Learn to control money but do not allow it to control you

Firewalker

I have been thinking rather a lot about the seven laws of the universe that I told you about in August and the more I think about them the more they start making sense. This is why lately I have been trying to teach Little Boy about the Laws of the Universe. And what better place to start than the first law of the universe – the one that says that the Universe is mentality. Or as a group of people I am more and more interested in – the free masons – say ‘as above, so below’. And did you know that there are non-mainstream branches of freemasonry that admit women, like the Order of the Eastern Star and the Order of the Amarath? It is true though that the women have to be associated with male Master Masons. But now back to lessons with Little Boy.

He has started to play loads of table tennis. Being still rather small and having less practice than the rest of the family he repeatedly lost and when he started losing he would get angry. So I explained that ‘anger always looses’ and asked him to imagine the perfect shot and keep it in his head while playing. Now he regularly wins against me (and I am a rather decent player) and he has improved dramatically through manifesting. But the main lesson is – learn to control your anger, anger looses.

Even after that Little Boy did not believe me when I was telling him that the Universe is mentality and that actually people can manifest. We saw the Sorcerer’s Apprentice – most of it was about manifesting and in fact there were implicit references to the law of vibrations. So we started testing whether the universe is mentality – sometimes it work but the important point is that it is always fun.

Otherwise, today was another very productive day. It seems to me that the combination between the “transatlantic challenge” and the technique of mind-mapping will bear fruit and sooner than I think.

And the saying for today is:

“The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

Firewalker

Firewalker

OK here is the deal! We all, even the most modest among us, want something in this life. It is true we want different things – and thank goodness for that. Imagine how unpleasant and at the same time boring life would be if we all wanted the same thing(s). Some of these things are material, other are not. But there are several things that we all want; we want happiness, security, love, health and money. I might be missing something but probably not much.

Interestingly, many if these things go together: love and happiness, money and security and health can pair with any of the other things. We, particularly us on this forum, also can easily get into the habit of linking money and happiness – probably because trouble with finance has caused so much distress and unhappiness in the past (or even still does). I remember someone started a thread asking about people’s worst fears: most fears were money related; only one person said that their biggest fears are about their family. So the question is: ‘are money and happiness really a match?’.

There has been quite a bit of research on this and results are inconclusive. These range from ‘no, having money prevents us from enjoying the simple things in life’ through ‘yes if we spend it wisely’ to ‘yes, but up to a $75,000’.

Out of curiosity, I decided to check the ranking of countries according to the overall happiness of their population. OK, I know this is a dodgy calculation but economists do measure happiness. And according to their measurement the happiest four countries in the world are Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. All very rich countries, you may say. This is what I thought, I thought ‘yep, rich country – happy people; it figures’. But then I noticed that most Latin American countries are among the top forty according to happiness; that Mexico is just behind the UK; and that the bottom twenty countries are in Africa (with the exception of Bulgaria and Haiti). Although the very top countries are rich, they also have very well established welfare state. And although it is true that the very bottom of the list consists of relatively poor countries they are also very unstable.

But what can explain Latin America? And do trends of countries tell us anything about the tendencies of individuals?

The saying for today is:

“The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money.” - Author Unknown

Firewalker

ninky_2

in a happiness index comparing how many resources a society consumes with how happy its citizens are costa rica scored highly. many of the richer countries have quite happy citizens but they are consuming masses or resources to achieve this. so i see costa rica as the ecologically frugal success story. it has strong welfare programmes too and has managed with no army for several decades.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/04/costa-rica-happy-planet-index

Firewalker

ninky wrote: »

in a happiness index comparing how many resources a society consumes with how happy its citizens are costa rica scored highly. many of the richer countries have quite happy citizens but they are consuming masses or resources to achieve this. so i see costa rica as the ecologically frugal success story. it has strong welfare programmes too and has managed with no army for several decades.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/04/costa-rica-happy-planet-index

Thanks for the link, Ninky. Costa Rica was very high on the index that is not normalised by resources - in the top ten I think.

How very interesting!

Firewalker

ninky_2

btw, why do you think bulgaria's citizens are so unhappy? i've never been there.

Firewalker

ninky wrote: »

btw, why do you think bulgaria's citizens are so unhappy? i've never been there.

Frankly, it came as a slight surprise to me that Bulgaria was so low in this happines ranking. Don't forget that this is done by self assessment. So, if I were to venture a guess the higher the difference between aspirations and conditions to achieve these the more un-happy one feels. Include, the fact that people compare what they have (in a very broad sense) with what their perception of what other people have: as an example, I found that some people in Bulgaria think that at the moment here, in the UK young people have really bright future; which for many is not the case. And three, the living standard of many people in Bulgaria dropped dramatically over the last 15 years or so. And these are the three main dimensions of hapiness - with large difference (I did this one in a post sometime ago; the dimensions of hapiness).

Interestingly, when we were there in the Summer, OH who does not understand what people say, kept saying that there is no feeling of exonomic crisis. All restaurants were full during week days anyway.

This is what fascinates me - if there is a place that should rank low in terms of happiness it is probably Mexico. There are very few obsenely rich people; there are slums that I though are a movie invention; there is very high level of crime and insecurity...and Mexico ranks 18 immediately after the UK. What the have is a lifestyle that promotes happiness - it is a natural paradise; probably one does not need much for their basic needs; and they have music (La Bamba is original Mexican piece).

