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The
Joyfully Creative Path to Financial Freedom
By Peter Nguyen - Jan 7, 2008
Why is it that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer? Why is it that only one person out of 20 will ever achieve financial independence? Most importantly, how can YOU achieve financial freedom?
First, it's important to understand that the rich and the poor have different philosophies about life.
Poor people have developed, through a consumeristic culture, the habit of buying, buying, buying. Often, they buy on credit -- that is, they buy with money that they DON'T have!
Rich people, on the other hand, have developed the habit of selling, selling, selling.
I know the following is obvious, but let me state it anyways:
Buying = You lose money
Selling = You gain money
Assuming that everybody wants to gain money, then why is it that most people buy more than they sell? In fact, most people do not sell much.
The only thing they sell is themselves. It's called a job. For instance, a person would sell his labor 8 hours a day in order to receive cash.
The key to financial freedom is to project your mind, your creativity, your ideas, etc. ONTO an object, and then to multiply that object infinitely so as to sell to the masses.
This is precisely what Henry Ford did, by creating the assembly-line auto manufacturing system which produced thousands of black T Model cars.
This is what Bill Gates did, with the Windows operating system.
This is what Jeff Bezos did with Amazon. Notice that in this case, the value is co-created by consumers since they "contribute" their computers and Internet connection -- two assets without which the Amazon business model would not work.
The success secret here is to remember that:
1. You become rich by selling
2. The best thing to sell is an object (physical or digital), NOT your person (your time)
3. To create a sellable object, you must project your mind, ideas, creativity, expertise, etc. onto an object
4. You must then find or create a system that delivers that object into as many hands or minds as possible
Paris Hilton is a very interesting example of mind projection. She's not really projecting anything from her own mind; rather, it is the viewers who are projecting their thoughts and imagination onto her.
Or maybe she's projecting the glamorous image of a beautiful billionaire heiress, a seductive image that certainly appeals to both men and women.
As for me, I follow her every move purely for research purposes. Anyways, that's my official story, and I'm sticking to it!
My point is that wealth requires a medium of transmission, and this medium can be a product or an image or a feeling.
In other words, financial freedom requires that a person change the focus from "me" to "media."
The medium is a way to "clone" the best of who you are. The medium is an extension of who you are and as such, it dramatically expands your wealth creation ability.
But how do you pour or package who you are into a medium like a book, blog, video, podcast, film, etc.?
This is an area where we can learn a great deal from the artists in Hollywood.
Writers, directors, actors, set designers, producers, etc. all work together to create experiential products (movies) that totally immerse people into a quasi-hypnotic universe of sound, images, feelings and words, all weaved into a nice (or sad) story that touches the soul.
Well, except for Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. They tend to stimulate in viewers the sudden urge to physically hit something. Or maybe it's just me! Maybe I need a course in anger management.
Anyways, my point is that to get rich, we all have to become like artists and begin to create something with our mind, our heart and our hands.
The road to financial freedom is, indeed, filled with self-liberating creativity and much imagination and artistry. It is a joyfully creative journey!
But it requires that people stop thinking of themselves as "employees who are working" and begin to see themselves as "artists who are creating."
Once you shift your mind and self-concept from "worker" to "creator," I guarantee that you will feel much better and your life will improve at many levels.
You no longer see life as something limited, but as a source of infinite raw materials from which your creative mind selects the right components to create objects of great beauty or great utility to others.
The best part is, throughout this creative endeavour, this marvelous artistic expression, you will FEEL like a very beautiful and wealthy being -- and indeed, you are -- and beauty and wealth and well-being will flow into your life.
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