Approaching my fortieth birthday, and having never had a 
job - at least, not a nine to five - I thought it would be 
interesting to take a look at some of the ways in which so 
many people are kept "inside the box". 

Schools and the home is where it all starts. Do you 
remember the early days of your childhood, when you were 
happy to take on anything, when you loved life just for the 
moment and weren't afraid of bills, tax men, mortgages and 
so on? 

At five or six years old, we were all happy to volunteer 
answers, even if we didn't know them! We were happy to get 
on a bike, give it a go, fall over, then get back on again. 
Yet by the time most people are 15 - 20 years old, 
enthusiasm has waned, fears have set in, risks are harder 
to take. 

I want to look at why this is, so that we can 
all review where we are, what we are doing, and how to make 
changes that we want to happen. 

Let's look at some of the ways we are subtly taught to be 
poor. 

How many of you are familiar with any of the following 
terms: 

"Money doesn't grow on trees!" 

"We can't afford it" 

"Money doesn't buy you happiness."

"You have to work hard to be rich" 

"They don't deserve that". 

Any of those strike a chord with fellow readers? You may 
well have made your own way in the world, and there is a 
chance you may have had enlightened teachers or parents who 
did not say any of the above, but my guess is that the vast 
majority of us nod our heads when we hear these phrases, 
and say "yes, I remember Mom or Dad, or Uncle Joe saying 
that to me". 

How about this one: 

"That's way too risky." 

This is usually a comment about investing of some kind, 
when the alternative is saving. The wealthy invest all the 
time and keep generating more. The poor and middle class 
save money and never have any spare. 

At school we're taught that the best thing to do is to 
learn all the nonsense they throw at us, so that we can go 
out there and get a good job. A safe job. A secure job. But 
in the world of electronic communication and the Internet, 
this has to be some of the worst advice. Why get a job, 
when companies come and go, people make fortunes and lose 
them and make them again, almost in the blink of an eye? 

There is certainly nothing safe about a normal job if all 
you have to fall back on is the state/government pension. 
Who knows what is going to happen to government coffers 
when the baby boomers all reach retirement age? If 
governments turn round and say "Err, sorry we can't afford 
it", what do those people do? They'll be wishing they had 
"taken risks" investing instead of backing the government 
donkey. 

"Money doesn't buy you happiness." 

That's another classic. Yes, of course, money doesn't buy 
happiness on its own, but as a friend of mine says, "Yeah, 
but I'd rather cry in the back of a Rolls Royce than the 
back of a mini!" 

Then there's all the guff about materialism and 
spiritualism being opposed, which is nonsense. Being 
wealthy does not make you a charlatan just as being poor 
does not make you spiritual. 

This one often comes down to a religious edict of some 
kind. Religion is the other great stifler of financial 
success (unless you happen to be part of the religion's 
administration, in which case it is just fine for you to 
accept as much money as possible!). Perhaps the best known
challenge to wealth from the Bible is :

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle 
than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven". 

No kidding! Gee, shucks I better stay poor then, otherwise 
we're doomed to a life of roasting on eternal fires. 

Yet I ask you this: who can give more to charities, local 
schools, any good cause? Is it the poor who are too 
terrified of making money, or the rich, who can donate in 
large amounts? Just look at what John Paul Getty jnr has 
done with a portion of his wealth. 

You see how serious that gets? How deeply entrenched are 
the mechanisms whereby we spurn or reject opportunities 
that could bring us untold riches? 

Then there is the classic: 

"The love of money is the root of all evil", which normally 
gets cut to "Money is the root of all evil". So, the mind 
is thinking, "Yuk, if I get rich, I'm going to be evil." 
Not only that, but if I make lots of money, I'll be one of 
the 

"Stinking Rich, the Filthy Rich" 

That money stuff sure is bad news. Makes me filthy, 
stinking, dirty. Don't want that. 

So people stay poor. Supposedly safe inside the cosy 
hologram that is their day to day job, until the economy 
collapses, or they get made redundant, or they die. 

What about: 

"Never a borrower or a lender be!". Shucks, that cuts out 
buying a house, or an apartment, or even a hotel, or how 
about a chain of hotels - if you're thinking of taking out 
a dreaded mortgage! Forget the leverage such an investment 
tactic gives you. No, no, stay inside, watch some "reality 
television" and don't take any risks!! 

OK, that's enough ranting from me. But I hope you see where 
I'm coming from. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to 
figure out why all these blocks have been put in place. 
Rulers do not really want all their subjects to become 
financially independent. When that happens, there is a 
potential threat to the ruler (whether that is a king, a 
pope, a priest, a government or a military junta). 

Governments worldwide cottoned on to what religions had 
been doing for centuries: teach the people to be poor, and 
give the rulers all their wealth! Simple, but very 
effective. 

Now of course, information can travel around the world at 
the press of a button, so things are opening up for 
everybody. People are challenging preconceptions they have 
long held to be "truths". This is great, because the big 
myth spouted by government and the media is that there is a 
finite amount of wealth, that we cannot all be rich at the 
same time (materially rich that it). This is just as stupid 
as saying the earth is flat. But then, remember what 
happened to Galileo when he suggested otherwise! 

Poverty consciousness is the phrase used by many 
wealth-gurus to encapsulate the state of mind people are 
educated into by parents, teachers and media. I would go 
further than that, for what happens is that people lose any 
sense of their own power, their innate value, their ability 
to achieve success overnight - and we all have these 
things. Poverty consciousness is actually denial of self. 
It is "unreality dependence", a state where the individual 
has accepted the mainstream views and will fight to support 
them even to his or her own expense. 

Changing our own reality is the key to changing our wealth, 
whether material, spiritual or physical. 

It is as easy as waking up in the morning and saying "I am 
rich". 

IT is a step in the right direction with the possibility of spreading a new way of thinking at exponential speeds. 

Desespoir