Wealth File #6
Poor people often look at other people’s success with resentment, jealousy, and envy. Or they snip, “They’re so lucky,” or whisper under their breath, “Those rich jerks.”You have to realize that if you view rich people as bad in anyway, shape, or form, and you want to be a good person, then you can never be rich. It’s impossible.
How can you be something you despise?It’s amazing to witness the resentment and even out right anger that many poor people have toward the rich. As if they believe that rich people make them poor. “Yup, that’s right,rich people took all the money so there’s none left for me.”
Of course, this is perfect victim talk.I want to tell you a story, not to complain, but simply to re-late a real-world experience I had with this principle. In the old days, when I was, let’s say, financially challenged, I used to drive a clunker. Changing lanes in traffic was never a problem.Almost everybody would let me in. But when I got rich and bought a gorgeous, new, black Jaguar, I couldn’t help but notice how things changed. All of a sudden I started getting cut off and sometimes given the finger for added measure.
I even got things thrown at me, all for one reason:
I drove a Jag.One day, I was driving through a lower-end neighborhood in San Diego, delivering turkeys for a charity at Christmastime.I had the sunroof open and I noticed four grimy guys perched in the back of a pickup truck behind me.
Out of nowhere, they started playing basketball with my car, by attempting to shoot beer cans into my open sun-roof. Five dents and several deep scratches later, they passed me screaming, “You rich bastard!” Of course, I figured this to be an isolated incident, until just two weeks later, in a different lower-end neighborhood, I parked my car on the street and returned to it less than ten minutes later, to discover that the entire side of my car had been keyed.
The next time I went to that area of town, I rented a Ford Escort, and amazingly, I didn’t have a single problem. I’m not implying that poorer neighborhoods have bad people, but in my experience, they sure seem to have plenty of folks who resent the rich. Who knows, maybe it’s some kind of chicken-and-egg thing: Is it because they’re broke that they resent the rich, or because they resent rich people that they’re broke.
As far as I’m concerned, who cares? It’s all the same, they’re still poor! It’s easy to talk about not resenting the rich, but depending on your mood, falling into the trap can happen to anyone,even me. Recently, I was eating dinner in my hotel room,about an hour before going onstage to teach an evening session of the Millionaire Mind seminar. I turned on the tube to check the sports scores and found that Oprah was on.Although I’m not a big fan of television, I love Oprah.
That woman has affected more people in a positive way than almost anyone else on the planet, and consequently she deserves every penny she’s got... and more! Meanwhile, she’s interviewing actress Halle Berry. They’re discussing how Halle has just received one of the largest film contracts in history for a female actor—$20 million. Halle then says that she doesn’t care about the money, and that she fought for this humongous contract to blaze a trail for other women to follow. I heard myself say skeptically, “Yeah, right!Do you think I and everyone else watching this show is an idiot?
You should take a hunk of that dough and give your public relations agent a raise. That’s the best sound-bite writing I’ve ever heard.” I felt the negativity welling up inside me, and just in the nick of time I caught myself, before the energy took me over.“Cancel, cancel, thank you for sharing,” I yelled out loud to my mind, to drown out that voice of resentment. I couldn’t believe it.
Here I was, Mr. Millionaire Mind himself, actually resenting Halle Berry for the money she made. I quickly turned it around and began screaming at the top of my lungs, “Way to go, girl! You rock! You let ’em off too cheap, you should’ve got thirty million dollars! Good for you. You’re incredible and you deserve it.” I felt a lot better.
Regardless of her reason for wanting all that money, the problem wasn’t her, it was me. Remember, my opinions make no difference to Halle’s happiness or wealth, but they do make a difference to my happiness and wealth.
Also remember that thoughts and opinions aren’t good or bad, right or wrong, as they enter your mind, but they can sure be empowering or dis-empowering to your happiness and success, as they enter your life. The moment I felt that negative energy run through me, my“observation” alarms went off, and as I’ve trained myself to do, I immediately neutralized the negativity in my mind. You don’t have to be perfect to get rich, but you do need to recognize when your thinking isn’t empowering to yourself or others, then quickly refocus on more supportive thoughts. The more you study this book, the faster and easier this process will be, and if you attend the Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar, you will dramatically accelerate your progress. I know I keep mentioning the Millionaire Mind course, but please understand, I wouldn’t be so adamant about this program if I didn’t see for myself the phenomenal results people get in their lives. In their outstanding book The One Minute Millionaire, my good friends Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen quote the poignant story of Russell H. Conwell in his book, Acres of Diamonds, which was written over a hundred years ago:
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren say to me, “Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to get money?” Yes, of course I do.
They say, “Isn’t that awful! Why don’t you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man’s making money?” Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel. That is the reason. The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. “Oh,” but says some young man here tonight, “I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible.” My friend, that is the reason you have none, because you have that idea of people.
The foundation of your faith is altogether false. Let me say clearly... ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men (and women) of America are honest.
That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. Says another young man, “I hear sometimes of men that get millions of dollars dishonestly.” Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are so rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk about them all the time as a matter of news until you get the idea that all the other rich men got rich dishonestly.
