Assorted Notes

(Introduction)

I’ve been making money since I was fifteen years old – and by making money I mean earning something other than pocket money because I mowed the lawn. I started by delivering newspapers in downtown Pretoria for National Press; the next year I recruited subscribers for the same company. In my second year at university I worked in a men’s gift shop, and two years later as an assistant at the Religious Studies Department. The year before I graduated I delivered food for local restaurants, and about eighteen months after graduation I started teaching English.

All this work can be sorted under the category of someone asked me if I can do something; I agreed; I did the task, and they paid me.

I have also made a small amount of money over the years by selling items – mostly stuff that had filled up space in my apartment that I advertised, but also books that I wrote and self-published, and materials that people could use to improve their language skills, or that could help them to help other people do so.

And then I have also had mixed success with “playing around” with money; buying something at price X and selling it later at price Y.

Seeing that I have been making money for over thirty years, and have made money in various ways, what exactly do I mean when I write that I have – or had – a historical problem with making money? Is it the manner of making money – okay if someone tells me/asks me to do something, not okay if I have to take the initiative? Is the problem with risking money to make money? Do I have a problem identifying a market and coming up with a product or service to meet a specific need?

Long story short, I don’t think any of this is a problem, although it will probably be easier to make X amount of money with one method rather than another.

(End of introduction)

SATURDAY, 19 JANUARY 2019

I can have nice clothes, nice shoes, nice sunglasses, a good quality cap, good quality digital devices and earphones. I can have a debit card with money in the bank. I also have no problem imagining myself riding around on a good quality bicycle. I can enjoy a good meal at a nice restaurant, and even give money to someone else if the opportunity presents itself. With all this, I experience no resistance from problematic programming.

Where programming still throws rocks in the road, is with me doing things and receiving a lot of money as a result. Or rather, I can do things and receive money – as long as it’s just enough to keep me alive.

And yet, I don’t have a problem having money. I know I can manage money well. When I have money, I know how to deal with it – to enjoy it, but not to waste it.

The problem is to make myself receptive to receiving ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more money than what I need to buy food, pay rent, and generally live a simple life. That I could be the recipient of a million dollars … that I could do things and then receive thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars – that’s where I’m still missing a few planks in the bridge I have to cross to get to the other side.

Monday, 15 April 2019

One does wonder: Why make more money than you need to live a simple life? One reason is that things can change quickly – you can lose your job, get sick, a war can break out in the country where you’ve made yourself at home. So I don’t want money to live lavishly. I just want more certainty than we currently enjoy. And to be able to do and enjoy some things we can’t afford to do at the moment.

MONDAY, 18 MARCH 2019

Whilst taking a shower I thought of two domain names I own, and how I finally decided that I would never be able to sell them. I thought of making money in general, and of financial markets. I think about how I have deactivated barriers in my programming. I thought about how fast it happens/How fast does it happen? Thought of religion, and about how I was programmed for twenty-plus years in a particular religious tradition and associated mythology, and how it was critically deactivated in a matter of no more than two years. Also thought that it wasn’t just the academic course I had been studying; that other people sat with me in the same classes and studied the same material, and their religious affiliation came out more or less unscathed. Thought again about the research I’m currently doing on the stock indices, and how at the end it doesn’t seem too hard to make money, but not too easy either. “What’s difficult, and what’s easy?” I wondered. Thought again about what I still considered to be my bad/flawed programming, or programming that I had picked up, because surely my parents didn’t mean to program me in a way that would make it harder for me to survive and find happiness in the world. Thought again that the flawed programming was that I thought it must be hard to make money: It must be a struggle. “Do I still struggle?” I wondered. Not really, I thought. Trading is a little more difficult than I thought it would be, or it’s taking a bit longer to work through all the options, but I’ve already made a lot of progress, even in terms of profit and loss. “But what’s easy, and what’s difficult?” came the question again. I knew it was important to answer because for decades I believed it must be hard to make money, to be successful, to make your dreams come true. It must be a struggle. But how difficult? When has one struggled enough?

