If I told you I wanted to sell you an old piece of cloth on a wooden frame with some oils on it for a “measly” $100 million dollars, you’d look at me like I was crazy. The materials cost of this thing would probably be less than $20. If I gave it to a goat, it’d just eat it and probably get no nutrition from it. However, if I told you that it was a canvas, 500 years old, drawn by the legendary Leonardo da Vinci, the oils depicted the Lisa de Giocondo and was called the Mona Lisa, you’d probably wonder what the catch was because that painting is “worth” or “valued at” at least $670 million dollars and I’m offering it to you for “only” $100 million. My previous description of the Mona Lisa is still accurate; it is still some old oils on a cloth on a wooden frame and its material value is no more than about $20, however its other value is so much more as a great work of art, as a milestone in the history of art, as a work of the great Leonardo da Vinci and as an accomplishment for all of humanity, as well as an object of intense curiosity and study.

This should suggest something important to you: Not only are there many different kinds of value, all value is within our heads not in the world out “there”. The Mona Lisa has no value to a goat beyond being able to eat it. A bear would not notice it, and people who do not know about it would probably consider it a weird painting and not give it a second look if it wasn’t hanging in the Louvre. Honestly, I only know about its value because other people have told me its valuable. Different people can have different understanding of the same object.

Let me illustrate this with another example: if I told you that I wanted you to spend your valuable time doing something unejoyable for me and in return I will give you some pieces of a (perhaps) shiny metal and some pieces of paper. Or, better yet, I’ll simply just bump up some numbers on a computer somewhere, would you look at me like I was crazy? You might, but remember that that’s what money is. The value of money is entirely in our collective heads. It’s a little more complicated than that, obviously, however that’s an accurate (though not very useful) way to think about it. As Steve Pavlina and Warren Buffett say, money is a claims cheque for withdrawing from “society” value that is worth the agreed upon value of that money.

Value is usually not so obviously conscious. Often times, things just “stick out” in the environment for you. When you focus your attention on something, you are indicating it is relevant in some way. Relevance, salience, importance are all very important, related concepts but they’re tricky to nail down. For example, say you walked into your room and found two things that are different: a very attractive person on your bed and that the walls have gotten one shade lighter. Which would you pay more attention to? What would you drawn to pay attention to immediately? Odds are high you wouldn’t even notice your walls have gotten lighter. You wouldn’t have the thought, “Attractive person, walls slightly lighter. I think I will pay attention to the attractive person.” It’s usually not a conscious choice: you simply pay more attention to the attractive person. The attractive person…attracts your attention. Further, you probably wouldn’t pay attention to the things that did not change, such as your bed, desk or closet. You wouldn’t ignore the attractive person and look at your books.

What “sticks out” in the environment for you is a result of perceptual filters. If you know about the Reticular Activating System (RAS), then that’s what I’m talking about. Things in the environment just jump out at you. Generally, attractive people in the environment stick out and cause you to look at them. That filter on your perception is set by evolution. If you come up with a new goal, such as to stop smoking, you’ll suddenly find yourself noticing ads that advertise stop smoking, or randomly overhear conversations people are having about not smoking. Another example: ever notice how even if you’re in a crowded, noisy room and you hear your name, it comes across clearly even across the room? Your perceptual filters are set to bring your name to your attention.

So, to make money, you have to convince enough people to give you their money. You can do this by begging, of course; convince others that you “deserve” or “need” the money, and you can, of course, steal it. However, the best way is to give enough value–that they consider valuable–so that they will give you money in exchange for it, or to own a system or structure that delivers value for you and you can enjoy the profits. A good rule of thumb is that anything people want is valuable for them. I want and value convenience or mobility and I’m willing to exchange one form of value (money) for it, when I buy a laptop rather than a desktop.

