Feeling guilty about making sales
Well, I just wrote a long response to _jose_'s thread about feeling guilty about making sales and now the thread has disappeared!
I'd still like to post what I wrote though because it's a good post and a good discussion. Mods, can we leave this up? I hope Jose sees this.
What I wrote:
It's certainly an interesting predicament, especially if you were raised on the Puritan work ethic, like I was. My dad has been successfully self-employed his whole life. I grew up with his mantra mantra ringing in my ears: "If you don't work, you don't eat.", meaning, if you're lazy, you deserve to starve. The world owes you nothing, etc.
So when making money online, it's easy to feel guilty since I wasn't "working" when I earned it. (Ha!)
I've had to sit back and take stock of some fundamental principals of money management AND money attraction, namely:
1. Save enough money and invest wisely and you'll never have to work another day of your life. You'll be able to live off of just the interest. I think it was Einstein who said that compound interest was the eighth wonder of the world.
It's the opposite side of the same coin so many struggle with: debt.
You don't have to be Warren Buffet to accomplish this.
2. Willie Crawford recently made some good points on Twitter about this:
Money is not attracted to need or desire, or "good causes". It IS attracted to burning desire, clarity of purpose, willingness to work and market forces. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he said.)
This is SO true! If you can provide a product or service that fills a need or solves a problem and market it effectively, you WILL be successful. Money doesn't recognize whether it's a "good" or "bad" cause. Porn kings get rich while children in Africa starve.
Our sensibilities are offended by this. It's not fair! But I think if you're offended, you don't really understand money and money principals. Fairness has nothing to do with anything. Money just doesn't recognize it.
I've spent the last few years studying money management and money attraction principals. Books like Think and Grow Rich, Credit Card Nation, The Working Poor, and Nickeled and Dimed have been HUGE eye openers. Books like Maxed Out and Short Changed: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy which details the desperation of the payday loan places and the obscene profits behind these business will leave you outraged at the injustice of it all. Certainly the question "Why do some people "have" and everybody else "have not" has been the question of the ages. It's partly practical and partly philosophical.
I recently read a FANTASTIC book Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem. Get it! It's absolutely worth reading. It's essentially a defense of capitalism.
With the growing disparity between rich and poor and the corporate scandals of recent years, people wonder whether capitalism is the right system. After a while, communism or socialism seem like a better deal, the answer to these problems. After all, capitalism causes the above problems, right? And why should so many suffer because of it???
Author Jay Richards dissects the issues, pointing out the myths and underlying false assumptions. One of those underlying false assumptions is that if you "have", then you must have done it at someone else's expense. For you to "have more," someone else must "have less." What most people don't understand is that this belief is based on the false assumption that money is like a pie: there's only a fixed amount and for you to have a bigger slice, someone else must have a small slice.
But that belief doesn't recognize the reality of money: it's NOT a fixed pie or a zero-sum game. Money can literally be created out of thin air and grow incredibly fast with no effort from anyone (compound interest). You having more DOESN'T mean someone else has less. In fact, with capitalism, the exact opposite is true: if you have more, you've added value to the marketplace by what you've exchanged for that money. So you've DOUBLED the previous existing value: you gave more value to others AND you have more value of your own (money).
The book The Richest Man in Babylon is OUTSTANDING, an awesome primer about wealth (and work) and how money works.
Sorry, I know this is a little long, but I just wanted to share some of what I've learned.
Briefly, another point:
DON'T buy into the notion that you should have less than others or those around you. I think that having wealth is a lot harder than it seems for a number of reasons, but this is a primary reason. I think we often believe (unconsciously), that we shouldn't have significantly more than those around us. That somehow it's not right or we don't deserve it.
That's a false assumption too.
If you ever get a chance, check out David Neagle's stuff. He tackles this side of money MAGNIFICENTLY. The things he opens your mind to are simply awe-inspiring!
Something that I'm working on and I recommend everyone else here work on is: focus on what IS, not on what OUGHT to be. You can rail all day long against the many incredible injustices in the world. But that doesn't do anything except get you worked up. It does NOTHING on a practical level for you or anyone else.
Focus on what IS. Play by the Universe's rules. I've had to realize that I can't help anyone else if I can't help myself. If I want to whine about "I can't" or how unfair it all is, I'll always be begging for scraps.
When you can help yourself and make some decent money, then you can truly help others. You'll be able to pick some favorite charities or pet causes and help right some wrongs. Mary Kay Ash said "I can't help everyone, but I can help someONE. And what I ought to do I CAN do, and what I can do, I WILL do."
Want to make a bigger difference (after you've made your millions?
)? EMPOWER others, don't enable them. "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. TEACH a man to fish, feed him for life." Leverage your efforts to make a difference, to create positive change in the world by EMPOWERING others.
THAT is how you create positive change in the world -- and a LEGACY.
Michelle
P.S. Guess I went off on a tangent.
But you hit a nerve with me. This is a passion of mine and I've been really studying it and analyzing it for some time.
