Law and Disorder

“The possibilities for mobilizing the experience, imaginations, and intelligence of workers, both employed and unemployed, are limitless.”
~Emlyn Williams~

For most of my youth (and maybe yours) when you went into a job interview you would give the interviewer the answers you believed he or she was looking for.

Quite often those answers were lies, distortions, or lined with self-doubt.  After all, you wanted to get to work and begin holding your proper place in society.

If it took a few distortions or naive assertions such as “I want to help your organization develop the next Game Boy,” or  “I want to lead the effort to develop cars that run on meglevs”….so be it.

It was a means to an end, right?

Fast forward to the winter of ‘09.  Many of those people who clawed their way into the system with self-deceit and lies and were then able to endure its chains during good times, are as easy to spot as a stripper heroin addict in a room of Born Again Christians.  They are unemployed or hanging onto their job by a nose hair because they never followed their dreams and their fraud was finally sussed out (slang for discovered).

Call it karma , if you must.

Japan is deeply effected by the recent dark clouds circling the economic planet.  “As GM goes, so goes America,” and as Toyota goes, so goes Japan.”   Many people have bought into this mindset, and have caused a run on the mind bank.   People and governments are gasping for air and a fresh approach.

Rewind to those first job interviews.  Isn’t what you really wanted and what you finally settled for vastly different?  You settled for a salary, and promised your employer in return that you would be a good boy or girl, follow orders, and sell your soul to the boss-devil as long as they could pay your bills plus a little alpha.

You wanted independence, but chose the wrong vehicle – others to lead you.

I recently watched a microcosmic view of “bread line” mentality in a New York Times video.

(Watch it!)

All the people in the video are hungry to work and many seem to have good skills and abilities.  But they are standing in line with many thousands of others at a job fair hoping against hope that they will win the job lottery for less than 40 positions offered by the boss-wo(man) inside.

You and I don’t need to stand in line.  You need to evaluate who you are:  your passions, your abilities, and your dreams…and then take action.

You and I have infinitely more worth than the salary a boss wo(man) can offer you.  Let’s stop chasing crumbs when we can have the pie.  It’s all a matter of attitude and follow through.    Believing is seeing.

“Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition.”
~George Clason~

During the bubble keizai (economic boom) in Japan, I was fortunate enough to have won a government lottery enabling me to buy NTT stock when it was privatized.  That deal yielded me a cool one million yen in profits before I unloaded it three days after the purchase.

I wasn’t skillful in stocks, just plain lucky to have been in the right place at the right time with some cash to invest.  Since that windfall, I have stayed clear of investment brokers and stocks.  They don’t give a damn about you or me.

A fool and his money are soon parted, said a wise farmer some 500 years ago before stock markets, sub-primes, and derivatives were even on the horizon.

Through no fault of my own, I knew less about financial markets and the science of getting rich when I graduated from college than a slum resident in Bombay.

How could one know?  Nobody ever teaches fundamental finances.  Most of us grow up believing that getting rich or becoming financially secure is the result of working your way up the corporate ladder or flipping real estate or winning a lottery.  While others of us get brainwashed into believing that being financially secure is unholy or sinful or a surefire path to Hell.

There has always seemed to be a conspiracy among the rich to make the struggling middle class and the poorest of societies dependent upon the educated gentry to control our money in return for a  very modest return – commonly called table scraps.

Ignorance is the nightmare of most people rushing to the workplace at 9 AM sharp for umpteen years and others who trust governments and financial institutions to act in the citizen’s best interest.

What we didn’t learn in school or from our parents and loved ones about finance has left us in the dark about how money works and how it could and should work for us, even in recession or depression.

My go-to mentor, the late Jim Rohn, summed up what differentiates the rich from the strugglers and stragglers:

“The philosophy of the rich versus the poor is this: The rich invest their money and spend what is left; the poor spend their money and invest what is left.”  A slight nuance is the difference between millions in the bank and bankruptcy in the courts.

Earl Nightingale discusses this same dilemma in his phenomenal audio series The Strangest Secret. He came from a poor family in Chicago during the Great Depression.  Being naively confused about why people were so poor at that time, he asked many relatives and neighbors an innocent question:  Why are we so poor and how can we become rich?  These poor people hadn’t a clue, of course.  So he went to the librarian and asked her:  Are there any good books on how to get rich?   The librarian shrugged her shoulders and said she hadn’t heard of such a book.  So adolescent Earl combed the library for weeks before he found the bible of getting rich called Think and Grow Rich.

It is never too late for us to learn how money works, so that we can be at the controls.  Making more of it seldom makes one independently wealthy.  Money management has little to do with how much you make.

