The Sunday Times Rich List has just been published and I recently saw a post on Facebook by someone who was upset by the fact that currently, for the first time ever, there are now over 100 billionaires in the UK.
The post went on to state that the person was resentful of these successful people because in the UK there are some people who are struggling to feed their families and who rely on food banks to do so.
In short, what this individual was implying was that the rich and successful people had taken more of their share and not left enough for everyone else.
Although I can understand this individuals point of view from a compassionate and genuinely caring perspective, I feel I have to say something because although this individual is probably a genuinely nice person, their misplaced rant won’t help anyone, because being angry at people who have mastered the ability to become successful and generate wealth doesn’t get us anywhere.
The real fact is that their resentment is also fueled by the media and tabloid press who show (as the Sunday Ties has) images of successful people as ‘fat-cats’ and who promote the perception that there is only a finite amount of wealth to go around and that the more some people have, the less there will be for others.
This is nothing more than cultural or social hypnosis, and it helps create one of the biggest limitations and blocks that people have to make money and living an abundant lifestyle.
One of the important aspects of this year’s Rich List is what we can learn from the roots of these successful people.
Many of these millionaires and billionaires are self-made.
They started with nothing more than an idea and a drive to be successful. They also had other things in common which they had to overcome, such as educational and personal setbacks – including poverty and the loss of a parent at an early age. They also took calculated risks and put their livelihood on the line in the pursuit of excellence.
And as for the argument that these successful people are ‘taking more than their fair share,’ the majority of them are philanthropists and are giving greater sums of money to charity than ever before.
In fact last year 280 of those on the Rich List gave a total of £2.387 billion.
Some people believe that ‘money is the root of all evil’ because that is what the Bible states.
Well, the Bible doesn’t state that. What it states is that ‘love of money is the root of all evil’.
These same people believe that in order to make money you have to sacrifice your time, your health, your family, and some people do. But you actually don’t have to at all. Don’t get me wrong, you have to put the time and effort in, but not at a ‘sacrificial level’.
There is a great saying that goes: “You can always make money, but you can never buy time”, and the fact is, is that you had no time at all you wouldn’t really be rich no matter how much money you had.
There is, however, one sacrifice you can make. In fact, you will need to make it if you wish to become rich – you will need to give up your resentment of people who have more money than you!
You see many of us are being held back by saying that eventually become limiting beliefs in our thinking that we have learned to believe as being true facts.
For example, I used to believe things like:
1. The rich get richer and the poorer get poorer
2. To win someone else must lose out.
3. In order to be successful, you have to screw others over.
And these limiting beliefs serve no other purpose but to keep you from achieving your full potential, and this is because they create unconscious limitations that can be self-sabotaging.
This is a universal truth:
The fact is if you are resentful of successful people that resentment will hold you back in your own pursuit of success.
The reason this happens is that your unconscious mind always acts with your best interest at heart, even if at times that seems contrary to what it is doing. Let me give you an example.
If someone is scared of spiders because they think spiders can harm them. What happens here is that their unconscious mind will work on that fear in an attempt to keep the person away from them in an attempt to keep them safe.
As a result, the individual may end up with agoraphobia (a fear of going outside) because that’s where they are likely to encounter more spiders, because what their unconscious mind has done has created an anxiety-based phobia to protect the person from what it believes will harm them, in this case, spiders. Their own unconscious mind has acted in the person’s best interest, and that is why it has created a phobia
Therefore, if you resent successful people, your unconscious mind will recognise that as something you don’t like and that could possibly harm you and it will do all it can to protect you from it.
As time goes by your unconscious mind helps turn that that resentment into anger and hatred, all in an attempt to keep you safe from what it thinks may harm you.
That is why you cannot become successful yourself by resenting successful people, and this is true for all areas if your life, not just in making money, but in a relationship and in your spiritual growth too.
The fact is all success is created within the human mind. Becoming successful is an inside job.
Mark Dawes: Sunday 28th May 2014.