Dr James, 0s:

We always wish we could go back in time and tell a younger version of ourselves some of the wisdom that we've learned over the years. How many times have we all heard ourselves say wish that I knew this whenever I was younger? And in a weird way, you can actually pull those experiences forwards from the future, and it's called education. That's basically what it is. That's the whole point Reading books, listening to podcasts, doing everything along those lines but anyway, that is a topic or a discussion for another day. I guess what I would like to share today is the top 10 beliefs or perspectives that I had on money when maybe I was about 25, that I just really wish I could have altered. And there'll be a lot of people out there who are younger than that. There'll be a lot of people out there who are older than that. It's fine, because you may know some of these lessons. You may know all of them or you may know none of them, but it's always good to listen anyway, because this is the highlight reel and really, if I would have understood these things, I really think that I would be much further in life than where I currently am. So let's go ahead and proceed. Number one is the greatest risk when it comes to investing is not investing. Why does everybody think twice before investing, but think once before spending? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't it be think twice before spending and once before investing? Because at least whenever you invest something, there's a chance that it may come back to you in terms of a return. Not always, or at the very least you'll learn a lesson which will be incredibly valuable to you later. But how many people spend so much of their capital on frivolous things and holidays and food and everything along those lines? They've spent it right. There's no chance of it coming back, but that's normalized in our society. I don't get it. Number two, when it comes to the markets, the decline is temporary, but the advance is permanent. And really what this pertains to is when you look at long-term data on the stock market let's say the S&P 500 or the MSCI or even the FTSE every single time that you have listened to the news and heard about a crash, inverted commas. Really, what they should say is temporary decline. But that doesn't make the same headline, does it? It's not nearly as entertaining. It's not nearly going to get as many viewers, is it? So, on that note. When you zoom out and look at the long-term data on most big assets not financial advice, of course you can see that actually they continue to tick up with time and really, as long as you know that and there's a lot of data then your asset selection can become as simple as understanding which assets give you the greatest returns and have the most data to support the fact that they have historical proof to demonstrate those returns over a long period of time. Forget the volatility. It becomes less pertinent at that point, providing you don't need the money anytime soon. Again, don't rush off and invest based on what I've just said, definitely take financial advice if you're uncertain. However, the decline is temporary and the advance is permanent. It's definitely something to tickle or pickle or get us inspired to think about this stuff. Number three is not really a saying so much as a concept, and that is the concept and fact, really more than anything else. That money is just made up. I mean, it's literally just printed and created, and you know I've got a whole load of content that you can view and listen to on the history of money. Where it actually came from the really good video that I made once upon a time. It's on the denison invest website and it's called some things you should know about money. It's all about the history of the bank of England and how we effectively got trained over long periods of time to use fiat money money that is just printed and created arbitrarily. It's a huge social construct. And I mean when you know that money is just created, it's just printed arbitrarily in the Bank of England, then all of a sudden you understand that. How can anything that you think or believe about money be anything but made up, or a belief that's given to you by someone else, or a belief that you've created in your own head at any stage? And that's not to say it isn't valid. If enough people think something, then it has a validity in its own way. But here's what it is to say. What it is to say is just how valid is it? Just how true is it? And is it a little gray, do it? Let's say, for example, we think something is too much or too little in terms of price. Actually, that doesn't really necessarily mean anything. If you ask the universe, you know that's just what the consensus in society is. But just because everybody thinks something, does that mean it's true? I'm not saying that there's nothing that is valid out there in terms of our beliefs and thoughts and concepts whenever it comes to money. I'm just saying there's a little bit more give there than what we'd immediately suspect. The second, that we know that money is made up. Therefore, when we know that we know that anything we think about it is subjective and something subjective is inherently not objective and not necessarily factually true and therefore there's tends to be a little bit of give there sometimes in our concepts and how true or valid do we know their concepts are for certain and can we change them to make them facilitate more wealth and success in our own lives? That's all I'm calling into question. That's all. Hopefully I'm not saying anything too controversial there. Number four this is more a lesson for business, I guess, and something that I definitely held at lots of stages in my life, and that's the notion that when someone sells to me that that is a bad thing or that should be avoided, or it makes me feel uncomfortable. But you know, having been on the other side of the table a lot of times in a lot of conversations about potentially collaborating with people and there might be a, there's potentially a money transaction there, the number of times I think to myself I'm like, wow, this thing could really, really really help this person. When we get the particulars out of the way. Until I sat on the other side of the table I never really realized that actually sometimes there are certain products out there that really can change your life, and the money is the thing that just facilitates it. So a lot of people out there, I feel, get uncomfortable about the whole sales process and that can be sat on both sides of the table. They dislike selling, the dislike being sold to. But if you think and sometimes people will even run away or avoid those conversations but I'm like, no, hang on. You know, I want to actually hear what this person has to say, because sometimes they have things that can completely change my life. If I give someone a thousand pounds and they make me ten thousand or a hundred thousand pounds back because of something that they do for me or help me within my business, or a new skill that I learn, or an investment that they make that they teach me, shouldn't I be trying to find those flipping people and hunt them down myself like, come on, that's some of the greatest returns on money that you can potentially make, but we never actually get to appreciate that until we just eliminate that little belief in our head and hear these things out. It's crazy. That is a really, really, really huge one, and I feel like that is a really, really, really huge one, and I feel like that is a big, limiting belief that a lot of people have. Number five time equals money. I feel like time can equal money, but it doesn't always equal money. I feel like if we hold that belief, we're always going to be selling our time for money. But remember, the whole point of assets is that