“The answer you’re looking for even though you haven’t asked the right question,” emerged the thought from the part of my brain that hadn’t actively been talking out loud in the shower, “is that you’ll never make it. That was your actual programming. The struggle part is just because you have to do something. You have to try. Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?”

In fact, the sum total of the lessons I observed in my parents’ lives, and of the lessons from the church, and of Radio Pulpit, and of Job’s struggles that had ceased after seven lean years but my parents’ struggles were never-ending – though there were times of hope when one could almost have believed the struggle was over – was that it was never going to happen.

Is that why I have also come close several times … only to retreat every time, for reasons I could never fully explain to myself? Is it because there was a deep conviction not only that I should struggle, but that it would never happen for me? That I will never be successful. That I will never be financially comfortable. That I will always struggle – because it had been written that way long before I knew what was going on around me and inside my mind.

It goes without saying that this is a superficial worldview. It goes without saying that this is merely the result of a child observing the world of adults and making assumptions about how life works, and these assumptions becoming entrenched in his mind. Because it doesn’t have to be that way. But once the seed has been planted in your brain that it is so, and should be so, and you fail to pull the poisonous plant out early enough in your adult life, it will always continue to grow, eventually becoming the dominant plant in the Garden of your Thoughts, which determines how you think about things, how you speak, how you act, how you dream, how you make plans, how you make money, and how you spend money in the hope that you’ll make more money, and how you spend your time hoping you will do better – someday.

“Is it easy to make money?” is the wrong question. “Is it difficult to make money?” is also the wrong question. “Should one struggle?” is not so much the wrong question as it is a stupid question.

The canvas is clean. The paint cans are full of rich shades from my past, and from my imagination, and from what other people will gladly teach you when you open yourself up to it. Will financial independence ever happen for me? The fact is, it started happening for me years ago – I just kept myself blind to it every time, and turned away from it. And made it in other ways, and in other areas that had nothing to do with money.

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THURSDAY, 31 JANUARY 2019

If anyone sincerely asks my advice about “making” money, I will agree, on a few conditions. One is they must understand that this is a package deal: You’re not just going to “make” more money; you are going to transform your life. You have to be ready for it. You need to understand where you are coming from with the whole business of “making” money and spending money. You need to understand that before you knew what was going on, you were programmed about money, and about many other things. Weeks, or even months before we get to the technical aspects of how to start a business, or how to set up a website, or how to trade, you will need to read books like T. Harv Eker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin’s book, Your Money or Your Life (preferably the older version), Wallace D. Wattles’ 1910 classic, The Science of Getting Rich, and even Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass at Making Money. Books like Scott Adams’s How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, and Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Belief are strictly speaking further away from the subject of money, but can make a big difference. And if you want to learn to trade, we won’t even talk about the difference between the Euro and Brent Crude until you’ve read Mark Douglas.

MONDAY, 11 MARCH 2019

“What is important? What are you supposed to do?” the thought comes to me for the umpteenth time as I leave the house to go buy dinner, after which I will return home to continue my work. (Contrary to my approach, I think of other expat English teachers who go out for 7-8 hours a day to teach 4-6 hours at NT$600-$700 an hour.)

Three options (as usual I will not succeed in disguising my preference):

1. Teach as many hours a day as possible at a set rate, hoping that the rug won’t suddenly be pulled from under you, and that the money will keep you alive for longer than logic suggests.

2. Get a so-called permanent position and hope the rug is not pulled from under you without warning – and if so, that you will soon obtain a similar position, and that the money you earn will be enough to keep you alive for a few years.

3. Live simply, and limit your expenses. Do enough part-time work, or freelance work, to cover your expenses. Spend a good percentage of the rest of your waking hours each day developing skills in more than one area – may be related, but need not be, and expand your knowledge on a variety of topics. Use this knowledge and skills to develop more than one source of income; sources of income that are more sustainable, and more reliable in the long run than any of the part-time or full-time positions you may hope to hold on to.

