498. Perfection and Frugality

"Perfection is not when there is no more to add but when there is no more to take away." - Antoine de Saint Exupery.

Less is always better than more. On the spiritual path, we need to shed our attachments to material things and to the mental and emotional burdens we seem to constantly pick up.

"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." -William of Ockham.

497. Achievement and Your Sphere of Comfort

"There is always a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want." -Tim Ferris

496. The Safest Investment in the World

"U.S.Treasury Bills are the safest investment in the world." - Richard Suttmeier. Unfortunately they probably have the lowest returns in the world. Science, Technology, and China's Drive for Modernization (Hoover international studies)

495. Adaptation and Adaptability

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the UNreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw.

494. Goal Setting vs Wishful Thinking

There is a distinction between goal setting and wishful thinking. When you set an effective goal you are giving a direct command to your subconscious. It has quantity, measurability and a time frame attached to it. The setting of goals gets you past your perceived limitations and allows you to spot opportunities that were unseen up to now.

493. How We See the World.

When making judgments about the world or about people, it is good to rember that, as a rule, we do not see things as they are but rather as WE are. Learn to strip out the ego (i.e. your ego) from the equation when evaluating things.

492. The Open Mind

The future exists in infinite possibilities. By developing and keeping an open minded approach we capture our highest opportunities. Minds are like parachutes, they only function properly when they are open.

491. Achievement

"The first formal condition for achieving anything great is that you should be independent of public opinion." -Hegel
Public opinion is fickle. It can be with you one day and against you the next. When all is said and done, it remains only that, an opinion. Opinions are worthless. True judgements based on examination and analysis of the facts are much more valuable. Mere unsupported opinion is worthless.

490. The Discipline of Writing.

The discipline of writing something down is the first step to making it happen. Boldness has magic and power within it; begin now !

Writing down your plans, goals etc. creates the bridge between the thoughts in the subtle world (your mind) and the actual reality in the here and now.

489. What State are You In ?

You have the coice to be in one of two states of nature; green and growing or ripe and rotting. These are the only 2 games in town !

488. Never Retreat

A Mulvey never goes backwards, never retreats and never gives in. We may change our tactics or direction from time to time but we are continuously pushing forward towards our ultimate goals.

For us, moving backwards is the equivalent of decay, decline, mental and emotional breakdown, physical undoing, fatigue, tamas and death. We cannot be truly stationary. If we are not advancing we are retreating. Mulveys never repeat a year. If we say we have 20 years experience that is exactly what we have, the experience of 20 different years, each moment fresh and unique, not 20 experiences of the same year.

487. Goal Setting

I will keep on coming back to this subject. It is absolutely essential that you master the art of setting goals, targets etc. Mark Twain said "Plan for the future because that's where you'll spend the rest of your life. Set your goals then act as if it were impossible for you to fail. It is only in the active pursuit of your goals that you will truly grow.

Having a goal is the equivalent of having a target and a motive. These are the things that keep you moving so that you don't stop and fall over.

486. Starting Over

You can make a fresh start with your last breath. It is never too late. Learn to set your best intentions on who you want to be and what you want to achieve and you'll be on top of the world. The Universe has no choice but to bring you the physical manifestation of those things on which you focus your thoughts.

485. What it means to be Rich

To have the ability to live your life on your own terms, according to your potentials, NOT your limitations is what it is to be rich.

484. Einstein on Interest

According to Albert Einstein, Compound Interest is the 8th Wonder of the World. Here is the formula :
A = P(1 + r/q)nq

The nq outside the brackets above does not mean "multiplied by nq" but "to the power of nq".

P is the principal (the money you start with, your first deposit)

r is the annual rate of interest as a decimal (5% means r = 0.05)

n is the number of years you leave it on deposit.

q is the number of times per year that the interest is to be calculated.



Sweet's modern business arithmetic: A treatise on modern and practical methods of arithmetical calculations for the use of business and commercial colleges, ... in other educational institutions

484. Financial Freedom

Work every day towards your financial freedom. Each day take a new step along the path that you have planned out to create financial freedom for yourself, even if it's a negative one like cutting up that high end credit card. Rather than putting yourself to work for money, put your money to work for you. Working for money is a necessary evil sometimes but you should always aim for making an investment at least once a month. "Profits are better than wages." -Jim Rohn

483. Deserving, Negotiation and Work

Generally speaking, you do not get what you deserve in life; you get what you negotiate. The Law of Sewing and Reaping will tell you that you get what you sew. It does not tell you that you get what you deserve.You should only spend time working with people who deserve your efforts, people who go at least half way to meet you in your efforts.

482. Benjamin Franklin On Education

"If you think Education is expensive, try Ignorance. - Benjamin Franklin.
Whenever you are offered a course of any kind, jump at the opportunity.

481. Good Deed for the Day

Practice the exercise of doing at least one good deed per day, something that will make someone else feel better. This is something that will spread throughout the world if you start it and it will keep you from feeling gloomy.

490. Being Unreasonably Happy

You control your thoughts. Your thoughts run your feelings. Therefore you control your feelings. Holding a positive frame of mind in the face of disaster is what the author Dan Millman calls "being unreasonably happy". Within every disaster, tragedy, upset, set-back, adversity, sorrow, defeat, loss, pain, injury etc., whether or not you caused it, lie the seeds of an equal and opposite benefit, joy, success etc., that you can nurture into a good that soars above the disaster that gave rise to them.

Remember that all previous failures are over and done with, past and gone forever. Yesterday is as dead as the Crimean War.

489.Permanent Health Insurance

What is your Primary Asset ?

Whatever puts most income into your pocket is your primary asset, your job, your main business, your best agency. This is the asset that initially allows you to purchase your buy to hold other assets, your passive income providers. It is vital that you protect this asset. A Buy to Hold Asset is defined as one that you keep forever (unless you can trade it for one that provides even greater income.) For this reason you should have PHI, Permanent Health Insurance a.k.a. Permanent Income Indemnity or Income Protection Insurance. It will pay a percentage of your income if you cannot work. If you don't have it, when you stop working, your income stops too. Your expenses do not stop just because your income does. The result is that you start to strip out your other assets, cash first, in order to survive. You then start to sell off your assets in order of decreasing liquidity just to live. Please note that I am using the term "asset" here in the sense that an accountant would. Once they are gone, you still have no income and nothing left to feed you.

Once you start to work for money, you should put this insurance in place and review it annually adjusting upwards by 5% to allow for inflation. Beware of the sales people - shop around for the best deal because you do not want to pay too much for it. At review time, shop around again and change provider if a better deal comes along. Counterintuitively, this is in fact a part of your master plan to create wealth for yourself. It gives you the peace of mind to be more creative in your thinking.

The Dream Game