Plenty of experts tell us that we need to act rich in order to get rich. This is great advice; you must know the part before you play the part. But how one can act rich when one is struggling to survive in today’s awful economy and/or drowning in debt?
You do this by playing a mind game with yourself. Release the emotions you experience about your money situation. Are you stressed or worried? Emotions are nothing but energy in motion. Believe it or not, any emotion you experience radiates out into the world and attracts more of the same. Worried? You’ll attract more things to worry about. Stressed? You’ll attract more stressful situations.
On a biological level, emotions are chemical molecules that flow through your bloodstream to every cell in your body. These molecules attach themselves to opiate receptors found in every cell in your body. Addictive drugs work on the same receptors. This means that people can literally become addicted to their emotions. If you’re worried and stressed all the time, you’ll eventually become addicted to that worry and stress. The chemicals produced by negative emotions are literally poisons that can shorten a person’s life span. The old expression “worrying yourself to death” is absolutely true!
Second, people pick up on emotions. During any face-to-face communication, the spoken word transmits 5% of the message. Your voice tone (pitch, rhythm, etc.) transmit 35%. The remaining 60% is totally nonverbal; it consists of your body language, gestures, and other “vibes” that you display whether you want to or not… and these signals are unmistakable to any observer. Have you ever interviewed anyone for a job? If so, then you’ve seen people who are desperate… and that desperation comes through loud and clear no matter how chipper and upbeat the person tries to act. How much more or less likely would you be to hire the desperate person? Any worry, anxiety, desperation, etc. you feel will be detected by people around you. There is just no way to hide it or cover it up.
Acting rich has nothing to do with spending money and everything to do with releasing your negative emotions. It’s that simple. Your negative emotions (grief, sadness, frustration, anger, etc.) all come from fear. Boil down any bad feelings about your situation and you will find fear. Why are you afraid? Boil down all of the consequences of your fears coming true and you’ll find that what you’re really scared of is losing control and/or acceptance. Loss of control may equal late payments, bankruptcy, and/or foreclosure. Loss of acceptance could be the stigma associated with your situation and/or a damaged credit report that will haunt you for years. The bottom line is that all negative emotions stem from fear and all fear boils down to the fundamental human needs to be in control and to be accepted.
Stop needing to be in control and choose not to care whether or not other people accept you, and you will be acting rich. It also means accepting responsibility, both for your current situation and for your future. You must also own your full responsibility for both whatever is happening to you today and whatever will happen to you in the future. Accepting responsibility for creating your current situation means accepting the responsibility for improving your situation. In other words, if you own the fact that you did this to yourself, then you can own the possibility of creating a different reality for yourself.
So here you are, fully accepting of responsibility, having let go of the need to control and be accepted. And you’re still in the same situation. What now?
Now you learn to manage what you do have. Ship captains didn’t start out that way. They started by working lines and chipping paint and worked themselves up. Working on a ship is the only way to know how a ship works and is the only way to gain the experience needed to eventually become a captain. Don’t have a lot of money? Learn to manage what little you do have and to get the most from every single cent. Invest the first 10% of every dollar you earn in yourself, such as in a savings or retirement account and don’t touch it. Don’t worry for a second about anyone else! What if you don’t have enough to go around? Oh well. Take care of yourself first. Do that and I will hazard the guess that there will always be enough to go around.
It’s much easier to earn more money if you’re caring for yourself first because you’re more invested in the outcome and have more to gain. The best part is that this works both subconsciously and counter intuitively. You may feel like you’re doing wrong but you’re actually on the right track. Work with your creditors to reduce interest rates, payments, etc. This recession is a golden time to negotiate a great deal for getting out of your debt for less. Talk to a financial planner. In other words, learn to get the absolute most from what you have. Once you are an expert at managing your little bit of money, you will be able to manage a little more… and a little more… and a little more… and so on. This road ends in one place: with you being rich!
Next, decide what really matters to you in life. Here is the simple truth: You are going to die. Not for a long time, I hope, but your end is inevitable. If there is nothing beyond this life, if it all fades to black, then every second that passes is a second gone forever and you literally have no time to waste. If, however, there is some form of continuity (as I believe there must be, for purely scientific reasons), then my analogy says that the better you do in first grade, the better prepared you’ll be to handle second grade.
This brings up a simple question: In your last few moments of this life as you look back from your deathbed powerless to do a thing… as you draw your last breath… what do you want to have taken, given, seen, learned, been, experienced, etc? What will it take for you to be able to die in peace? I think you’d agree that the last words anyone should die with are “if only!” This translates into a very simple test: Anything you do is either contributing to or detracting from your desired life’s vision and life’s mission. Everybody has a mission and you are no exception. If you are not living in accordance with that mission, then no wonder your financial situation stinks.