Moreover, knowing how and why to invest can allow us to breathe easier in these uncertain times.  Our newfangled knowledge will also make it possible to teach our children how to be financially independent, even without a regular job.  And subsequently our children can proudly pass on this legacy to future generations everywhere.

Let’s help each other out of the dark ages and into the age of enlightenment.

If you think you’re a winner, you’ll win.
If you dare to step out you’ll succeed.
Believe in your heart, have a purpose to start.
Aim to help fellow man in his need.

Thoughts of faith must replace every doubt.
Words of courage and you cannot fail.
If you stumble and fall, rise and stand ten feet tall,
You determine the course that you sail.

For in life as in death, don’t you see,
It’s the man who has nothing to fear,
Who approaches the gates, stands for a moment and waits,
Feels the presence of God oh so near.

You’ve been give the power to see,
What it takes to be a real man,
Let your thinking be pure, it will make you secure,
If you want to, you know that you can.
~Anon.~

“No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business. Your customers need to be constantly educated about the many advantages of doing business with you, trained to use your products more effectively, and taught how to make never-ending improvement in their lives.”
~Robert Allen~

In Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret, he mentions a swank department store in downtown Chicago that did swimmingly well a half-century ago.

That store had many mink stoles and the affluent clientele would regularly rummage through the very expensive furs just to find that perfect one suitable for a glamorous evening out on the town with their hubby.

They would buy the coat on credit and then the very next day after the glamorous event would return to the store and demand a refund.

One of the store clerks was on to these thieves, and went to the store manager and barked, “Mr. Green, are you blind to what these conniving women are doing? Can’t you see that they are using us?”

At that point, Mr. Green pulled out the client’s record file, flipped it onto the desk, and told the nonplussed employee to take a look. The employee reluctantly did so and was astonished to learn that that very lady he was complaining about had spent (without return) nearly $10,000 on apparel and accessories that year.

Then the manager stared at the employee with an amused grin and said, “That lady plops down a lot of cash here each year. She more than pays for your salary every year. If she wants to borrow a stole for an evening gala, so be it.”

In today’s highly competitive markets online and offline, you need an edge. You need to develop mutual trust with the people whom you want to buy your goods and services. In some cases, that might figuratively mean giving away half the store as an ethical bribe.

If all you have is all you ever intend to produce and deliver to hungry buyers, then sadly your days as a marketer or an entrepreneur are numbered.

Japanese have often played it safe. They look for the path of least resistance and greatest security. But in the modern world, the play-it- safers are going to be left behind in the planetary dumpster. The mom-and-pop shop may be quaint and sometimes can be profitable, but only if the owners have a plan rather than a “I just wanna get by” attitude.

The enemy of Excellence is always Good Enough. Give with pride, passion and excellence and know you will receive your fair share in return.

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”
~ Orison Swett Marden~

It is called “Being in the flow.”  You know you are there when everything and everyone that enters your life makes you happier and more energized.  More money, more love, more understanding, more breakthroughs take place effortlessly in this zone.

Moreover, those in that flow seem blessed with an abundance that is incomprehensible to most mortals.  The naturals of the world make up less than  three percent of the population of any given society, and while others struggle to make ends meet, they flourish beyond comprehension.  They seem to have the Midas Touch.

If you have ever attended a motivational conference or an entrepreneurial workshop put on by successful people, what you see in the audience are people hungry for success and looking to the charismatic millionaires on stage for guidance in removing the one unknown obstacle that separates them from the rich speaker.

Many in the audience know the content of the presentation even better than the speaker does, yet the results of the listeners remain meager indeed.

Some of those leaders look like chiseled movie stars, but interestingly some do not.  Some speak like finely-tuned politicians on message, while others seem to be halting and idiosyncratic.

Ask these leaders why they have results which have made them millionaires while others spend tens’ of thousands of dollars filling their pin heads with high-sounding notions which don’t seem to work for the masses, and they will say:  “Just do it.”

Here’s the problem:  Successful people have a divine ability to focus on what they want and filter out what could hold them back.  They can’t explain how they do it because they don’t know how they do it.  They just do it.

To learn from such people the system for success is a valuable investment worth making.  But unless you understand how to break out of the loser’s mindset by learning from people who first teach you to ask the right questions to yourself to break out from the ninety-seven percent crowd, the money you invest in such seminars will inevitably be flushed down the toilet.

Systems for obtaining wealth mean cockroach crap without first being spiritually grounded.  Making money and enjoying abundance cannot be discovered in the next great opportunity or hot business system.  It’s an inside job that will take some time and effort.

A great book on this subject is written by a man who understands the ninety-seven percent of us, Noah St. John.  Read The Secret Code of Success: 7 Hidden Steps to More Wealth and Happiness before chasing any more rainbows.