Just because there is free chocolate cake doesn’t mean that you must vary from your plans to lose weight. Believe me, this is what happens. I also did this. I planned to do something, but while I was busy with it, something else came up. I decided to put my plans on hold, but the next thing I knew was that the year was over. If you do this, nothing is achieved; your mind has shifted, and you have forgotten about the dream. There is no way you can achieve it without taking committed actions. No dream will be achieved without dedication, as a lack of dedication results in failure and running in circles. Life circumstances will always attract you to things that are not in line with your plans, or are short cuts to success. There will always be something that comes up. Different circumstances will come up, and although they seem innocent when they come into your life, if you pay them attention you forget about your dreams. Your focus shifts, and then you don’t achieve your dreams.
Consistency and building a brand for yourself
This goes back to committing to what you do. You have to be consistent with what you do to make it easier when it comes to the selling of value, which is the vital stage of creating wealth. You will only live your dreams when you are able to successfully create value and sell it in the marketplace. It is vital that you sell your product or services; this is how you make money and being consistent goes a long way here. This is how…
When you are consistent with what you do, people start recognising you for what you do. You build a brand for yourself, and you get known for what you do which makes you the first name that comes up when people refer to needs your product or services fulfil. This makes it easy for you to make sales and be profitable in your business. It is very important that you build a brand for what you do. Make as many people as possible know you for what you do, and build your business into a brand. This takes some time as it needs consistency and commitment to what you do.
Being employed versus being self-employed
This is like saying dependent versus independent, and the latter is the best. Wouldn’t you like to work when you choose to and not work when you don’t feel like working, with no one controlling your time? Wouldn’t you like to decide how much you earn or will you want someone to decide that for you? Time is so precious. Why are you trading yours? Is it worth it?
People who are self-employed have more control over their success. They learn more than the employee who does the same thing over and over again gets to learn. With that said, when you enter the money-making business, if you don’t have anything to trade, and when you don’t have the initial investment money for the business or career you want to take, you will have to trade your skills and time as an employee.
It becomes a problem if you don’t grow and start your own business or have several sources of income other than your job income. It is a mistake that a lot of us make. We take security in the job and we settle down there because it is so safe knowing exactly what you will earn at the end of the month. This is all wrong. There is no job security as an employee. Things can change anytime and you have no control over your income; it can be taken away anytime. You are still dependent. Like kids are dependent on the parents, employees depend on their employer. Very few people achieve success through employment, or even wealth; they are just middle-class, the working class. Most of them are in debt and work under a lot of pressure from their employer.
If you don’t use that little income you get to grow from being an employee to employer, you will end up being dependent for the rest of your life. Employment must be an entry level for self-employment. You must not work for other people your whole life if you really want to achieve anything worth taking note of in life. You must have more than one source of income – that’s true security. There is no security in a job, and no security in one income. All wealthy people have several sources of income. What is job security when you can be fired anytime?
Advantages of self-employment
You must have noticed my emphasis on self-employment as a way you must take to live your dream life throughout this book. Here I want to mention a few things that come with self-employment and why I believe it to be the ultimate solution for all financial problems.
When you are self-employed you have more chance to influence your future the way you want it to be. You can create the future you want. Nobody controls your destiny but yourself. You are the pilot; you choose where to land and where not to land. This gives you a lot of advantages when it comes to living the life you aspire to live.
Through self-employment, most of your circumstances are decided by your decisions. No other person makes decisions on your behalf without your consent; you make the rules and you control most of the things that happen in your life. When you are working for other people, they make decisions that affect you without even consulting you. Especially when you are in a junior position, they can make rules and change them at will. You just have to learn the rules and live by them, while when you are self-employed you make your own rules. You can break them without the fear of being fired; you can work without any rules, which helps a lot when it comes to being creative in your work. Creativity doesn’t follow rules. When you follow rules it stifles creativity; you cannot be creative.
No one tells you what to do when you are self-employed. You work at will, when your energy and your body allow you. You don’t have to work when you don’t feel like it, which helps in maximising your energy. Let’s say you love working at night or in the morning. This is where you are most productive. No one will force you to work when your energy levels are down. This helps a lot in making you productive; you are able to achieve more when you work at will.
The other important thing is doing what you like. When you are self-employed you do things because you want to do them, not because you have to do them. This allows you to enjoy life and enjoy your work. Your work becomes fulfilling to you. You get to do what you like as many times as you want. You have a choice to shift parts of your work that you don’t like to other people, and you can hire people to do the things you don’t like to do, while when you are employed, your workload is your workload; you have to do it, you cannot shift boring responsibilities to other people.
