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Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
Gratitude For What Is, Right Now
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“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G. K. Chesterton
Of all of the holidays in our calendar, both civic and religious, Thanksgiving Day brings together all of the essential elements of being “Abundantly Alive Now!” We all understand the connection between Thanksgiving and abundance as we sit down to eat enormous feasts. What intrigues me is the connection between Thanksgiving and time, and how this connection affects what it means to be fully “alive.” Thanksgiving Day is the holiday that celebrates the “Now” in a unique way.
Did you ever play with a magnifying glass in the sun? If you hold the magnifying class steady, you can concentrate the rays of the sun onto a combustible object and watch the object catch on fire. Thanksgiving Day can be that kind of magnifying glass to focus powerful and transformative energy onto your life.
“Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.”
Brian Tracy
Thanksgiving Day is a focal point, where past and future converge into one single moment. Thanksgiving Day is a pivot between the past and the future, between what was and what can be. Thanksgiving Day is a fulcrum between where we have been and where we are going. Thanksgiving Day is the ultimate spiritual holiday because it exists to offer gratitude for the realities of the present moment.
I know, I know. The reality of Thanksgiving Day can be very different, and anything but spiritual. Cooks can become frazzled and frustrated with twenty-five pound turkeys and conflicting family traditions about what must be included on the Thanksgiving table. As a case in point, consider this letter to Miss Manners.
“Dear Miss Manners:”
“My sister-in-law always serves white potatoes for Thanksgiving. She already knows that my husband and I don’t eat white potatoes, and we don’t eat stuffing because it contains white bread.”
“When I offered to make whipped organic sweet potatoes at her house, she acted offended and said she didn’t have room for another cook in her kitchen.”
“We think it is insensitive to serve a dish she knows we don’t eat, and then not let us contribute something in its place. My husband thinks we should just cancel and not go.”
Miss Manners
Judith Martin
And if the food isn’t enough to push a cook over the edge of sanity, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and football games provide plenty of other distractions to keep us off balance. Thanksgiving travel also means frantic airports and heavy traffic. And families are made up of fallible human beings who bring their loves and hurts and oddities to dinner. Whatever tensions exist in the family do not go away because the calendar tells us to be thankful.
But underneath all of the stresses and excesses of the day, Thanksgiving Day occurs in our calendars as a unique opportunity to focus our scattered minds on “Now.” At its core, Thanksgiving Day calls us to be grateful for what is, right now.
The truth is, most of us are not grateful for what is, right now. We are pulled away from the present moment by memories of the past or thoughts about the future. We can have fears, hopes, dreams and plans about the future. But our lives are not in the future. Whatever will be, it is not now.
At the same time, we can be pulled backwards, with regrets, hurts, and happy and sad memories. But our lives are not in the past. Whatever was, it is not now. Meditation teaches us to settle our monkey minds on now. Nothing is harder than this. The ultimate human challenge is to be fully present right now.
The second human challenge is to be grateful for what is, right now. Thanksgiving is the remedy for two profound discontents in our lives. The first discontent is to be so focused on the injustices of the past that there can be no room for gratitude for the present. The second discontent is to be so focused on striving toward getting what we want that there is no room for gratitude for what we already have.
“Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
When I think of the connection between gratitude and the past, I think of my mother. I knew my mother as a bitter woman. If she was grateful for anything in her life, I was never aware of it. I am quite sure I never heard her say “thank you” for anything. I do remember constant complaints about the unfairness of her life, and the injustices that had happened to her in the past. Her bitterness about the past kept her from ever being satisfied with anything at any moment.
Instead of being grateful for what she had in the “Now,” my mother “made do.” I heard that phrase again and again. “Make do with what you have.” “Making do” meant eating what she hated, wearing what she hated, living where she hated, being with people she hated, and doing what she hated (including being a mother.)
My mother was incapable of expressing gratitude in the “Now” because her past was too much with her. It also robbed her of her capacity to enjoy her life, and made living with her a painful ordeal. I was truly grateful to escape her presence the day after my eighteenth birthday.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beattie
The opposite extreme to my mother’s focus on the past is the tendency to focus on getting more in the future. “More” is a disease that afflicts us all in a consumer society. Wanting more has become a way of life. We are so used to wanting more and more and more that we don’t realize how much wanting more also robs us of the capacity to enjoy life in the “Now.”
