Six requirements to be successful in wealth creation

According to Dr. Ivan R. Misner, who is the Founder & CEO of BNI (www.bni.com), the world's largest referral organization, there are six requirements to be fulfilled, in order to feel successful in wealth creation. They are:

Financial Freedom:
It isn't possible to enjoy life if you are constantly worried or concerned about whether the bills can be paid or about the cost of Christmas presents.

Love and Loving Relationships:
Loneliness, which is not the same as being alone, can be the most terrible disease, and all the money on earth will not compensate for the privilege of having at least one long-term, mature, and loving relationship with another human being. You need friends and a lover, and the companionship that they provide.

Freedom of Mind:
Be free from anger, fear, and guilt. You cannot be successful until you take these out of your life.

Health:
You can't get much satisfaction from life if you are in poor health or don't have sufficient energy during the day.

Worthy Ideals:
Why are you here? Has your life any purpose? What contribution are you making to the human race? The quest for purpose and meaning to life is arguably the greatest single drive of any person.

Personal Satisfaction:
The feeling of personal fulfillment, the knowledge that you either have achieved "something" or at least are definitely on the way to achieving it is a personal symbol of success.

Every one of these six requirements are critical for a person to be satisfied with their success. Anyone who do not fulfill any one of the requirement will not feel total satisfaction even if they have achieved more than they have planned for on the remaining five requirements.

How will you feel if you have achieved all the financial freedom in the world but do not have a good health to enjoy the freedom?

Concept of wealth creation – Be Do Have

An interesting explaination by Kim Kiyosaki, from the book, Rich Women, on the concept of creating wealth.

Be – Do -- Have

Be is your beingness; who you are.
Do is the doingness; what you do.
Have is your havingness; what you have.

Example of the concept is, if you want to have a family then who you have to be is a husband and a father. What you have to do is to find a girlfriend, get married and finally to have children of your own.

Like what Kim said, the key is that your focus from the start is not on all the things you have to do, your focus is on what you want to have – ‘ I want to have a family.’ All you have to focus is what you want to have because what you want to have is much stronger motivator than what you have to do.

Concentrate on what you want to have and what you have to do will happen. Who you are and what you have gotten you what you have today. If you want to change what you have, then you have to change who you are and what you do. If you don’t then you’ll remain with what you have.

It’s my goal or what I want to have that determines who I become and what I do.

Wealth creation is about choices you make

Recently in my company, we encountered many incidents of people violating operation protocol and the quality of the products were being affected. Because of the poor quality, the management enforced all operators to follow strictly on the protocol, or they may faced losing their job if they caused another quality issue. Unfortunately, another quality issue occurred in few days time and this time the operator lose his job. During a debrief to the engineers and managers, the head of the department raised his voice to his people on the most recent case due to the questioning from his people on the releasing of the operator.

This is what he said:

"Anyone of you think that he cannot agree on the dismisses of the operator and feel that he cannot work in this environment, he is free to walk out from his job. If he can not take the requirement of releasing his people, he can always go and sell burgers. I do not enjoy releasing this person, but I do not have a choice because this is my job. Anyone of you thinking that I actually enjoy terminating people from this department! he must be crazy."

The point I want to make here is that, many of us choose the career after we get out from school, and then we try to make our career our passion. In the example above, the department head is in his 40's. At the position he is holding in the company, with the salary he is drawing, he know that he is not going to get another job that pay him the same money. It is too late for him to think of a career switch, he is stuck in his current job regardless if he love his work, regardless if he has passion for it. Many of us fall into the same catergory, where we find ourselves too comfortable to a certain situation. By the time, they realized that they lost passion on their job, it is too late to make a switch.

Many of us, feel comfortable even we do not love what we are doing because of the good money the job paid us. We forced ourselves daily to do the job we have lost passion of because we think the money is good. Over the years of staying with the job, we created a certain high living for ourselves and our family. We will not wanted to lose our position even though our passion for our job is getting lesser by the day. Eventually passion changed to hatred but we still refused to make the switch. We feel demoralized and fastrated, yet we refuse to change. Years passed, we get promotion and more pay, our life style get better and more difficult to change. At the end, we will just have to dig our own grave for our passion and dream we have plan to pursuit years back.

It is important that in the process of creating and discovering our wealth, we also need to pursuit the dream and passion we love to have. It is all about balancing. It is all about choices. It is critical that we must first look for our passion, and then make the passion into our career. The whole point of wealth creation and discovering is to do what you love and love what you do.

It is purposeless if you are unhappy with what you are doing even you can make all the money in the world. If you do that, it is just the beginning of creating your own disaster.

Creating wealth is all about choices you make. The right choice will allow you not to sell burger and be unhappy, but to buy McDonald the business and yet be happy. Which choice you make?

Success is not an entitlement

This morning, I read an article from the AdvantEdge Newsletter of Nightingle. This article is written by Dr. Ivan R. Misner, who is the Founder & CEO of BNI (www.bni.com), the world's largest referral organization. I will like to share with you.

Everyone wants some degree of success. Each person might want it in different forms, but I've never met anyone who didn't want to be successful in or at something important in their lives. This is good, because everyone is entitled to pursue success; but success itself is not an entitlement.

Success is largely determined by our hard work and our choices. Many people work hard but make bad choices, and it is amazing how many of them think they deserve to be more successful simply because they feel that they've worked so hard. Working hard is only the first part of success. Making good choices is the second part, and it truly takes both to achieve success at whatever you do……….

…….I've had the opportunity during my career to work with thousands of people who have experienced varying degrees of success in their lives. One of the recurring themes I see with these people is that they plan their work and work their plan. That is, they think through their choices, make the best ones they can with the information they have, and then work hard to carry those choices out.