You also have someone deciding how you spend your time, which is your life. When you are employed there are certain hours that you are expected to be at work. This makes your life a routine and pre-determined, which is one of the things that make formal employment boring. There are no spontaneous activities. You have to do the same thing over and over again.
It limits your creativity, as you cannot be creative because you have to perform tasks the way they are expected by your boss. You cannot creatively introduce things without your boss’s approval, for every idea you have about your work you have to present to your supervisor, who has to pass it on to the manager, then maybe it reaches the boss to be approved or declined. Most of your ideas will end up in the dustbin between the supervisor and the manager.
The big one is that there is no security in a job. You can lose your job at any time while with self-employment you report to yourself. You can even fire yourself if that is practical. There is no threat; there is no one who oversees your performance and put any pressure on you. You work at your own pace; you run your own race, you play your own game, and you make the rules. No one will beat you at your own game.
When you are self-employed you choose where to work. You can go to the park and do your work there, you can go to the beach and do your work there, and you can be around things that inspire you and make you more productive. You can creatively plan your work to afford you more idle time, and to have more time to just chill and enjoy life. You choose your working conditions and the way you want to work. There is no pressure, which enables you to make work fun.
The best of all is the salary. You pay yourself – isn’t that great? You can’t cheat yourself, you can’t pay yourself peanuts, you can choose how much you pay yourself, and you decide your salary. There is no set salary; you can make as much mon
ey as you want, not for somebody, not for your boss to get a fat bonus paycheck, but for yourself. You don’t have to wait for a promotion; you can be whatever you want to be in your business.
There are just so many advantages that come with being self-employed, including choosing your own growth, and how big you want your business to grow. You can make decisions about your future while an employed person has decisions about their future decided by other people. See how awful this is? Self-employment is the way to go. If you are working for somebody and you are employed by a company, you must work towards self-employment. I haven’t even mentioned many of the advantages that come with self-employment here, but it is the way to go when you want freedom, a great future and to live your best life.
The best way to use formal employment
As much as I want you to work towards self-employment for a successful and happy life, we all have to start in a job environment and work ourselves up to self-employment. At the same time, a job environment is also a business deal. It is a trade. You are just trading your time and skills with your boss. Don’t let it take over your life; still be in control. Be honest with your boss and have an honest relationship with him. We are all people, and we are still equal. The fact that he is your employer doesn’t mean that he can hold you to ransom and you can do nothing about it. Maintain your power. Do not beg, rather work on agreement terms.
It is not a lie that many employers exploit and mistreat their employees. Remind yourself that you are responsible for how people treat you, even your boss. Don’t let anyone mistreat you. If you do, it is your own fault. You teach people how to treat you. Letting the boss take advantage of you without doing anything is like being in a marriage where you are asked to do everything without asking why, and if you do enquire or try to refuse with reasoning you are threatened with divorce.
This is how it is if you let your employer walk all over you. Stay true to yourself and keep your pride. If you are mistreated in a business deal, walk away. Believe you me, it is not worth it. It is not even worth a cent because if you let people run all over you, you lose respect for yourself, and you lose self-value, which is very important to your being. It is priceless, so never sacrifice it for a pay-check, no matter the condition or circumstances.
Form relationships built on mutual agreement, not power versus powerless or money versus moneyless. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied by your boss. Mutual agreement relationships empower and result in a win-win situation while power over powerless relationships result in win-lose situations. Once you think something is unfair about the relationship, and you have a problem with that relationship, be it work or a love affair, you must walk away.
Everyone on both sides of the relationship must be empowered by the existence of that relationship. Beggars can’t be choosers and choosers can’t be beggars. To choose your future, you must be a chooser. Never beg. At the same time, you must not be unreasonable. You must also put yourself in the other person’s shoes before you argue with a point or idea he or she is proposing. Maybe your boss is suggesting some work changes you don’t agree with. To be sure of your argument, put yourself in his shoes. What would you do if you were the boss? Remember, don’t give people problems; tell them the solutions. Instead of arguing, tell your boss the alternative.
The truth about a work situation is that you left your game and now that you are playing someone else’s game, you must play by his rules, unfortunately. That is why I don’t see it as being a great place to spend the rest of your life in, but this is just the truth about it. If you play my game, you play by my rules. Trying to make rules on how your boss must run his business, which includes leading you, is like visiting someone’s house and starting to make rules for that family. No one will allow it. There are two sides to this. You must just be careful about your work relationship. It must be based on agreement. It is a business deal, and if it doesn’t work out for you, walk away.
