Intangible Wealth (IW)

In August, I posted an article titled “Life, Plants and Three Principles You Should Know”. In the article I used the experiences of my friend Andy to convey three principles that I’ve discovered between life and plants. Self-Suffice – one of our readers and also an extremely talented hip-hop artist and teacher – shared a great analogy with us in the comments section.

In his analogy, he made an excellent metaphor between our focus and drops of water. He equated each water droplet to one second. After a full day we accumulate a bucket of water that we can use to water our gardens. And did you know that there are 86,400 seconds in our day? Each one of those seconds is an opportunity (drop of water) that can be invested into different areas of our lives (gardens).

It can be a serious challenge to successfully invest in all of the areas of our lives! How many of us have ever gotten overwhelmed trying to focus on everything at once? It can feel like an impossible task and, in fact… it is.

Self-Suffice stated, “If we only pour our focus into 1 or 2 gardens for too long, the others will grow weeds, rotten fruit, and dying flowers.” And he went on to ask a big question …

How can you water all of your gardens?”

It’s such a pertinent question for us all, isn’t it? I came up with four simple ideas on how you can water all of your gardens. Yes… all. Following these four basic steps will help you get everything done at once.

#1 – Eliminate unnecessary gardens

#2 – Expand your time horizon

#3 – Get a team to help you

#4 – Make compost

#1 – Eliminate Unnecessary Gardens

Cease contributing your time and focus to unfruitful activity. We often invest our time in time consuming and unfruitful endeavors that need to be uprooted from our agenda. Bottom line: if it’s not beneficial get rid of it. Check out my post “Winners Quit” for a practical exercise on how to do this.

#2 – Expand Your Time Horizon

Establish the appropriate time horizons when watering your gardens. This will help reduce the pressure to complete tasks in unrealistic timeframes. With only 24 hours in a day, there’s only so much you can do so you may need to expand your timeline to a few days or a week, for example.

Remember: all plants don’t need to be watered every day!

#3 – Get a Team to Help You

Expand your effectiveness by getting others to help you water and plant. There may be tasks you can have other people handle. By delegating tasks to other people you free time up to do the things you do best and to do the things you want to do. Plus, each additional person adds 24 more hours to your day. Getting just one additional teammate adds 24 hours; two teammates will add another 24 hours.

If you’re bad at math, take a look at this: your 24 hours + 1^st Teammate’s 24 hours + 2^nd Teammate’s 24 hours = 72 hours in one day. Wow! How many teammates would you like to have?

#4 – Make Compost

Turn the negatives into positives. Use the weeds, rotting fruit, and dying flowers to make compost. All of the plants and fruit that withered away can help foster conditions for other (better) things to grow. Try not to worry too much about lost crops and make the best of your current conditions. In the plant world, our failures are biodegradable!

Why would anyone want to take over the world?  After all, that is not what caring, compassionate, and unselfish people do, is it?  That type of activity is reserved for fascists and dictators or for the arrogant and egotistical, right?

Wrong.

Kind, loving, and respectful people are constantly taking over the world and I’ll prove it to you.

What Does It Mean to Take Over the World?

Someone who is aiming to take over the world has a goal of having an abundant and seemingly limitless amount of power, control, and influence.  Once accomplished, this person will have the power to direct resources as needed to accomplish any given task at any given time.  If you manage to do this you have completely taken over the world.

How do we go about accomplishing this?  Before we answer that, let’s first answer…

Where Is the World?

Contrary to popular dogma, the world does not exist outside of you.  Instead, it actually exists within you.  Yes, within you.  By taking over the world within you will be able to have power over your thoughts and ideas, control over your habits and attitude, and be a greater positive influence in your society.

How Is This So?

Our brains function as data processors, taking in information from our surrounding environment.  It then processes this environmental information producing an output that we know as our experience, perception, or reality.

Just like our personal computers we have an operating system.  The operating system that we use to process information is our belief system.  Our belief system processes all of our environmental stimuli (input) and creates our experiences, shapes our perceptions, and forms our realities (output).

Our experiences are a product of how we interpret our environment.  This is why two people in the “same” environment can react in opposite ways.  For example, one person sees challenges, the other sees opportunities.  One person sees poverty, the other sees riches.  One man sees trash while the other sees treasure.

Understand?  This is why our world is created from within us.  We can control our output by changing our belief system.

How Do We Change Our Belief System?

We can change our belief system by increasing our education.  This will renew our ideas, stretch our imaginations, and expand our worldview.  We must learn!  And we can learn from a myriad of things whether it be from a conversation, other people’s experiences, a book, etc.  The list is endless.  But no matter what form the opportunity to learn comes, you have to take responsibility for using it to reshape your reality.

