Hello Aluxers and welcome back to a Sunday motivational special, where over the course
of the next 5 weeks we will discuss the topic of wealth in the depth that it requires.
Because there are great differences between the terms wealth,
money and your position in the social hierarchy.
Out of all 3 of them wealth is the one you should go after.
The fundamental reason why most people want to build wealth in life
is freedom, but even freedom takes multiple forms.
Today we will discuss the idea of wealth as a facilitator of different kinds of freedom.
Money and Wealth are very different.
Money is what you earn in exchange for your time and work,
while wealth is the fortune that grows outside of your direct input.
Wealth is making money while you sleep.
Wealth continues to grow even if you decide to take a sick day which can not be said by money.
Even if you earn a lot of money, one can still have money problems.
The most direct type of freedom wealth solves is:
FREEDOM FROM MONEY PROBLEMS
The debate on weather or not money can make you happy is still going,
but one thing’s for certain: Lack of money will make you unhappy!
Much of our unhappiness comes from our inability to go through life comfortably and unstressed.
Most people will never be financially free, they will never escape money problems.
Most people will work several jobs for 40 to 50 years and at the end
hope that what they’ve been able to acquire through all these
years is enough to keep them going until the day they eventually die.
Many people struggle financially until the very end,
with the debt being passed down to their children.
Wealth solves that problem as long as you don’t screw around with it.
The house in which you live is not wealthy, because it requires you to go out into
the marketplace and trade your time in order to pay the mortgage or utilities.
The moment you distance yourself from it and rent it out to someone else,
that is when a house goes from liability to an asset and wealth is made out of value generating assets.
The notion of escaping money problems through money generating assets is nothing new,
but every generation has their own version of a wealth building protocol.
If back in the day a cow was the go-to asset..
it’s because it gave milk and milk could be sold if you chose to.
The wealth of an individual was determined by how many cows, sheep and chickens they had.
The fundamental money problems are: food & shelter.
A person finally becomes free once their income from wealth
crosses the threshold of food and shelter.
Then you have to expand it so that the wealth can take care of the entire family
and make tomorrow predictable from a money problems perspective.
A person can not afford the luxury to work on their mental state
if their children have nothing to eat.
The purpose of wealth is to free the individual from money problems.
Food taken care off, bills taken care off, the future is predictable enough to feel safe
going into tomorrow because you have enough wealth to give yourself a fighting chance.
Which takes us to the next type of freedom wealth facilitates:
FREEDOM TO TRY AND FAIL
Wealth is determined by how many times you can afford to fail and still be fine.
It’s a luxury combined from timing, money and mental fortitude.
If you’re 23 years old,
no family & minimal overall expenses, you can start and fail multiple times.
But what if you’re 40 years old, with a family of 2 children where
the family needs your salary to survive.
Can you afford to quit your job and work for the next 5 years on your start-up without pay?
Probably not.
This is one of those incredible advantages people born into wealthy families have and
although everybody dislikes the kids of the rich - because they didn’t do anything to deserve the
privileged situation they find themselves in, deep down we are all hypocrites,
because we all wish our children had access to the best possible tools to maximize their potential.
Wealth allows you the privilege of being able to fail no matter who you are.
Maybe you spent the first decade of your life working hard to build a company and through it your wealth,
but one of your passions has always been painting or movie making.
Because you were able to build wealth first you can afford to pursue painting or making
movies for the next 10 years because even if it doesn’t work out you’re still gonna be fine.
This is the main reason why you have to solve the wealth problem first.
There’s a very smart saying from - we believe - Nassim Talleb who says:
If you want to be a philosopher-king, first, become a king
and then be a philosopher, not the other way around!
The purpose of wealth is for you to have that safety net that allows you to try
the things that you find interesting, because we are very complex creatures that are forced
by the environment into tiny boxes, all in the hopes of efficiency and increased productivity.
Which once again, brings us to the next type of freedom wealth allows you to go after:
FREEDOM TO EXPLORE
We are multi-variant individuals, yet society is forcing you to pick what you want to be in life
from a very early age..
How many of you remember being children and all the adults asking you
“what you want to be when you grow up?!” - many of them, living lives they haven't selected for themselves.
Most people do not know who they are because they can't afford the luxury of finding out.
We don’t know how to be happy because we never take the time
to find what makes us happy - or fulfilled for that matter.
In order to find “your thing” you have to be able to first try many things and
select the one that interests you the most; and it doesn’t stop there, because what interests you
in one period of your life might not maintain said interest later on
- this should come naturally as you evolve and develop an appetite for growth.
One of the most important purposes of wealth is allowing you the luxury
to explore and better understand yourself and the world which you are shaping.
The more you learn about it the more you become a part of it.
There are things out there that would fascinate you for the next decade that you don’t know
about because you didn’t get the opportunity to explore the unknown deep enough to find it,
yet most of us know that there is this thing out there.. Because we can feel it.
