TV shows, blogs, magazines, weather, YouTube videos, advertising, e-mail and so on. Our brain is constantly stimulated with information throughout the day and rarely, if ever, it will tell us that it has had enough.

That is exactly why we have to become aware of how much information we are consuming.

Information Obesity

Chances are you never really sit down and think about consuming too much information. Do you really need to watch those TV shows; read, watch or listen to news; read and track every single blog out there? Probably not. Many of us are just information consuming machines, just like some people are food consuming machines: it’s just important to eat, does not really matter what. You could call the phenomenon of people consuming too much information the information obesity.

It is time to trim the fat!

Trim The Fat

The process is really simple and pain free if you answer the following questions:

• Does this information add any value to me?
• Can I use this information to achieve my goals?
• Is this information relevant to my life?
• Does this information help me make decisions in my life?
• Does this information have any long-term lasting value?

You could add a couple of additional questions, but you get the idea. You can do away with most of the information that you are currently consuming in your life. You have to become selective with what information you consume and eliminate the information that is irrelevant to you.

Why Do It?

There are a couple of reasons to limit your information consumption. First, the more information you consume the more value it losses. Your brain can only process so much information without starting to selectively ignore it. Moreover, think about the opportunity cost of mindlessly consuming the information you don’t need. You could instead be absorbing that what really matters to you. Also, over-consumption of information will cost you a lot of emotional energy because you will react to information that has little to do with your life. Over time that will cause you to become insensitive to the information that you see around yourself essentially numbing your brain.

Sure, many of you will say, but I need to know! I need to know what is going on the world, I need to know how the celebrities are doing, I must know about all the technology that is coming out, I must watch the favorite show and so on and so forth. However, if you really sit down ask yourself the questions listed above, you will realize that you only need so much information to get you closer to accomplishing your goals in life.

If you are able to do this and limit the information to what only matters to you, then many changes will take place in your life. You will have more time and energy. You will be able to focus more. Your day will seem less busy and much more calm. You will stop worrying about the things that you can do nothing about. You will feel happier. More importantly, you will free up your brain power so that you can use it towards things that matter and achieve results faster. Trust me! I have done it myself.

I did it!

I have not watched TV in months. Matter of fact, I do not even have cable TV at my home. I barely read news (if ever). I have blocked websites using LeechBlock which were sucking up a ton of my time: Hulu, Gmail, Facebook and so on. I have limited my access to those sites to only certain times and hours within the week. I read only the books and blogs that matter to me and that will help me accomplish my goals in life: become a financial planner/advisor, become independent, improve my spiritual well being and many others.

It’s easy – JUST TURN IT OFF.

“Money is anything that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts.^[1][2] The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value, and occasionally, a standard of deferred payment. – Wikipedia

Sure. Money is all of those things and it is great! Back in the day people used to barter, use rice, rare items such as silver, gold, ivory as money. Today, even the cash is going extinct: all we need is a credit card to carry out a transaction. But do you really understand what money is and what it is for? Anybody can read the above definition and claim that they understand, but can you explain it your own terms?

Maybe you can and I am happy for you if you do, but if you cannot then it is time to get serious. It is time to get serious if you want to create wealth in your life; it is time to get serious if you want to lead a rich life.

First things first – money is not real. That is why anything was and can be used as money: you could use Monopoly money as money if everybody agreed to it. The dollar bills that you see every day have no intrinsic value. That is to say that billions upon billions of notes that pass through people’s hands every day are actually worthless. It has about as much value as a blank piece of paper. So why is it that we use these notes as money and nothing else?

Because the government agreed that this what we are going to use to carry out transactions. That’s it.

Now, we have a society that has a certain item they can trade for goods and services – we call it money. If you want to buy or sell something, you must pay a certain price for it. What exactly is a price? It is an expression of value which is determined by supply and demand. The more there is of a certain item the less valuable it will be. The more demand there is for an item the more valuable it will be. If we follow this logic then high prices should represent high value products and cheap prices should represent low value products.

Yes and no. It is people who create the demand and supply and therefore price is somewhat random and irrational. Actually it can be what we want it to be. If enough people decided that something is awesome and very value adding, then that item will get a big price tag to come along with it: think diamonds, paintings, antiques. That is why supply and demand forces are not entirely rational -because people are not entirely rational.

Now, you might say that I have not told you anything new, but let us reexamine the facts:

• Money is not real
• Price should reflect the value of an item (in theory)
• Prices which we pay are determined by not entirely rational supply and demand forces

If you truly realize this, your thinking will change dramatically.You might actually get some answers that you were not looking for.

What exactly does this have to with becoming wealthy and leading a rich life? Everything!

If you start to truly understand the above ideas, the concept of money should disappear form your life entirely!

Being rich and being poor are actually just states of mind. Nothing else.

It has little to do with how much money you have in your bank account, it has much more to do with how much value you can create. So next time you think money, I say think value.

You want more money? Create more value.

After-all, money is just a tool or a resource which can be used to acquire different types of resources.All you are really doing is exchanging your intellect, your time and your energy in exchange for this powerful yet very illusive tool called money.

Are you broke? Then think: “How can I create value for others?” If you continuously create lasting value for others, you will lead an abundant life.

Sure, you could trick others to perceive you as being more valuable than you really are, but people tend to figure those things out quickly. So, in the long run you would be actually be shooting yourself in the foot if you were to cheat or misrepresent yourself.

Creating value includes being honest and truthful about your actions and intentions. This way your price will always stay high and people will be willing to pay for it. If you want financial freedom, do not look anywhere else but within yourself and unleash your inner genius to create value for others which will in turn allow you to live a rich and wealthy life.