TUESDAY, 12 MARCH 2019

Question, again: To whom would I offer this advice? Certainly to myself ten, fifteen, even twenty years ago. And certainly to other expats who support themselves with English teaching in countries like Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan.

Does this also apply to other people who do part-time work, or freelance work? To some extent. However, there are people who are risking their future and their greatest hope for a good life in a more traditional profession, where they will increasingly earn more money, and will increasingly occupy better positions. I can see how this guerrilla approach – staying mobile; travelling lightly; keeping things simple; taking what you can get and holding out for as long as possible – won’t apply to them.

[Also read “Advice for the 25-year-old foreigner who plans to teach English in Taiwan for the next thirty years” of July 2018]

FRIDAY, 15 MARCH 2019

The money in your bank account is only a subatomic particle of the amount of money that already exists; money that has no feeling or opinion about flowing your way. If money could “know”, it would know anyway that it wouldn’t stay with you, not in the way a piece of clothing would remain hanging in your closet for years after you acquired it. You spend money. Then other money comes in. You deposit money in your bank account, which in any case means you don’t even own that money anymore – you lend it to the bank, for which the bank pays you interest, and if you want it back, they will give you different money than the money you gave them.

Still, money – which already exists and is in circulation – has no feeling or opinion about spending time in your possession. You’re not special in that sense of the word. If you open yourself up to it and take the right steps to receive it, it will flow to you.

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THURSDAY 14 MARCH 2019

01:19

Tuesday evening I was waiting at a busy intersection in the city. As people rushed past me on their scooters and motorcycles, I thought how each and every one of these people had a story – something you could find out if you spent a minute or two with them.

Little did I know how I would have the opportunity the next evening to find out just how true that was.

11:24

So it came that my wife and I walked from the restaurant last night where we had dinner, to an ENT specialist in our neighbourhood where my wife wanted to go for her flu symptoms. As we walked past a series of businesses on the walkway, I saw from the corner of my eye a woman stepping out from a psychiatrist’s consulting room. (I noticed her because she looked for a moment like someone who was in a class of mine for a while.)

A few businesses further, we came to the doctor’s. I said goodbye to my wife, and continued on the same walkway.

Not thirty seconds later, I heard a voice calling out, “Hey!” Seeing that little English is heard in the streets of Taiwan, I immediately suspected that I was the target of the call. Looking back, I saw a woman approaching, who looked very much like the woman who had exited the psychiatrist’s practice.

“Where are you from?” she immediately demanded.

Here I have to explain that after twenty years in Taiwan, I have a policy about this question. If you approach me politely, and say, “Excuse me, may I ask, where are you from?” I will respond. If you shout at me from a distance, and then without any introduction demand information from me, I’m not going to answer you. Or, I’m not going to proceed the way the person might have assumed. “Where are you from?” I asked her back.

No answer, just a repetition of her question.

“Why do you want to know?” I asked her with a hint of a smile on my face. “Are you from the police?”

The next hour and a half would make it clear that this was the wrong question.

She then became aggressive. “Why you don’t want to talk to me?” And then, a few seconds later, a more bizarre question: “Why you and you wife so poor?” This mention of my wife confirmed that she had seen us together before she approached me; most likely, as I suspected, when we had walked past her at the psychiatrist’s. I ignored her, and as I rounded the corner of the building, I quickened my pace, now just about a minute away from our apartment.

At this point she had moved away from me, but continued to scream in my direction from the other side of the street. “Why you look down on me?” (Interesting twist, I thought: First we were “poor”, and now she felt I looked down on her.) A series of words I couldn’t make out followed the English.

Ten meters further, I heard her running towards me.

What does a man do when he is in public, he is aggressively confronted by a woman he does not know – whom he happened to have seen at a psychiatrist’s office, and the woman shortly afterwards charges at him? Not only did I not want to be attacked, I didn’t want to be in a position where I would have had to defend myself with possible force.