We are curious beings by nature and we are curious to learn what makes us feel things..
Mix the freedom to explore with the idea that tomorrow is taken care of
and you and up with a special type of freedom:
FREEDOM TO PURSUE PASSIONS
This type of freedom is an extremely interesting one, because it’s not done for monetary gain.
You don’t go fishing to make money, you don’t Vplay video games, build ships in a bottle or
spend time with your pet for profit.. You do it because it makes you feel good inside.
Passions require time and we know time is valuable.
Passions require money and money requires time to make money.
This is the true underlying purpose of wealth,
creating time for the things you WANT TO DO and not HAVE TO DO.
True wealth is being able to choose where your time goes!
Life should be lived passionately, yet so many people forgo their passions
because they do not fit with the demands of a busy society, but without passions one can never be happy.
Although passions are not a necessity for survival,
they are a necessity for a life well lived - which is why most fall short.
The purpose of wealth is to allow your passions to craft an enjoyable existence for you.. Actually,
it’s beyond that… the purpose of wealth is to allow you the freedom to be
who you want to be and not what they expect you to be.
This is the final freedom we will discuss about today:
FREEDOM FROM SELF & SOCIETY
What do we mean when we say freedom from Self?
There’s a little voice inside your head that you probably know very well,
that keeps trying to push you in one direction. Although it’s coming from within you, it’s not your
words the voice is speaking, but the words of everyone you’ve met, it’s the voice of society.
The voice wants you to get a safe job, to settle down, to fit. It says so
even those you have yet to shape yourself properly. The way society makes people fit is
by crushing them into the empty hole it finds in the immediate vicinity of the individual.
This is why most people’s entire lives are wrapped up in the immediate environment.
You’ve met your partner on a 30 minute radius from where you live.
You found your job in the same area and
you now own a suboptimal apartment there, but it’s all rather convenient for your current lifestyle.
There are 2 selves within us:
There is the true self - the one where if every door was open for us we would eventually become them.
and there’s another identity dictated by what we think society wants us to be.
Wealth allows you to put distance between your reality and that pestering voice.
True wealth is making peace with your mind, being free of that voice,
of the worries it brings with everything else.
It allows you to not feel the need to impress people, to not play pretend just for status games.
Wealth allows you to be happy with who you are and change if that is what one desires.
Who and what we are should be in constant change. We are not puzzle pieces meant to be inserted in
specific gaps to fill in someone else’s picture.. we are more like colors that can go on a canvas.
The purpose of wealth is to allow you to become the painter with said colors, whatever you want,
without feeling the need to get the approval of others just for the pleasure of painting.
But wealth has other purposes than just freedom, and next Sunday we will take a
look at the Security wealth brings but this is only if you, the Aluxers found this valuable.
Let us know if we should continue this series, or get back to the 15 things format!
As a thank you for those loyal Aluxers who always watch until the very end,
we could not forget you despite the difference in format, so here it is:
Bonus: FREEDOM TO DO NOTHING PRODUCTIVELY
One of the biggest problems people have in their lives is that they do not know how to be alone,
silent and enjoy the moment.
It’s almost an artform.
We’re growing in a society where people use signal to others:
“Look how busy I am” as a way of playing status games: I am busier than you,
so that must mean I am better than you.. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
There’s an old story that we’d like to share with you that goes like this:
A young entrepreneur was walking on the bank of a river one day when he met an old fisherman under a tree.
- some of you might already know this story, but we’ll share it either way -
The young hustler approached the fisherman and asked him how much fish does he catch in a day.
The old man replied that he doesn’t really care how much fish he catches.
The young entrepreneur proceeded to optimise the fisherman’s life:
If you catch more fish today, you can sell the excess at the market
and use the money to buy another fishing line. “And then what” - the fisherman replied.
Then with all the excess fish you’re catching you could keep on selling it until you can buy a boat.
“And then what” - the fisherman replied. Then using the boat you can catch even better fish,
that will sell for even more money. “And then what” - the fisherman replied once again.
Then you use that money to buy multiple boats, hire a bunch of other people and
now you have an amazing fishing business. “And then what” - the fisherman calmly replied.
Then.. one day when the business is big enough you could sell it to someone else
and make a lot of money. “and then what” - the fisherman replied
with a smile on his aging face.. Then.. you could spend your whole day
fishing and never having to worry about… - that’s when the young man goes quiet.
It’s one of our favorite stories,
because many times in life we feel that people are missing the point.
If you solve wealth early on, if you do it smart, everything else will look like you
aren’t doing much to everyone else, because they are conditioned to think that way.
We want you to solve wealth this decade Aluxers! Make it your priority to do so,
make it your purpose! Then use it to be free.
If you enjoyed today’s session and want us to continue this series,
please write Part 2 in the comments! That way we’re doing something right.