The fear of being poor has a grip on a lot of people, and really holds them back. If you can make peace with fear, then holding an abundance mindset is easy, and the road to riches becomes a whole lot easier.
Can you imagine anything worse than ice-fishing?
What a miserable experience it must be. Out in the freezing cold, standing on a big block of ice, nothing to look at but your line disappearing down a little hole…
… and then just waiting around for hours and hours, like a penguin at a bus-stop.
It would drive me mental.
I was on a ferry from the Greek mainland out to one of the islands, and I ended a chatting to a Norwegian fellow. He said that he loved ice-fishing – it was one of his favourite things to do.
“But don’t you get cold?”
“Sure, but it’s not so bad.”
“How do you handle it?”
“When I was young, maybe 4 or 5, my father took me ice-fishing. It was freezing. I started to cry but my father said, ‘look, you’re here now. You can either spend the whole day crying about it, or you can learn to love the cold. You’ve got a choice. You can either choose to be miserable, or chose to love the cold.’ And so that’s what we did. We just learned to love the cold.”
I said if he was in Australia someone would have reported his dad to DOCS, but the Europeans have a different way of doing things.
We are biologically hard-wired to fear and hate certain things – the cold, loud noises, spiders, Miley Cyrus concerts. It’s always done a good job of keeping the human animal alive.
But we also have a conscious mind that can over-ride the animal side of our selves. We stand at the edge of the water, and we know it’s going to be cold, but we push ourselves to dive in anyway.
And so there’s a level at which we can separate sensation from the stories we tell about sensation. We can separate the feeling of being cold from the suffering of being cold.
In time, we can even learn to love the sensation – just the way I learned to love vegetables when I grew up / turned 40.
It seems to me that being poor (the stress of not having enough to look after ourselves and our loved ones) is almost an instinctive fear. Or maybe we’ve been conditioned to fear it. Either way it sits pretty deep.
And we let the fear of it run the show a lot of times. Often in ways we’re not fully conscious of.
I like the story I heard about two types of running. Back in ancient times there was a woman who hired a very attractive maid-servant. She saw the instant attraction her husband felt towards the girl, and instantly realised her mistake. For 6 years she made sure that she never left the two of them alone.
Then one day, she and her husband went to the public baths. She realised that she had forgotten her comb and absent-mindedly sent her husband home to get it. Her husband, seeing the opportunity, ran gleefully through the streets.
Soon though, she realised what she had done, and went running home as well, to keep the spark from the hay pile, fear and anxiety written all over her face.
There are two types of running, though both are headed for the same destination.
The pursuit of wealth is like this. There are two ways of running. We can either pursue our fortune joyously – focus on the freedom and the lifestyle it will buy us, and how much fun it is to manage a truly cranking portfolio.
Or we can try and build a defensive wall of money to keep the suffering of poverty out.
To the outside observer they might look exactly the same, but there’s a world of difference between them.
At a practical level, we make better decisions when we’re relaxed. If we’re tense with fear, we’ll grasp and rush. That might mean jumping at the first property that you find in your budget, or selling and taking profits too early.
If your more cosmically minded, if we’re running joyously, we’re focused on abundance and opportunity and that’s what we’ll attract. If we’re acting out of fear, we’re focussed on lack and loss, and that’s what we’ll end up calling in. I’ve seen it play out this way over and over again.
And ultimately it’s a question of who you want to be. Do you want to live life on the defensive, or do you want to be open to everything life has to offer? Do you want to keep yourself partially hidden, or live in the glorious YES?
It’s like Nietzsche says, “to say no to any part of life, is to say no to all of life.” We can’t pick or choose what experiences we’re open to… We’re either open or we’re not. We’re either living in the abundance, or we’re not.
It’s a constant discipline to check in and make sure we’re running the race we want to run.
But if we can learn to love the pangs of poverty, the way our Norwegian friend learned to love the cold, then we’ll have nothing to fear.
