Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Wealth File #3 Rich People Are Committed to Being Rich, Poor People Want to Be Rich (Summary)

This is a chapter-by-chapter summary of a book by T. Harv Eker’s Secret of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth (2005) series. One chapter, one article. Read this summary, buy the book. Enjoy!

Wealth File #3:

Rich People are Committed to Being Rich.

Poor People* Want to Be Rich.

“The number one reason most people don’t get what they want is that they don’t know what they want,” said Harv Eker. Do you know what you want? What do you want? Who do you want to be? How do you want your life to look like? Why do you read this summary? I guess you at least know the answer to the last question. Our world, or better, our society provides uncountable choices. It is then a common problem that we don’t really know what we want.

How are we going to get what we don’t know we want? Does that make no sense? You get the point (I hope). If we don’t know what we want in life, how are we going to get it? We won’t… If I asked you if you wanted to be rich, you’d probably think “What a stupid question…” and say, “Of course I want to be rich.” The truth, however, as Eker points out in this book, is that most people don’t really want to be rich. Why? “Because they have a lot of negative wealth files in their subconscious mind that tell them there is something wrong with being rich. That’s how we’ve been conditioned… and most of us have mixed internal messages about wealth.” One part within us says, “I’ll be able to travel the world.” Then the other part chirps in, “Yeah, people will think that you’re show off.” These mixed messages (mine) may seem innocent enough, but in reality, they are one of the major reasons most people never become rich.

Again, mixed internal messages (at least subconsciously) about wealth is the major reason we’ll never get rich. Eker highlights: “If you are not fully, totally, and truly committed to creating wealth, chances are you won’t.” Sound crazy, yet that’s the power of our mind. How can we develop clear internal messages about wealth? The author states that there are Three (3) Levels of Wanting:

#1 I Want to Be Rich. “This won’t bring you anywhere as billions of people want (or at least claim that they want) to be rich, but relatively few are.”

#2 I Choose to Be Rich. “Choosing is much stronger than wanting because you take responsibility for creating your own reality.”

#3 I Commit to Being Rich. “That’s the highest form of wanting. You devote yourself unreservedly. You give 100% to achieve wealth. There are no excuses. Failure is not an option. I will be rich or I will die trying. That’s commitment and that’s necessary for true success!”

Rich people are committed enough to do whatever it takes. Period. What about you? Are you willing to work longer hours a day? Rich people are. Are you willing to sacrifice seeing your family, your friends, and give up your recreations and hobbies? Rich people are. Are you willing to do whatever it takes? Rich people are (in the long-term, however, I disagreed with all of these ‘sacrifices.’ If you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki will surely disagree too. But for the initial periods, you must willing to sacrifice all of these – mindfully, morally and responsibly – for the greater good in the future). You need to fully, truly and totally committed to creating wealth. You choose wealth over mindless-hangouts with friends; you choose wealth over getting too many loans; you choose wealth over expensive car (for now). Sure, you need to find balance in everything. Most importantly though, Eker reminds us, “You need to want to be wealthy bad enough so that you commit to being wealthy. Otherwise you just won’t get rich. Simple as that.”

[*I need to note that the Harv Eker makes it clear in this book that he does not mean to degrade poor people. He does not think that rich people are better than poor or middle-class people. They’re just richer.]

I Have a Millionaire Mind!

Essential Thinkers #23 John Locke, the Empiricist, on the Nature of Human Understanding

In his day, John Locke (1632-1704) was an important political figure and author of the liberal exposition Two Treatises of Government. An associate of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke spent time in exile in Holland, returning to England after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. It is for his views on the nature of human knowledge, however, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that he is remembered in modern philosophy. 20 years in the writing, the book was to exert such an influence on the next 100 years of Western though that its author is considered by many to be the greatest British philosopher of all time. The works of George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume are all direct successors of Locke’s Essay.

The subject of Locke’s Essay, as given in the title, is the nature of human understanding, that is, the very way in which the human mind collects, organises, classifies and ultimately makes judgements based on data received through the senses. Greatly influenced by the scientific turn of his day, and a personal friend of two renowned contemporary scientists, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, Locke’s intent was to set the foundations of human knowledge on a sound scientific footing. He had read with great interest Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, but rejected the rationalist philosophy that underpinned its conclusions.

