What does tending your garden and becoming rich have to do with each other? Would you believe me if I said everything? Literally everything!
Imagine a beautiful garden. Lush green grass. Beautiful flowers in all colors of the rainbow. Streams and ponds everywhere. Trees so full of fruit that they bow under their own weight. Life everywhere in abundance. The original garden of Eden.
Now there is one word that I will associate with this garden. It is a word that some people embrace and other people run away from like they have seen a ghost.
What does it take for a garden like this to exist? In nature it takes the perfect balance of elements. Light, water, temperature, and good soil. For us to create something like this we have to tend to it. We have to give it what it needs and we have to love it dearly.
The relationship between you and this garden is the same relationship a father or mother has towards their children. It is a loving relationship. The success of this garden depends on the amount of love and care you pour into it. Not only do you have to love and care for it, you have to learn how to love and care for it appropriately. If you do these things your garden will bloom like none other. You will be the envy of everyone around you. People will come to you for advice on how to make such a beautiful and productive garden.
Have you imagined all this in your head? Do you see the connection to being rich? Do you know what one word describes all this and makes it happen?
The one word I am getting at is responsibility?
Are you ready to run? Does responsibility scare you? It scared me for a long time until I understood how amazing it is.
Whatever you are responsible for becomes an extension of you. A parent often lives vicariously through their child because they are responsible for them and the child’s life is an extension of the parent’s life. What the child says and does reflects back on the parents. The child’s life is a partial representation of who the parent is.
This point is so important I want you to reread the previous paragraph. Go ahead and do it now. Did you reread it? Good. So what does this all have to do with becoming rich and tending your garden?
Each dollar that comes into your possession is like a child. It is a seed. You need to take responsibility for it. You need to plant it, water it, give it sunlight, prune it when it needs to be pruned, pick the fruit when it is ripe. As your child you need to encourage it and guide it down the appropriate path.
Each dollar is as extension of you. There is no getting around it. You need to know where your money is coming from, where it going, and why you are directing it to go where you are putting it. The worst thing you can do is spend money blindly.
One key to becoming successful with money is to know exactly what you want out of life. If you can imagine the garden you want to make, if you can say this will be my perfect little Eden, then you are well on your way to creating it.
All success books have this idea in them. What you think is what you get. When Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich in the 1930s everyone really wanted to know how to become rich. The U.S. went from the success of the Roaring Twenties into the deep Depression of Thirties. On top of that we then were forced into World War II. It was certainly an era where not much was succeeding on the large scale of things, but I am sure people had their small personal successes. It is no wonder that Tom Brokaw coined the term, The Greatest Generation, when he stated in his book of the same name, “it is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.” The post war economic boom made us the most prosperous nation in the world. Certainly sounds like success to me, and it largely or almost entirely had to do with how people in that day and age thought about life.
We have lived with prosperity for so long that we as a whole have become very entitled creatures and responsibility is something very few people want to take on.
Your own personal Eden is truly waiting there for you to make it. The only way you will make it is by becoming responsible for your life, for your money, and what direction you take with it.
You can hear “a dollar saved is a dollar earned” all day long, but what will make you take action? I think a good kick in the rear is often the answer, but unfortunately we need it every day. We make enough effort to make it into work, and then let our managers kick us into action. For our service we collect a check, and then go home, and spend it making ourselves as comfy as we possibly can. I will let you guess what percentage of society this represents, but you have to decide if you fit into that category. I imagine most people don’t want to be in that category but they unfortunately are.
What moves us to action is either inspiration or desperation.
I would hope that you are inspired by my writing so you never end up in that desperate place. A place where you are swimming in debt. Creditors are calling you. You are living paycheck to paycheck. After infusing yourself with caffeine you drag yourself to work. Even if you like your work you are scared that they will fire you. Or maybe worse yet, they walk all over you because they can.
Who wants any of that? No amount of money is worth all that, especially if you just spend the extra money on comforting yourself when you get home because you had a hard day at work mostly caused by other angry and frustrated coworkers who are just as scared as you to run out of money.
The time is now to be inspired. To say to yourself that you can create the life you want, and that it is largely created by changing your thinking. The tactics and strategies to get there are not anywhere near as important as changing your thinking. Once you change your thinking and begin thinking about how you can create your a fruitful garden the answers will just come to you like freshly fallen rain.