Start small
People fail to become successful because they have unrealistic expectations about their lives. They believe they can just start by being successful. They don’t believe in starting small, and expect great things to happen as soon as they leave school. They forget that everything, no matter how big these businesses are, all started as small garage-run businesses. Their stories on how they started are always inspirational; they start from nothing and grow to unbelievable levels.
Success is achieved when people are prepared to start small. A lot of people don’t want to create anything because they don’t like starting small. They feel it is better if they work for someone else, someone who has already grown his or her creation, rather than start their own creations from scratch. This makes them average achievers and they will not live their dreams, which results in unsatisfied lives. You must be willing to start very small if living your dreams and achieving stress-free success is what you want.
You must be willing to start as small as you can and grow gradually. Even with investment, no matter how much money you have for investment, it is wise to start small and test the waters, then when you see success, gradually grow your investment. Everything starts small; success starts with the smallest activities and smallest businesses. The creativity is found in your ability to take something small and grow it to something big. This is true success. This is the success I have respect for, and these are the people I look up to; people who rise from nothing and become great people; people who start right down low and achieve great success.
Learn from life
For everything that happens in your life, look for what you can learn from it. Look for an opportunity in it, and use the circumstances to your advantage. Use it as a motivation; someone can use the circumstances of being broke as a motivation to want to be the wealthiest person alive. There is always something to learn from every circumstance.
What do you have control over?
It is very important to know where your power starts and where it ends when it comes to the creation of your desired future. When you know what you have control over and what you don’t control you can focus your energy on the things you can control and leave the things you cannot control to the universe.
It is a wrong idea to think that you don’t have any control over your life. It is false. There are many things that you control about your life. These are the vital and very useful tools that you can use to influence how your future turns out. It is also a wrong idea to think that you have control over everything in your life; it is not true. In the creation of wealth and living your dream life, it is important to know what you control and what you don’t control.
The world operates on the rule of action and reaction; for every action, there is a reaction. Your control over things is also based on that. You cannot control the reaction. You can only plan and do things in a way that you might get the reaction you hope for, but still, you don’t control the reaction. By following the ideas discussed in this book about creating the future you want and desire, it gives you the actions to take. But the actions only influence the future; they don’t determine the future. You cannot control the future outcome; you can only influence it with your actions. Your actions, however, are what you have control over. You decide and make choices about what action to take or not.
You have total control over your life in what you do. You have the power to choose what you take or refuse from life. Life will throw various things at you, and how you react to the situations that present themselves to you is up to you. This is where you must practise your control and your free will. There will be women with thigh-high clothes for example. It is up to you how you react to that. If you are married, starting problems in your marriage is up to you, because you can refuse the temptations or give in and there will be consequences for whatever you decide to do. This is how you control your life. This is what I mean when I say that you have total control of your life, because you choose how you act and react to life circumstances. You must focus on what you can control and that is your choi
ces. When you use your power of choice wisely it is likely that you will get the desired reaction from your actions or activities.
Focus on your actions and your choices, and you will have a better chance of influencing your future to be how you want it. Realise that the future is not always exactly as we thought, but it is always close to what we wanted. Whether very close to or far ahead of what we expected though, it is real, and it is happening. The reality of it always makes it better than when it was just a dream.
Sometimes we forget that the present is what we influenced with our own decisions because of the new challenges it comes with. And yes, that perfect future you dream of will have its own new challenges, when you struggle with making decisions about thousands. How hard will it be to make decisions about millions?
Don’t get caught up on whining about the challenges. Also appreciate your success; it is what you have created anyway, and you must be proud. Even now you can stop and think about the things you’ve done and succeeded in, and you will see how successful you have been. To reach your dreams is a journey and the successes you’ve had this far are part of that journey. They have brought you this far, closer and closer to your dreams.
Follow your curiosity
Develop an attitude of ‘I want to know how’; love to know how to do things. Be curious to know how electricity works, how your car engine works, and so on. Always be open for new knowledge. Develop a curiosity about things. By nature you will not be curious about everything, but there are certain things that you will naturally be curious about. This is very important, as they will unlock your strengths. Learn about them; they will make you wealthy. It starts with curiosity. You must decide what you want to do for a living based on your curiosity and on things that fascinate you; things you have an interest in.
Money- Wealth Creation Guide Page 22