Here I need to stop to state the obvious… that being rich has nothing to do with money and everything to do with attitude. If you were born to study obscure native tribes in far-flung lands and that’s what you do in life then you will be rich beyond measure even if your bank account is a little lean. Get the huge bank account and fancy stuff without living your life’s purpose and you’ll be even more miserable than you are right now (or, more accurately, you’ll feel whatever negative emotions you currently feel, only far more strongly).
Acting rich is easy. Start by managing what you have and always pay yourself first. Discover your life’s mission, then let go and you will be rich. It’s that simple.
To jump-start your path to being rich, find and learn from rich people. By “rich”, I mean someone who has both a big bank account and a big heart. These people are rich in the truest senses of the term and are willing to share the wealth of their knowledge and passion. I have a college degree and am in grad school… and here I am learning from a high school dropout. Jim Britt (who leads the MOXXOR WORKS Team) had everything going against him and he turned that into a life that has touched over a million people while also making him financially independent. I had a lot more going for me than he did and here I am having never touched a million people’s lives nor been overly generous to my finances.
The simple truth is that what you know about money today just isn’t serving you… because you aren’t rich. So throw it all out! Replace this old knowledge with fresh information gleaned from people who have been where you want go and who are doing what you want to do. The best ones to learn from are (not coincidentally) the ones who will be most interested in teaching/mentoring/guiding you. Jim and I co-founded the MOXXOR WORKS Team along with Louis Volpe and Sid Smith to do just that.
I am practicing what I preach as a co-founder of the MOXXOR WORKS Team, and I can truly say that I have never had the door of opportunity opened wider than I do today. I am impatient and I feel that my success is taking its sweet time when I want it NOW, but I counter that by remembering to let go, surrender, and take action with no expectation of any particular result. I am reminded of the words a pastor spoke one Sunday: Every day, the Creator (however you define that concept) is trying to give each of us a blessing. The problem is that we place so many expectations and demands that the blessing arrives either mangled beyond recognition or not at all. Every single good or bad thing that happens to us in life is a blessing… provided we remember to look for the silver lining no matter what. It doesn’t matter how bad any given event seems. Choose to see it as a blessing and be thankful, and you will be blessed every single day.
Let go!
Get rid of the fear that leads you to seek control and acceptance. Fear is the veil that shuts you off from your inner light. And I mean that absolutely literally (read The Field by Lynne McTaggart). The need to control stems from the fear of drifting along in the current and being swept out to sea. The need for acceptance comes from the fear of ostracism, which is the worst thing short of death that can befall a social animal like a human. Consider moments when you have truly surrendered… when, for example, you stood before someone and said, “I love you” with total openness. In that moment you surrendered control and had no idea if your love would be accepted or not. You bared yourself beyond naked and exposed your innermost self. That took strength! That opened you up to receive a blessing far, far greater than any kind of expectation or fear ever could.
Recall how you felt in those moments, and learn to observe your feelings moment by moment. When you catch yourself feeling a certain way, ask, “Does this move me closer to, or further away from, that feeling of total fearless surrender? The your current feeling is taking you where you want to go then let yourself FEEL it with every fiber of your being! If not, then find a way to channel that moving energy into a positive place. You can do this. It just takes practice. You can channel your emotions however you see fit. Reward yourself when you do well, and forgive and be extra good to yourself when you don’t. You’ll get there.
Your needs to control and be accepted (your fear) exist because at one point you faced real or perceived dangers. The distinction between “real” and “perceived” is blurry at best because everything is perceived. Your fear protected you from danger and thus helped save your life. Therefore, it is critically important to love your fear just as much as you love your “good” feelings. It has done its job of protecting you to perfection and now that job is done. Don’t ever resent your fear. You wouldn’t dream of resenting a delicious dinner once you finished eating it, so why resent an emotion that exists to protect you? You ate the meal of fear, you’re finished, and you can leave the table fulfilled and ready to move on. Acting rich really is that easy.
Anthony Hernandez
Anthony Hernandez is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Business Association Coach and author of Guerrilla Marketing Success Secrets with over 20 years of successful self-employment experience. He is proud to be a co-founding member of the MOXXOR WORKS Team. Visit the MOXXOR WORKS Team Web site to learn more about the MOXXOR WORKS Team and our home-based opportunity.