As the CEO of an international company, I know that the choices I make are extremely important to the business. They can impact hundreds of employees, franchise owners, and associates as well as tens of thousands of clients around the world. Years ago, I was talking to a friend about some tough decisions I had to make and my concerns about them. He gave me some great advice: "Not every decision you make has to be a good one. Just make sure that you make more good ones than bad ones, and when you make a bad one, minimize the impact by fixing it quick." It was advice that squarely hit the point about working hard and making good choices. Not every choice you make has to be on the mark. However, enough of them do in order for you to get the kind of results you want. Some of my greatest lessons in business have come from my losses, not my successes. Generally, neither had much to do with luck but rather with the choices I made or the commitment I gave to the project.

Not long ago I was talking to someone I've known for years about the growth of my business and some other personal goals I've recently met. He said, "Man, you're lucky. It must be nice."

"Yeah, I'm 'lucky,' " I responded. "Let me tell you the secret to my 'luck.' First, I went to college for 10 years. During that time, I started my own business and worked really long hours for two decades. Along the way, I mortgaged my house a couple of times for the business, and I also wrote five books. You can have my kind of 'luck' too. All you need to do is apply this kind of effort to whatever you do and you can be just as 'lucky.'"

He laughed and said, "Okay, okay, I get it!" Did he really get it? If being successful was easy, everyone would have the success he or she thinks he or she deserves.

For most of those two decades I mentioned above, I didn't feel very lucky or incredibly successful. It took time, effort, hard work, and fairly decent choices before I felt any modicum of success. The problem is that many people want to go from point A to point Z and bypass all the challenges in between. They work hard; therefore, they "deserve" the success they want.

Yes, we all have the right to pursue success, but that's it. Success is most often earned, not handed over because you are entitled to it. I was in my 30s before I really, truly understood, and internalized that notion…….

Success is not an entitlement. It is not a "right" or a "claim" that we should simply get. Success is earned.

Different skill and knowledge for different wealth creation

Not too long ago, there was this professor who hired a boot to bring him down stream to another town. As he was sitting on the boat, enjoying the beautiful scenery along the river as the boatman paddled the boat down stream. They passed some huge rocks protruding out the water.

To start a conversation with the boatman, the professor asked, “ Boatman, boatman, do you know anything about mineralogy?”
The boatman answered, “ No, what is that?”
The professor answered,” I am so sorry, one quarter of your life are wasted.”
The boatman was unhappy and felt sad.

As the boat flow passed some floating leaves and plants, the professor asked, “Boatman, boatman, do you know any thing about botany?”
The boatman replied, “No, what is that?”
The professor said, “ Oh! I am sorry, you just lost half of your life!”
The boatman felt so sad.

As the boat floated through ranges of mountains, the professor asked, “Boatman, boatman, do you know anything about geography?”
The boatman replied, “No.”
The professor said,” I am very sorry, you just missed out three quarters of your life!”
The boatman felt terribly sad.

As the mountain closed up, the river narrowed, and water became rapid. The boatman started having problem of controlling the boat as the water got faster and faster. Then, the boat suddenly hit a huge rock and started to fall apart.
The boatman then asked,” Professor, professor, do you know how to swim?”
The professor replied frightfully, “No!”
The boatman then say, “I am sorry, 100% of your life is wasted!”

This is a short story told by Adam Khoo, the motivational guru whom I attended an introduction to his program, SuperKids Camp. The whole point of the story is that a person who has good knowledge and skill in one area of his expertise must not be satisfied and contented to what he already know. There is always some situations where your knowledge and expertise cannot be applied and be useless. In those situations, another person who thought to be weak in certain skill and knowledge than you, will be excel in that situation which fit nicely into his skill set.

We must not be contented on what we know, as continue learning is a process and a pre-requisite for anyone who wants to be successful. Creating and discovering wealth is no different. We will need to be constantly upgrading ourselves in all areas leading us nearer to our goal. Every person we meet in the journey have a certain skill set which we can learnt and be useful in situation down the journey of discovering our wealth.

Theory of constraints and wealth creation

Years ago, I have read this book, The Goal: theory of constraints by Eliyahu Goldratt. At that time, I was at a younger age that I have just started my career in engineering practice. My focus or shall I said that my world at that time was all about climbing the corporate ladder. I was a junior engineer then, with a lot of energy and ambitious to become a highflying corporate manager. I am in the area of manufacturing with group of operators reporting to you. I still remember that I was assigned to production control section, where my daily responsibility was to ensure smooth sailing of material flowing thought the different operation to meet the commitment of delivery to the customer.

Because of the complexity of the manufacturing operation in the company I worked, balancing material flow within operations became critical when certain operation was facing some difficulty of meeting the required output. That is when I was introduced to this book, The Goal: theory of constraints, by one of my friends. Because I have a mindset of an engineer and an employee, I can only relate the concept of the theory of constraints to my work as a manufacturing engineer.

Presently, years after I last read the book, I realized another meaning of theory of constraints after relating to Brian Tracy Audio CD, The Ultimate Goal Program:

Between you and anything you want to accomplish, there is a limiting constraint that determines the speed to where you want to go. Our objective is to identify this key constraint and focus on removing and eliminating this key constraint. If we based on 80/20 rules: 80% of your limiting constraint is within yourself, only 20% is outside. You are the major limitation, the major roadblock from preventing you from reaching your goal. To remove this limiting constraint, we must look for what is right rather than who is right. Many times, when we hit a roadblock, we tend to blame on someone else. Pointing fingers to another person for your temporary failure or resistance. If we can just ask what is it in you that hold you back? If we can identify the key constraint in our own personality, habit, skill, education that hold us back.

It is so true, the limiting constraint within yourself is the most important factor you need to overcome to achieve whatever thing you need to accomplish in life. The primary obstacle of this obstacle inside you is our mental.