Wealthology

by Akinaw Bulcha

  The reason for digging into knowing how we know was to know for sure. After all, in order to keep (not lose) what knowledge I gained, it had to be completely true. You cannot keep knowledge that‘s been erroneously learned. [In the same way, you can‘t keep money that‘s been made based on false assumptions. I hate false assumptions and would hate for anyone else to have them. That‘s part of the reason I‘ve attempted to show you the precise nature of money—you must clearly know what money is in order to preserve it. Economics, what I‘ve tried to teach you in a sneaky way, are the set of assumptions that will determine your financial fate].

  Permanent/absolute truth about every topic was my goal (including economics)—it has been the obsession of my existence. It was this goal that led me to stop my MBA program and instead enroll in an M.A. program in theology; it didn‘t make sense to live my whole life believing something that hadn‘t been thoroughly examined—especially if it had authority over how I should live.

  My focus was never about understanding an entire field of study but finding out if the ground, initial premise or foundation on which the entire thing was based was solid enough for me to invest any time investigating it. If the foundation was solid, all that was built on top of it would also be solid. If it was false, no amount of reshuffling or re-dressing an argument would make it true.

  In this way, my mind automatically economized or shortened the time it took to know a subject accurately. And I could, therefore, know a field of study or a profession better than those who have labored under false assumptions throughout their careers. Another added benefit was that I didn‘t mind being wrong—something that most people are deathly afraid of. I loved being wrong because it put me closer to the truth. I didn‘t care about my ego—the more times I was wrong, the sooner I had lasting knowledge.

  I had a merciless, defiant, fists-clinched, approach to knowing things because knowledge became a substitute for love. When anything was studied, resolute determination was made to find out first whether it could withstand all the logical criticism that could be mustered.

  The experience of loss was much more acute in my situation because, even before I experienced any type of loss, I naturally tended to want to keep things to myself. When I last visited Ethiopia, my birth mother said something interesting: ―Your sister would share all she had with the other kids until she ran out. But you‘d clutch what I gave you and keep it to yourself.‖ This natural ‗conservatism‘ as a child greatly magnified the deep, emotional response to the experience of loss of love.

  All of this, however, has been to your benefit, Kidus. What better guide on economic matters than someone with the life experiences I‘ve had. It almost seems like my life was designed for this very purpose.

  Now, I don‘t know if you believe in Providence but there may be something to it. Why else does my name mean ―to show the right way, or lead in the right path‖? You see, to be able to show the right way, I would have needed to go through a series of very, very unlikely events and react the exact way I reacted to every single one:

  i. I was one of very few kids who had the privilege of coming to America. ii. I was naturally conservative as a child, wanting to keep things to myself. iii. Experienced a series of emotional losses (outlined above).

  iv. Experienced the greatest financial meltdown of my generation.

  v. The industry that I loved (real estate) experienced the greatest loss of wealth in the recession.

  vi. I misinterpreted the experiences of loss as a child and created a neurosis. vii. Of all the things I could"ve substituted for love, I chose knowledge.

  This all has come together either by chance or Providence for your financial benefit. Rest assured that you will notice the truth in my letters when you use it. I‘ve given you all the tools you‘ll need to protect and grow your capital; it puts you on par with the best economic minds in the world. No one can lie to you or hoodwink you about economics after you‘ve read what I‘ve written because it‘s a product of a relentless mind. It‘s not a product of my own mind but of a deep pool of wisdom we can all access and we do access every minute of every day (I‘ll explain later). So I can‘t take credit for them, it didn‘t arise out of my own conscious mind. My story is a clue as to how everyone can access this super mind.

  So you understand a little bit more about how important knowledge was to me, consider this: I did fairly well in school, finished a Master‘s Degree and a third of an MBA program by my mid-twenties while struggling with attention deficit disorder. How come? This question baffled the doctors who were testing me for ADD. They didn‘t know why my GPA had improved dramatically from high school to college.

  They didn‘t know I fell in love—with knowledge. The answer is that one neurotic symptom (forgetfulness/inattention) was cancelled out by a stronger obsession—to have something that couldn‘t be lost (knowledge). I needed the forgetfulness to deal with the pain of loss while on the other, a blistering, industrious mind was needed to destroy and dismantle arguments until indisputable, permanent truth could be obtained.

  This greed for knowledge explains why I can see pages of books in my mind; it explains my ability to recall specific ideas from hundreds of books at will. It explains why the only people to whom I listened were my professors. It was important to listen to them because at any moment, they could blurt out an indisputable fact that couldn‘t be lost.

  6. Carl Jung, the co-founder of psychology once said, ―Where love is lacking, power always fills the void.‖ For much of my life, personal empowerment through knowledge was a constant goal. I have a deep passion to empower others because it‘s a projection of my own goal of self-empowerment. I actually care that people think correctly about things. I genuinely want people to be empowered.

  “Your life is what your thoughts make it.” ~Marcus Aurelius.