The value mindset understands that value is being created all the time, simply because other people perceive it as such. For example, if I have made someone laugh, I have created value because they perceive it as such. If I said or did the same thing and another person did not even smile, then I have not created value for them because they did not perceive it as such. Not everyone reacts to the same object the same way, nor in the same location or the same time. What value is exchanged for money is largely a matter of convention and need. For example, even if you go to a professional masseuse and get a nice relaxing massage, they created value because you feel that was a valuable experience and you expect to exchange value in the form of dollars or favours for it. If, however, your girlfriend or boyfriend who happens to be a professional masseuse gave you a nice relaxing massage which was also full of love, they have created greater value than going to a spa, but if they asked you for money, it would be really strange.

This is the big difference between a “scarcity” or “cost/expense mindset” and the abundance or “value mindset”. The cost/expense mindset has a very narrow definition of what is valuable to other people and it is generally based on what is valuable to you. We often don’t know a whole lot about other people, so we fill in our understanding of other people with liberal helpings of our understanding of ourselves. A mistaken understanding of what is “valuable” enough to be exchanged for money is what is at the core of the difference between the two mindsets.

The cost/expense mindset, however, has a much narrower definition of what “value” is that can be exchanged for money. Here are some definitions I have believed and discarded:

• If I work hard, I am creating value for other people. “Hard work” meant long hours, personal stress, being constantly on call and doing something I disliked. This is unsustainable. You can read more about it here.
• If I am the best or at the top, only then I am creating value and deserve money in exchange for it.
• If I am good enough, I am creating value. The value I am creating to others is being able to have ME and my time. This was largely egotistic.
• Value is objective and everyone agrees on what value is, rather than each person having their own idea of what’s valuable to them.
• Only the material cost of something is valuable. So, if a pair of shoes costs $5 to make and someone wants me to pay them $60 for it, they’re being greedy and unfair. The real “value” of that thing is whatever the cost is.
• Only the “function” is valuable. For example, an $100,000 Aston Martin and a used $10,000 Honda both perform the same function: transportation. So, an Aston Martin seems extravagant when a Honda will do, however the function is not the only kind of value of the Aston. Its fast, its the most beautiful car in the world. But only some people care about that stuff, many people just care that a car get them from point A to B. Don’t project your values onto other people.
• Value is created only by my personal effort and its all about me being good enough.
• Only my own original ideas create value.
• Only things with definite physical price has value. Things that give me a fluffy “emotion” or experience do not.
• Only things that last have value. Something transitory such as a massage does not have very much value.
• If I’m smart enough, or good enough, I am creating value or I can create value.

People in the cost/expense mindset tend to pursue money rather than attempting to give value. I’ve been there and during that time I did worse than I did otherwise and generally did not enjoy how I felt every day and about myself. I felt a bit like a cheat desperately trying to grab what he can. I do not recommend this path. Steve Pavlina has also experienced it and recommends against it. That said, you’re free to try out both and see which one works.

Value created is when someone else acknowledges that you have done something they value. They may return the favour in money, in other favours or in something else you may find valuable. They may do this implicitly by simply putting their attention on it.

This view transforms money into something to be valued rather than a scarce resource. Some people think there’s only a limited amount of money and it’s just wrong. Money represents psychological value, which is basically infinite. While before it would seem noble to not take a whole lot because others would not have enough, now you can have as much money as you’d like as long as you’re creating value. If there’s greater value than the amount of money out there, they can print money. It sounds pretty noble to me to create something people value. You’re helping other people in a way that may well not take anything away from you. Does that sound noble to you?

Footnote:

The “redefine it ’till its absurd” is a game I love to play. See what else you can apply it to? Movie theatres are places where we get to sit in the dark quietly listening to some sounds and having some light movements hit our eyeballs. And we get to pay money for the privilege.

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 2 – What is Value?

Part 3 – Practically Creating and Delivering Value

Part 4 – What is your Current Mindset?