The entire advertising industry exists to make us want more than we have. Ads are designed to build discontent and dissatisfaction. Advertising has to persuade us that something is missing in our lives so that we will rush out and buy it. In contrast, Thanksgiving Day asks us to focus on what is, right now, and be grateful for what we have right now.
I have written before about the question, “What is enough?” (November 8, 2005.) Knowing “what is enough” is dramatically different from “making do.” “Making do” comes from a belief in lack. “What is enough” is firmly rooted in a belief in abundance. When you decide that “this is enough,” you are making a statement about being satisfied in the present moment. You know that there could be more, but you are satisfied right now with what you have.
“This is enough right now” doesn’t mean that you stop dreaming or planning for more in the future. It simply means that you are willing to be content with whatever you have right now. And when you are content, you are able to be grateful for what is, right now.
“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”
Denis Waitley
Finally we come to the connection between gratitude and being “alive.” Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis is a professor of psychology who has conducted research studies on gratitude and thankfulness. Clinical research has demonstrated that gratitude results in greater psychological and physical well being.
“Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.”
Robert Emmons
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/
Gratitude is the secret of living an Abundantly Alive Now! life. Whatever else you do on Thanksgiving Day, I encourage you to be grateful for what is, right now.
Click here for Words of Gratitude for Mind, Body, and Soul by Robert A. Emmons and Joanna Hill.
This article was originally published November 22, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-22.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Are You Doing Business With Monopoly Money?
“People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to…rather than detracts from…our lives.”
Stephen R. Covey
During the depths of the Great Depression, the Monopoly® game appeared in the marketplace. For many American children, Monopoly is the first introduction to using money for business decisions. Monopoly teaches players to buy and sell property, collect and pay rents. The game is fun, especially for the winners. My question is, Are the lessons you learned playing Monopoly killing your capacity to make real money in your business?
Monopoly teaches at least three money myths that can keep you struggling with money in your business.
Monopoly Money Myth One is that the amount of money available is limited. The game begins with a fixed amount of money. The game ends with the same amount of money. The only difference between the beginning and the end of the game is that the money, which was evenly distributed at the beginning of the game, is now concentrated in the hands of the winner. The critical point is that no one MAKES money in Monopoly. Monopoly is a zero sum game.
Compare the zero sum Monopoly game to what happens to money in business. In business, you create a product or offer a service that actually MAKES more money. This is how it works. You create a product. The product costs you money to produce, market, and sell. If you sell the product for more than your costs, you make a profit. This profit is money that did not exist when you started the game.
In other words, you actually create money. You have not only added money to your bottom line, you have added more money to the money supply. This is the critical money difference between Monopoly and business. Profitable businesses make money. No one makes money in Monopoly.
“I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.”
Steven Wright
Monopoly Money Myth One teaches players that money is a commodity in limited supply. Monopoly cannot teach the fundamental truth that the amount of available money is potentially unlimited because money is created in transactions. The more transactions occur, the more money is created.
Monopoly Money Myth Two teaches that the game can have only one money winner. (The game is called Monopoly for a reason.)
As a model for doing business, Monopoly teaches that making profits in business means taking money away from other businesses, to end up with the biggest piece of the existing money supply. This business model is still very much with us when we see businesses act like sharks in a feeding frenzy. In fact, some businesses do win by following the Monopoly money model.
When business owners understand the real truth that the supply of available money is potentially unlimited because money is created in transactions, it takes away the need to be sharks fighting over a fixed amount of money. Instead, enlightened business owners can create mutually beneficial joint venture relationships with other businesses. Joint ventures allow each business to increase profits and increase the amount of money available.
The liberating money truth is that you can make more money by cooperation with other businesses than you will by attempting to take money out of the pockets of your competitors.
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Monopoly Money Myth Three is that making money means hurting other people. In Monopoly, the only way to get more money is to take it from other people, leaving them with less money than they had when they started. The game is over for them when they run out of money.