  Heightened Sense of Awareness The entire point of detailing my experience here is not to embarrass myself. I‘ve done so in order for you to be confident that what‘s been said in all the letters up until this point is the gospel truth about money and economics.

  My obsession with knowing things accurately has given me the unique ability to give you an accurate report of the true nature of wealth creation in the world of global capitalism. I‘ve paid a terrible price for my misinterpretation of the events that transpired early in my life—two decades of virtual nonexistence, a heart closed to love, feeling, and depression. But the consequences that produced the pain have also produced an even greater asset—a heightened awareness of the mental errors that lead to financial loss (miscalculation).

  This state of mind has given me a unique gift that I can share with the world. After all, we have no limitation but those we recognize. Our greatest difficulty, can be our greatest gift—our greatest struggle, our greatest victory.

  It might not be obvious why a heightened awareness of mental errors that lead to loss is an asset. The reason is simple: This awareness of loss brings us back to the principal of entrepreneurship. A good entrepreneur or investor is someone who hedges against risk. We cannot avoid risk if we‘re unable to identify it.

  The greatest investors in the world, as was mentioned, are oddsmakers. Of the two billionaire investors mentioned earlier, one (Bill Gross) started his career in a casino and the other (Warren Buffett) was obsessed with math computations, the game of bridge and has been underwriting insurance risk his whole life.

  The information you‘ve received from me is, therefore, invaluable because every possible bad money assumption that could lead to a loss of wealth has been explained and replaced with good assumptions that will lead to prosperity. Your greatest financial risks have been made clear.

  I know it seems that this way of looking at investing or making money seems negative. How can we make money if we continually dwell on negative outcomes? Doesn‘t that lead to procrastination? Doesn‘t that lead to fear? No!

  We fear the unknown, we don‘t fear what we understand. Understanding all the possible risks doesn‘t pre
vent you from making money any more than waiting for traffic to stop prevents us from crossing the street. Remember that the largest payout in Wall Street history was paid to someone who took out insurance against loss!

  Profit is really the flip side of having the ability to guard against error. The brilliant real estate developer Donald Trump once said that if you take care of the downside, the upside takes care of itself. You now know all you possibly need to know to guard against the downside, (losing money) and therefore, guarantee an upside! Remember that when my obsession for knowledge transferred to thinking about business, it didn‘t stop me from making deals and going for it. On the contrary, it emboldened me. Accurate knowledge has a way of doing just that.

  “We not only interpret the character of events, we may also interpret our interpretations.” ~Kenneth Burke

  The Trigger That Allowed Me to Serve People We‘re all lucky in some way. You‘re lucky that someone with my background experienced a great recession. It has allowed me to be of service to you and others in ways I never dreamed. Here‘s how it started.

  When the real estate industry came to a complete halt, the fear of loss was triggered in my subconscious mind. As the crisis grew into a catastrophe, all the creative effort and intelligence in the world couldn‘t help me stay on top. In an instant, the entire industry cratered. Even the older, more experienced real estate entrepreneurs, whom I looked up to, were in deep trouble.

  I scrambled to find niche, recession proof income in real estate. After six months of work (giving webinars, blasting the internet with ads) a big deal came my way. It was my biggest, most lucrative deal ever—sixty or so individual deals with an enormous payout. But in the midst of it, the individuals involved in the deal went bankrupt.

  At some point during this process, my subconscious mind picked up on something. Without my conscious realization (at the time), it said, ―Wait a minute. There‘s something I don‘t know. There‘s a cause for everything—there‘s a method to economic recessions and booms. I must know it now. I will not waste my life by subjecting my efforts to forces I do not fully grasp.‖

  It realized that the same process I used to deconstruct philosophical and theological ideas or arguments to find the kernel of indisputable truth that couldn"t be taken away, could be used to understand real estate and economics better than most professionals.

  The subconscious mind automatically summed up the actual method of building lasting prosperity:

  In the real estate business or any business, there is only one thing that we need to know—how to value assets. Knowing the value of assets is like the science of knowing truth in philosophy (epistemology). You"ve therefore learned the “epistemology of making money.” You‘ve learned Wealthology.

  If you take away any quote from my letters, it‘s the one by Benjamin Franklin: ―I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they‘ve made of the value of things.‖

  In the realm of money (and of life in general), our estimates of the ―value of things‖ determines how much we make and how much we lose. My letters have sought to explain what creates or destroys wealth in order to help you estimate the value of things.

  I‘ve found that Squirrelmericans have false estimates of value. That‘s why ideas of safety and risk had to be redefined. The things that seem to be safe (the dollar, bonds, U.S. Treasuries) are really the greatest threats to your wealth.

  The ideas contained in these letters are a glimpse of the working of an obsessive mind finding the kernel of indisputable economic truth. You can take it to the bank because it‘s not a product of conscious thought but of a subconscious one that doesn‘t make mistakes (and therefore something I can"t take credit for). You‘ve learned the epistemology of making money. You now know the economic truth.

