Episode 60. You don’t get something for nothing. Brought to you by the universal law of nature number 3. Abundance.
crossing the line between the tangible and the intangible is for some people are very difficult journey. For example, when you give a gift to somebody for their birthday you give that gift with love, you are so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, kind. There is probably not a more beautiful angel than you when you give that gift to somebody for their birthday. There is no expectation!
some people would say therefore that this gift defies the laws of the universe because somebody got something for nothing. They didn’t do anything except sit on a chair and wait for the world to go around the sun another time and boom they have a birthday and you gave them a present which they got for nothing. In the tangible mechanical world you can see this is a distinct possibility. Therefore you might argue, that the universal law of abundance is not valid.
but just then watch and see when the person you give the gift to tells you that it’s crap. They don’t like it, it’s not good enough, why did you give this to me, I don’t want it, it’s rubbish. Suddenly you feel very disappointed, hurt, rejected. So there was a giving but there was a receiving which was the joy of giving and for that joy of giving to be paid, the birthday person had to say thank you. So there was not a one-sided equation here. There was a giving and then there was a getting.
this intangible currency in life is one of the most underestimated aspects of relationship and business. I remember once in Korea, doing a massive multi million dollar business deal with a Korean business tycoon. I negotiated on behalf of my American supplier and it came down to a stand-off over $20,000 for a contract worth in the vicinity of hundred million dollars. The American supplier finally capitulated and the deal was sealed. We signed the deal at 3:30 in the afternoon and then went out for dinner and each bottle of scotch, for the 20 people at the dinner was worth over $1200. Add to this the entertainment which we won’t talk about. Plus the meal, plus plus plus and you can see that the $20,000 was not negotiated in order to pay for the dinner it was a matter of principle. The Korean businessman had to be seen to win. That’s the Korean culture. So the $20,000 was worth much more in the intangible world of business then the money itself.
one of the strangest things that I’ve read is the psychology of being liked. One of the strangest things that the research showed was that you can get a person to like you more by asking them to do something for you. Now go figure. Seriously? A person likes you more by doing something for you? Surely we think it’s the other way that by doing things for people they will like us more. Anyway I’m not here to argue the research which is Sara on this topic. Suffice to say there is a currency other than the material one and this becomes part of the intangible versus tangible world of exchange. If you give me frozen water and I give you back steam, it may not at first look like an equitable deal but it is.
in Business one of the things that has shifted most in the last 20 years is the devaluation of this intangible quotient. Once upon a time and employer would say you would be lucky to have a job. The employer could fire you at any time with a few weeks notice. You felt blessed to be employed. However now with the millennial generation, employment is an entitlement. So, that’s not a bad thing however, the value of many of the intangibles that many leaders expect their teams to value has dropped incredibly. The intangibles such as, a good income assurance, generosity of time out, reliability of employment, respect for the need for compassionate leave, and some sort of insurance for the day that things might not go well enough for you to work. These intangibles have a value but because the market at present for employment is easy, the value of them goes down, and people start chasing jobs with higher salaries. When the market eventually turns down and employment is not so easy and companies start to shred their staff then the value of the intangibles will skyrocket and people will happily sacrifice significant salary for security. The intangible quotient in life is incredibly important to measure at all times. However this intangible is often referred to as a feeling, and can fluctuate without notice.
in relationships we meet somebody who is super attractive to us and we have a super good connection with them. Then all the material and intrinsic aspects of the connection with that person start to play out. That person may fake some of those material or intrinsic aspects of themselves and so we value our connection with that person in fraudulent contract. That person might be very generous in order to seduce you but then start to withdraw that generosity once the contract is a little more settled. Often, we value the physical engagement with a person and the promise of a great future with them way more than their integrity, their niceness, their fun. And so relationships become complicated because the promise of a future is worth a fortune and we may overlook many of the darker aspects of a person and called love. Then, as time goes by, those aspects we overlooked which were darker such as their ability to lie or the cost of maintenance of their emotional state, starts to become more expensive than we expected, and the contract which looked like an all upside win-win for the future, becomes an exchange of cost benefit. Feelings, emotions, values, thoughts, expectations all have a value in the exchange of time, money and energy. You do not have to look far in the eastern suburbs of Sydney to see couples who have very little romantic engagement but have incredible material exchange. This is not a bad thing. But what it shows is that every relationship, no matter how ugly or complicated, has a form of love that the couple may or may not appreciate. Nothing is ever missing. Another example is couples who stay together for the children. In this type of relationship the couple can actually hate each other and if it weren’t for the children they would not consider being in each other’s company for more than 10 minutes. But the kids become the glue. The intangible fear of the children being traumatised by a split up in the relationship or the division of assets, becomes worse Farmoor than the discomfort of living with someone you don’t like. Nothing is missing in this situation it just changed form.
another astonishing thing to realise is the intangible quotient that is considered to be currency in our self mastery. Guilt gives a person purpose. A person who has no purpose in life other than life, will choose from time to time a negative state of mind to give them some sense of purpose. In this example nothing is missing. The individual has a purpose. That purpose for them is a negative state of mind, that drives them to be all sorts of miserable, all sorts of anxiety, all sorts of action and reaction but that person has a mission. The mission is to either fix the cause or fix the result of this negative state of mind. That is a purpose. When this person is asked to create a purpose bigger than themselves they create a fluffy tailed possum, to push away the intrusion on their negative state of mind which is their purpose of their life, for them. So, every human being on this planet has a purpose and is living that purpose, for some it is a sacred state of mind, for others it is a revered emotional state of mind, and for others it is material wealth re-defined as something philanthropic. Therefore, all our relationship problems, health problems, financial problems, social problems, mental problems, are a form of purpose. Nothing is ever missing it just changes in form.