When was the last time you missed a meal? I haven’t missed a meal (unless I was too busy having fun) in 20 years, but still I think I should eat a little bit extra at every meal, just in case the next meal doesn’t come. Totally irrational.
Make peace with hunger, with sleeping rough, with relying on the kindness of strangers, and you will neutralise the fears of poverty. From there, the road to wealth is easy.
It might sound difficult, but if a 4 year old boy can learn to love the ridiculous cold, I’m sure you can do it too.
Dom says
Wisdom!
ian says
So , If i come from nothing and i go back to nothing . Basicaly i,ve lost nothing lol.
But i have gained the experience good or bad , just learn from the bad .
Tony says
Great article! Fear keeps us from attaining our goals.
Note spelling correction: If your more cosmically minded…. should be: If you’re more cosmically minded
Just an fyi 🙂
Adam says
Technically, since all the words in the sentence are spelled correctly, the your – you’re correction is one of grammar and not spelling. 🙂
Johno says
No, it’s a spelling mistake because the intention was clearly “you’re” and he misspelt it as “your”. It wouldn’t make any grammatical sense as your.
If you can get past Giann’s bad grammar and bad spelling he has a lot of gold to share.
Adam says
Exactly the point. “Your” makes no grammatical sense yet it is a correctly spelled word. Ergo, it is a grammatical error not a spelling error.
But I was just nit picking for the fun of it. 🙂
And I totally agree, I love reading Giann’s posts and he does have a lot of good stuff to share.
Richard says
I wanna know if the wife caught up with her husband in time!!
Con K says
Another awesome post, Jon.
Love, abundance, expectancy and a happy “can do” attitude sprinkled with a bit of fun and adventure sure beats the hell out of fear and scarcity …. every time !!
Jacques Lucas says
Great post Jon,
So many times the fear of losing keeps us from truly winning.
Yve says
Great positive article. are you able to give advice if you are approaching retirement age, how can you possibly start a portfolio of property when you don’t have a guaranteed wage coming in? and currently own half a house? Just a thought?
anthony says
great article, thankyou for sharing this concept
Bob Chapman says
Thanks for the great article. You made so clear the distinction between running for joy and running in fear
Michelle says
Yes, Richard! I wanna know if the wife caught up with the husband in time too.
Michelle says
PS. Cosmically minded test – how many of these cosmically minded men would like to marry me, and we’ll see just how cosmically minded they are. 🙂
M.Nasratullah Meah says
Jon, thanks for sharing your enlightening thoughts. Despite becoming a self made millionaire, I am yet to come out of the dreadful fear of loosing out. If I had known your Mantra 10 years ago, perhaps I would be more successful and happier. Please keep encouraging people with your knowledge of life.
M.N.Meah
EK says
Jon,
Thank you for this insightful post. Yes we have two choices in life fear or love/joy. Always choose love/joy. Media, religions, politicans etc have been doing a pretty good job to create fear and keep us in fear to control us. Please turn off your TV!!
If anybody has about 30 minutes of free time, please watch Jim Carrey’s speech. I have great respect for him and his wisdom. Link is:
Thanks
EK
Scott says
Life has many crossroads
Wealth is just a path
How you take that path is up to you
If you take that path is up to you
As I said there are many paths through life
With many outcomes and taken for different reasons
It’s how I get there that concerns me
It’s what it will do to me that concerns me
Standing at a crossroad
I take the time to observe my present
You say buy my logic tells me wait
Look before you leap
World events
Local events
you tell me it’s not a gamble with
My livelihood
And Lady Luck
slept in the cold more times than i can remember
So the cold is an old companion
Small steps to build conference
First Rule being everybody is a potential thief
Or a potential sucker
I don’t intend to be ether
I like who I am
How I think
I have one small investment that is working ok
And I have regained balance again
It’s ok to have the right attitude
So long as it is tempered with wisdom
Richard says
I’ll marry you Michelle….
I asked my wife, she said it was ok and that she was just going out for a run…