If you want to be rich.... Surround yourself with rich people
A few years ago, when I started on my own midlife creation journey, I joined the Rich Dad/Poor Dad coaching program with Robert Kiyosaki. I thought I might want to be rich so I found a mentor who could teach me.
For 6 months, with four kids at home (including a very active 2-year-old) Deb and I did our homework in the evenings and then dragged ourselves to our weekly 5am Sunday morning call with our coach in California.
It was a salutary lesson in changing how we saw money and wealth but I we learnt something even more important, something that applies to all the 'great games' we chose to play in life.
So here's what I learnt from Kane, our Rich Dad/Poor Dad coach and his boss, Robert Kiyosaki - whenever you want to be responsible for successfully making a change in your life, these core rules pertain:
1. Osmosis: find people who are playing the same game as you and hang out with them.
2. Transference: if you want to be rich later, start doing what rich people do now.
3. Value: value, not quantity counts and the single most important resource is always your life (and the easiest way to quantify your life is in time - your time is your life!).
4. Focus: you need a vision of what you are trying to create.
5. Education: knowing how to create wealth (either material or ontological) is not something we are born with it is something we have to learn, and for that you need to consciously and deliberately find (and these days usually pay) teachers.
How this looked in my life
Deb and I were quite conscious about following these rules, even before we fully understood what they were. So here's how it played out for us in our midlife change.
At 38 I realised being the CEO of an environmental not-for-profit, though my life's dream, was no longer enough. The idea of 40 more years doing a variation of that gave me the heebies... We'd been doing biography-work for a few years so we understood we needed to rediscover ourselves so we gave ourselves a full year to reflect and try find out who we really were. We knew we were no longer the youthful enthusiasts who's gotten married ten years earlier, but who were we?
After that, we gave ourselves 2 years to concretely shift the trajectory of our lives to accord with what we had discovered about ourselves (and about each other). nb. please note, this sounds so smooth, it wasn't always!
For the next two years we assiduously applied these five rules. This is how that looked for us:
So, rule 1: Osmosis
We realised that the culture in the country town we were living in (Castlemaine in Victoria), though awesome, was not our future. We needed to be surrounded by entrepreneurs because that's what we were going to be.
We realised that the culture in the country town we were living in (Castlemaine in Victoria), though awesome, was not our future. We needed to be surrounded by entrepreneurs because that's what we were going to be.
Rule 2: Transference
We realised that if we wanted to be full-time travellers later, we had to be doing it now. All we had was equity so we used that.... and left Australia. That was scary...
We almost randomly chose Ubud in Bali because a friend told us about it; it was not too far from home, and; it was full of expats all of whom were entrepreneurs of some kind. It seemed to suit ...
Rule 3: Value
This was hard for me. I'm the son and grandson of white-collar workers so my time always belonged to someone else. The biggest breakthrough in this area has only happened recently when I started to value listen to music, meditating, massages, exercise and Sci Fi novels as much as I did blogs, coaching calls and admin. I've started to realise that every moment of my life is my life, that I want to value every moment and that I need to "fill myself up", consciously and deliberately, with things that give me joy and peace if I'm to be of use to people (and consequently, build my business).
This was hard for me. I'm the son and grandson of white-collar workers so my time always belonged to someone else. The biggest breakthrough in this area has only happened recently when I started to value listen to music, meditating, massages, exercise and Sci Fi novels as much as I did blogs, coaching calls and admin. I've started to realise that every moment of my life is my life, that I want to value every moment and that I need to "fill myself up", consciously and deliberately, with things that give me joy and peace if I'm to be of use to people (and consequently, build my business).
Rule 4: Focus
Deb and I created a vision of our lives at 80 before we got married at 28. the specifics aren't important, the process of distinguishing what's important to you, both now but also over the long arc of your life, is critically important (this is basically what we do in the midlife creation program HERE for a short video).
Deb and I created a vision of our lives at 80 before we got married at 28. the specifics aren't important, the process of distinguishing what's important to you, both now but also over the long arc of your life, is critically important (this is basically what we do in the midlife creation program HERE for a short video).
Rule 5: Education
You simply can't do it alone. No culture ever expected people to traverse the middle years alone. We all need guides, mentors, cheerleaders and the occasional kick up the proverbial... We also don't understand the basic concepts of the phases of life in our time. It's a knowledge that is lost but extraordinarily powerful to understand that all people, at all times, in all cultures, had to traverse the same phases and stages (and experience the same doubts, fears, strengths and weaknesses that you are, have and will experience) - click HERE for a webinar where I go through these phases.
You simply can't do it alone. No culture ever expected people to traverse the middle years alone. We all need guides, mentors, cheerleaders and the occasional kick up the proverbial... We also don't understand the basic concepts of the phases of life in our time. It's a knowledge that is lost but extraordinarily powerful to understand that all people, at all times, in all cultures, had to traverse the same phases and stages (and experience the same doubts, fears, strengths and weaknesses that you are, have and will experience) - click HERE for a webinar where I go through these phases.
This is our journey, and it fulfilled the core values we discovered about ourselves: the need to travel and to teach. That's us, but what are your core values (your Leitmotif - see HERE for an article on this concept)?
Where could you apply these rules to continue taking charge of your biography and your future?
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P.S. Whenever you’re ready to look at new ways to take charge of the second half …. here are here are four ways we can help:
1. Request some articles on how to take charge of the second half of life by discovering you Leitmotif (the recurring theme of your life) email me
2. Join our private group on Facebook: a great place to share and learn from other’s sharing, get ideas, ask questions and hangout with others the same place you’re at
3. Get a free pre-order of our book (just pay shipping). It’s called “Midlife Creation: how to take charge of the second half of your life". Just email “BOOK PLEASE” and I’ll send you a copy when it is published (around December).
4. If you've questions etc. you can schedule a quick private call at a time convenient to us both HERE(pls note you can't register into a program this way, but you can check me out and see if we click)