I'd still like to post what I wrote though because it's a good post and a good discussion. Mods, can we leave this up? I hope Jose sees this.
What I wrote:
It's certainly an interesting predicament, especially if you were raised on the Puritan work ethic, like I was. My dad has been successfully self-employed his whole life. I grew up with his mantra mantra ringing in my ears: "If you don't work, you don't eat.", meaning, if you're lazy, you deserve to starve. The world owes you nothing, etc.
So when making money online, it's easy to feel guilty since I wasn't "working" when I earned it. (Ha!)
I've had to sit back and take stock of some fundamental principals of money management AND money attraction, namely:
1. Save enough money and invest wisely and you'll never have to work another day of your life. You'll be able to live off of just the interest. I think it was Einstein who said that compound interest was the eighth wonder of the world.
It's the opposite side of the same coin so many struggle with: debt.
You don't have to be Warren Buffet to accomplish this.
2. Willie Crawford recently made some good points on Twitter about this:
Money is not attracted to need or desire, or "good causes". It IS attracted to burning desire, clarity of purpose, willingness to work and market forces. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially what he said.)
This is SO true! If you can provide a product or service that fills a need or solves a problem and market it effectively, you WILL be successful. Money doesn't recognize whether it's a "good" or "bad" cause. Porn kings get rich while children in Africa starve.
Our sensibilities are offended by this. It's not fair! But I think if you're offended, you don't really understand money and money principals. Fairness has nothing to do with anything. Money just doesn't recognize it.
I've spent the last few years studying money management and money attraction principals. Books like Think and Grow Rich, Credit Card Nation, The Working Poor, and Nickeled and Dimed have been HUGE eye openers. Books like Maxed Out and Short Changed: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy which details the desperation of the payday loan places and the obscene profits behind these business will leave you outraged at the injustice of it all. Certainly the question "Why do some people "have" and everybody else "have not" has been the question of the ages. It's partly practical and partly philosophical.
I recently read a FANTASTIC book Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem. Get it! It's absolutely worth reading. It's essentially a defense of capitalism.
With the growing disparity between rich and poor and the corporate scandals of recent years, people wonder whether capitalism is the right system. After a while, communism or socialism seem like a better deal, the answer to these problems. After all, capitalism causes the above problems, right? And why should so many suffer because of it???
Author Jay Richards dissects the issues, pointing out the myths and underlying false assumptions. One of those underlying false assumptions is that if you "have", then you must have done it at someone else's expense. For you to "have more," someone else must "have less." What most people don't understand is that this belief is based on the false assumption that money is like a pie: there's only a fixed amount and for you to have a bigger slice, someone else must have a small slice.
But that belief doesn't recognize the reality of money: it's NOT a fixed pie or a zero-sum game. Money can literally be created out of thin air and grow incredibly fast with no effort from anyone (compound interest). You having more DOESN'T mean someone else has less. In fact, with capitalism, the exact opposite is true: if you have more, you've added value to the marketplace by what you've exchanged for that money. So you've DOUBLED the previous existing value: you gave more value to others AND you have more value of your own (money).
The book The Richest Man in Babylon is OUTSTANDING, an awesome primer about wealth (and work) and how money works.
Sorry, I know this is a little long, but I just wanted to share some of what I've learned.
Briefly, another point:
DON'T buy into the notion that you should have less than others or those around you. I think that having wealth is a lot harder than it seems for a number of reasons, but this is a primary reason. I think we often believe (unconsciously), that we shouldn't have significantly more than those around us. That somehow it's not right or we don't deserve it.
That's a false assumption too.
If you ever get a chance, check out David Neagle's stuff. He tackles this side of money MAGNIFICENTLY. The things he opens your mind to are simply awe-inspiring!
Something that I'm working on and I recommend everyone else here work on is: focus on what IS, not on what OUGHT to be. You can rail all day long against the many incredible injustices in the world. But that doesn't do anything except get you worked up. It does NOTHING on a practical level for you or anyone else.
Focus on what IS. Play by the Universe's rules. I've had to realize that I can't help anyone else if I can't help myself. If I want to whine about "I can't" or how unfair it all is, I'll always be begging for scraps.
When you can help yourself and make some decent money, then you can truly help others. You'll be able to pick some favorite charities or pet causes and help right some wrongs. Mary Kay Ash said "I can't help everyone, but I can help someONE. And what I ought to do I CAN do, and what I can do, I WILL do."
Want to make a bigger difference (after you've made your millions?
)? EMPOWER others, don't enable them. "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. TEACH a man to fish, feed him for life." Leverage your efforts to make a difference, to create positive change in the world by EMPOWERING others.THAT is how you create positive change in the world -- and a LEGACY.
Michelle
P.S. Guess I went off on a tangent.
But you hit a nerve with me. This is a passion of mine and I've been really studying it and analyzing it for some time.
Blogger at RicherOrNot.com (Make Money online blog but also promoting ethical internet marketing)
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"