The by now well-known advice, “Run, Forest, run!” had been floating in my subconscious the past few days. And so I started running, in my plastic sandals, with the woman following in furious pursuit. In the haze of the moment I also heard something like a plastic bottle being thrown in my direction. For some reason I didn’t go straight up the street to our alley, but down the street behind our apartment building. I heard her scream, “I’m going to call the police!” As I ran, my mind translated her further utterances in Chinese: Stop him! Stop him! He …

Almost at the other side of the street I noticed a man observing the whole affair. He first looked at her, then at me, and then he grabbed my arm. I pulled away, and told him in English, “She’s crazy! Call the police!” He seemed to be unsure of what to do, and I took the opportunity to run past the woman in the direction from where I came, around the corner, past another few shops, around another corner, into our alley; unlocked the door to our apartment building, rushed up four sets of stairs, and called my wife as I arrived at our apartment door.

Out of breath I told her: “There’s a crazy woman who just attacked me in the street! I think she may be on her way to you!” My wife was naturally unsure of what was going on, but I could hear the woman screaming in the background. “She’s already there!” I said.

In the apartment I put my wife’s soup and dumplings and her bottle of Coke on the coffee table (“Forest” even had to run with a plastic bag with food in his hand), got myself some socks and put on my sneakers – to be better able to run away, and called the police as I was leaving the apartment to go and save my wife. I gave the officer on the other end our address, and told him about the unstable one who had attacked me. I also informed him of my concern that my wife might be her next target.

Not more than a minute later, I was back in the walkway to the doctor’s office. As I had expected, the woman who chased me was standing outside, now surrounded by four police officers. “That’s him! That’s him!” she shouted in Chinese, with a fierce finger pointing in my direction. I calmly walked past the police, into the consulting room, and told my wife: That’s the woman I was talking about.

For the next few minutes, I explained to the police – one had already taken hold of my arm – my side of the story. Seeing that my liberty – in the truest sense possible – was at stake, I reckoned it was pertinent to inform them that her narrative, wrong as I knew it to be, may not have been a malicious lie, but the figment of a mind that may not be one hundred percent healthy. I prompted them to follow me. We proceeded down the walkway in the direction of the psychiatrist’s consulting room. There, I told them, in somewhat incorrect Chinese, that I was 99 percent sure I had seen her leave the room no more than one minute before she had confronted me.

Certainly essential to mention at this point that I fully understand that there are people with mental disorders, and people suffering from chemical imbalances. I don’t look down on people with health problems – physically or otherwise. The fact that I referred to her as crazy was not a medical diagnosis, but a simple remark based on her bizarre behaviour at my expense in public. I also don’t hold it against anyone if they want to or need to see a psychiatrist. Why would I? Do I look down on my wife who wants to see a doctor for her cough and sore throat? However, if a person acts aggressively towards me in public, and threatens my wife’s well-being, and calls the police and fabricates a story that I attacked her or something (it later came out that I had supposedly stolen money from her while she was speaking to me, which explains the “Why are you so poor?” comment), I am definitely not going to keep it to myself that I reckon she might be capable of believing figments of her imagination, based on the fact that I had seen her at a psychiatrist.

The police officers – three of them had accompanied me, probably in case I decided to start running again, then asked the receptionist at the psychiatrist if there had been a woman with them a few minutes ago. The receptionist came out on the walkway, looked down in the direction where the loud one was still waiting with the other officer, and slowly nodded her head.

I could see how the officers’ attitude towards me changed. I again explained in Chinese (for which I would at least have gotten a C+) what had happened, how she had tried to talk to me, how she had been rude and that I didn’t want to talk to her, how she had shouted at me from the other side of the road and threw a bottle at me, how she had charged at me and I how I felt compelled to run-Forest-run!, how a man grabbed me in the street (did she grab you, the officer enquired in Chinese), and how I first called my wife at home and then the police. The one officer pointed to the CCTV cameras in the area, with the implication that it would surely confirm whose version of events were accurate.

