What I Have Learned Here

[HCBailly]

AroundTheWorld asked me to create a topic about the lessons I have learned on my road to building wealth, so here it is. Being in the S-quadrant, many will probably disagree with my lessons, but oh well.

1) Know what I want, how to get what I want, and if the benefits outweigh the effort to me.

I struggled with this lesson for 8 years. I kept on putting my effort into what I thought was the right thing to do, regardless of the benefits and their costs. Ultimately, I decided that the benefits of becoming truly wealthy did not outweigh its cost, to me. Since recognizing that, I’ve become much happier with my life.

2) Time is far more valuable than money.

For example, I tried working a full-time job in addition to my business, in order to get ahead faster. While it was a great job and working environment, I decided not to renew the contract after a pre-arranged "trial period", because I felt that it wasn’t worth the effort. I was far more miserable working 60 hours per week and getting ahead, than I was working 20 hours per week and barely getting by. If my survival depended on it, that would be a different story, but it isn’t.

Even in this economy, my business is doing enough for me to survive, working 20 hours per week. I’m not rich by any definition, but I have my time, and that’s all that matters to me.

A lesson I still have yet to learn is to overcome my E-quadrant mentality of getting paid directly proportional to the amount of effort I put into my business. Sure, I could be doing more to grow my business, but I don’t think that would make me happier, even if it did work, which I doubt.

3) Only ask questions if I’m willing to use the answers.

I heard a quote a long time ago, “If people knew ahead of time exactly what it would take for them to become rich, no one would ever do it.†This holds especially true for me. My mistaken belief was that if I become wealthy enough, I wouldn’t have to work anymore. Yet, when I asked questions about how to become wealthy, I only found far more work and effort than I was willing to put forth. This is primarily why I now ask financial-related questions, instead of marketing-based ones.

4) If you can’t BE positive, at least try to ACT positive.

One thing that I really learned about being positive is how influential words can be. For example, I used to look at negative circumstances as problems, difficulties, and hard. Although I sometimes fall back on that thought process, I try to use words like “challengesâ€. In the words of Data, “I decided to treat them as challenges to overcome, rather than obstacles to be avoided.â€

Now for the lessons that I think people will strongly disagree with.

5)It’s okay not to be rich.

What I have learned that is more important, brings me back to Lesson #1. It’s okay not to be rich, if you know that is what you want. Too many people are miserable with their life, because they want to be rich, but aren’t willing to do what is necessary to get there, including me. At least for me, recognizing that I would be happier not struggling to become rich, than I would actually becoming rich, broke the obsession with money. Put simply, it’s critical to recognize the importance of money, but if you don’t have a lot of it, it’s okay, as long as you recognize that is what you really want.

6) Long-term simplicity is better than short-term success.

Someone once told me that I have all the tools I need to become successful and wealthy, but my desire for a simple life prevents me from doing so. Looking back on it, I would have to agree, and now consciously choose to live my life that way. Maybe I still have something to learn, but I believe that creating a simple life will promote greater long-term stability than investing time in creating backup systems upon backup systems of wealth.

From my perspective, the more systems that are in place, the more variables that are required to maintain those systems, and thus, the more things that can bring the whole system down. Of course, if one has a sufficient amount of wealth, that’s a great idea, but that takes way too much time and effort to generate a positive ROI on my time.

Right or wrong, that’s what I’ve learned. Thanks everyone.

 

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