The Less I Own the More I Have

The Less I Own the More I Have

Study this glyph carefully, if you have a problem or choice to make, start at the bottom and work your way up. If you have a worry the reason can be discovered in the three bottom right boxes! The critical questions are to the left and right. They remind you of the importance between; Disciplined and Emotional reasoning. Do not go past any of the boxes until you have reasoned with each one.

The Lotto is a nice thought to begin the essay.

I thought I would tap a few keys about one of the world’s most favourite subjects. Money. The word either instils happiness or fear, depending on how much or how little of you have. I once craved it. Earned plenty and enjoyed squandering most of it. Do I regret the money wasting madness? No, not one jot. If I won the lotto, it would be the same. I could not help it. A new ten grand Hasselblad. Highest spec MacBook Pro, even though this one works a treat. 911 Turbo and a holiday home in ‘Hot Climate by the Sea’ are all on the list. Bang! There’s a million spent before you can say ‘Get the credit card out’.

I’d sort out a few friends by paying off their mortgage’s and a car or three for those who like their wheels. I fire up a trust fund for someone I like. I would then jump on the metal bird and fly off to see friends in Australia, America and Bognor Regis. The primary objective for the following year would be to dive the best wrecks sites and caves in the world.

I write about the lotto because I find the answers to the question ‘What would you do with a lotto jackpot?’ interesting. In fact, I use the question as a character gauge. To date, sixty-two people talk exclusively about what they would do for their selves. A paltry twelve people talked about sharing the imagined wind-fall. I’m a sharer and prefer generosity. I find generous people to have a more supportive and open-minded nature, I prefer them as associates.

Incidentally, I draw lines through the names of any who talk about what they have and how much they have spent. ‘My new car’ ‘My new blah, blah blah’ it is so boring and how well it exposes the weak character of the moron. Boasting is a wonderful way to lose friends. Being humble is the way to make and keep them. What? You do not agree with me? I do not care a fig.

From lotto to another thought about money and those who are self-employed.

Those who meet me will know I am never without my blue canvas holdall. The few items it contains provide me with a living. A MacBook, Zoom field recorder and a reporter’s microphone. Probably worth about eight hundred pounds. I will not mention how much I earn from using these ‘tools of my trade’, but it is not peanuts. Today’s situation is a far cry from the years I was in a business which needed tens of thousands of pounds of equipment, shredders, grinders, extruders, lorries and trailers to operate. Agreed there was an excellent living to be made, but at what cost? Well, the cost was everything! Eighteen hours a day, five and a half days a week. Working to buy more equipment to become more competitive, to buy more equipment to grow a larger business and then one day, the crunch came, a massive capacity to recycle industrial waste and the Chinese companies who were my customers lowered the buying prices. End of business.

Five years after the business was sold, I realised twenty years working in an industry I hated had been wasted. I also owned a photo processing business which came to an end with the beginning of the digital era. Such is life. Next, I spent a few years messing about on the stage hypnotising people, and at the same time running a small office hypnotising individuals who wanted to stop smoking or overcome the fear of flying. The next venture was recording and selling meditation Cds. It was the Cd’s which changed it all; I sold thousands of them. From there I began to write and sell my work on Amazon.

The tapping of typing keys which exposes my thoughts and short stories is the final destination. There is nothing unusual in following different paths until we discover the right one for us. It is worth a few moments thinking about this. You may be the greatest guitar player, painter, computer programmer in the world and you are stacking shelves. You may never have touched a guitar, paint brush and canvas or learned the finer points of computing, although it does not mean you have not the aptitude to be the best there is. If we do not try how do we know? I know there is more to the concept than a thousand words on a WordPress blog, but it is a theory worth consideration.

What is this blog’s message? It is four-fold. Firstly, we do not need very much equipment to earn a living. A gardener would get away with spade, fork, rake and brush. Decorator pasting table, some brushes, pails and plumb line. A courier needs a van or a car. Secondly, you do not need many customers to start a small part-time business; there are plenty of people who are prepared to pay for others services. Thirdly, you must have a clear idea of how much you value your work. The fourth idea is those you work for must respect you and your needs.

The key to working for yourself is ‘you must earn enough money to pay for all of one’s needs’. It’s interesting people embark on the journey of self-employment and do not fully understand the risks involved. Fools will risk their homes on ventures they have not thoroughly thought through. If you need three hundred pounds a week to pay for your needs, then it is sheer madness to work for less than sixty pounds per day profit. It is unbelievable, but people do work in this way in the belief the method will bring them work in the future or anything is better than nothing.

Today, a lady asked me to write a small booklet for her. I gave her an idea of the cost, ‘That’s too much, I can get it done for half that price’ she said ‘please do so’ I answered. She did not respect my needs. That’s fine by me she gave me a reason to write this essay!

The final message is this. If more of us said ‘No’ and valued our work. Then we would achieve better incomes for what we do. If more of us said ‘No’ to friends and family, they would value what we do for them. If you carefully re-read this essay, you will discover a multitude of ideas about the human psyche. Most which are part of our daily life.

Psyche = The human psyche is the mind or soul. It is the centre of an individual’s emotions, thought and behaviour. The psyche controls the individual’s response to his environment.