Part 5 – Value & Self-Esteem

Part 6 – Value & Service

Part 7 – Value & Marketing

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good, practical guide shifting to an “abundance” mindset, only indicators or markers of where it is. I have spent the past year or so creating my own understanding of the abundance mindset that brings together my knowledge of personal development, the way the world works, psychology, philosophy and economics. I want to share this understanding and my process for achieving it here.

What makes this guide special? My goal is to help you shift your mindset to an abundance mindset by delivering clear reasoning (instead of assertions) behind each of the pillars of the abundance mindset and contrasting it with the common mindset. You can then test out your results with the abundance mindset versus your previous mindset and decide which works better for you. The other guides I have seen have done some things I will avoid:

• included assertions rather than arguments
• have only described the final mindset without contrasting it with the “common” one
• have only talked about the “symptoms” of the abundance mindset (such as finding a ten thousand dollar a night for a hotel room acceptable) rather than why that is so
• made metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the universe such as for the law of attraction. There may be value there, but I will stick to a naturalistic understanding of the world whenever possible.

The criteria that define the abundance mindset are:

• it has to be ethical.
• it has to model the world as it is by explaining how people make money right now and accounting for why people don’t.
• empower us to make more money easier, better or faster, and deliver all sorts of results easier.

How this guide works This guide is written so that the next page will contain almost all you need to know about this mindset. It will be a sort of overview of the whole guide. The pages after that will contain greater detail, illustrations and depth about each part as well as my personal history with each idea. This is a work-in-progress. If some part of this guide could be improved or if you feel that some parts are lacking, please contact me and let me know so you can help create greater value for the other readers of this guide.

Table of Contents:

Part 1 – Introduction

Part 2 – What is Value?

Part 3 – Practically Creating and Delivering Value

Part 4 – What is your Current Mindset?

Part 5 – Value & Self-Esteem

Part 6 – Value & Service

Part 7 – Value & Marketing

That, I believe, is the real reason people ask this question. It’s easy to feel good about yourself if everyone else is also stuck in the same place, or if you can assign some external reason for why you are not doing what you really want to do but don’t have the courage to right now. Those reasons enumerated, I do want to answer the question as asked:

Like I said previously, a massive change like everyone following their dreams will not happen suddenly. If anything, it could be argued that its been happening slowly over the last many decades. Massive social changes like that rarely happen very quickly (they’re called revolutions if they do). “For example, if everyone did what they felt their purpose was and there were no garbage-collectors left, this is some of what might happen: 1. The wages for a garbage collector would skyrocket. 2. People would have to clean up after themselves. 3. There would be a greater demand for solutions that didn’t require humans or as many humans, such as automated cleaning machines, and the people who really enjoy solving society’s problems using technology would love to create that.”

There are every kind of people. Paul taught me about this. This may sound really, really strange to you, but there are people who ENJOY being garbage collectors. The Fred Factor is a book about a postman who brings so much joy and purpose to his work. Most people would think that being a post delivery person would be dreary and boring, but Fred loves his work. The value of these people who really love to do this would go up dramatically because they are so rare, so they could actually make a lot of money doing something that others would consider “dreary”.

Finally, we, as a species/culture, can adapt to massive social changes such as if everyone is starting to follow their dreams. We’ve gone through a number before now. For example, I’m willing to bet that someone said at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “What if everyone went to work in jobs in factories and left the farms; we’d all starve!”. And we have not starved. This henny penny, “the sky is falling” stuff is usually overrated.

Let’s say there was suddenly a severe shortage in the number of postal workers. Courier businesses would probably skyrocket, people would stop sending as many letters (as they have), the wages of postal workers would skyrocket, faxes and emails would grow much greater in number, many entrepreneurs would step in to attempt to come up with solutions that are cheaper and/or more efficient than the current system. Perhaps instead of getting mail delivered to our doors, each neighbourhood or block would get its own central mail box racks where you go to pick up the mail, like a PO Box, this is pretty common in many places around the world.