Making money at the expense of others is obviously not a problem for Enron-type businesses that care only about making profits without regard for how much they hurt other people. Monopoly originated in the Depression, when vast numbers of people endured real poverty while a minority of fat cats lived in luxury. The Monopoly game reflects the realities of that economic era.
“I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner. I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good.”
Peter Cooper
In my own coaching experience, I have encountered many people who believe deep down that making money means hurting other people. And since they consider themselves good, honest people, they are deeply conflicted about doing business. They want to make more money but they don’t want to hurt other people in the process.
If you are struggling with money in your business, ask yourself if these three Monopoly Money Myths lie at the root of your problems. As a game, Monopoly can be fun. As a model for doing business, Monopoly Money Myths will keep you stuck in a Depression-era mindset of haves and have-nots because it teaches that money is a commodity in limited supply.
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
Henry Ford
You can play a much more liberating money game in business than Monopoly can ever teach you. What happens to business when you stop playing with Monopoly money? You will discover that money is unlimited because money is created by transactions, cooperation is more profitable than cutthroat competition, and you can make money while serving the best interests of other people. Best of all, you are much more likely to win the money game.
This article was originally published November 15, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-15.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
How To Find All The Money You Need For Your Real Estate Investing
“Expect your every need to be met. Expect the answer to every problem, expect abundance on every level.”
Eileen Caddy
Would you like to buy investment real estate? What is stopping you? Is it the money to get started?
If you are like most people, you think that the way to get enough money to buy a property is to go to a bank and apply for a mortgage.
Do you know that the best solution for beginning investors who are short on cash and credit is a method that most people don’t even know exists? This method allows you to bypass banks and mortgage brokers.
In three short steps, you can find all of the money you need to fund any of your real estate deals, without ever having to apply to a bank for a mortgage.
The first step is to realize that the best solution is to use private money. Private money comes from an individual, rather than a bank. A private money investor could be anyone. When you open your eyes to the possibilities of using private money to fund your real estate investments, you realize that all the money you need is hidden in plain sight all around you.
“The time spent identifying your base of contacts is an investment in your success and the success of others with whom you share your resources.”
Harriet van Horne
The next step is to find a private money investor. Private money investors are everywhere, ranging from neighbors to professional investors. They can be people you already know or people you find through advertising or online. Let’s keep it simple and start with the people in your own immediate circle. Your relatives, your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, your dentist, and your mechanic are all potential private money investors.
You might be wondering why anyone you know would be willing to loan you money to invest in real estate. The answer is that most people are not satisfied with the low rates of return they are getting in so-called safe investments in savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs. And people have been badly burned by the stock markets. They’d like to make more money but they don’t know a better way.
You can find private money investors by asking the people you know if they are happy with the returns they are getting on their investments. Then you ask if they would be interested in earning higher rates of return through safe investments in real estate.
If you don’t know about private money for real estate investing, it’s highly likely your friends, relatives, and neighbors don’t know either. They simply don’t know that they can use the money that is sitting in low-interest savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs to invest in real estate. They also could have substantial equity in their own homes or IRAs that return tiny yields on mutual funds.
You can explain to them that you are offering a higher rate of return than they could get through any of these other so-called safe investments. They could earn 8%, 10%, even 15% by funding a first mortgage on an investment property. One of the greatest benefits of using private money is that you can create flexible rates and terms. You are asking for them to invest in a property that will guarantee them a higher rate of return than anything they are doing now. And you are doing it by offering a first mortgage secured by real estate.
“When you have too much month for your paycheck, then what you need to do is realize that there is abundance all around you and focus on the abundance and not your lack and as night follows day abundance will come to you.”
Sidney Madwed
After you find a person who is interested, your third step is to find a title company to set up the paperwork for you. You are not simply asking to borrow money. You are asking your private money lender to fund a mortgage on your investment property.
At this point, the title company will treat the mortgage contract between you and your private money investor the same way they would treat a mortgage contract between you and any bank.
If you want to get started investing in real estate, realize that the money you need is as close as the people you know as you go about your daily life.
