Don't work. Create!

Can you manually calculate (i.e. without using a calculator) the following equation in less than 5 minutes?

1,455 + (400 X 256) - 455 + (4532 X 93842) - 500 + 4532 - (20 X 20 X 256) - 500 - 4,000 - 532 - (93842 X 4532) + 5 = ?

Okay, maybe you've had a tough day so you might ask, "Peter, why do I have to do this, it looks like a lot of work!"

But suppose you HAD to calculate the above equation in order to become successful or rich or happy in life?

After all, winning in life requires strategy and strategy requires the exercise of much intelligence. This is so because human beings are not born with instincts; we rarely know what is the right thing to do, unless we take the time to calculate and make decisions based on careful calculations.

The good news is that human beings don't have to know a lot in order to be successful or happy or rich. Indeed, many things or events in life CANCEL ONE ANOTHER. This is sometimes referred to as the Law of Duality: where there's black, there's white. Where things can go up, they can also go down. And so on and so forth.

So the way to calculate the above equation is to step back and see the variables that cancel one another out. The answer is, of course, 5.

1,455 + (400 X 256) - 455 + (4532 X 93842) - 500 + 4532 - (20 X 20 X 256) - 500 - 4,000 - 532 - (93842 X 4532) + 5 = ?

In other words, when you step back and look at the BIG PICTURE, you can save yourself a lot of work.

Often, hard work is necessary in order to become successful at anything. But it is equally true that a lot of hard work is unnecessary, IF (and this is a big IF) you are capable of stepping back and looking at the big picture in order to discern patterns that cancel one another out.

Here's a concrete example: if you make a mistake, you will learn. The more painful the mistake, the more memorable the lesson learned.

But here's the great news: you can actually step back and look at all the human beings who are struggling for success, and then LEARN from their mistakes. That way, you gain wisdom WITHOUT having to pay for the mistake!

This is as good as robbing a bank, except that you won't get arrested (or shot by security guards).

So how can you apply the above to your own life?

First, realize that your life is made up of endless cycles. That is, every day, you do things in a routine kind of way. It often would not occur to you that those routines are not helping you to reach your goals, yet you do them anyways. This is how society has conditioned you to behave.

In fact, these are more than routines. They are what I call SERCs or Self-Enforcing Reality Cycles.

That is, the more you do something, the more it seems to become real so that you cannot imagine life without it. It becomes "real" in the sense that it becomes neurologically integrated into how you think, perceive, feel and act.

It's like an addiction. The programming is more powerful than your willpower, so your addiction keeps growing and growing while your will gets weaker and weaker.

Smoking is one such addiction. Eating unhealthy foods is another.

But perhaps the most invisible and insidious addiction of all is --- are you ready? -- work.

By "work," I mean the "execution of a prescribed routine." In that sense, I distinguish "working" from "creating."

People are addicted to work, yet they don't realize that many things cancel each other out. For instance, a person works to make money, then spends that money here and there, and so is forced to come back to work the following day. Meanwhile, their lives are going nowhere. That is, there's no personal growth and no moving toward the realization of a dream.

It's like the long equation above. People tend to get into the "work" and do the mental efforts WITHOUT stepping back to see the self-canceling patterns, and then only focus on the critical work.

For example, if you want financial freedom, then create a product, market it, build a business around it, and sell like hell! Just like Michael Dell did. Or Bill Gates. Or Jeff Bezos. Or Steve and Chad, the Youtube founders.

Why would you read the classifieds, apply for a job, get the job, get a mortgage, get into debt (car, house, etc.) -- then one day realize it's the wrong path?

It's because that's how society and the educational system "trains" and "conditions" people to think. No university graduate, upon graduating, ever thinks about "creating a product"! Yet, it would be a mistake not to do so, especially now that the Internet enables anyone to sell and ship a product to practically anywhere else on planet Earth!

Creating a product is like focusing on the number 5 in the above equation. However, by building a business around that product, you're multiplying that "5" by 10, 20, or even 50. That, my friends, is how a person becomes rich! NOT by calculating the little variables that society or employers throw at you.

A lot of very smart people perform complex intellectual calculations in order to enrich their employers and shareholders. My question is, "Why?!" Why do people work so hard at enriching others? Why not use your brainpower to create a product and then market it yourself in order to build YOUR fortune?

This is what I realized in June 2000. I brought in over $100,000 for an employer, from zero. That was done in about 4 months. I had NO additional resources. So I thought, "Hmm, I'd be a sucker if I stayed in this job!"

It's not that I was exploited. Everybody was VERY nice to me. But I felt I could do MORE on my own.

To me, it's about self-respect. If you respect yourself, then work for yourself. Enrich yourself first.

But to do that, you have to step back and see the big picture. And above all, you must admit to yourself that it's possible that you're addicted to work.

The important shift is to move from being a "worker" to being a "creator." Only then will you become really successful and rich.