and so there is a currency. There is a tangible currency and there is an intangible one. I guess the question that most people have is can you exchange one for the other. Can you turn intangible currency into tangible currency? If so what would that look like?
in the book “the secret” there are a lot of promises made with very little evidence. The suggestion is that if you think about it you can cause it to come true. Not everybody in the book agrees with this simplicity. However, converting currency from thought to tangible has been the art and science of manifestation since the beginning of time. Most people are so confused between searching for how they feel, lifestyle, and wealth creation that they don’t understand that they are exchanging feeling good for being wealthy and therefore, begin to lose faith in the process of manifestation. I and this is where people lack discipline. You see, discipline is the sacrifice of some intangible asset such as pleasure, being right, superiority, self-esteem for a tangible outcome that will take a little time to manifest. An alcoholic would rather feel good today then build good health tomorrow. Good health is a tangible asset and feeling good is an intangible one. I hope you can see from this that there is going to be a exchange between your tangible and intangible assets. If you sacrifice a little bit of sleeping in in the mornings, random freedom to do what you want, you will build a tangible asset called a goal. Or you can sleep in and have the intangible asset of comfort and sacrifice some level of goal.
in goalsetting workshops the question is always put to individuals with their goals, how much are you willing to pay for it? You have heard the story of my expedition in Nepal too many times so I won’t retaliate but I stood at the base of a mountain range that would give me a goal if I crossed it and I decided I was not willing to pay my life to do it. The intangible asset I had was worth more than the tangible asset of completing and achieving a goal. This happens for people every day in every day life they say that they would rather sacrifice the goal in order to protect the tangible asset that they have which could be a marriage. There is always a balance. Nothing is ever missing and quite often what we perceive is goalsetting is really the change of form from one asset to another.
one of the most important things about affirmations and visualisations is the realisation that you already have what you already want. When I’m in a workshop I ask people in the room who is a billionaire? Typically there are not many. So I choose one individual and ask them would they sell their eyesight to me for, $200 million? Would they sell their children for $500 million? It doesn’t take long for me to come to a total way beyond 1 billion that they already have in some form for them to realise that they are already a billionaire but they just don’t appreciate it. If we don’t appreciated the way that we’ve got it we won’t get it the way that we want it. And so what we are saying is that all of manifestation is simply the change of form from the intangible to the tangible and that is why gratitude for what we’ve got becomes a key to success. A person who is saying they have not got something is living in poverty. If a billionaire says they do not have a relationship then they too are living in absolute abject poverty.
so you might be thinking at this point in time that if you build a business or you build an asset worth money that you must steal from your banking in your intangible asset catalogue. You will see many people do this as they become more asset focused in the tangible world they become more miserable or more vulnerable or more emotionally disrupted or mentally unhealthy in the intangible world so they have transferred their assets from Innerwealth to outer wealth. But there is a way around this and this is called evolution.
if you draw a circle and divided up with seven spokes you will get what we call the VIP circle. You then score yourself on each of the seven areas of life, the seven spokes, from 0 to 10 as to where you think you are at in each area. Then you join the dots of each point on the spokes so that you get some sort of shape. If you now measure the shape that has been created by joining the dots on each spoke and measure the size of that area somehow, you have just measured the amount of intangible asset you own. Or as many people prefer to call it your gratitude score. It shows how thankful you are for what you’ve got. We also know that as you get closer to the outer circle, the achievement of a goal or something, the achievement of one goal always gives birth to 2 more. And therefore as you get closer to the outer circle the outer circle grows bigger and this is how we evolve. When the outer circle grows bigger and you still have the same amount of gratitude score as you had before, you are still dipping into the same asset, intangible asset, in order to build the world you call your life. Instead of this you can grow your gratitude. And we do this using the discard form because ultimately, what causes us to be ungrateful, is ego and how much of the world we can look at and love.
So if you don’t want to rob Peter to pay Paul, or if you don’t want to steal from your Innerwealth to create your outer wealth there is only one solution and that is to grow your gratitude. Now we have talked about this until the cows come home and I think you might by now be ready to block your ears when you hear it. There are seven areas of life, seven opportunities for judgement, seven areas of growth where you can grow your gratitude for what you’ve got and if you grow your gratitude for what you’ve got by walking in the park, taking time to step away from being busy, stop criticising yourself and others and more and more start to appreciate the learning that you get from every situation then you grow not only towards your goals in a tangible form but you grow your Innerwealth in an intangible form. Hence, your bank account is growing both internally and externally and this is called great leadership and great self leadership. Remember that nothing is ever missing it just changes in form and that you have everything you need to ever have in some form already. The trick is to appreciate what you’ve got so that you get what you want. And the second part of the story is be more and more thankful for what you’ve got, including the people you don’t like who are around you or at work, so that you evolve and therefore have access to a greater pool of Innerwealth. That’s the end of this episode.
With Spirit
Chris
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