they can generate us some recurring income with time. You know, I heard it uh described once as we should plant money trees. We should spend a lot of our time trying to plant money trees, and the thing about money trees is, maybe businesses, maybe assets, whatever you have to water them, you have to nourish them, sometimes for months, sometimes for years most of the time is years, uh, whenever it comes to traditional investing. But you know what, when you grow the money tree, the whole point of the money tree is that it can give you, it bears fruit and you can begin to take some sort of residual income from it. So time doesn't. It can equal money, but it doesn't always equal money. And, like I say, if we hold that belief subconsciously and we just think that that's in essence what it is all of the time, well then we'll always be looking for ways to exchange your time for money. But, like I say, there's certain instances where that doesn't apply. Number six really cool lesson again, not really a uh punchy how can I say uh a punchy one-liner or punchy phrase. It's more just a concept is this one, and that is the concept of high leverage skills. That is the concept of that. Not all skills are equal whenever it comes to capitalism. There's certain skills out there that can allow you to create a ton of leverage in your life and get a huge bang for your buck in terms of time for money, in terms of that exchange, or reducing the time aspect of that as much as possible and increasing the return. Certain skills this will apply to I mean for me, some of and we should, we should seek to learn these skills because they can, they can compliment what we do in a day-to-day basis. So an example would be the skills of running a business, massive, you know, being able to understand how to coordinate a team and KPIs and everything along those lines. That is a high leverage skill. The more we can learn that skill is, the better we become at business and the more return we get on our time. Another one is coding. That's a classic example of one. You make a machine, you make a, you make a software program once and it serves you forever. It just runs continuously, continuously, continuously. Massive, massive, massive, uh leverage. If you make loads of them, or loads of a quick succession of them, you'll find that, uh, and they are all successful. You'll find that well, that is one of the best ways that you can generate a lot of cash. Look at all the richest people in the world, or certainly most of them anyway. A lot of them are tech entrepreneurs. It already gives you a big clue as to what those high leverage skills are. Another one would be sales. I definitely think that that is up there as well, and I'm sure there's a whole host of them too. There's no definitive list, but, like I was saying, if everybody can get a high leverage skill or improve it and then use it to compliment their skills that they do on a day-to-day basis, I really think that they'll welcome a lot more wealth into their own life. Number seven hard work equals money. Man, man, man, man, man, man, man. That is a belief I held onto for a long time. And don't get me wrong, I think that you need to focus and concentrate on learning about money and equipping yourself with certain skills and knowledge in order to become wealthy with time. But I think the whole hard work equals money concept, without any nuance whatsoever, is actually slightly toxic, and that's because it can lead you to where you live a life where you're just constantly working maybe not ever necessarily being that effective or productive and hoping that money is going to come your way and not really enjoying life so much as you could be, and also not even really achieving your goal, if your goal is to generate wealth because you're not doing things in an efficient manner. If hard work equaled money and that was all there was to it think about it the best paid people in the whole wide world would be people who do hard, physical, manual labor every single day. Those are the people who are going to get paid the best. If that was true, if that was, if that was the not only if it was true, but if that was obvious. That was the only facet to it. Obviously there's more to it, because we know that that isn't true. Therefore, we should really look to question that belief when it applies and when it doesn't. Number eight is money equals bad, money is evil and every variation of that concept or connotation because if we hold that in our head and we get uncomfortable whenever it comes to that, is one of the that instance. What about if you give a pound to charity? What about if you make ten thousand pounds and you give a thousand pounds to charity? Is it not good in that instance? So, really, actually, there is a lot of things that money can be used for that are good and that do help society. You know we have, we can have all these beliefs about the world, or we can just accept the world the way that it is and then use the tools that, uh, you know, society has created over the years and use these, these concepts and these, uh, the the structure of the way society operates and functions. We can either rally against it and get all up in arms, or we can just accept it and let it wash over us, try to embrace it, try to benefit from it, try to create something that does do something good in the world, kind of work with it a little bit and then, as we elevate ourselves, try to change it. Uh, from that higher vantage point that we've elevated ourselves to uh, to uh, rather than just staying at ground level, constantly spending all of our energy spinning our wheels. For me, if you want to change a system, the best way to do it is to just work around the outside, get to yourself, get yourself to a position where you're on, you're on top, you have some power, you have some control, and then try to change it rather than try to change it from within. So much more effective. So if you do actually think that and you do really, really, really disagree with capitalism, for me you kind of you should. For me it's way more helpful to get yourself to kind of work with it, at least in the short term, to get yourself to a position where you can actually have cause and effect on society. So, if you do actually think that it might be easier just to work with it and accept it, at least at the beginning just my thoughts, just my beliefs on that one, but I'm sure other people will hold other thoughts on that Number nine your circle equals your success, absolutely massive. I really feel like it's so worthwhile to go out of your way to find other people doing other things and learn from them. The number of things that I've picked up just from going out of my way to meet new people who do different things, even in like random cafes. Whenever I've been on holiday, I see people using software that I use and I start to talk to them about it and they they make me see things in different ways. You know they shift my beliefs on it and for me that would never happen unless you mingle in different circles. I could be better at it. You know it's very easy to stay in your comfort zone and hang around with the same crew and friends that you've known ever since day zero, and and you should do that, you should absolutely do that. But I'm just saying that there is so much to be gleaned and so much to learn and so much to embrace and understand that we don't even know what is out there until we start walking in other circles and talking to other people and having an open mind. Your circle equals your success. It's another variation of that whole trope that gets thrown around. Your network is your net worth. Number 10, the final one. I heard this saying the other day and I really, really, really liked it because it's very empowering and that saying goes along the lines of heaven helps those who help themselves.