Assorted Notes

WEDNESDAY, 4 FEBRUARY 2015

Imagine someone asks you to make a rather significant monetary contribution to a cause, and you answer, “I can’t really help you. I don’t make much money. It’s not what I do.”

“What do you mean making money is not what you do?” the person asks. “Everyone needs money!”

Not one to let a chance go by to point out a misconception, you confirm that of course most people need money, but that not everyone needs to make money. As examples you point to monks and nuns, the children of rich people, people who have inherited a lot of money, criminals who have stolen enough, and so on.

You explain that you do have a part-time job, but that you make just enough money to pay rent, buy food, pay the bills, and do something fun every now and then. Any extra money is saved so that you can afford to visit your family every year or two.

After going back and forth it might emerge that you do in fact try to make more money.

“Yes,” you admit. “That is so.”

You’re not stupid, you say. You are aware of the benefits of having more money than what you need to buy necessities and pay for necessary things. “So I try to make a little more money, but again, it’s not my first priority.”

“You don’t have children, do you?” the other person asks.

“No,” you reply. “For that I will indeed need a lot more money.”

“If making money is not your first priority, then what is?” the other person asks, by now visibly irritated.

“Like every other human being on this planet,” you start after striking an appropriate pose, “including the man or woman who lovingly raises a family, the man or woman who worships a god in great sincerity, and the man or woman who consumes large quantities of drugs or alcohol my first priority is to try and make my own life worth living. I have discovered that there are things that cost relatively little money that actually make me feel like my life is worth living, much more than was the case when I was merely trying to make as much money as possible and not much else.

“If by who I am and what I do I end up contributing to other people also being more convinced that their lives are worth living,” you add after a brief pause, “that is also good.

“But,” you say, circling back to the start of the conversation, “unfortunately I simply do not make enough money at the current moment to contribute much to this very noble cause.”

Would that be good enough for your interlocutor?

That will be the day.

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FRIDAY, 23 JANUARY 2015

The One Minute Millionaire is a 2002 book written by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen that explains how you might be able to make one million dollars in thirty days. The process is explained by way of a story about a woman who has just lost her husband. She is in her thirties, with two children, a meagre income, and in-laws that threaten to declare her incompetent and take away her children. She makes an agreement with them that if she succeeds in making one million dollars in one month, they will leave her alone. If she fails, she loses her children. Her desperation is exactly what she needs to shock her into action – more specifically, to approach a woman she has identified as a successful entrepreneur and ask her for advice.

For me, desperation was never enough to achieve any kind of success with any of the ways I have tried to make money since 2006. Or, as I thought on many occasions, perhaps I wasn’t desperate enough. I have always had a roof over my head, and I have no children looking at me with hunger in their eyes.

That I was, however, desperate to make money was beyond doubt. This proved to be problematic for several reasons:

1. I didn’t have money to use as seed capital.

2. I was aware of my desperation, and this awareness further undermined my self-esteem.

3. I therefore never had enough confidence to approach other people in order to ask them to work with me. I was afraid they would see me for what I was: a desperate man who needed their help.

4. If you are desperate, you don’t have time for something that will only start bringing in money in six months or a year’s time; you need money immediately.

5. Because you can’t commit to a long-term project or business you tend to jump from one idea to another.

6. Lack of seed capital, lack of confidence and reduced self-esteem, and jumping from one project to another are all factors that reduce probability of success. Your almost inevitable lack of success after three months, six months, two years, three years … make you even more desperate.

TUESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 2015

I also have a history of issues with identity. In my writing I made capital from it, but it cannot be denied that I still struggle with it. Of course I know who I am … but where? when? with whom?

If I had decided early in 2006 I AM WEBSITES – the business of creating a website for other people or creating websites to sell, the desperation would still have had an effect but I would have overcome it quicker. If I had decided I AM SHORT REPORTS, desperation would also have had an effect, but it would eventually have faded. If I had to decide I AM SPORTSBETTING, it would still have taken me two or three years to become successful, but I wouldn’t have wasted time with anything else. The same can be said about Forex trading or sports trading or freelance writing or social media marketing for other people.

