Money, like blood in our veins

Money, like blood in our veins…

I have been dealing with money professionally for a long time. During these many years, several things about it have become very clear. As you can imagine, dealing with a wide range of clientele, I have gotten a rare and privileged look inside the personal and professional lives of many.

But, even prior to my helping others with money, I, like you, was surrounded by its “aura”, “allure”, “excitement”, “stress”, and just about any other emotion you can imagine. It seemed I was always trying to figure out how to get it, how to keep it, when to spend it, when to save it…on and on and on.

As a small boy I tried everything I could think of to get it; asking mom or dad, begging mom and dad, pleading to mom and dad, stealing from mom and dad, asking for an allowance, asking for more allowance…I could see that I had to get very inventive to “get me some of that money”. Why?

I would look through the Sears Catalog every night, looking at everything from motorboats, to drum sets, toys, and all the other amazing prizes they offered.

When I got my allowance it never seemed like enough to do anything with, sort of a tease, like here is your dollar or two allowance, have some fun. But the drum set was a couple hundred, the boat 750.00, I was doomed!

So, I got creative again, I will SAVE it up! Well after a few weeks and I was up to a whopping 6 or 10 dollars, desperation set in. At this rate I would be “old” by the time I got the drums or the boat.

Without any hope in sight, I might head to the candy store, or buy some bb’s for my BB Gun or some other consumable. Then with the money spent, more despair would set in, I would never get the drum set, or whatever I was currently coveting.

1. This was a trap! I was doomed! How was I ever going to get enough cash to make my dreams come true?

That led to the job hunt. I started looking for things I could do to get some of that cold hard cash! Mow a lawn for a few bucks, wash the cars, clean the pool, walk the dog, take out the trash, feed the neighbor’s cat while they were out of town. This all looked like a good idea, so off I went. But man, that was some dirty and hard work, for just a few dollars and the occasional root beer float from the old lady with the large lawn. By the way, she also seemed to think that somedays the root beer float was my pay!

Then after a while I looked at what I had accumulated and I was still going to be old by the time I got those drums! And so, I plummeted again, to the depths of despair.

And of course, when you are in despair, you come up with your best ideas. NOT! Bank Robbing started to look pretty good, perhaps I could be a good con-man, maybe sell illicit drugs like in the movies.

Thankfully I had enough IQ to figure out that this path might get me the drum set, but that I would probably be playing it in the prison band.

OK, I think you get the idea, and while I went a little far afield I had fun writing this and hope I stirred some memories for you too.

The point is simply this…MONEY IS A SYMBOL. It represents something else. What it represents is so important to us all, that it is capable of creating some of the most dramatic reactions I have ever seen.

It represents SURVIVAL. The most basic of all purposes in life.

In my trip down memory lane, I didn’t even touch on what are the most important reasons we need money. Things like, food, shelter, electricity, water, on and on and on. Without money, in our current society, we die. Not fun.

So yes, there are the nice things that money can buy, but these are not even conceivable without enough to handle the basics of living.

As a young boy or girl, we needed money for a date, for a dress, for a car or something else VERY important to us at the time. Most times we had to settle for the old VW, rather than the shiny new Trans Am. Because we simply did not have enough cash!

Most of our lives have been fraught with, as I said earlier; how to get it, how to keep it, when to spend it, when to save it…on and on and on.

Each one of us can write a book on our failures, broken dreams, depressions, excitements, losses, wins, trials and tribulations on the subject of money.

In fact, as I write this I keep thinking about what I could say in this short Blog that would be helpful, when the subject itself is so immense, so overwhelming, so emotional. How could anything I say make a difference?

Here is a simple way to look at it;

1. Realize that money is linked to your survival and that is why it can be so important and so upsetting.

2. Decide what is important to you and what you would consider a win in life. Of course, you can say 10 houses, 15 cars, money to charity, etc. But that will just make you want to give up. So, just start on a gradient and come up with a reasonably good life target. What is your current definition of surviving well? This will change over time, once you hit your first target.

3. Realize the only way to really win is to have more of the stuff than you can figure out how to spend.

4. Don’t Give Up! Persistence is the number one requisite for success.

5. Look at what you can actually do and produce to create a large amount of survival for OTHERS!

Money is the exchanged symbol for having provided survival for others in one form or another.

By producing survival oriented products and services, that help others survive, others will want to give you some of their survival credits in the form of money.

I have found that if I give somebody a conceptual 10 units of survival, they are usually willing to give me about 2 of them for my help. That means I have to deliver 5 times more survival to others than I get for myself.

This rule holds true when analyzing companies’ Profit and Loss statements. By the time they make the product or deliver the service, pay everyone involved, cover the office expenses, etc., there is usually between 10 and 20% left over for them to take as profit. Some companies have found ways to increase this margin and technology companies specifically have broken all the limits.

This means to live well and have lots of survival for ourselves, we must provide an abundance of survival to others. The more prolific you are at providing help and survival to others the more you will achieve yourself.

Ignore the failures, ignore the nay-sayers, ignore the emotions, ignore the voice in your head telling you that you can’t do it!

CREATE LIKE A TORNADO!

RAIN DOWN HELP AND SURVIVAL LIKE A HURRICANE!

FIND WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR OTHERS AND DO IT AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL YOU CAN!!

Then, go out and buy that drum set!