2012 - T. Harv Eker

You’ve probably seen this painting periodically throughout your life called American Gothic by the artist Grant Wood. It shows an older man and woman, farmers presumably, standing stoically in front of a farmhouse, the man holding a pitchfork.

Art is subjective—what you see may not be what someone else sees—but even the casual viewer of this painting will see two people devoid of any emotion that would make the viewer stoked about the idea of ‘hard work.’

The painting, so the myth goes at least, points toward the idea that hard work is a rewarding virtue in itself. It’s implied as if the reward of hard work is something that just naturally happens as a result of our having ‘paid dues.’

Please understand I’m not ragging on farming or anything that requires hard, physical labor. I am, however, ragging on the idea that hard work is a ‘virtue’ that we should be carrying into our retirement years.

Unfortunately, these myths we grow up with impact our psychology more than we sometimes give credit. So many people judge success on superficial factors—like the prideful vanity of using a line like “I work hard” to bludgeon other people with—but also on the wrong metrics of measuring success to begin with. The number of hours worked and tasks completed may produce more money per paycheck, but it’ll also mean you’ll end up with those long, tight faces like in American Gothic.

Do years of hard work and little enjoyment of life, yet having a ‘comfortable’ retirement, equate to success? Maybe, but you could just as easily look at it as poor time management and a waste of personal strengths and skills—doing stuff that (often) makes us miserable for a little bit more money and for vanity’s sake—“I’m a hard worker.”

If we’re honest with ourselves, the only realistic goal of playing the money game while being truly happy and fulfilled is to play for eventual freedom from work—way sooner than retirement. Don’t misunderstand me here: the most valuable things in life aren’t going to come easy and they’re often not going to come without some pain and effort.

If you’re going to work hard, you might as well be working hard at working less.

The real measure of success is how free you are—financially, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—to live life the way you want to live it.

Now it’s your turn, I want to hear from you! How are you going to practice working hard at working less right now? Or better yet, what specifically in the financial, mental, emotional and spiritual areas of your life will you practice this principle? Share your comments here, your feedback is valuable!

It’s one of the most basic questions ever: What do you and 99% of the population want most?

Most people will say “More money.” Specifically, we want to be rich. Who wouldn’t? If you’re rich, you really don’t have much to worry about, except maybe what to do with all that money, or maybe what to do with that “distant cousin” you never knew, who all of a sudden shows up when they find out you’ve got some money. Still, that’s a problem most people will gladly accept.

More money means material comforts, and doing what you want when you want without having to answer to anybody. No bosses, no deadlines, no evaluations—being in charge of your own life. Since this is so apparent … why are we even talking about it?

Because sometimes, the obvious is so obvious that we miss the bigger picture. When we talk about wanting to be rich, what are we really talking about; money, or freedom?

There’s a pretty big difference between the two, no? Does having more money absolutely mean having more freedom, or security, or even peace of mind? Not necessarily. Being rich certainly provides material convenience, but you and I know there are plenty of rich people out there who are completely miserable. Sometimes they miss the whole point of being rich—i.e. freedom and happiness. Instead, they work even more than some middle class people, who struggle just as hard, because some rich folks think they have to work harder in order to stay rich and “free.” Can you believe that?!

So in the end, what are we really after? What do we really want?

What we’re really seeking is a feeling that we associate with being rich. The house we want can give us a sense of comfort. The car we want can heighten a feeling of importance. Travel and toys can bring excitement and stave off boredom. But you don’t have to wait to be rich in order to have these things or experience the feelings of freedom and happiness.

The goal isn’t to get rich in order to be free. Let’s turn that around! Get freedom first, and then being rich becomes icing on the cake.

How do we get free now? Financially speaking, you do this by creating passive income vehicles—some to build, some to buy—letting those streams gather momentum over a few years, reaping the rewards, then doing more of this with other passive income structures. This way, you get the material wealth that gives you tangible freedom from having to worry about working—one of the basic goals of our desire to be rich—and if you really know what it is you really want, you get the happiness part of it as well.

Freedom is only as good as the results of your true intentions. In other words, keep the endgame in mind. We’re not getting rich to be free. We want to be free and then enjoy the benefits of being rich. This is not something we have to wait for to arrive in the future. There’s no freedom in waiting. Freedom starts now.

The idea of multiple streams of income sounds great, yes? If you lose one stream, you have others flowing in still. The problem is—especially with a lot of entrepreneurial-types—people don’t think about the kind of income they want to create.

You can have multiple sources of income and still play the role of worker-bee. Anybody who has had two or three jobs at a time knows that. Multiple incomes won’t mean much to your freedom if you still have to work like a dog for it. The difference is between linear and residual income.

Linear means you work once, you get paid once. That’s a job. Residual means you work once, and you get paid hundreds or thousands of times.

How do you know if you’re earning residual income? When you woke up this morning, were you richer than when you went to bed last night? If the money flows in while you sleep, this is a good thing. Duh! That’s always been the goal, yes?

It may sound like another one of those classic no-brainers, but frankly most people don’t get this concept. They end up working for years and years, trying to figure out how to make some money, but don’t ask the question, ‘Is it residual income?’ If it’s not residual income then don’t do it, because it takes you too slavery, not to freedom.

If you’re going to starve in order to do something—to create some kind freedom for yourself—then only do things that will take you to the kind of freedom you want. Most people end up starving doing linear income, so they have to keep going back to work. And every time they go back to work, they’ve got to get their daily fix of distraction after spending all their time making little money for themselves while the people who own the company they work for take the lion’s share. They don’t have any time left over when they get home to create any kind of streams of income that can last while they’re sleeping.

Here’s another problem people have—fear and uncertainty. You’re not going to know how to do what you want to do before you do it, and most people are waiting to know enough to be able to take action and go do it, which will never come.

You didn’t learn to drive a car by watching a video, did you? You got in the car, sputtered between the brake and the gas—driving your parent somewhere between frightened and resigned—but then you finally got pretty good at it. The things you want to do you have to do!

Everybody wants to be a millionaire, but only a few people will do whatever it takes.

Most people are stuck into these little straight-jackets about what’s right and what’s reasonable

A lot of people say, ‘Well, that idea I had to start a business was just a thought.’

Someone else once said, “No thought can reside in your brain rent free.” Every thought has a consequence. Some of those thoughts are very expensive!

And they cost our time, our enjoyment of life. A simple twist in how we look at the income game. How do you maximize your time and energy? How do you take what is already available to you right now to the next level?

Share your ideas or insights. We want to hear from you!

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