The problem was not only that I was desperate for cash, I also had no idea about “who” I wanted to be. As usual, I wanted to do everything, because everything looked good.

This is still a problem every time I am confronted with more than one option.

* * *

To be able to function and make a claim for a place in the sun we need to initially discover and eventually decide who we are and who we want to be, and then focus on being this person. If we change identity every second month – “My name is not John anymore, it’s now Tienzin, and I don’t eat hamburgers anymore because I’m now a vegetarian” – we will struggle to make a success of whatever it is we want to do.

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FRIDAY, 30 JANUARY 2015

For a long time I believed joy and happiness to be luxuries that can only be enjoyed by people with no problems in life. I tried to convince myself that it is okay to be happy – that I won’t be committing a mortal sin and risk being hit by a bolt of lightning if I walk around with a smile, being nice to people and making jokes and generally feeling positive about life.

Eventually I started believing myself.

Alas, I tend to fall back into old cognitive grooves way too easily. Time and again I catch myself thinking once more that only ignorant people, children, psychopaths and fools can get away with experiencing happiness and joy as a normal existential condition.

The truth, as many people already know, is that happiness and joy form the first wall that protects you against the onslaughts of life; happiness and joy are also the tree out back where you will take your last stand to keep yourself alive, and more or less healthy.

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WEDNESDAY, 28 JANUARY 2015

I have been fascinated for quite some time by the difference between successful and less successful people. My attention always sharpens when someone enters my attention field that I think would be a good case study – in flesh and blood, in a program on TV or in a movie. I observe how these people behave, how they enter a room, how they greet people, how they listen to other people, how they dress, even what vocabulary they use.

Twenty years ago my role model – the person I most wanted to be like – was the ascetic. I dreamed of being able to withdraw from society and to live in an abandoned fort at least three days’ walk from the nearest town – and with no easy access to any kind of vehicle.

This interest in the successful person reflects an unsurprising ambition: I want to be successful. I want to behave like a successful person; I want to talk like a successful person, think like a successful person, and over time expect to succeed when I embark on any kind of project or endeavour.

Have I finally undergone a transformation? Has the one who wanted to become an ascetic become tired of standing alone? Has he started to wonder how it would feel to be one of “them”?

The truth is, the ascetic is successful, although students and imitators of conventionally successful people won’t necessarily see it. The ascetic does not speak apologetically. The ascetic does not wear an expensive suit, but he is comfortable in the material he drapes over himself. The ascetic is not poor, though he has little money.

The ascetic is successful because he does what he wants. He goes his own way. He does not make apologies. He does not ask for acceptance. He does expect to live in peace, to feel good about who and what he is, and to finally die in peace.

Most people certainly want to be successful at the end of the day, but you have to ask yourself: successful as what, and as whom?

———————-

Read about Richard Withers, a hermit living in the “modern desert”.

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TUESDAY, 20 JANUARY 2015

In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains how Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were at the right place at the right time in their teenage years. Interest in computer technology, good schools, and access to computers paved the way for them to become iconic figures in the tech industry years later.

I am also to some extent fortunate regarding my writing. A few decades ago there were writers like me who also wrote material about their own lives, and about their ideas about life. Little of these people’s writing has probably been read by more than ten people, and many eventually died without much recognition.

Likewise, there are other people alive today whose lives are similar to mine, and who write about similar themes in ways that will also probably never lead to any commercial success.

Here is where my luck kicks in, my being at the right place at the right time. I have had a computer for my exclusive use continuously since 1999, with stable, fast access to the internet – a privilege I did not enjoy before I came to Taiwan. Particular conditions in Taiwan have also made it possible for me to make enough money to survive and save some for the future without having to give up more than thirty hours per week of my life. Throw in my desire to make money from home that exposed me to internet marketing, and within a few years I had acquired a critical mass of knowledge and experience in the field of self-publishing.

I can therefore afford to spend time on my writing projects, I know how to publish this material on my own websites and on a growing number of other platforms and in other formats, and I know how to distribute this material for maximum exposure.

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