We then went back to the other doctor’s office. The other patients who were waiting with my wife in the small room looked more sympathetically at us, gesturing that we should calm down and sit – that everything would be all right.

Because I had also called the police, they wanted me to go with them to their station to make a statement. Because my wife would remain to see the doctor, I wanted assurance that the Chinese woman would not be in the area. They assured us that she had already left with a female officer.

I climbed in the back of the police car and drove the kilometre or so to their station. After arriving there, one lead me to what was clearly the back of the building, through a door into what looked like a basement, past a barking dog in a cage, and into a long, narrow office with padded walls, a few desks, and a TV high on a shelf with a blue screen and two Chinese characters gliding across the screen. The one officer then explained that everything was okay and I just had to make a statement. I gave him my Taiwan ID card, and he asked me to relate the whole story again. Which I proceeded to do, in my best Chinese. After a few more questions, he read back what he had written, with me asking for clarification here and there.

Along with my ID card, I also saw the woman’s ID card, and I surmised why I was in the basement: The woman was also in the building and they probably didn’t want her to flare up again.

A policeman in civilian clothes had since brought my wife, and after I shook hands with the officer who had taken my statement, we walked the few blocks home.

All in all, the incident probably ended not too badly. Four things counted in my favour, and I think the woman didn’t expect one of them. I was back at the scene within a few minutes, despite the presence of the police, and in spite of the fact that she was pointing at me as the person who had done X, Y or Z; I had called the police myself and told them I was concerned about my wife’s safety because of this person’s behaviour; I could tell my side of the story in Chinese; I could share with them that I suspected she had a health problem that could have influenced her narrative.

One somewhat unpleasant consequence is that quite a few people in the neighbourhood where we have been living for almost five years saw me bolting down the street with a bag of food in my hand, with a woman following anxiously behind me, all the while screaming that she was going to call the police and that I had done something to her. I have to face the other residents in this neighbourhood again, walk down the same streets and alleys, and walk past the same businesses where I had climbed into the back of a police car.

One should probably just have a thick skin, I encouraged myself, and keep your head high. What other choice do you have after all?

Oh yes, and I may have to think twice before talking to strangers in the street again.

---

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SATURDAY, 9 MARCH 2019

Like probably most thinkers outside the mainstream, developmental biologist Bruce Lipton has his critics. Nevertheless, everything I’ve listened to and have read over the last few years from Lipton gives me the closest I’ve come to an integrated worldview since my earliest programming as an Evangelical Christian: An explanation connecting the physical world to the non-physical world, the where-you-come-from with the where-you-are-going – or where you could go if you do the right things.

* * *

One of the most appealing aspects of Lipton’s explanation of how things work, especially as described in his book, Biology of Belief, is that it empowers the individual. You are responsible for your own life – much more than you ever could have imagined.

I understand that the thought can be extremely unpleasant for some people, who already feel that they aren’t good enough, or that they are not doing well enough. And now they have to hear they themselves might be responsible for their own misery!

Of course, it’s complicated. After all, human beings are complex organisms. The world is complex. Numerous factors play a role in how good or how bad you do in your life, including health-wise.

Belief in your own abilities to positively affect your life, and recognition that you are largely responsible for your own life, does, however, have practical value. If people already have disagreement with this point, there is a good chance they will undermine their own abilities to positively affect their lives.

Some people might point out other factors that also play a role in your physical well-being – things like toxins in the environment or genetic mutations that affect how cells function. Of course there are other factors! This is not a black-and-white issue. Even if toxins in the environment affect your health, or if genetic mutations lead to disease, belief in your own abilities to positively affect your quality of life and health will continue to make a difference.