So, let’s start from the top. I wrote this a few weeks ago:

A central claim of many personal development works is that if you want to achieve a goal, think how people who already have that goal, believe what those people believe and take actions like people who already have that goal and you will achieve that goal.

Pretty simple process, though not always easy to implement. My goal lately has been to create multiple passive streams of income, a la 4-Hour Work Week, totaling up to at least $1000/month requiring less than 15 hours a week to maintain and/or grow. There’s been a lot of beliefs, fears and so forth to root out so I’d like to discuss them. A lot of the actions that need to be taken are fairly easy, physically, but to become the kind of person who takes those actions on a consistent manner is hard. That’s what personal development is about, IMO.

I’ve read a lot about money beliefs and the one thing that I’ve been looking for more than anything else is a simple list of the various false beliefs we may have and a list of target beliefs. I have yet to find it and the lists that I have found have not resonated with me. For myself, I’ve never felt that money was evil or the root of all evil, my concerns have been more about how to earn that money, but working or what have you.

A large part of what I’ve done is projected my worst case scenarios and tried to figure out why they affected me. Looking back, I can say that most of the things I was afraid of were people saying things about me, my character and my identity. I’d initially tried to disregard them as being worried what other people might think and low self-confidence. However, I realized that what I was afraid of people saying had to do with my principles. For example, I was afraid that people might say that I failed to deliver what I promised, or portrayed myself as an expert when I did not know it all (I’ve written about this before). I realized that I was really interpreting the imagined threat to mean that I had lied, been deceitful or at least withheld the truth. This was a direct “attack” on my sense of integrity, values and honour and that’s why this imagined threat affected me as such. The solution, I believe is to look to Steve Pavlina. I believe that Steve Pavlina has created a great model of honest, authentic and honourable marketing and I want to learn more about that from him.

I also realized that I was hesitant to promote my work, including this website or a lecture about beating procrastination for students. I also feel incongruent writing about a subject others have covered in a way that I feel is better than I could. At first I misinterpreted this as simply having low self-esteem or low regard for my abilities or performance, but I realized that one of my principles is to do what is best for all involved, or win/win. So, I had trouble really recommending something that I feel is inferior simply because it will create income or benefits for me. Instead of thinking of this as a mistaken perception of my work, I’m now taking it at face value and considering that I really don’t believe my work is very good (it may be average or mediocre) and that it can be improved. For example, I am hesitant to promote my blog on personal development and related issues because I feel that promoting Steve Pavlina’s blog is better for the people who are interested. Perhaps I can promote both. I think that my general honesty is telling me I should be thinking about this.

I realized that I was expecting a lot from paid activities after reading a wonderful book called Your Money or Your Life based on a recommendation by JD over at Get Rich Slowly. You can read an excellent summary of it here. There’s very few books that I go out and buy after reading them from the library, but this is one I will be picking up soon. I generally judge a personal development book based on how many “aha” moments and shifts in thinking I’ve had, and I had a lot with Your Money or Your Life. Gushing aside, I learned an important lesson from this book: paid employment is not all of your “work” in the world. One of the chapters in the book is devoted to pointing out that we expect a lot from our jobs (which I will say means the same as paid employment), including self-expression, a sense of identity, authenticity, fitting in with your values, integrity, respect, recognition, achievement, feeling of power, contentment, absorption, real fulfillment, cooperation, competition and finally, getting paid. The authors point out that these things don’t have to come from paid employment; that you can get those things from things that you do voluntarily such as games, sports, family/community, volunteering, being active in a community, etc. The only thing you don’t get from those is getting paid. I realized that my attempts to create passive streams of income were riddled with the unspoken assumption that my income-producing activities should reflect the kind of person I am, and that they are acts of self-expression so they should be authentic and original, unique and undefinable, creative and growth-oriented. While this isn’t a bad or incorrect way of looking at it, I would rather look at creating these businesses more like doing my laundry. I don’t do my laundry in a crazy unique and original way, I just do my laundry for a specific goal: to have clean clothes. I can think of my muses or businesses the same way, almost as chores. Ironically, if I stop expecting all those things from a job AND to get paid, a lot of inner tension loosens up and my expectations are easier to meet.

