The Science of Getting Rich- anyone ever read this book? What think ye?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, after starting a thread asking for links to online weirdness, I found myself surfing The Quintessence of the Loon. Followed a link to some “Bible Fraud” site, stumbled upon a link to this book. It was a free download, I was in a certain frame of mind, so I decided to check it out.

It’s very interesting reading, something on the order of Think and Grow Rich.

Decided to give it a whirl.

The basic idea of the book is that there is plenty of wealth to go around in the universe, and that by cultivating a particular mental attitude and a bit of what is commonly called “creative visualization”, a person can obtain their fair share of that wealth. Opportunities to earn money or acquire desired possessions will present themselves if you project the proper, specific thoughts onto the “formless substance” of the universe. Prayer doesn’t hurt, either, but you have to really believe that God wants you to prosper.

So far, after putting into practice the basic principles outlined in the book, which is very short and a fast read, well…

Yesterday in clinic, I walked out with $24 in tips, which is outstanding for a student massage clinic after working on three clients. One is a regular who usually tips me a five, she gave me nine yesterday. One was a lady who had been in once or twice, liked my work a lot, requested to have me work on her again, and slipped me a ten. Requests for rebookings in the clinic aren’t really rare, but they are far from the norm.

I suppose it could have been a fluke, but I’d much rather think that it was the beginning of something bigger.

So, if you’re inclined to follow the link, download the book (PDF file, so you’ll need Adobe Reader) and read it- like I said, it’s a short book and a fast read,

let me know what you think.

2

Sounds like a simple concept (The Power of Positive Thinking?) dressed in a bunch of jargon to me.

To sum up: Be positive.

Well, if you’re in a service industry, especially one that relies on tips, having a positive attitude will pay off. You’ll smile more, engage the customer more, theoretically give better service and theoretically get better tips.

3

No, it’s bullshit. One cannot “will” themselves rich anymore than they can meditate their way to becoming a professional football player without the skills.

A scientific way to get rich is to go through the following steps:

  1. Who is rich?
  2. How did they become rich?
  3. How long did it take them to become rich using that method
  4. What tools and skills do I have that will allow me to become rich
  5. What actions should I take to acquire wealth?
  6. What will I have to sacrifice or risk in order to become rich?
    Now maybe the book goes into that, maybe it doesn’t. The method everyone is taught in school (by people making $45,000 a year) is go to school, study hard, find a career you like, work hard. Unless that career in medicine, investment banking or certain aspects of law, it’s a good way to end up working for someone else your entire life.
4

[QUOTE=msmith537]
No, it’s bullshit. One cannot “will” themselves rich anymore than they can meditate their way to becoming a professional football player without the skills.
QUOTE]
If by “will themselves rich” you mean, “turn lead into gold,” then you are correct.

You may want to actually read the book (or at least look at the summary starting on page 63) before you say: 1) this book is crap and then 2) restate what the book says (i.e. “Figure out your goal, figure out how to get there and do it”).

It seems you actually agree with the book.

Thea: the basic message of the book is pretty simple and repeated throughout history in a variety of ways: 1) there is “unlimited” wealth in that there’s always a way you can make money, you just have to figure it out and 2) You generally can’t get it if you think the way everyone else does, but if you use your subconscious mind, you’ll pick up on things that aren’t obvious to the prejudiced mind.

The second point is arguable, but in an NLP sort of way, everyone whose gone through the rags-to-riches thing has done this.

Yeah, The Power of Positive Thinking is basically the same book with different terminology (written by a minister IIRC).

5

Actually, the book does go into that, well, mostly. The author (a funny looking dead guy) point out that often people with little or no talent become rich, while very talented people remain poor, people who work very hard remain poor, while people who don’t work all that hard get rich, people who are in the same business, using the same types of business practices have the same disparity- one makes it big, another, same business, same types of practices, goes belly-up. The main difference between people who get rich and those who remain poor (laying aside people who use cutthroat competition, or who basically cheat to make their money) has to do, more than anything else, with their mental attitude.