Using private money to fund your real estate investment has two great benefits. First, it allows you make money with someone else’s money. And second, you are helping your private lenders make more money by investing with you than they would by keeping their money in the bank. This is a true win-win situation for both of you.
“People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to…rather than detracts from…our lives.”
Stephen R. Covey
So, if you would like to buy investment property but don’t have the money or the credit to qualify for a mortgage on your own, the easiest and best solution is to look for private money investors among the people you already know.
This article was originally published July 26, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-07-26.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Ready Or Not, Here I Come!
“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is there something you say you want to do…but you are not doing it? What is stopping you from doing it?
I had a telephone conversation recently with a potential coaching client. She said she wanted to start investing in real estate. I asked what was stopping her. She responded, “Fear.” I told her that I don’t believe fear stops us as much as we claim it does.
”Fear!” as the answer to the question, “What is stopping you from doing what you say you what to do?” is a cliché. It is an automatic first response, deeply conditioned into us in our self-help culture. We have heard that fear is an acronym, “False evidence appearing real.” But after saying, “Fear!,” what comes next? Fear of what? Where do you go with that declaration?
A few years ago, I took several screenwriting courses. One of my teachers made the comment, “When you are writing a screenplay, never take the first idea that comes into your head.” He said that the first thought is always going to be a cliché. We have seen or heard it a hundred times before in movies. He told us to go deeper. He urged us to go beyond the cliché to find something authentic.
I asked my potential client some more questions to get to a more authentic response. Her answers revealed a belief that the only way she could make money in real estate would be at the expense of other people. She considers herself a good person who doesn’t want to take advantage of others. This is valuable information and lies several steps beyond the automatic response, “I’m not investing in real estate because I’m afraid.”
I just retrieved a book from my bookshelf with the astounding title, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Gotten Worse. It is one of the most provocative books I have ever read. (And I have just reminded myself that it is time to reread it.)
The core idea of the book is that psychotherapy has taught us to look inside ourselves for our weaknesses and pathologies, with the idea that we have to fix ourselves before we can act in the world. In other words, psychotherapy teaches us that we have to “get ready” before we act.
“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”
George Bernard Shaw
I suspect that the sense that “I am not ready” stops us at least as much as “I am afraid.” Therapy teaches us to look for our flaws, to tend to our wounded inner children, to name the addictions that we are powerless to overcome. We cannot possibly act powerfully in the big scary outer world when we consider ourselves frightened children on the inside.
The same dynamic occurs in education. Because I come from an academic background, I saw again and again the ways that academics stop themselves from action by the belief that they are not ready. There is always one more book to read first.
And if you are a seminar junkie the way I am, “getting ready” means you have to take one more seminar, buy one more book, work with one more coach, and then you will be ready to act. Except that getting ready to take action is not the same as taking action.
One of the most valuable conversations I ever had was with a professor at the University of California in Berkeley. I had just passed my doctoral oral exam and he was a member of my committee. He was also one of the most brilliant and “street-smart” academics I have ever met, with an impressive resume of published books and articles behind him. I went to his office to ask him a question. The question was, “What do I need to know to write and finish my dissertation?”
I knew the statistics. 85% of doctoral students in the humanities who pass their doctoral oral exams never finish their dissertations. They become permanent ABDs (”All But Dissertation”) for the rest of their lives.
The professor said, “Most people who reach the point of writing a doctoral dissertation know enough, work hard enough, and are smart enough to finish. But everything they hear is, you don’t know enough, you don’t work hard enough, and you’re not smart enough. And so they never finish.”
Those words impressed me deeply. I went home and wrote the question, “What is enough?” on an index card and taped it to the wall behind my desk. During the months I worked on writing the dissertation, that question brought me back on track again and again. And I am convinced that the fundamental reason that I did write and finish my doctoral dissertation was because I kept asking myself, “What is enough?”
This question, “What is enough?” will liberate you from the belief that being “ready” means you have to know everything and be like Mary Poppins, “practically perfect in every way,” before you act.