Value can be created by just getting people with a need in touch with the way to fulfill that need. Thus, value does not have to be unique, entirely original, and I don’t have to be the very best or original provider of it, but if I was trying to create an artistic or self-expressive work, I might want to do that. Additionally, those things would indeed put me in a fantastic position if I was trying to build a strong market position but they’re not necessary to be in a middle position in the market. I’ve written about this before in greater detail.

Another of my beliefs was that money comes from work and cannot come without work. This is just a belief about my impression of how the world works, rather than a normative belief about what “should” happen. Money actually comes from all sorts of ways, but the most consistently successful manner is to exchange value for money. I realized that if my blog suddenly got, say, 30,000 visitors a month (100-fold increase in traffic, approx.) and started making some decent money without my having to do anything including writing more posts,  I’d feel really weird just sitting there and accepting the money because I felt I would not be working for it and thus not “deserve” it. Additionally, there was a subconscious fear that’s been around that I’ll become dependent on a source of income and it will dry up and I won’t be able to meet my future needs. I felt that work activity consistently leads to income, so I’m not working, there is no garuntee for the income to continue, but then, there’s no garuntees period. This is simple operant conditioning, conditioned when I’ve worked at a job before and gotten paid, not worked and not gotten paid. I’d assumed business is the same. Making seriously consistent money has to be decoupled from both time and effort and recoupled to value created.

I’ve previously felt that I’d nailed all of my resistence but then discovered a reluctance to move forward, so I don’t know if this time I’ve got it, however, I can feel that the only thing standing between me and moving forward are my fears and excitement over doing something new that I may fail at. One of the ways I’m dealing with the procrastination is to remember that I have only a limited amount of time on this planet and I have no way to tell how long that will be. The next few weeks should be instructive.

Main Points:

• I felt that others may perceive me as unethical, a liar or deceitful in certain ways in providing value directly through a business model, especially in my marketing or my claims. I do believe I can market and conduct a business with honour, but I was afraid that people might still accuse me of that, but I will be the judge of that and I can’t control what other people think or feel.
• I believe in the “highest good for all” involved, so I wasn’t promoting my work really because I didn’t feel it was very good or original. This will push me to do better. I really did feel people will be better off going somewhere else.
• We expect our jobs or careers to give us a lot of things, including a sense of identity, fulfillment and challenge, as well as paying us for it, too. I believe it is more honest to simply accept that real reason for jobs is to get paid, stop expecting all those things from jobs and seek them elsewhere to build a more fulfilling life.
• I recommend reading Your Money or Your Life. Fantastic book.
• I believed that money comes from working, and if there is no work, the money may disappear because there’s no garuntees of getting the money and I will be left penniless, broke, and unable to fulfill my needs. A pervasive fear about a lack of control.
• There may be more beliefs related to making money, but I feel like I’ve tackled a lot of the big ones. The next few weeks will let me know how things are going because my actions and results will change.

“I want to have enough”

“I want to be comfortable”

“I want enough so I don’t have to worry about money”

The obvious problem with all three of these goals is that they’re not well defined. Good goals are well-defined and can only have a binary interpretation. That is, either you’ve reached your goal or you have not. A good goal formed like this might be, “I’m making $50,000 dollars a year and my expenses are less than $35,000 dollars, I save $10,000 dollars a year and spend the other $5,000 on whatever I like by 2010″. You can read more about forming clear goals in Steve Pavlina‘s wonderful article, “The Power of Clarity“. All of the above three fail this criteria by using feelings to gauge whether you’ve reached your goals. That would be fine if feelings were at all objective, but they’re not, so you find some curious patterns people go through for each of the above goals.