Now, for the $64,000 question. Where did this thread come from? I had scrolled through the forum twice, checked a couple of other forums I posted in today, and even did a forum search. The thread was not here. I thought the hamsters had eaten it, so I wrote a new OP, reposted, and, voila, here’s my original thread.

How’d that happen?

6

The Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, who officiated at Donald and Ivana Trump’s wedding.

Which I guess hints at a rich/positive-thinking link, but suggests resulting bad luck choosing barbers.

[QUOTE=Chairman Pow]

7

well, apparently it might work for you. Seems to work for lots of people. I read several such books when I was in Amway 20 yrs ago- never could get it into my head/my head into it. (Btw, the two such books I recall were The Magic of Thinking Big & Zig Ziglar’s See You At The Top. I also have some Robert Schuller books but I don’t quite put him in the same category & I also consider him my ‘vacation pastor’- we go to Crystal Cathedral whenever we visit my brother in L.A.)

8

Well, rich, stick-to-it-ness. Possibly for the hair too.

9

One really good way to get rich is to write a book on how to get rich and sell it. :smiley: :smiley:

10

Just an update. Yesterday, in the mail, I got this certificate thingy from a car dealership saying I was pre-approved for an ungodly huge amount of credit. Not that I was interested, I don’t have a driver’s license, and these “pre approved” credit things are usually contingent upon them doing a credit check and finding you worthy, and my credit’s pretty well down the crapper right now.

But, there was a scratch-off thingy. If my number matched one of the numbers on the certificate, I won a prize. It could have been $250, $500, $10,000 or an Internet shopping spree worth $1000. Read the fine print. No purchase necessary. Went to claim my prize. It was the 'net shopping spree. They were out of the gift certificates, so the guy took my number so he could call me when they get more in. Mostly, it’s small household items, the guy described them as knicknacks, but apparently there are personal electronics, DVD’s, stuff like that. If when I get to the website, I find a turntable so I can play my vinyl records that have been gathering dust for lo, these many years, I will consider that a major score. If I can’t, well, an electronic organizer or a PDA would be nice, too…

The thing is, I have never been what you’d call “lucky”. This free stuff (it will be so nice to be able to get a few new toys after living close to the bone for so long) stacked on top of my windfall (or breezefall, if you prefer) from the other day, well…

I think there may be something to this…

11

Two threads, same title.
Merged.

12

One thing you can do to get rich is to use leverage. This is
an instrument that lets you use $1 to control, say, $100. Money
begets more money, and pretty soon you’ll be a fat cat like Trump.

13

Why not try some test at a casino? Pick an amount of time and play for it. See if you can come out ahead at the end of this time period. If you were actually super-lucky, the amount of time could increase indefinitely, thereby making you a high-rolling obese feline.

14

But that assumes you have money in the first place to invest, and if you have that starting capital, you are already rich. Part of the premise of the book is if you have nothing but debt and a dirt floor, you can use the principles to get the starting money you need to make whatever investments.

j_kat, well, there’s positive thinking, then there’s being stupid…

15

I’m not disagreeing with your book. I’m just giving a more specific example.
Trump was something like $50 million in debt but still made a comeback. His secret? Leverage of course.

When a homeowner takes out a mortgage to buy a house, that can be considered a type of leverage also (I think).

16

Some good books on this topic, with a more genuinely scientific approach, are The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind.

17

Harriet, I haven’t heard of those books, but if you find a link to a free e-book version, let me know.

BTW, yesterday, my Mom’s paycheck was short. She had been promsed a raise, but her boss never sent the paperwork to payroll… anyway, we were going to have nothing left after we paid the rent this month. I wandered back into my room, spotted the Bible I used to stash my extra cash in, picked it up and found a $100 bill. OK, sure I could have put it there ages ago and forgotten I had it, but I had transferred my cash to a different book, and I thought I had been pretty thorough in going through that Bible and making sure I had gotten everything. I just think it’s kind of providential that the money turned up at just that moment.