“The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
John Maxwell
Yesterday, I played hide and seek with my granddaughter. Even played with a four year old, whose idea of hiding is to hide behind the same tree each time, the game has a great phrase, suitable for putting on an index card and taping to your wall: “Ready or Not, Here I Come.” The truth is, you can’t do anything by getting ready to do it. The only way to do it is to do it.
This article was originally published November 8, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-08.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Are You Working Too Hard To Get Anything Done?
“There are advantages to putting in longer hours. You often get more done, for a start. Countries that work longer, such as Canada, Britain, and the U.S. have racked up higher economic growth in recent years. But when the work ethic turns workaholic, there is a price to pay. Productivity falls, absenteeism rises, and the bottom line suffers. Something else, something deeper, also gets lost in the dash to keep up-quality of life.”
Carl Honoré
enRoute Magazine
Air Canada
On Canadian Thanksgiving Day, I read a provocative article on a flight on Air Canada between Vancouver and San Francisco. The article was written by Carl Honoré, author of the book, In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed. (The book is published as In Praise of Slowness in the United States.)
The particular aspect of the article that I want to focus on is the connection between speed and productivity.
Many of us, especially those of us who are entrepreneurs, or attempting to become entrepreneurs, get caught up in a frantic rush to do more and more, faster and faster. The inevitable consequence of trying to go faster and faster is that quality gets lost.
“When we speed around, are we mastering our life or hanging on for dear life?”
The Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche
Have you ever had the experience of rushing to do something? It seems that the more you rush, the more likely you are to make mistakes.
As a college student, I had a summer job on an assembly line, one of about 20 female college students hired to box glittery greeting cards. It was without question the worst job I ever had. We lined up beside a conveyer belt, in front of a wall of windows in an old factory building without air conditioning. We were divided into groups. The first group put boxes on the belt. The second group were supposed to count out twenty envelopes and put them in the boxes. The third group were supposed to count twenty cards and add them to the boxes with the envelopes. And the fourth group put the tops on the boxes.
Meanwhile, the sun glared into the windows behind us, as the temperature rose past one hundred degrees. We worked continuously for one hour and fifteen minutes intervals. Then the conveyor belt would stop and we could rest for a few minutes.
It wasn’t so bad as long as the belt moved slowly enough that we could accurately count out twenty envelopes or cards. The quality problem started when a supervisor decided that we were not filling enough boxes per hour. And so he increased the speed of the belt. It reached the point where empty boxes were going by so fast that it was impossible to count anything. At that point, my sister workers and I began simply plopping fistfuls of cards or envelopes into the boxes whizzing past. It became a joke and a game. I remember the gleeful statements of the girl next to me as she tossed cards into the boxes flying by. “There’s another box of cards for a happy housewife.”
Before too long, the same supervisor who cranked up the speed of the conveyor belt stood before us and harangued us. He said that spot inspections of the boxes showed that every single box had the wrong number of envelopes and cards.
That was a vivid example of the truth that faster is not always better. Working faster to get more done usually results in more mistakes. Frantic mode is error mode.
The “Slow Movement” is a worldwide reaction to our obsession with speed. It started 17 years ago in Italy with the “Slow Food” movement.
“Slow Food aims to be everything fast food is not. It’s slow - in the making and the eating. It’s fresh - not processed. It’s from neighborhood farms and stores - not from industrial growers such as Tyson Foods (TSN) or retail goliaths such as Wal-Mart (WMT).”
Jim Hopkins, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2003-11-25-slowfood_x.htm
Slow Food is a conscious rebellion against “fast food,” that heavily processed stuff that has become the way many of us eat many of our meals.
I was in Vancouver for a seminar. At lunch time, several hundred of us invaded the food court of the shopping mall next door to the seminar hotel. We had only time enough to buy some of the “fast food,” eat it quickly, and rush back to our seminar room. Fast food is everywhere. In schools, hospitals, airports, shopping malls, and on every city block. Slow food is much harder to find. And it is even harder to allow ourselves the time to eat it slowly.
The Slow Food movement has expanded to become the “Slow Movement.”