“I want to have enough” is a goal I had in mind for a while as an overarching goal in life, but the problem with that is that as my income has gone up (I’m making at least twice what I was making last year), I have found my expenses to increase in step, so “enough” which was generally having enough to cover my expenses is pointless. Every year, there’s lifestyle inflation as my income goes up, so what’s “enough” increases every year. I have some ideas of why this happens, including that I believe I have a belief that prevents me from having much more than necessary for my survival, so as my income goes up, my belief unconsciously pushes my expenses up.

This is actually an excersize I learned from Brian Tracy and I’d like you to do it. I hope I’m remembering this correctly. He asked some seminar participants to ask themselves how much money they would like to have and most of them quoted something two to three times more than what they’re making now. Then he asked them how much they were making when they first started working and they often quoted amounts two to three times less than what they’re currently making. I drew a couple of lessons from that. The first is that a lot of us are stuck in this rat race and don’t keep things in perspective. More about that in the next section:

“I want to be comfortable” is another thing people often cite when asked how much they want. The problem with this is again that what you consider “comfortable” increases every year. Last year you may not have had a dishwasher, but this year you bought one and now you feel you are living in greater comfort, even though that’s an additional cost. Of course, internally, you’ve probably habituated to the washing machine so you’re no longer thinking it’s a “comfort” item, it’s just a necessity.

“I want enough so I don’t have to worry about money” is a goal I personally thought was a worthy one until I realized what that meant. Basically, I was willing to be disciplined about spending and making money and doing a broad budget for the hope of some point at which I did not have to be disciplined at all and I could spend money however I wanted. I didn’t notice the problem with that for a long time, but it was that I will always have to be disciplined with money, and I may have to deny myself things because I don’t have the money at any income level. The thing is, while today I may have to deny myself a 5 dollar item, when I’m making much more than that, I may have to deny myself a plasma screen TV or a new car. I will still need to be disciplined, probably in broad strokes, while still giving me enough to enjoy life and indulge every once in a while. That is, say I put aside 10% of my income as play money, which I can do anything with, as my income grows, this amount will grow, but I will always have to stay within it. You can read more about it under the number 3 tip in “8 ways to prepare to be a millionaire” at Getting Finances Done.

If you’re reading this blog, odds are that you are rich. Read that again. Read that over and over again if you’d like to. I often forget this, and I need to remember it as often as anyone else. Compared to someone somewhere, I am rich. I have many of the amenities that money can buy, including a house, a computer, a cellphone, good food, clean water, I’m getting an education, I have clothes, warmth, friends, various technical goodies, access to great healthcare. Odds are good that you have access to all of these as well. That’s enough to survive and then some. Think about it, does that not make you rich?

All of the above leads to a curious conclusion, I believe feeling rich is an internal state, as is being comfortable or having “enough”. There are some people that spend their whole lives acquiring and making more and more because they feel poor on the inside and their pattern says that having more will make them less poor and thus they will have more of the “good life”. The pattern essentially says, “if poor or not rich, make more to become rich or well-to-do”. Because feeling rich is an internal state instead of an objective situation, I can feel rich and grateful right now. In general, people want money because of how it makes them feel. For different people, its different things, it could be security, it could be self-validation as a member of society, it could be the ticket to the “good life”, freedom, the end of self-discipline, etc. It means all of these things and none of these things. Money is money, but your relationship with it causes you to feel certain things.

Unfortunately, I do not have an answer for you, yet. I can’t tell you what’s a good money goal, or a good motivation for making much more than necessary for your survival, only what I feel are bad goals. In short, I can’t tell you why you should be rich. All of the arguments I’ve heard so far have not been compelling, but that might be because I have some beliefs that make them so. I’d love to hear your perspective on these things, so please drop me a line in the comments and help me figure this out. Thanks in advance! Any thoughts are appreciated, honest.