Why the Rich get Richer

It is an oft talked about subject, and one has heard it a million times.

‘Money attracts more money.’

A saying that is pretty much believed by most people. But is it true?
While one may argue against it or for, the truth still is that a Warren Buffet or Bill Gates were not born rich. That argument should end there. But it does not.

How often have we seen the people who do well, do even better, the rich seem to get richer much quicker, the happiest of folk seem to be blessed as nothing ever seems to go wrong in their perfect lives and the beautiful or popular lot seem to continue to reign almost indefinitely. And no matter what you try you just cannot seem to catch up. You think and know you are working just as hard if not more, and yet nothing seems to improve.

That poor bloke who has lost a job has a life that seems to go from bad to worse, and tragedies seems to hit him at every turn, the poor stay poor.
Is it luck? Is it just destiny that seems to drive our lives? Is there a way out? Or are we destined to live out the fate we started with? How do you leave one fold of life and jump on to the bandwagon of the folk with better lives and pretty wives?

In 1957, at the John Hopkins, noted biologist and psycho-biologist, Curt Richter conducted an interesting spinoff to the Porsolt test. He took a few wild Norway rats and immersed them into a tall jar of water with the height of the jars walls such that the rats could not escape. Their only choice was to swim or drown. He noticed that a few of these rats drowned in a few minutes and some swam for close to 60 hours.
On these rats that drowned quickly, he conducted autopsies, checked the condition of their hearts and concluded that they had died submissive deaths. Not seeing an escape, they simply gave up.
Curt then proceeded to try the same experiment, but with a twist. This time he dropped the rats into the water jars and but just for a few minutes. He would then then pluck them out and ‘save’ them. After a while he would dip the rats into water again, then after a few more minutes he would rescue them again. After repeating this a few times, he put the rats in the jars and did not try to rescue the rats. He noted that all the rats then paddled for between two and three days in hope of escape before drowning and dying of exhaustion.

Running the risk of turning a psychoanalyst this little experiment does make one thing clear. Consciously or not, our minds are conditioned based on past events. We have a mind map that follows the most obvious pattern. And while we pride ourselves with our lives being the sea of choice that it is, we are often unknowingly prisoners to ourselves. Our sub conscious choices lead our lives.

We all subconsciously decide how to go about a certain task based on previous mental baggage, be the result good or bad.
Knowing this fact is key to jumping ship to the ‘happy lives and pretty wives’ bandwagon. It is a very important step to taking what little control you have over your life.

The second experiment rats believed there was possibility for survival. They endured. After surviving multiple times they believed they had a chance. And so they paddled on till it was physically possible. Active thoughts of giving up were easily surpassed by the subconscious desire and drive to live.

The rich get richer.
People who have certain experiences get conditioned to it. Their self confidence (good or bad) grows based on how results have taken place in the past. And they push toward similar experiences.

Like the rich getting richer as they have had similar earlier experiences, the contrary is just as true too. We start to believe in our patterns, and the truth is our brain starts mapping patters even when sometimes there is nothing to be mapped. In a positive situation ofcourse it works wonders but more often than not we need to take a second look into it. Take a look at the figure. What do you think could be the next shape?

With just something repeating twice, it was enough for you to conclude what the third shape might be.

The idea is to make a conscious choice by cheating the unconscious.
The understanding is simple, a winner continues to win because he believes there is a strong possibility that he will. There was a pattern which made his mind believe it. The rich get used to making more money, trusting themselves and their choices a little more, their confidence and commitment growing and after a while even if they make mistakes they believe they can bounce back because they have before. The pattern is set. To summarize the phenomenon in a word (or two): ‘Donald Trump’.

It is about building confidence in a certain aspect of yourself and your life about the possibilities and not reading into shallow patterns that might really not be patterns at all. If you seem to be doing bad in an aspect of life, it is perhaps time to make your mind unlearn and cheat a little on it.

Of course confidence can often turn to overconfidence, but over a course of time, if there is the winning bent of mind in the subconscious, there is the ‘yes, there is a definite possibility’ bent of mind and the pursuit to beat the fallacy in false patterns. There is indeed a shot at redemption for each of us.

Our life is sea of choices and knowing that fact, it is up to us to make them, to meet us half way toward our goals in it.
With a little help from ourselves, the tide can change in our favors. All we have to do is to aid it and form that positive habit of thought.

Write that Obituary

Face it. Until they figure out a way to immortalize us physically and mentally, you are going to die. Today, Cryonics has only developed so much as to preserve our body after death for a hopeful future of uncertainty. But having said that, for all practical purposes today- you will die. And that day really is not as far off as you would like to believe it is. I have enough friends today who wish they die young, others who wish they die before they turn into a burden to people around, and some, apparently very few, like me, who still wish they never do.

Fact. All of us are going to die. And very few of us prepared for it.

How do we deal with it?

Be prepared.