“These days, many of us live in fast forward - and pay a heavy price for it. Our work, health and relationships suffer. Over-stimulated, over-scheduled and overwrought, we struggle to relax, to enjoy things properly, to spend time with family and friends. The Slow movement offers a lifeline. It is not a Luddite plot to abolish all things modern. You don’t have to shun technology, live in the wilderness or do everything at a snail’s pace. Being “Slow” means living better in the hectic modern world by striking a balance between fast and slow. In Praise of Slow is the first handbook for the emerging Slow movement. Through a blend of anecdote, reportage, first-hand experience, history and intellectual inquiry, it explains how the world got so fast and why slowing down can pay dividends in every walk of life.”
Carl Honoré
http://www.inpraiseofslow.com/book.htm
One of the dividends of slowing down is that creativity seems to thrive at slow speed.
Overwork is the enemy of creative thinking. The latest brain research confirms that the best way to get the creative juices flowing is to relax.
Carl Honoré
enRoute Magazine
Air Canada
Our creative minds do best when we are relaxed and have time. All of us have had the experience of being stuck on a problem and then having the idea pop into our minds after we wake up or while we are doing something else.
Ask yourself how relaxed you are in your work. Are you attempting to do more and more? How much do you get accomplished that way? And how creative are you when you are working too hard and trying to do too much?
These are very real questions for me. Each morning, my husband and I sit down for our morning meeting. We talk about what we have scheduled for that day and what we would like to accomplish. And each day, our lists include more items than any two people can possibly accomplish. The next morning, many of the same items remain undone on our lists. And so we sit down again feeling that we are not making progress fast enough. And each day we add more items to our lists.
6th century Christian theology identified 7 deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sadness. In the 17th century, “sadness” was replaced by “sloth.” “Sloth” is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work. Frantic overwork didn’t make the list. Yet for many of us in the 21st century, working too much is a bigger problem than working too little.
“Make haste slowly.”
Benjamin Franklin
The creative solution to productivity is to make haste slowly, not working harder and longer. I speak for myself when I say that writing down too many items on my to-do list is counter-productive. I intend to follow my own counsel and make a shorter list tomorrow. I invite you to slow down with me to work less and accomplish more.
And while you’re at it, here’s a song you can sing to celebrate slowing down.
“Slow down, you move too fast.
You got to make the morning last.
Just kicking down the cobble stones.
Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy.
Hello lamppost,
What cha knowing?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growing.
Ain’t cha got no rhymes for me?
Doot-in’ doo-doo,
Feelin’ groovy.
Got no deeds to do,
No promises to keep.
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me.
Life, I love you,
All is groovy.”
Simon & Garfunkel › The 59th Street Bridge Song
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/simon-and-garfunkel/124694.html
This article was originally published October 11, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-10-11.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Buying The American Dream
“No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have a question for you…and it’s not a trick question. Here’s a hypothetical situation.
You have the opportunity to buy an investment property. The property is perfectly located, well-priced, in move-in condition. You have outstanding credit and you have enough money to pay the down payment and pay the mortgage. You already have several potential renters, all with excellent credit and references. You can charge enough rent to cover all of the expenses of the property and leave you with money left over.
My question is, Do you buy the property?
If you are like many real estate investors, especially beginning investors, you will probably jump at the opportunity. Of course you will buy the property! And you will celebrate your good fortune at finding such an outstanding deal.
My next question is, Is buying this property really the best investment strategy? Or to be more precise, is buying ANY property the best investment strategy?
“Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.”
Donald Trump
You might be saying, “How else do I invest in real estate if I don’t buy property? What other options are there?” The short answer is that successful real estate investors know that controlling property is often a far better option than buying it. But before considering other ways of controlling property without buying it, let’s go back to the compelling lure of buying real estate.
“Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world.”
Abraham Lincoln
The “American dream” always includes owning your own home. One of the great divisions in our society is the division between owners and renters. When you apply for credit, you are faced with the inevitable question: “Do you rent or own?” Credit agencies give higher ranking to home owners than tenants. As a homeowner, you also have tax advantages that renters do not have. You can deduct mortgage interest on your income tax.
