What is wealth?
This post is inspired by a book written by my business mentor, Roger James Hamilton
What is Flow?
The reknowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines ‘flow’ as the peculiar feeling of complete involvement in what you’re doing – which comes when you’re paying attention to a goal and reading the feedback that you’re getting from the goal.
Roger Hamilton argues that following your flow is the critical first step that every entrepreneur must take if they’re to achieve, and perhaps more importantly, enjoy sustained success and fulfilment.
In Roger’s book, he describes how flow creates attraction, which creates wealth.
What is wealth?
Wealth is often casually interchanged with being rich. Being rich, is a measure of the amount of money you have, whereas wealth, is not about how much money you have. As Roger explains...
“Wealth is not how much money you have. Wealth is what you’re left with when you lose all your money”
Without wealth any money you acquire will be temporary. Why? Let’s look to another concept Roger introduces in the book, namely “The Wealth Paradox” which states: the more money you have, the more opportunities you have to lose it.
You’ve probably experienced the frustration of approaching your bank or financier, in the hope of securing a much-needed advance or loan, only to be turned down. Yet in those moments where you’re literally swimming in the cheddah, it seems like everybody and their uncle wants to give you money you don’t need. If what I’ve just described sounds at all familiar to you – you’ve experienced the wealth paradox first hand.
Roger argues that the wealth paradox exists to seperate the temporary nature of money from the permanent nature of wealth. Whatever money you have will inevitably fall (or rise) to your level of wealth. Think of money in terms of volume and wealth in terms of capacity.
Wealth builders are in flow – the distinction between ‘money makers’ and ‘wealth builders’ is akin to the distinction between a garden, whose nature is permanent and the transient, fleeting nature of butterflies that visit the garden.
Butterflies.
You want to catch butterflies, so you decide to build a net. The more butterflies you have, the more difficult they are to hold on to. When the butterflies disappear, you’re left with nothing.
Many entrepreneurs become experts at sales, marketing, management and customer service. Yet they still struggle to make money. They follow strategies they’ve learnt and then are baffled as to why they don’t attract the same opportunities, resources and luck as their role models.
They are trying to make money without first building wealth. They are trying to chase butterflies with a net.
The Garden.
Successful wealth creators don’t worry about building a net. They grow a garden. As their garden grows, the butterflies come. They don’t fear the butterflies leaving, as more will inevitably come.
Successful wealth creators focus on building their wealth foundation rather than on making money. They build their reputation, a powerful network, a knowledge base, a resource base and a track record.
Every day, they wake up to their garden, not to an empty net. By staying in flow, and realising that flow attracts all the people, resources and opportunities they need in the same way that a leaf thrown in a river will naturally follow the river’s current.
Flow state is achieved by playing the entrepreneurial game which comes naturally to you. The more you play your game, the more you’ll attract others who want to play with you.
