I'm 30 years old and I haven't achieved anything remarkable in my life. I'm a totally ordinary guy. I don't even have a place of my own.
I haven't had one for the past six years. I've lived in many different places spread across three continents. I sort of feel like a nomad.
When I'm in my hometown in Munich I sleep at my mom's house. If I'm not, I usually stay at hostels or AirBnBs all over the world. I never bought any furniture in my life.
At the same time a lot of the people around me start getting married and think about raising a family, whereas I can't even properly take care of my own shit.
I probably make less than a third of what people my age make. I guess it's safe to say that I'm a complete failure, at least measured in traditional terms. Measured in terms of me at the age of 18 imagining how my life might look like when I'm 30 years old.
Still, I feel that I have more than enough (even though at first sight it looks like I don't have anything). I am actually amazed by the sheer abundance in my life. I feel like I have more than I could ever make use of.
It was a long way to get there. It was a long way to implement this way of living and make it a part of my life. Living on a shoestring while everybody else around me starts buying Porsche and gets married wasn't always easy.
A lot of people asked me how I do it. How I manage all of it. So here are a few things that help me every single day to feel rich, even though I don't have a lot (measured in traditional terms).
# GRATEFUL.
What I do at least once a day is to be grateful. Grateful for all of the things I experienced during the day. Be it the nice breakfast I had, the coffee I drank, the friend I talked to, the inspiring chapter of a book I read, the people that commented on a blog post or the nice dinner I had.
It takes me about 2-3 minutes every day to reflect about the things I'm grateful for. And the list is usually twenty to thirty items long. I guess feeling rich is all about being conscious about all of the amazing things that we usually take for granted.
It's about being conscious about the abundance that surrounds us, about life's abundance while getting rid of a scarcity mindset at the same time. And I have to say that this short exercise helps me quite a lot.
Every time I do this, when I reached the end of listing the things I'm thankful for, I realize how the corners of my mouth start to form one of the most beautiful shapes on this planet earth.
A shape that can decide about whether or not we like someone. A shape that makes people fall in love. A shape that can stop wars. A shape that can save people's lives.
I smile..
# SHARE
The worst thing you could do is to not share anything with the world. Be it that idea you have for a company, that one brilliant thought you just had or this amazing thing you just experienced.
What's going to happen when you keep your ideas or thoughts for yourself, when you protect them and treat them like a treasure and something very, very valuable is that you're automatically limiting the amount of ideas you'll have. You'll automatically create a scarcity mindset.
A mindset where there will only be this one idea, this one thought and nothing else. Because it's so precious that it'll keep your mind's bandwidth occupied all the time. No time and bandwidth for other thoughts anymore.
But what happens when you share your ideas with the world is quite the opposite. You'll come up with hundreds of other ideas. You'll create an abundance mindset. Don't believe me? Don't. Just try.
I never thought that this would be true either. But ever since I started writing down my ideas and I started sharing them with the world, I started having many more ideas. Ideas for businesses. Ideas for blog posts. Ideas for books and so on.
That's why you absolutely need to get your ideas out there. As many and as as soon as possible. That's the only way to come up with even more ideas. To become better at creating ideas.
And maybe one day you'll hit a home run and have that game changing idea. And then you'll be ready. Because then you'll have hundreds of other ideas on how to get that idea out there, how to get it in front of as many people as possible and how to find customers.
Only by sharing your ideas, your work and your art with the world will you be able to leverage the abundance of your brain power and become an idea machine.
# DONE LISTS.
Getting things done apps and to do lists are super popular these days. But what they usually do is that they limit us quite a lot. They limit you to only do the things that someone told you to do.
Or they limit you to do the things you decided to do a week ago, yesterday or this morning. These lists completely take away every flexibility and our ability to question the tasks at hand. It's on the list, so it has to be done today. No matter whether or not it even makes sense.
The worst thing about them is that they usually make us feel miserable in case we weren't able to tick all the boxes. We end up becoming slaves to these lists. A great way to solve this issue is to use done lists instead.
These are basically lists where you write down all of the things you've done during the day. I read about this a while ago on James Altucher's blog. So instead of having a to do list, you'll have a done list.
Be it the 30 emails you wrote, the ten people you called, or the five proposals you wrote. It doesn't matter. List everything. It's about visualizing all of the things you did. Even when they weren't successful.
To do lists essentially enforce negativity, whereas done lists do the exact opposite and enforce positivity. This will ultimately make you feel a lot better about yourself.
And you'll be able to see all of the things you've done and achieved during a single day. This can be up to a few dozen things a day and adds to the general feeling of abundance. Of feeling rich..
# DON'T COMPARE.
Whatever you do, never ever compare yourself to other people. This might be the single most important thing if you want to be rich, even when you're a failure. There's nothing more limiting than trying to live someone else's life.
Not only will it make you feel miserable, it will also drastically limit your number of possibilities. When you see someone doing this or that, what's going to happen is that you'll see this as the only way to feel rich and fulfilled. Your mind will be on autopilot.
But there are actually millions of other ways to feel and be rich. So don't limit yourself by comparing yourself to other people. Use it as an inspiration. Look at all the different ways there are and then experiment, combine them and find your own way to be and feel rich..
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I guess, at the end of the day it's all about creating a mindset of abundance. A mindset where there is plentiful of everything for everybody. And while everybody else is stuck in their scarcity mindset, you'll be one of the few that can benefit from all of the opportunities out there.
Because nobody else will realize that these opportunities even exist. They are all busy ticking their boxes, while you're sharp and ready to seize every opportunity. What's going to happen is that you'll succeed, feel and become rich (mentally, financially, spiritually or whatever) while everybody else is away..
Read More: The 25 Rules for Being an Entrepreneur