18

I think we have to seperate reality from wishful thinking. The latter takes the form of “magic” and “good luck”. From a pragmatic standpoint, they don’t really exist, and you’d be foolish to believe in such things. If you place your (financial) faith in a lucky rabbits foot, you are putting yourself in a potentially dangerous position.

Now I’m sure many millionaires do make thier money through a tremendous amount of (what we would commonly refer to as) “good luck”, or “providence”. However these are not inherently bestowed upon a particular person. In fact, the definition of the word itself implies that a certain amount of randomness was involved. Therefore if you are truly lucky, it was a random or chance event. Oh sure there are ways of improving your odds, just as working on your dunking technique will increase the chances you’ll score. But confuse this with “pure luck” at your own peril.

A positive approach can work because of Xavier’s principle of “strike 'em as many times as you can”. In a given number of attempts (let’s say 100), there will be a statistical chance that you will hit the jackpot at least once. Nobody talks about thier failures, only the successes. A couple of these rich guys probably fumbled around for ages before something lucrative turned up. So keeping a positive approach simply means trying for as long as you can to crack the market. In a very physical sense, I really doubt that being happy in itself makes any real difference to a business venture (unless it does so directly e.g. your smile makes the client feel more at home - thus you score). Similiarly, being in a particular mindset does nothing directly to improve your chances. You can argue it makes a psychological difference to you, in the sense that it keeps you trying. But ultimately, it does not make any one particular “chance” or “gamble” any more statistically likely to succeed.

Also, please let’s get off this idea that there is something inherently mystical about rich people that explains thier success (either through “magic luck” or “pure tactical genius”). For every Ted Turner there’s probably 100 versions sitting there in a ditch, counting the number of times they see a woman’s high heels cross the road. We just don’t know. We don’t know because we hardly ever hear about it.

Ultimately, it’s a combination of luck (the random kind), some good financial sense, personality, resources, connections etc. All very mundane and boring I’m sure, but much more practical, and probably closer to the truth.

19

Xavier, I’m thinking right now…

If I hadn’t been in a particular mindset, when I found that certificate in the mail, under normal circumstances, I might have figured it was just a way of getting my body into the car dealership (which it was) and assumed that getting my prize was contingent on my applying for financing on a car, as reading the fine print reveals so many “you’ve won a prize” things turn out to be - to claim your prize, you must buy something, apply for credit, etc… I would likely have just glanced over it and thrown it away, and missed out on a thousand bucks worth of free stuff. But because I had adopted a particular mindset, I read the document thoroughly and found that it was in fact a legitimate prize.

Similar situation with the money I found in the Bible. If I hadn’t been in a certin frame of mind, I might have looked wistfully at the Bible, remembering bygone days when I had cash stashed in it, but now the money is long gone. Instead, I decided it was worth a look-see, to see if there was something in there I had missed, and lo, I am $100 richer because I picked the Bible up and looked inside. Sure, the bill had probably been sitting in there for a couple of years, but if I hadn’t been thinking along a particular line, I would not have gained access to that cash.

I don’t think this is “magical thinking”. I think it’s putting yourself in a mindset that money, things, generally stuff is available to you. If you’re in that frame of mind, you’re more likely to spot those opportunities to make money, or to find it stashed in a Bible, or to acquire things. If you consider a particular possession is already yours, you might be more inclined to find a way to get it- you need a new couch, and hey, you’re walking past a junk shop and for a small amount of money is a perfectly good couch that with a bit of work (call in a favor from a friend who knows how to invisbly repair the upholstery, maybe). If you’re thinking positively, your manner becomes more attractive to people who might be in a position of offer you a better job or help you get start-up capital for a business.

Also, I’m getting the idea that you didn’t follow my link and give the book a look-see. Random luck or “rabbits feet” have nothing to do with it. It’s not any mystical ability. It’s about cultivating a mental attitude that there is wealth available to be had, which puts you in a frame of mind to figure out how to go about getting your hands on it.