My friend, you... drive me... out into the suburbs of Philadelphia, and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this great city, so beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people in character as well as in enterprise in our city....
They that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and careful, by owning them. We preach against covetousness...in the pulpit...and use the terms...“filthy lucre” so extremely that Christians get the idea that...it is wicked for any man to have money. Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it!
You ought because you can do more good with it than you can without it. Money printed your Bibles, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers....I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto riches...it is your... godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious.
Conwell’s passage makes several excellent points. The first refers to the ability to be trusted.
Of all the attributes necessary for getting rich, having others trust you has to be near the top of the list. Think about it, would you do business with a person you didn’t trust at least to some extent? No way!Meaning that to get rich, there’s a good chance many, many,many people must trust you, and there’s a good chance that for that many people to trust you, you have to be quite trustworthy.
What other traits does a person need to get rich and, even more importantly, stay rich? No doubt there are always exceptions to any rule, but for the most part, who do you have to be to succeed at anything? Try some of these characteristics on for size: positive, reliable, focused, determined, persistent,hardworking, energetic, good with people, a competent communicator, semi-intelligent, and an expert in at least one area. Another interesting element in Conwell’s passage is that so many people have been conditioned to believe that you can’t be rich and a good person or rich and spiritual.
I too used to think this way. Like many of us, I was told by friends, teachers,media, and the rest of society that rich people were some how bad, that they were all greedy. Once again, another way of thinking that ended up being pure crapola ! Backed by my own real-world experience, rather than old, fear-based myth, I have found that the richest people I know are also the nicest.
When I moved to San Diego, we moved into a home in one of the richest parts of town. We loved the beauty of the home and the area, but I had some trepidation because I didn’t know anyone and felt I didn’t yet fit in. My plan was to stay low key and not mix much with these rich snobs. As the universe would have it, however, my kids, who were five and seven years old at the time, made friends with the other kids in the neighborhood, and pretty soon I was driving them to these mansions to drop them off to play. I remember knocking on a stunningly carved wooden door that was at least twenty feet high.
The mom opened it up and, with the friendliest voice I’d ever heard, said, “Harv, it’s so great to meet you, come on in.”I was a bit bewildered as she poured me some iced tea and got me a bowl of fruit.
“What’s the catch?” my skeptical mind kept wanting to know. Then her husband came in from playing with his kids in the pool. He was even friendlier: “Harv, we’re so happy to have you in the neighborhood. You have to come to our BBQ tonight with the rest of your family. We’ll introduce you to everybody, and we’re not taking no for an answer. By the way, do you golf ?I’m playing tomorrow at the club, why don’t you come as my guest.” By now I was in shock. What happened to the snobs I was sure I was going to meet? I left and went back home to tell my wife we were going to the BBQ. “Oh, my,” she said, “what will I wear?” “No, honey, you don’t understand,”
I said, “these people are incredibly nice and totally informal. Just be who you are.” We went and that evening met some of the warmest,kindest, most generous, most loving people of our lives.
Atone point the conversation shifted to a charity drive that one of the guests was heading up. One after another, the check-books came out. I couldn’t believe it, I was actually watching a lineup to give this woman money. But each check came with a catch. The agreement was that there would be reciprocity and that the woman would support the charity the donor was involved in.
That’s right, to a T, every person there either headed up or was a major player in a charity.
Our friends who had invited us were involved in several. In fact, each year they made it their goal to be the single largest donor in the entire city to the Children’s Hospital Fund. They not only gave tens of thousands of dollars themselves, but every year they organized a dinner gala that raised hundreds of thousands more.
Then there was the “vein” doctor. We became quite close with his family too.
He was among the top varicose vein doctors in the world and made a fortune; somewhere in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 per surgery, doing four or five surgeries per day.
I bring him up because every Tuesday was “free” day, when he would do surgeries on people in the city who couldn’t afford to pay. On this day, he would work from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. doing as many as ten surgeries, all for free.
On top of this, he headed up his own organization whose mission was to get other doctors to do free days for people in their communities too. Needless to say, my old, conditioned belief that rich people were greedy snobs dissipated in the light of reality. Now I know the opposite to be true. In my experience, the richest people I know are the nicest people I know. They are also the most generous. Not to say that people who aren’t rich aren’t nice or generous. But I can safely say the idea that all rich people are somehow bad is nothing more than ignorance. The fact is, resenting the rich is one of the surest ways to stay broke.
We are creatures of habit, and to overcome this or any other habit, we need to practice. Instead of resenting rich people, I want you to practice admiring rich people, I want you to practice blessing rich people, and I want you to practice loving rich people. That way, unconsciously you know that when you become rich, other people will admire you, bless you, and love you instead of resent the heck out of you the way you might do them now.
One of the philosophies I live by comes from ancient Huna wisdom, the original teachings of the Hawaiian elders. It goes like this: bless that which you want. If you see a person with a beautiful home, bless that person and bless that home. If you see a person with a beautiful car, bless that person and bless that car. If you see a person with a loving family, bless that person and bless that family. If you see a person with a beautiful body, bless that person and bless their body.
Subscribe by Email
Follow Updates Articles from This Blog via Email
No Comments