* * *

It’s like a completed circle. You look at biology, physics, chemistry, math, and so on, and finally at quantum physics – protons, electrons, and neutrons that act in all sorts of unexpected ways; energy that is the basic element of everything that exists, and perception that affects how cells function. You move away from religion and the “spiritual” world you can’t touch but that is supposed to affect your life, and you end up with wonderful things that scientists sometimes find difficult to explain, and that, if you look at it carefully and think about it, are not too far from the meaning of the word, “magic”.

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FRIDAY, 15 FEBRUARY 2019

15:55

Over the last few years, I have become intensely aware of the difference it makes in your life how you think about yourself, even how you talk – with yourself, and about yourself.

No one can make statements about what types of challenges other people could face. There will always be people whose condition is such that “positive thinking” may not make much of a difference. But is that reason enough to underestimate the exceptional ability that people do have to make a difference in their lives? Specific people have specific problems, but to dismiss as insignificant good advice that can make an astronomical difference to many people’s lives because it won’t (in your opinion) make a difference to a specific person’s life, does not do anyone favours in my opinion.

I would rather encourage someone to try something than to give them an excuse not to try it. Maybe something doesn’t work. Then you try something else – and you don’t have to feel embarrassed because something doesn’t or didn’t work for you.

I reckon the whole story of positive psychology is more than just a bumper sticker or the straw man some people make of it which they then criticise. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that in many cases positive psychology is the difference between life and death, or the difference between a miserable life and an exceptional one.

Of course, it does matter how you share this type of opinion or advice with people.

* * *

I can’t say I’ve had a Damascus Road experience and now know what the truth is and everything is hunky-dory. It is simply a case of looking at what works for me and looking at what works for other people. And if the results turn out to be positive, I’ll throw more of it in the pot and continue brewing. That’s certainly what most people do, isn’t it? And for the record, I even throw bumper stickers and posters in the pot, and if the bubbling brew doesn’t explode, I add it to the recipe.

* * *

The idea isn’t to restore your health overnight or regain the use of your limbs (as good as that would be). The idea is to do the best you can with the situation you are in, or with the condition you are suffering from. Thinking of yourself as a victim will bring about a dramatically different result from thinking of yourself as a powerful agent of ability and personal transformation.

People like to argue about the accuracy of words or phrases (“Does X really mean Y?”) when they should rather focus on the practical value of an approach or outlook. “How valuable will it be for me on a daily basis?” is the question you should rather ask yourself.

19:55

You shouldn’t get involved at all in an argument about the simplicity or not of positive psychology as a factor in one’s life. It’s a bit like someone saying vegetables are healthy for you, with someone else responding with, “But not all vegetables are purple.” To respond with, “But I didn’t say all vegetables are purple. I only said vegetables are healthy for you,” would be a waste of time. It will be to move away from the real point, in the case of positive psychology, the value of positive self-perception, and an acceptance of the astronomical abilities that (most) people have to influence their own well-being.

The whole argument of the simplicity or not of a factor is in any case absurd – not because it is absurd that X can be simple, but about the meaning of the words. After all, what does it mean to say, “It’s not that simple”? First of all, what does Person A mean by simple, and what does Person B mean by that? Second, how sure is Person A that he is not just making a straw man of Person B’s argument, and then attacking the straw man?

Wednesday, 17 April 2019

I would rather overestimate the value of positive thinking, than underestimate it because I define myself or identify myself to others as someone who doesn’t have time for “New Age mumbo jumbo”, and rob myself in the process of the potentially enormous effect positive thoughts can have on my behaviour, on my experience of reality, and on the results I produce every day.

Thursday, 18 April 2019

A reader of the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Martin E.P. Seligman, makes the following comment in their review of the book on Amazon.com:

“‘Learned optimism’ is based on the idea of ‘learned helplessness,’ or the theory that if a person believes that he/she has no control over the bad things that happen to him/her – that bad things just occur randomly and for no reason – then the person gives up trying to find ways to make his/her life better and as a result he/she becomes depressed. ‘Learned optimism’ is designed to teach a person with ‘learned helplessness’ that while he/she might not have control over life’s events, what he/she does have control of is his/her own thinking about those events.”

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