For Locke, there could be no innate knowledge: rather, everything we know must be derived from experience, through the actions of the physical world on our sense organs. This is the view now known as empiricism, a view still central, in essence if not detail, to the philosophies of W.V.O. Quine and other modern thinkers. Locke’s detractors, the Rationalists (Rene Descartes, George Berkeley, Gottfried von Leibniz) with whom the Empiricists battled for ideological supremacy throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries, have their modern counterparts in the supporters of Noam Chomsky and his philosophy of innate, or generative, grammar.

Locke states that the mind at birth is like a blank slate, or tabula rasa, waiting to be written on by the world of experience. All human knowledge is derived from ideas presented to the mind by the world of experience. However, these ideas can be classified into two general sorts. There are complex ideas and simple ideas. Simple ideas are the immediate products of sensory stimulation, examples would be ‘yellow,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘round,’ ‘hard,’ and so on. Complex ideas are constrictions out of simple ideas, and are the product of internal mental operations. These include all our ideas of familiar material objects, such as tables, chairs, cats, dogs and horses. But complex ideas need not represent anything real in the world. This accounts for ideas like that of a unicorn, a complex idea itself made up of other complex ideas, such as ‘horse’ and ‘horn.’

Among Locke’s simple ideas is a distinction between those that are primary qualities of objects and others that are secondary qualities. The distinction divides those qualities thought to be essential and inherent to all objects and those that are apparent only on account of the effect objects have on our sense. Primary qualities are those such as solidity, extension, shape, motion or rest, and number. Secondary qualities are those such as colour, scent and taste. These are secondary because, according to Locke, they do not inhere in objects themselves, but are causally produced only in our minds by the effect of an object’s primary qualities upon our senses. Another way of conceiving them is to say primary qualities are objective (really exist) and secondary ones subjective (only exist in the minds of observers).

In the popular conundrum of whether a falling tree makes a sound when there is no one to hear it, Locke’s view would be that the falling tree creates vibrations in the air, but that there is no ‘sound’ strictly speaking, since sound is not a ‘real’ or primary quality. This view, sometimes called ‘scientific essentialism,’ leads to the metaphysical conclusion, plausible to many modern thinkers, that without a perceiving mind, there is no such thing in the world as colour or sound, sweet or sour and so on; but there are really such things as shape, extension and solidity, independently of whether anyone perceives them or not.

[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by Philip Stokes, 2012.]

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

Change Your Life: Be Mindful of the Wonder

“Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth
are never alone or weary of life” (Rachel Carson).

What we see in the world around us is to a large extent a matter of choice. Do we take time every day to look, really look, at things? To find the beauty, or the humour, or the charm, or the mystery in them? When driving car to work or better at traffic light, do we stare aimlessly out the window, or do we make an effort to look at the colour of the sky, the shapes of the clouds? Do we look closely enough to allow ourselves to be delighted by the funny little dog trotting along the sidewalk? Or to feel sympathy, or admiration, or sadness when we watch an elderly woman walking slowly and carefully out her front door?

It is natural to be preoccupied by our own thoughts, or to be lulled into not noticing all that is around us while we do routine errands. And there is nothing wrong in daydreaming from time to time (in fact is it good). But the more we can be mindful of what we are doing as we doing it, the healthier and happier we will be.

Mindfulness is a choice, and it is something we can practice: When our mind wanders – whether while eating, doing the dishes, writing a report, or walking to our car – we can gently shift our focus back to the wonders that are everywhere to be found.

I like what Helen Keller (she lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old as a result of an illness) noted in her essay, Three Days to See:

“I who am blind can give one hint to those who see – one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind… Hear the music of voices, the song of the bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense: glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you.”

Don’t overlook life’s treasures,

Be mindful of the wonder.

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

 References:

1. Choose the Life You Want: 101 Ways to Create You Own Road to Happiness by Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD (New York: The Experiment, 2012)

2. Full Catastrophe Living” Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness by J. Kabat-Zinn (New York: Delta, 1990)