The Reason Why You Aren't Rich

Why You Aren't Rich If You Aren't Rich

I wrote a book on this topic based on my years of research and experience working with people. I can't write a book here, but I will cover the big points here.

If you are not rich and you have never been rich there is only one real reason. You have not successfully followed a good wealth strategy. That is it. If you tried something and it didn't work, then by definition it wasn't a good wealth strategy. If you quit before you became wealthy, then you didn't follow the strategy, you only started it. If you didn't do anything, well doing nothing isn't an effective success strategy.

The next question is why haven't you followed a successful wealth strategy?

Maybe you don't want to be wealthy.

Maybe you didn't realize you would need such a surprisingly large sum of money to retire or in case you became ill or disabled and couldn't work while needing medical care and money to pay for it. For that matter, if someone you care about becomes ill or disabled.

Maybe you didn't know you had to follow a wealth strategy to become wealthy. I have never heard anyone say they taught them they needed a wealth strategy in school.

Then here is the big one. Maybe you just can't get yourself to change what you are doing. You really can't get yourself to do anything different.

People tell me all of the time that this isn't their reason, as I see it in their every daily action. We actually think we are in control of our lives. We can see the humor in others thinking they are in control of their live when we watch them say one thing and do another, but we can seldom see it in ourselves.

Here is why change can be so hard. For the example I ask that you accept you have a subconscious mind without me having to go through all of the hoops to explain what the subconscious mind is and proving you at the very least virtually have one. This is a blog post and not a graduate course, so please just bear with me.

So this subconscious mind has a goal seeking mechanism. GSM. It makes a great servant and a terrible master. Most people don't even know that most of their decisions and actions are controlled by this Goal Seeking Mechanism. The really huge problem with that is if you don't set the Goal Seeking Mechanism's goals, then random chance and basic survival programs set it for you.

The outcome for this failure to set the Goal Seeking Mechanism is that most of the day your life is run by a virtual three year old. That is the default level the GSM operates at without direction. Could be a two year old, if you have some good habits maybe a four or five year old in some rare cases. Everyone thinks they have the five year old, but it is more likely a two year old that runs or even ruins their life.

First, the Goal Seeking Mechanism wants to keep you alive and comfy right now. Since it doesn't understand the future, don't expect it to direct your actions with any reference to the future, like eating the veggies over the cheesecake so you will feel better, look better and live longer in the future, what is the future? Pass over another slice of cheesecake.

Next, the Goal Seeking Mechanism is hard wired to think that anything new is dangerous. What you have been doing has kept you alive so far, why change? Staying alive is high on the Goal Seeking Mechanism's list. New is a no-no. New in unknown and dangerous. Pass the cheesecake.

Talk to the GSM about money and it says what is money? Warm and Cold I understand. Bitter veggies and sweet deserts I understand. Fear and Happy I understand. What is money? What is the future?

I am going to prove all of this to you right here and now.

Are you doing everything you know to do to have a healthy body?

Are you doing everything you know to do to become wealthy?

Are there areas in your life that you know you could do better?

If you aren't acting on your knowledge to do all of the things you know that are good for you and will bring you your goals there is only one reason. You aren't acting on your knowledge and conscious decisions, you are acting based on something else, the Goal Seeking Mechanism.

Why aren't we doing everything we can to bring us the goals we want? It is because we aren't consciously controlling our actions. Random events and basic, low level programs are mostly setting your Goal Seeking Mechanism.

We aren't doing what we know we should be doing because we are surrendering our control to an automatic mechanism in our mind that wants us to be safe, happy and comfortable right now.

More knowledge on any subject is useless until you learn to act on the knowledge you already have.

I can't cover all of this in a blog post. I have studied it for years and work with people in my office to help them understand and change all of this for them. It is a big topic and a big thing, but I can hit a few high points.

To take control of the Goal Seeking Mechanism:

1. Realize you have one and what is going on. Awareness is a first step. You can't fix a problem you don't know you have and understanding what is going on gives you a framework to work with.

2. Write down your goals in plain terms, make them definite. Take money. If you want money you must write down how much, it has to be a number. You have to make a picture of it. The GSM understands pictures. It helps to have pictures on paper to transport images into your mind where the decisions are made.

3. List emotional reasons why you must achieve your goal. Emotion = Motion. No emotion and you will not make any motions toward your goal or few at the best.

4. Repetition is a must. Things will come along many times a day and knock your goals out of the mechanism. You must keep repeating your goals until they stick.

5. Talk to the recorder when the record button is pressed. You wouldn't try to record a message when the recorder is on play or turned off. The GSM is the same. Turn record on when you want to put a message in the GSM. You do that with emotions. Dry and lifeless reading without feeling of your goals is useless. You have to feel it.

6. Let it know the actions you want. You must associate actions with the goals. You can ask someone at the office why they are drinking protein shakes and they can tell you they are drinking the shakes to lose weight. The formula is I am doing this to get that. Write those actions down, why you are doing them and review them as many times as is reasonable daily. Maybe even unreasonable.

7. Find a way to show yourself it is working. I call this making it true, you must find a way to make your goal true, it is really happening on some level. The GSM loves results and the sooner the better. It works on a reward loop. If you want to lose weight, then as you start dieting start graphing your weight loss. That way your GSM can see the results plainly in a line going down the chart. In research people have lost weight by only graphically charting their weight. They had opened up a feedback channel that set and reinforced the GSM for weight loss.

8. I strongly suggest you make your goal a prayer and pray it several times daily. If you want something that you think wouldn't make a good prayer, then you have some conflict in your goal and that needs to be fixed. I know people will say prayer doesn't work and they are not a believer and lots of other things, but I have seen it work time and time again.

There are two sides to prayer, the side we see and can understand and the side we don't see and can't understand. We can understand that drug addicts that don't believe within themselves they have what it takes to get off drugs can look to a higher power outside themselves that can offer help above their personal resources and then do things they otherwise couldn't because of self doubt. We can see how prayer reinforces our goals through repetition. On the other hand, there are a lot of things I have seen with prayer that psychology and statistics just won't explain. Prayer really seems to work whether you think it will or you think it won't, but it works better with faith. How do you get faith? One way is to pray for that too.

Why aren't you wealthy? Because you haven't followed a successful wealth strategy in an effective manner.

Why would anyone find it hard to do that?

They might not know they had to. 

They might not know a successful strategy.

Or they just aren't doing the things they must do to bring them their goals because they aren't setting and controlling the Goal Seeking Mechanism.

How do you do that? Have you got a week to spare and I will tell you? Never mind, I don't have the week, so I gave you some pointers and you can take it from there with your own research.

Best and be blest,
Scott Hogue CChH