Extrait
Chapter One: Why “Enlightened” Wealth?
There it is. Can you see it?
It’s the vault containing everything you’ve ever wanted. On the other side of the huge door to that vault, a lifestyle of abundance and prosperity, wealth and security, awaits you. Behind that door is literally anything you want. But how will you ever crack the code to the vault?
Around you it seems as if others have cracked the code to wealth. You can see them everywhere. They live in the best neighborhoods. They drive new, high-end cars. They work at jobs they’re passionate about. They seem to be happy and balanced. Their children go to the finest colleges. They take exciting vacations. They seem to have smart, successful friends. They give time to charitable causes. They have time to do what they want, with whomever they want, when they want. It appears that they have it all. How did they get it? Did they really earn it? Or did they do something illegal or immoral or unethical to get it? Aren’t you as deserving as they are? Aren’t you more honest, ethical, hardworking, and humble than they are?
A little voice inside you may be saying, “Why do they have so much? It’s not fair!” Maybe so. Maybe not. But if you focus on the unfairness of it, envy will consume you. Don’t focus on them and what they have. Simply focus on your own vault and claim what rightfully belongs to you. It’s the wealth that was reserved for you from before you were born. The truth is that you are amazing just as you are. Be open to receiving abundance right now. You don’t need to think that anything is wrong with you. You came into this world with all of the necessary talents to open your own vault. Life will teach you some more of the essential codes. Others will share with you shortcuts that will shave years off the process. But, essentially, you’re the only one who can open the door. You either figure out how to open it yourself or it could remain forever closed.
What if you were destined for a more abundant life? How sad it would be to realize, too late, that you could have lived a more prosperous, abundant lifestyle without sacrificing anything that you now hold dearyour values, your health, your spirituality, your freedom, your friends and family. Here’s a shocking thought: you could actually be happier, healthier, more spiritual, more friendly, more free, more able to do more good for the planet if you learned how to crack the code to your own, personalized wealth vault!
Why do you seem to have been locked out of your own vault? Did you blame someone else for stealing your codes? Or maybe you were just never taught them. Perhaps you weren’t ready till now. Maybe you told yourself that you didn’t deserve them. Or maybe, after trying for years to crack the codes, you have just given up.
In a dramatic experiment some researchers placed a large fish in the middle of an aquarium with minnows to feed on. The fish fed to his heart’s delight. Then, the researchers placed a glass partition in the tank, dividing it in two. After the pike had eaten all of the minnows on his side of the partition, he could see the other minnows through the glass but he couldn’t get to them. He thrashed, he bumped, he bashed his body against the glass partition but to no avail. He finally formed a belief that it was impossible for him to get to those fish. He stopped trying. Then, the researchers removed the glass partition and allowed the minnows to swim all around him. He could smell them. He could see them. He could feel them. But he believed that those fish were no longer available to him—that they were forever locked away from him—that it was impossible for him to win. So he starved to death in the middle of an aquarium full of food.
Everywhere you look, people are starving to death in the middle of aquariums teeming with food. Everywhere you look, people are blinded to the prosperity that surrounds them, deaf to the sound of opportunity knocking on their own front door, insensitive to the intuitive feelings that flood their entire being. This doesn’t need to happen to you. There is no question that you were destined to be wealthy. One key to the code is understanding that this is not just ordinary wealth we’re talking about here.
Manifesto of Enlightened Wealth
You have the potential to create a great fortune.
Wealth creation is a learnable, teachable, and easily transferable skill. It makes all other skills more valuable, useful, and profitable. Wealth is where you ultimately learn to work a little and earn a whole lot. Most people practice poverty—where they work a lot and earn a little.
Almost everyone potentially has millions of dollars in them awaiting the requisite stimulus—the enlightened spark.
You have in you ideas—seeds that can grow into fortunes. These seeds can be in the form of ideas, books, copyrights, products, services, inventions, licenses, plays, patents, songs, movies, franchises, TV shows, trademarks, processes, and so on.
By using your total talents at their highest and best levels, you will be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled, and your contributions will leave a lasting legacy.
You are coded within your DNA to solve and resolve an issue for yourself and then to prosper with it by solving it for all others.
Fair and reasonable profits are the just reward for serving greatly.
Proportionately more of your time needs to be invested in creating residual income. The question is, What percentage of my daily time is invested in creating residual income for myself and/or my company? Residual income is where you work once and get paid endlessly again and again.
Inside you have a great and important dream. To implement that dream you need a team. With your team you can create multiple streams of residual income.
You are a potential philanthropist dedicated to doing lasting good works in what we call perpetual philanthropy.
Before we settle in to showing you exactly how to open your personal wealth vault, let us lay down the foundation principles upon which you’ll be building the skyscraper of your personal prosperity.
Can We Talk?
