Are you rich?Stop. Think about that question for a moment, and answer it honestly. Let it wind down through your head, past your heart and into your soul. Put it into first person.
Am I rich? Ask, and wait for
answer. It’s important to get an answer because your whole life is currently being controlled by that answer. Everything you do is colored by it. Every single facet of your life is shaped by it in some way.
In this life there are four answers, and each answer shapes reality of person answering in ways they may not even be aware of.
The first group says, “Of course I’m rich. Look at all money I have.” And then they go home to empty houses filled with all finest things in life but devoid of anything even nearly approximating love. These are people who are lost but don’t know it, or who can’t face how barren their lives really are.
The second group says, “I’m not rich. Look around. I can hardly pay my bills each month. I have no savings, my car just broke down, and I have no idea how I’m ever going to send my kids to college.” These people hold “poverty” up like a badge of honor when in reality, their focus on bad keeps them in perpetual bad without any hope of getting to good in life.
The third group says, “No, I’m not rich because even if I have a lot now, something terrible could happen tomorrow, and then where would I be?” These are people who are just waiting for bad to happen. They can’t enjoy what they do have for fear of future. So, no matter how much they have now, fear is their dominant emotional state, and it effectively negates any positive feelings making them perpetually feel “poor”—effectively keeping them in bad.
And then there is fourth group.
The first time I read this question, my resounding answer all way to bottom of my spirit was, “Yes, of course I’m rich!” However, it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I really thought about question in terms of money. I simply looked out to where my children were playing as I sat on steps of my home waiting for my husband to come home, and I said, “Yes.” How, in that context, could I answer anything but yes?
Life, however, is not nearly as logical as it sometimes seems. A few days later I asked question of someone in exactly same situation, and that person’s immediate and resounding response was, “No!” I was astounded. How could two of us in as close to same boat as two people can get respond so differently?
The more I reflected on that paradox, more I learned about how and why I relate to my world way I do. When I was younger, a friend told me, “You know, you are so lucky. Everything always works out for you.” At time I said, “Yeah, and I work darn hard to make sure it does.”
In light of this new question, however, I can see why things work out for me—because I believe that they will and I focus all my energy toward that end. Then, even when they don’t work out like I planned, I see that how they worked out was even better than what I had planned or at least exactly way they were supposed to work out for my continued growth. A circumstance which causes me to feel even richer than before.
World-renown motivational speaker Anthony Robbins has an exercise where first you “hope” something will work out. He says that when you hope, you see two possibilities: thing working out, and thing not working out. Then he invites you to “expect” that something will work out. Expecting focuses all of your attention, all of your energy, on goal being accomplished with no thought to it not working out. When you expect consistently, your goals, your dreams, and your plans have no choice but to come into being because your thoughts create your reality.