  “Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.” ~Soren Kierkegaard.

  The Power of the Subconscious Mind As was mentioned before, everything we see is caused by something we don‘t see. Behind what‘s said, is something that‘s not said. The forces that drive us to do one thing or another happen as a result of internalizing beliefs. My story was just an illustration of how the subconscious mind works. It is the most powerful tool you have in building wealth (and something most economic textbooks will never cover adequately). The way to influence it to build a prosperous life is to internalize success producing thoughts.

  The way to internalize an idea (or turning intellectual truth into heart truth) is through emotion. Our emotionalized beliefs shape our inner person. (In one sense, John Calvin had it right when he said that unbelievers couldn‘t voluntarily change themselves. They first had to be changed internally in order for them to change their choices with respect to divine things).

  There‘s something good and something bad about internalized beliefs. The good news is this: Once beliefs are internalized, they are seared into your subconscious mind as if by an iron. Once that happens, how you react to the external world gets locked into a certain pattern. Your whole perspective—from theology to the movies—becomes colored by a new lens. One of the movies that most affected me, for example, was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a film about losing the memory of love (as you‘d expect given my history).

  Our subconscious mind automatically seeks the same things continually, 24 hours a day without stopping, finding delight with the same act as if each additional experience was new. It‘s because of this fact that reading a logic textbook was a ―happy experience‖ for me.

  The repetitive nature of our subconscious activity is a power of its own. Because I was refusing to heal the emotional wound, filling the hole in my heart with knowledge was a constant occupation. As I mentioned, somewhere along the way, the discovery was made that knowledge couldn‘t be lost or taken away. Once that discovery was made, it started choosing different things for me to do. The subconscious starts where it is with the tools it has to accomplish your goals. I happened to have grown up in the church, so my addiction to knowledge began with learning as much as I could about the Bible.

  In high school, I started borrowing books out of the church library. Even then, a methodical plan for my education was automatically laid out by my subconscious mind. It wanted to find out the bottom line, irreducible things that could be known. For example, instead of learning about theology (God-ology), the goal of the subconscious was to know the initial premise, foundation or authority on which it was built. Were these prophets really inspired? How did we get the text of the Bible we‘re reading? Are there contradictions? Is religion based on fact or fiction? What about evolution? Quantum physics?

  As a senior in high school, I even began teaching myself Greek and Hebrew so that I didn‘t have to depend on other people‘s interpretation of the Bible. I began studying archaeology to understand the context in which the original copies of the Bible were written. I went to great lengths to get the story for myself and I did it all unconsciously (unaware of my ultimate desire). I did an insane amount of work to get the story straight. What was once a chore (reading/studying) was the most enjoyable thing I could do.

  What would it be like if creating prosperity could be easy, automatic and a joyful obsession? That‘s the promise of understanding how things are really made, how our minds produce things (trust me Kidus, you won‘t get this in an ordinary economics textbook).

  As Napoleon Hill wrote so many decades ago, once our subconscious minds accept certain ideas as truth (through emotional experience), it‘s an unstoppable force that makes us do things. It will economize time and space to give you prosperity if that is its goal. It will invent things, build bridges, travel continents or anything else to get you from where you are to where you want to be. The great thing is that you don‘t even have to think about how to get to your destination. I had no idea what was happening to me until years later. The subconscious mind will do it all for you if you can internalize a goal.

  Hill says that once this internalization
has been accomplished, our minds become ―magnetized‖ to attract everything we need to get what we want out of life. It was only after I became conscious of what I was doing that I was able to understand how this ‗magnetization of the mind‘ works.

  Hill‘s main goal in his book, Think and Grow Rich, is to give his readers the tools they need to internalize success principles (thoughts) so that they can magnetize their minds to continuously and automatically create wealth. This is the reason he mentions that making money is easy if you can magnetize your mind to automatically attract wealth into your experience. It has to be an obsession for it to be activated.

  On the flip side, the danger of the way our subconscious mind works is that if we internalize negative thought habits, our mind power gets locked into continuously bringing us what we consciously seek to avoid. We find ourselves doing things we don‘t want to do as if we were possessed by a will not our own. That other will, or outside force is caused by our subconscious activity.

  In my experience, the negative side of internalizing the idea that love doesn‘t last was the inability to love again. I was afraid of getting into relationships. I was afraid of loving anything too much. The cost of misinterpreting multiple emotional experiences has literally been spiritual death.

  “Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives.” ~Robert Collier.

  Your Assignment Now, we‘re finally ready to talk about your assignment. If you remember, you were asked to underline and mark ideas that stood out at you regardless of how they stood out. In light of all I‘ve said about the subconscious mind, why you were asked to do so can finally be explained.

  The exercise is designed to help you find out what ideas are operating in your subconscious without your awareness. What is your subconscious focusing on? What is it bringing into your experience? How are your lenses coloring your experience?