If you’re looking for a “hard-nosed” system for making bundles of quick cash, then this is probably not your book. And if talk of spirituality, faith, or belief in a Higher Power bothers you, then you’d best give this book to a friend. But before you rush off to buy another business bestseller, here’s a question we encourage you to ponder: How well does traditional business really work?
I am an apprentice in my Father's business.
On the website for the U.S. Small Business Administration you’ll find this quote:
Starting a small business is always risky, and the chance of success is slim. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first five years.
STOP!!! Read that again...s...l...o...w...l...y....
No matter how you look at it, starting a business can be a difficult and rocky endeavor. In truth, nobody is 100% sure of the exact rate of business success or failure. A failure rate of 95% is often used, although other research has been more encouraging. As noted small business researcher David Birch, listed by Fortune Small Business magazine as one of the top-10 small-business minds, puts it, “Starting a company is very hard to do. The risks are enormous, the anxiety is enormous. Therefore, the only business you should start is one in which you have a huge interest, or else you won’t have the persistence to stick with it.”
Every day thousands of new business owners gather at the starting line in the marathon of business start-ups. They’re excited. They have high hopes. They’ve got an idea for a product or service that they feel could change the world and earn them a small fortune. The starter gun goes off and they launch their dream business. Few survive.
So if you’re one of the 1.7 million new businesses started each year,2 how do you turn the odds of success in your favor? You must start by becoming an Enlightened Entrepreneur. Money magazine echoes this by saying the first step in turning a dream into reality is “seeking something bigger than getting rich.”
Why Listen to the Two of Us?
Neither of us is a stranger to business failure. Each of us has had businesses drop dead on us. We've both been legally bankrupt. We know what it’s like to suffer the embarrassment of losing everything several times. After being hit “upside the head” enough times, we finally realized that there had to be a better way. We both began to practice these new enlightened business principles and prospered independently of each other. Then, we joined forces and prospered even more. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth. This isn’t theory. What we’ll teach you really works!
We’ll teach you a system for creating Enlightened Wealth. But let us warn you before we begin: this is very different. It might seem very weird, very strange, very foreign as compared with the world of traditional business “as usual.” But the odds of your success will be much, much higher.
This book takes a bold look at how Higher Power would run a business. Frankly, the whole theme of this book is going to be about the Higher Power approach to business success. We’re going to go very deep into this—much more deeply than almost any business text. No traditional MBA class dares touch on this stuff. It’s too touchy-feely. Yes, we will put God and money in the same sentence, although we’ll try to do it in a way that doesn’t offend anyone.
Let’s start with the concept of Higher Power. A lot of words can be used to describe the Supreme Being, depending on your spiritual belief: Universe, God, Goddess, the Creator, Higher Intelligence, Deity, Divinity, Providence, Jehovah, Allah, the Great Spirit, the Supreme Soul, Buddha, Lord, the Wise One, Divine Mind, Universal Life Force, Infinite Spirit, Mother Nature, Godhead, the Holy Spirit, the Almighty, Eternal Father, Father in Heaven, plus a hundred more. We’ve selected the words Higher Power to use throughout this book, although we encourage you to translate the concept into whatever specific words have the most meaning for you personally.
It is our belief that you have been given talents to resolve a specific problem on this planet. Solving this challenge will earn you a literal fortune. We believe that Higher Power knows which problem you were given to solve. Higher Power is waiting to show you the way. Higher Power also knows the shortcut to your enlightened fortune; Higher Power expects you to share some of your profits with those who are less fortunate.
The New Paradigm of Enlightened Wealth
There is a new sound in the air. It is the sound of a new wind of economic change blowing across the world, an enlightened breeze of hope, of opportunity, of prosperity. Can you sense it? There is a new paradigm of wealth emerging—a new way to look at business, of buying and selling, of Enlightened Entrepreneurship. The old model is giving way to a new way of doing things. Change is on the way, and old-style capitalism is about to be transcended, transformed.
In 1776 Adam Smith wrote the book that changed the world—The Wealth of Nations. Smith laid the intellectual framework for capitalism. He theorized that the “invisible hand” of unbridled self-interest was more powerful than any organized government activity. He envisioned a world where people, pursuing their own self-interest, challenged by the fear of competition and the joy of operating in a free market, would produce better products and services and create a better world. For the most part, he was right. It has created a better world. But the knock on capitalism is that it is so selfish; the self-interested entrepreneur is too often motivated by greed and fear.
But Isn’t Greed Good?
In 1987, Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for playing stockbroker/corporate takeover specialist Gordon Gekko in the Oliver Stone–directed movie Wall Street. The most memorable scene is Gekko’s speech to the stockholders of Teldar Paper, a company he is trying to acquire.
“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
As the movie goes on to portray, greed eventually reveals itself to be very destructive indeed. There are endarkened ways to create wealth and there are enlightened ways to create Wealth. We think that a new paradigm of Wealth is appearing. And it appears to have the power of science behind it.
From the Hardcover edition.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
