If becoming rich is part of your dream, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be, just be careful you don't confuse being rich with living a rich life. I think we should all become rich financially. We can give more to our families, our communities and our world if we are. But it's living a rich life that should be our primary objective.
A rich life is created by being more concerned with who you become than what you acquire. It's created by clarity of purpose. And clarity leads to power.
In my opinion, the most important thing you can do for yourself is to invest the time and perhaps even money to become absolutely clear on what you want out of life. I'm not talking about goals here. I'm talking about the essence of what you truly want--what you will feel good about when your life is over. This is not an easy process. Perhaps that's why so few people do it.
All the information is inside you. You need only to think carefully and intuit deeply in order to gain this insight and allow you to live with a keen focus and real clarity.
The old adage, "Know thyself," has become such a cliche that its lost much of its meaning. But when you're completely clear on who you are, what you want, where you're going and have a plan to get there, you will not only be more effective, you will experience better health and more fulfillment. You will lead a rich life.
If we were sitting across from one another, here's what I'd ask of you. "What's the most important goal/dream/mission in your life?" I'd be looking for a description that shows your passion for it--something where you have a sparkle in your eye and emotion in your voice. I believe that everyone has a dream--and that it's not something to be invented, but rather to be discovered. It may take some time to uncover it, but living a life filled with verve and excitement is certainly worth it. Your plan, your vehicle to get there may change over time, but the vision - the mission - will not.
The next question I would ask is, "Why do you want to accomplish this dream?" Your reasons are critical to your success. When you have sufficient reasons you can overcome any challenge. One of the ways you can strengthen your reasons is to visualize what your life will be like when you've accomplished your dream. The more real it becomes, the more you can see it and feel it, the more you'll believe it.
It's also a way to check out if this is really your dream. Sometimes, after envisioning what we think is our dream, we find that it's not really what we want. Better to find out now than to spend our lives achieving something that will not provide fulfillment in the process.
And it is that process that is the real value. Remember, it's not so much what you accomplish, but rather what you become in that process that's important. Which leads me to my next question. "How will you have to grow and change in order to accomplish your dream?" "What will you become on your journey?" Any worthy goal involves change. If you don't think you'll have to grow and change, then you don't have a very inspiring goal. A worthy goal involves risk. It involves getting out of our comfort zone. And that's where real growth occurs.
So the short version of our conversation goes like this: what do you want, why do you want it and what are you willing to do to get it? These are questions we need to constantly be asking ourselves.
If we do--if we take the time to think and ponder the answers, we'll gain greater clarity, more fulfillment, live longer and feel better. We will live a rich life.