On the Quest for Domination

A single mother of two working a full time job decides to go back to school and get her Master’s degree to: (1) demonstrate to her children the importance of education; (2) increase her earning potential and raise the quality of life for her children; and (3) prove to her children that there is indeed nothing you can’t do if you want to badly enough!  She is creating her future.

Fed up with his negative life circumstances, a man changes his entire philosophy from one of criminality and deception to one of legality and honesty.  Instead of continuing to blame everyone else for his mistakes he realizes that he must take responsibility for his life because no one else will.  Despite his past life blunders he refuses to let those obstacles restrict him from achieving his newfound dreams of becoming an author, publisher, and public speaker to inspire the lives of youth and adults alike.  He is changing his reality.

A business man, earning $500,000/yr is striving to double his income in the next 2 years.  Not because he doesn’t think $500,000/yr is a lot of money, not because he needs a new car, and not because his house isn’t big enough; but because he firmly believes that he is actually worth $1M and $500,000 is merely half of his earning capacity.  Why should he settle for half a million?  He alters his philosophy.

These people have one thing in common: they are all taking responsibility.  They are changing how they process their life experiences.  They are changing their realities and creating their own circumstances.  And most importantly, they are all taking over their world!

Don’t Change Other People Change You

Some people are out to change the world by changing everyone else.  This is a short path to frustration.  Instead of trying to change other people, change you.  We can influence other people but we won’t change them.  Each of us has to take over our own world. I’ve seen so many people who are waiting for their boss, their spouse, their friend, the President, or whoever, to change their world.  Don’t count on it.  The best thing about changing you is that you don’t have to wait on anybody.  You can take over your own world right now.

Pop Quiz…

Where does your world exist?  (Hint:  Answer B is wrong)

(A)  Within You

(B)  Outside of You

Now that you’ve passed that difficult quiz, let me give you …

One Major Reason Why You Must Take Over Your World

It’s your responsibility.

Go dominate!

Last night, I took a moment to lie down and relax. With my hands behind my head I thought about a popular Vince Lombardi quote that I’m sure you’ve heard. You know how it goes, right? It says, “Winners never quit and quitters never win”. It’s a great quote that we should take to heart and use as inspiration when we need that extra kick in the rear end to motivate ourselves when things get tough. As such, we use this quote to instill perseverance into our character. If we want to win we can’t quit – it’s as simple as that. But as I thought more about the quote I started to realize something.

Sometimes we need to quit.

There are a lot of things we no longer need to be doing. I bet that if each of us made an honest evaluation of our life – the people we are involved with, the places we visit, the things we do – we would come to the same conclusion. There are some things that we need to quit, wouldn’t you agree?

Pause

And try this. For the next few minutes take a look at your life in the financial, family, health, and spiritual categories. See if you can discover five things you need to quit doing.

…

Okay, ready?

I did this exercise while going for a drive this morning and was fascinated at how profound, simple, and helpful this exercise is. Believe it or not I came up with five different things that I need to quit! I would like to share them with you:

• Quit procrastinating on starting business concepts
• Quit time consuming, boring tasks like surfing the internet
• Quit patronizing non-health conscious food producers
• Quit being silent about issues and be more vocal
• Quit starting up art projects and not finishing them

What did you come up with? I bet if I asked 100 of you each of us will have different answers, but we will all have one thing in common: every one of us will have something we need to quit. I’ve discovered a lot about myself through this type of assessment. And do you want to know what the most important thing is that I’ve learned? I’ve learned that in order to win there are things we no longer need to be doing. In other words…

In order to win we need to quit.

That’s right, be a winner and quit! Win for your health and quit eating unhealthy foods, stop drinking alcohol and quit smoking. Win for your family and quit being silent about challenges and procrastinating on providing them the quality resources of time, advice and love. Win for your community and quit walking over trash and not saying hello to your neighbors. If we take the time to quit doing these things I guarantee that our quality of life will improve, wouldn’t you agree? Quitting those activities may be the very things needed to make our lives, our homes, and our neighborhoods the types of places we dream of.

The next time you’re analyzing your own life or a friend is complaining to you about their challenges listen to them very closely. Listen to yourself.  Listen to them.  And pay close attention to what you are hearing. Then ask this question…

Have you ever tried quitting?

There are often underlying behaviors that are self-inhibiting and quitting them may be the precise thing we need in order to get to where we want to be. When are you going to quit so you can start winning?