Bite the bullet. Write your obituary today. Whether you agree with it or not, it will give you an insight to where you have led your life so far, and better still, it will give you a direction for future actions and goals, making it all just a little bit clearer, and challenging.
Some of us were asked to write our obituaries when we were young and in school. We were then full of hope, all of us wrote down that we would be the president of the country, would win multiple Oscars, be compared to a Mother Teresa, and perhaps invent time travel or be the first person to land on Mars.

Today, revisit your thoughts with a renewed clarity of mind.

Put down the values you want to stand for and accomplishments that you wish to achieve. Try not to be held back by today’s ground realities of where you are and what you do. Sounds easy but even five points with corroborative actions will be difficult to come by. Put those five points down and reflect where you come from and where you wish to go to. You might even be on a completely perpendicular track at the moment.
Don’t think too much. Let those values just roll off the tip of the pen. We already know that if you do not believe in yourself and your actions, no one else is going to. Its that simple.

If penning down your obituary sounds morbid, then go ahead and write a brief biography page as someone would when they cover you for your fiftieth or seventy fifth birthdays. What would you as a third person journalist write about the real you for ‘Time’ or ‘People’ magazine on our fiftieth or seventy fifth birthday. Presently what are the chances they even will? Interesting thought? Most definitely.

Note that goals and values change with time, and this is something each of us knows as we develop over each year. Most of us are most certainly not going to get to Mars or become the next Prime Minister or President. But this should not stop you from come real close to what you wish to accomplish in your lifetime.

Take ten minutes off at the start of each year to rewrite that article or obituary. Take another ten minutes off each June to browse through that list again to refresh your mind. Keep the past articles to reflect. Realize the latest one to the best of your abilities.

This is pretty much all you need to be prepared for death.

If you die tomorrow, understanding and knowing that up until today, you have lived the best you could in line with your values, goals and ideals in life up to this point of your death will keep you happily prepared for it. A life lived, understood and fulfilled till it gave you company.

Take ten minutes. Write that obituary.

The voice of reason

Unlike the paradox of the uncommon nature of common sense, we all seem to do exceedingly well with regard to reason. We all manage to live our lives with a painstakingly great sense of reasoning, and logic.

We postpone certain ideas and jobs in favor of the ‘that makes more sense’ job in front of us. We decide to put on hold certain exciting plans in life because it just ‘isnt the right time now’, which is incidentally always between a year and five away no matter when we think of it. We make all the right decisions and live reasonable lives.

In short, our life mimics the life of mundane reason and maturity that increasingly improves with age. Also in short, to compensate for all of this lack of excitement, we live our lives through the eyes and lives of others – very much like the idea of when you wear an Armani suit or a Chanel dress, the essence of Armani or Chanel rubs off you and you feel good about yourselves.

Or when we go and watch movies to escape from where we are and for that few hours we become part of this other life – that of the main protagonist in the movies. For those few moments we run away from life in order to live it. The irony.

Ever wonder why ‘Friends’ is one of your favorite comedies of all time.

We align our minds with those persons we would have liked to live like, be it a Kurt Cobain or Bear Grylls or an Anthony Bourdain, Richard Branson, or that coolest guy or the hottest PYT today – basically anyone from leading DJs, travel/food show hosts to adventure daredevils, sports personalities, actors, politicians and other crazed celebrities who have dared to do and be more than what they were they could be.

The right and reasonable decisions help us lead exactly the lives that they must – right and reasonable. (The same thing everyone else is trying to do for some reason!)

Each of us are doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - better ones at that. We press the breaks constantly and wish the car would accelerate. All because the sticker on the break says ‘accelerator’. We don’t question the sticker because we have been told that the sticker is right. And so in our quest we do everything but question the sticker.

The only thing that really differentiates the people you want to be like from the people that you are or are slowly but surely turning into, is that they choose to disregard the voice of reason sometimes and you don’t.

They see the bright red ‘skulls and bones’ sign all over the ‘right and reasonable decisions’ and clearly read the word ‘Danger’, while you clearly see the same danger sign and treat it like we do most things we are afraid of (like old age, death), with denial.

'That happens to other people. It cant possible happen to me. Everyone else must have missed something, but im doing everything right! Its only a matter of time’.
We refuse to question the sticker.

Only it does happen. And before you know it, life is passing you by and you are in your mid 30s and 40s and still living your life through another’s – wondering ‘I’m doing everything by the book! Where did I go wrong?’

What does your voice of reason say today?

Time & Timing

--- Time ---

“I simply cant find the time!”
“I’m still young, I will have a lot of time to do that later.”
“I’m too old to try and do that now.”

Sound familiar?

Most of us identify with one or two these statements. We have all said it. We have all felt it. And what the heck, it’s so damn true! It even sounds right!
But it isn’t.
And the crazy fact is that you know it and will not acknowledge even if a gun is put to your head. It’s just convenient. To play the blame game with time is the easiest way out.

Time is not about preaching, but about self reflection.