What do you reckon?

Firewalker

Firewalker

Tonight I feel like telling a story. I remembered this story today because of something that occurred to me and I will call an AHA (a term used in the personal growth literature and referring to an existential realisation of something; something that you feel as a pang in your heart rather than as a wave in your head). What suddenly came to me was the following: most of us look after our possessions much better than after our assets most of the time. Our main assets are our health and wellbeing – problem is that these two things we usually take for granted until something goes wrong; by which time often it is too late.

Having been hit but this AHA, I had this image of me being in M&S. I do like Per Una clothes – they do some frilly stuff as well but mostly, I find, it is about casual elegance. And the clothes are just cut for me. My image of being in the shop dated from about 6-7 years back, when Little Boy was about 3 years old. I saw myself walking through the shop, choosing outfits, Little Boy jumping up and down saying ‘Mummy, this is lovely...and this...and this...’. Then I saw myself at the pay station and I heard:

‘Three hundred and twenty two pounds, please!’ I took my purse out and paid the bill but when we were several meters away I started crying.

“Why are you crying, Mummy?” – asked Little Boy.
“I am just not used to spending so much on myself.” – I explained.

And then my three years old son looked up at me, smiled and said:

“You are a good mummy, Mummy. You deserve this.”

I started crying even harder.

Today I had my haircut and a lovely massage; I bought myself a winter cycling jacket and do you know what? It feels great and deep in my core I know that I deserve this.

Now that is what I call growth, this is what I call an AHA!

Sleep well.

Firewalker

ninky_2

Firewalker wrote: »

What do you reckon?

i think the human tendency to assess one's own happiness by comparison to other people is a deep flaw. i'm not religious but i think when the bible says that 'covetting' your neighbours stuff is a sin this is what it is referring to. not so much the harm it causes others but the deep harm it causes to one's own wellbeing. the ability to make the most of what one has and see your own 'blessings' (aethist ones in my case) is a really precious one - and something we tend to find in happy people. perhaps cultures which are able to manufacture this tendency on a grander scale have happier citizens?

what you say about natural paradise is also important. being close to nature (by which i mean proper nature, not the agriculturalised landscapes and deforested fields we have in abundance in the uk) does make a person happy. it certainly makes me happy. you only have to look at advertising - frequently the scenes feature unrealistic and rare glimpses of a life lived in nature. shampoos performed in waterfalls. cars driven through empty wildernesses. laughing yogurt eating children giggling through meadows and babbling brooks. it is a shame that so many of the products we aspire to ironically destroy that which was free and commonly held for all of us before.

rainbow81

Firewalker wrote: »

This is what fascinates me - if there is a place that should rank low in terms of happiness it is probably Mexico. There are very few obsenely rich people; there are slums that I though are a movie invention; there is very high level of crime and insecurity...and Mexico ranks 18 immediately after the UK. What the have is a lifestyle that promotes happiness - it is a natural paradise; probably one does not need much for their basic needs; and they have music (La Bamba is original Mexican piece).

What do you reckon?

Firewalker

Hi

I can't remember who studied this but I have a good friend who talks about him and the theory about the happiness index of different countries. I think the main point was that the happiest countries have the least difference in wealth between the rich and poor. So money/wealth is related to happiness but not necessarily in ways we expect. I do expect it is ultimately about comparisons so countries with higher infiltration of media will feel more dissatisfied as viewers "believe" that others have it all and by comparison their riches seem insignificant. I only have to read a magazine to feel a little bit depressed about what I've got, but in reality I have a nice life, I certainly have "enough" anyway.

R x

Firewalker

A quick post before I am off to the Airport.

Yesterday was a rather hectic day for me full of highs and stress. After hearing two really welcome pieces of news (one about a friend and one related to me) I decided to check in – and realised that I have not done my ESTA thing. After some messing about and answering really silly questions about whether I do or don’t have intention to overthrow the government of the US the form was filled in (btw, have done this one on a number of occasions before it was electronic) and no result followed. Apparently, now it takes up to 72 hours to hear whether they have authorisation. Thanks to some good people on MG’s thread this was sorted out last night and I am packed and almost ready to go. So, instead of nice weekend cooking, reading, playing with Little Boy and blowing bubbles I have a very long way in front of me ending in a nice hotel in doggy area of town (which of course I did not know when booking but did not have much choice either).

All else has been done – weekly accounts; menu for my men and shopping list. It was nice to see that we can be on budget even though this month we needed to buy a fridge freezer and I was tempted by this laser gadget I was telling you about (which I still have not used).

The more I think about the link between happiness and money the more interesting I do find the whole thing – too many paradoxes and where there are paradoxes there is usually something fascinating (and useful) at the core. There is another group of people who are basically happy – the Roma people. The one thing that Latin Americans and Roma share is two characteristics of their indigenous music – it is high vibration, fast rhythm. Just a thought – in any case want to look into this one more.

I will be writing during the next week but not sure how much I will be able to read (and post). But please, I know people are reading this diary, do post – every time there is a post it is a celebration. I am taking with me all challenges from MG’s Transatlantic adventure with Mr Big and working on them – some need re-writing, others just some further reflection.

And the thought for today is:

“On your journey to your dream, be ready to face oasis and deserts. In both cases, don't stop” – Paolo Coelho

Firewalker