Home ownership also carries emotional benefits. With your own home, you have the freedom to do what you want with your property. You don’t have to ask a landlord for permission to paint your house. You can hang pictures on the wall anywhere you want. You don’t have to worry about a nosy landlord snooping around. Your home is your own.
According to the American dream ideal, renters fall short of the American dream. You are paying to live in someone else’s property. Your home is not your own. Leaving aside all of the other limitations of renting rather than owning, renters live with a subtle social stigma. Even if no one ever says it out loud, the “American Dream” teaches us that successful people own their own homes and unsuccessful people rent.
The economy and hot real estate markets of recent years have added two additional elements to this formidable social urge toward homeownership as the ideal of the American Dream.
In recent years, we have had two strong and somewhat contradictory trends. One trend has made it easier for renters to become homeowners. With low interest rate mortgages available, banks have loaned money to people who would never have qualified for mortgages in earlier years. With “no document” loans and “stated income” loans available, former renters have been transformed into homeowners.
We have all seen pictures and news clips of smiling people standing in front of their own homes-homes they would never have been able to afford without special programs for first-time homebuyers. They now own their little piece of the American Dream.
At the same time, in hot real estate markets, prices have risen much faster than incomes. Owning a home becomes a carrot on a stick for people who want to buy but cannot afford the high costs associated with buying. These frustrated want-to-be homeowners cannot make the magical transition from renters to homeowners. We have also seen stories and pictures of these people and seen their unsmiling faces as they complain about how they cannot buy into the American Dream.
My point is that we live in a society that has taught us that buying a house is a goal worth almost any amount of money and sacrifice.
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
Ellen Goodman
Now let’s say that you have done it. You have bought your own home. You have achieved a major goal of the American Dream. What comes next?
The same real estate market that has turned some tenants into homeowners at the same time it has prevented other tenants from buying homes, has also attracted thousands and thousands of people into real estate investing. Real estate investing offers the promise of the next step in the American Dream. If buying your own home is Goal #1 of the American Dream, buying investment property is Goal #2. If owning one house is good, buying more houses is even better.
“No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.”
Charles Dudley Warner
This is real success. You know you have “made it” when you not only own your own home, you can own the homes of renters who have not managed to grab their little piece of the American Dream. You are not only a home owner, you are the owner of investment properties.
And this is the place where the American Dream for homeowners can easily turn into the American nightmare for real estate investors. It all comes down to the unexamined assumption that buying real estate is the only way to invest in real estate.
Too many beginning real estate investors leave their real estate seminars and go out to buy investment property as if they were buying their own homes. They use their own money and their own credit, and scramble to buy property they cannot really afford without understanding what successful investors know about investing.
“Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.”
Robert Green Ingersoll
For example, on Sunday, as I sat in yet another real estate seminar, in a too-cold hotel meeting room, I listened to a phone call to a woman who wanted to sell her house. She had bought it last spring as investment property with a 95% loan. She said she had overpaid for the property. She had already put in thousands of dollars of repairs. And her intended lease-optioner had backed out at the last minute. Now the owner-investor was over the proverbial barrel, with no rent to cover her expenses, a mortgage payment due, and a real estate market that is softening. She has tried to sell the property, but has no takers. At the same time, she insisted that she has $30,000 of equity in the property and wants to get all of her equity back in a sale. It was clear that she has no idea of the costs involved in selling a property.
Without going into more details of her situation and the solution that was being offered to her, I want to make the point that she was in big trouble because she had bought an overpriced investment property she could not afford, with her own money and her own credit, without counting the costs involved.
The root of her problem was her unexamined assumption that the way to make money in real estate is to BUY real estate the same way she would buy her own house. What she didn’t know was that there are ways to control investment real estate without buying it. Sometimes, buying investment property makes sense. And sometimes, not buying it makes more sense.
If your plans for creating abundance include investing in real estate, you can increase your potential for success by learning to think the way successful investors think. This process includes examining various homeowner and consumer assumptions about money and real estate. The first assumption to examine is the belief that making money in real estate requires you to buy real estate.
This article was originally published November 1, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-01.htm
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© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
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