“I gotta work out. I keep saying it all the time. I keep saying I gotta start working out. It's been about two months since I've worked out. And I just don't have the time. Which uh..is odd. Because I have the time to go out to dinner. And uh..and watch tv. And get a bone density test. And uh.. try to figure out what my phone number spells in words.” – Ellen DeGeneres.

If you are amused, or have smiled, you have an idea of where this coming from, and where it’s headed. Admission. That’s the first step right there.
Admit it! There is always time. You don’t need to make it, it’s already there.

It’s really not rocket science. And it’s actually as easily done as said. All you got to do is prioritize. And if that sounds too philosophical, here’s the deal:
‘That extra hour of mind numbing television?’ or ‘…those guitar classes you have always wanted to take up?’
‘An extra hour of sleep?’ or ‘…that art class you have wanted to take up?’
‘That extra hour of sleep?’ or ‘…an hour of working out in the morning?’
‘An extended lunch hour and a few extra coffee breaks followed by an extra hour of work’ or ‘Getting off work with the sun still out?’ (You can even perhaps fit in that workout hour in here if you can’t wake up in the morning.)

You don’t have to create time. You just have to use it as best you can. All that needs to be done is to make sure is that you use and chart out that fixed time in the most productive way possible.

--- Timing ---

“…I have commenced on the great mission with a great vision in a great season [spring season] to fight against the mighty Mt. Everest with the will-power of my mind and the clean energy of my heart.” – Min Bahadur Sherchan.

Min Bahadur was 76 years old when he said this. He was successful. He became the oldest man to have scaled the mountain in 2008 beating a 71 year old from a year earlier. He was 25 days shy of turning 77, and he is still going strong.

The only real response to this information is of course, “Damn! What a nut-job!” followed by a crazy look of awe and recognition towards what this man has accomplished. That really is some crazy shit right there.

So smell that fresh powder on the top of that summit. Almost anything you use at this point with respect to time and age to make an excuse will fail in relation. Not to mention what you read in the papers every other day about 90 year olds going back to school and taking driving lessons.

It’s never too late to start or do anything. If a seventy six year old can climb Mt. Everest, we have run out of excuses. We are not too old to learn to surf or take those music classes. We are not too old to ride a horse or to take up tennis lessons. We are not too old to go back to school or take driving lessons. We will simply never be too old to do anything ever again.

And this also extends to emotions too. It is never too old late to admit a mistake or to try to amend one. It is also never too late to say sorry or forgive. And it is never too late to mend relationships.

Physical or emotional, its never to late to accomplish what in your heart of hearts you know can be done, something that you know to be possible, no matter how much you wish it wasn’t. If it can be done, and you want it done, then it should be done, no matter how soon or late you realize it.

Know this:

There is always time. And it is never too late.

The Solution to happiness

Its Diwali. You are very young, you like those little red dots. They burst when thrown on a wall, they burst when you use them in toy guns, they burst when rubbed against a wall. You enjoy rockets too.

You get a year or two older, and you enjoy those little crackers rolled in red paper. You burst them all day, in tin cans, under leaves, under rocks, in bottles. That and you enjoy rockets with little plastic men in parachutes coming out of them.

You get a couple of years older, and you enjoy those ‘atom’ bombs, the crackers wrapped in green rope. These are more potent with louder bangs. Now, you enjoy rockets with colorful fireworks. The larger the better.

You get a few years older, and you no longer find interest in crackers. But if you were shown the detonation of dynamite anywhere, you would perhaps leap at the opportunity.

Life is a little like that. The smaller things that we enjoyed as youngsters, we take of granted. They no longer interest us and we want more. We want bigger things. We want more exclusive things. We begin to lose track of what makes us happy and why. The wonder and amazement falls off the wagon and nothing we have or had seems enough. We compare and then we compare some more. The little things in life that should give us happiness no more do. Call it an inescapable journey which each of us must tread. Happiness is at a premium and our quest seems unending.

We often want to go back to childhood, when we were less jaded and those little red dots and flower pots gave us the most happiness in life. But we cannot.

We know we must find a way out, we know that we might never be able to go back to the innocence where the smallest of things gave us the most happiness, like a grandfather buying a cheap little plastic car. You were on top of the world! Today anything less than a nice plush real car would not give that kind of happiness.

So how do we get back to true happiness, the kind that we had when we were younger?

I don’t really know.

There are a lot of questions that each of us have. There are a lot of short comings. And answers are not always at arms length. This passage is not about absolute solutions.

As the old saying goes, a man must be taught to fish, not given it.
So here is the deal.

Knowing that there is a problem is the solution.
It is not the answer, but it is the first step to that basic happiness.

We all have issues and problems, and acknowledging that we do, is that first step to an answer – the prologue to a solution.

The truth is, answers to some questions we will never find, answers to some, we will in time. But regardless of whether we do or not, just knowing that there are short comings will help us build on ourselves.

Knowledge and acknowledge will help us know understand where we stand against ourselves. It will help us emerge as stronger individuals, aware individuals.

The first stage of a solution to happiness is in that acknowledgement.