I Have Answers

Many times our dominant paradigm confuses, blocks, barricades, yea even blinds us to
to information right before our eyes.

Consider two examples. The answer will be right before your eyes, but chances are your dominant paradigm--to be more fascinated by problems than by answers--will blind you to them. To benefit from these exercises, please follow my instructions explicitly.

Think of a number. Double it. Add 16 to it. Now divide the answer you have now by two. Subtract the number you first thought of from the answer you have now. Your answer is eight. I am right. I know I'm right. I challenge you to figure out why I am right.. The answer is right before your eyes. Will you see it?

Here's your second challenge.

Think of any three digit number except a mirror number. A mirror number is 232, for example; it is the same either way you say it. Here's my number: 567. Reverse your number and subtract the smaller number from the larger one. Here's my work: 765-567 = 198. Note: if your subtraction produces a two digit number, such as "98," please add a zero to the front of the number, hence: 098. Now reverse your number again, and add the two, such as: 198 + 891. My answer is 1,089, and so is yours! Again, I am right. I know I'm right. Your challenge: determine why I am right. The answer is right before your eyes. Can you see it?

Finally, read this phrase as you initially see it: opportunityisnowhere! Studies reveal that chances are good that about 75 percent of you initial saw: opportunity is nowhere. Another way to see this same information, data or situation, however you term it is: opportunity is now here!

Why are answers so hard to see? Why do many of us often "see" ourselves trapped in confusing conflicts, barricaded behind ominous obstacles and blocked by impregnable barriers?

The answer begins with an intriguing question: do you believe what you see, or do you see what you believe? We can ask this question differently: must I accept current circumstances as my only reality, or can I influence, even alter circumstances so they become the reality I desire?

Why do people fail? A quick and seemingly logical answer might be: people fail because they do not know what they need to know to succeed. Certainly, that's true, but this answer raises yet another question. Why don't some people know what they need to know to succeed? This answer, I believe, gets us to the crux of the difference between failure and success. Here's the answer: Sometimes as much as 80 percent of what people firmly believe they know simply isn't so. Consider several examples:

1. Remember this: "When released from prison, a criminal has paid his or her debt to society." Well, let consider the crime process and see precisely what incarcerated criminals pay and when they pay. Let's say that a criminal burglarizes your home. Who paid for what he or she stole? Answer: You did! When you telephone the police to report the crime, who pays the police? Answer: You do! The police arrest a suspect. Who pays for the local jail? Answer: You do. In court to testify against the culprit, who pays the judge, the prosecuting attorney and the court appointed lawyer or public defender? Well, of course, you do. If sentenced to prison, who pays for the so-called corrections system? That's right! You do. So again, when did the criminal pay and precisely what did he or she pay? On his or her release date, the criminal has, at a very minimum, outlived the court-sanction.

2. Bible students will love this one. Remember in Luke 23 we find the record of a conversation Jesus, the Christ has with two criminals who died with Him that fateful day. The one on the right reportedly said: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Jesus allegedly replied: "I tell you the truth today you shall be with me in Paradise. Written Greek, which Luke wrote, does not include punctuation. English translators punctuated Jesus's reponse this way: "I tell you the truth, today you shall be with me in Paradise." If that's true, Paradise is the grave because that's where people put all three bodies later that day. Okay, maybe their "spirits" went to Paradise, wherever that is. I don't have time or space to delve into that particular reaction. Here's my point! What if the English translators put the comma in the wrong place? Consider this: "I tell you the truth today, you shall be with me in Paradise." If that's where the comma belongs, then the meaning is completely different from what most professing Christians believe it to be.

3. Consider this example! About 15 million network marketers claim that they operate home based businesses, but more than 90 percent of them are sole proprietors. That one of the two worse business entities available in this economy. Yet these network marketers insist that they operate potentially successful businesses. Yet other statistics reveal that 90 of every 100 small businesses, including the so-called network marketing "businesses" fail during the first five years of existence. Within the next five years, nine of the other 10 fail. Why?

Robert T. Kiyosaki, in his book Before You Quit Your Job--10 Real Life Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Building a Mjultimillion-Dollar Business--listed the following six of the "more critical reasons" 99 percent of new businesses fail within their first decade of existence:

1. Our schools train students to be employees who look for jobs rather than train entrepreneurs who create . . . businesses.
2. The skills to be a good employee are not the same skills required to be a good entrepreneur.
3. Many entrepreneurs fail to build a business. Instead they work hard building a job that they own. They become self-employed rather than business owners.
4. Many entrepreneurs work longer hours and are paid less per hour than their employees. Hence, may quite out of exhaustion.
5. Many new entrepreneurs start without enough real life experiences and without enough capital.
6. many entrepreneurs have a great product or service but don't have the business skills to build a successful business around that product or service.

Those six reasons certainly apply holistically to a particular group of US citizens who have not reached their complete success potential, despite an ever-increasing number of opportunities.

In this article series, I will focus on that huge market segment that numbers about 38 million individuals, with a GSP(Group Spending Poverty) in excess of $1 trillion, the vast majority of which they spend buying stuff and liabilities, rather than assets. What most of these individuals do not see is that a continual focus on "spending," particularly if you consider spending money to be "power," represents poverty thinking, no matter how much money you might earn and spend.

In the way I am using these terms in this article, stuff describes inexpensive things you do not need to survive. Liabilities refer to anything you buy that continually takes money from you for one or two or more years. Assets refer to things you buy that will make money for you. Additionally, this market spent only about 10 percent of its $1 trillion with themselves.

That's just one example of what we know that just isn't so! We "know" that earning more and more money on jobs to spend for more and more stuff represents progress. The fact we cannot seem to see is that continued spending, without productive business investments, followed by return on investments, represents little more than multi-billion dollar poverty.

I know that sounds ike an oxymoron. How can a people spend a trillion dollars and suffer with seemingly endless poverty? Consider how I define poverty! It is the continual mis-management of resources, specifically spending, with no regard for how to produce additional resources through the purchase and profitable management of assets.

Okay, here's your final quiz in this article:

1. What collective group of citizens routinely sees itself as more poor than prosperous, despite prodigious potential?
2. What collective group of citizens appears to operate an unchangeable fixation on jobs, with not much regard to properly planning and producing successful businesses?
3. What group of citizens, more often than not, make the excuses Kiyosaki cites in his book?

That's right! African Americans. Now, I'm not saying that these descriptions do not apply to folks of other ethnic groups. I assert, however, African Americans appear to have an almost endless list of excuses for overall failure. I believe the following principle: You can make excuses or you can make money. You cannot do both!

The formula is quite simple: Practicing Powerful Principles Produce Prodigious, Profitable Prosperity. I will delve into a detailed discussion of these principles in the following articles in this series.