Just as in different parts of North Korea, we live in a world with a huge discrepancy in resources available to one country vs. others.  Just take a moment to appreciate what is happening at a global scale.  While in the United States and other developed countries we are focusing a great deal of effort into determining what the solution to an obesity crisis would be, there are still countries in which coming across a plate of food is a miracle, a rarity not to be afforded by many.  We’ve all heard about this.  Someone, at some point or another, has told each of us about the starving children and families, the communities plagued by insects and sickness they can’t control or fight, the mothers exposed to dangerous bacteria and germs due to a lack of access to clean water.  We have heard these things, yet we are relatively unmoved.  We look the other way and think that someone else, someone out there in the world, will think about such issues.  That somehow, rather than getting involved and contributing to the solution, we should just stay at home, watch the big game on TV, or simply have a nice night of prayer and calmness.  And while we do all of this, there’s a young child who’s hunger is tearing him appart with pain and suffering, and who’s mother is too weak to even fathom venturing into the wild and trying to find grass to feed anyone.  And even if the mother is able to go and find something “edible”, it would rarely reach the 500 calories a person is estimated to requires per day to survive.  I say survive, because with 500 calories in a day we would not be able to exert our bodies to any extent without fainting.

We observe this tragedy, or learn about it, and we move on.  We hear the statistics about the millions without food and we turn away.  We think that given the massive scale of the situation, there is nothing we can do to solve the entire problem.  And instead of contributing a little bit to the solution by contributing to feed 10 starving people, we decide that it’s better to look away and focus our attention on something else.  And that is where we need to stop and reflect.  This is when I want to give a shout out to everyone.  Because I can’t understand at what point we decided that it is OK to forget about human beings that are dying for no good reason, while we instead argue about whether I should pay an extra $10 in taxes or whether you are wrong for not believing that a particular religion is correct.  We create these “pressing matters”  in our heads of things we deeply care about, these games with society that we play each day of arguing and thinking we are better than others given our amazing reasoning skills and arguments, yet the humane part of us is buried deeper and deeper within us and we fail to see how much is not only hurting others, but ourselves.

I would argue that most of us are adjusting to an age of so much change and a hectic pace that we fail to take enough time to sit and reflect.  To realize that in our rush to do things, in our rush to accomplish what we think we should be accomplishing, we are missing the point of life, the point of being alive.  We want to have a life with purpose, yet we fail to see that if we can simply help one human being in need to survive and move on with their lives, that by itself is more admirable than sitting at home mindlessly watching a TV show of no real importance or contribution.  Isn’t that purpose enough for your life?  The notion of a superhero that can single-handedly bring a solution to the world problems has infested our minds and we need to let it go.  We need to realize that the outcome of anything in this world is only going to be the sum of the parts, the cumulative actions by all beings, and all we can do is to contribute in our own little way to make sure that our little contribution is adding to the improvement of the world, not simply keeping in neutral or take away from it.  We can continue to strive for more, but can’t overlook the importance of working harmoniously with others and make our contribution, as small as it may be, to fix the problem.

Although the book Nothing to Envy first spoke to me about an intriguing political system in North Korea, what the book truly highlighted to me is the madness of the world.  While some starve, the world I have observed is one in which we think that accumulating material items or focusing on ourselves will yield happiness.  Time is slowly proving to us that this is not true, we are growing wealthier, but not happier.  We are growing wealthier and, in general, getting stressed, overweight, rushing through life and never stopping to be in the moment and actually appreciate what is going on.  From what I understand, the people of North Korea need help, lots of help.  And they are not alone.  We may be limited in the aid we are able to give to North Korea given the tight control the government has, but that’s only assuming that things remain as they currently are.  There are always solutions, we just need to find them and contribute our own little piece.  And even if North Korea remains the way it currently is, what can we do to help the rest of the world in need?  We don’t need to deprive ourselves of all things to give it to others, that’s not what I’m suggesting, but let’s at least think about these problems and contribute our 2 cents to the solution of it.  That is how the world will become a better place.  When we share love, compassion, and our wealth, the need for division and war starts fading away and we end up with a happier world with less undue suffering.

Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.

— James Russell

Problems are only daunting when you don’t know what’s the next actionable item that will get you closer to your goal.  As such, always think, what is the very next step I need to take to get one step closer to my goal?  Once you have that figured out, just go ahead and take that one step.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
- Lao Tzu

Once the journey is over, you’ll look back and be glad you took that first single step, then the second, and the third.  But if you never take the first step, you’ll always wonder “what could have been if?”

This holiday season I will be doing something very different (other than spending Christmas Day in Alabama.)  I will be (voluntarily) going to a 10-day Silent Meditation Course starting this Wednesday, Dec 28th. I will be there until January 8th, and of course I won’t be reachable during this entire time (no reading/writing/talking/etc. while I’m there).  If you’re curious, here’s a link with more information about the course.http://www.dhamma.org/en/code.shtml

Also, as a reminder, there is just about a billion people without access to clean water on this world. I am trying to raise just enough money to give access to clean water for just 15 of those people for 20 years. At $20 per peson, that’s only $300. Any donation is very appreciated! The link takes you to the donation page which has a truly great video we should all watch explaining “why water?” Watch it just for your own info, even if you can’t contribute at the moment! http://mycharitywater.org/p/campaign/?campaign_id=21927

Thank you and Happy Holidays to all!
Omar

1. Is what I’m doing something that makes me happy?
2. Do the things that keep me “busy” matter to me?
3. Am I making progress in the areas I care for?
4. Will I be able to make better contributions to society through what I am doing or the skills I’m learning?

Sometimes the answer for some of these questions is… “uhmmm… maybe?” and that can be acceptable, but at least asking myself these questions helps me evaluate the true meaning of what is keeping me busy. Sometimes I am busy and flustered by things, and at the end of the day I realize… none of the things that kept me so busy truly mattered or made a different in my life, my happiness level.

“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing”
- Lao Tzu

Obnoxious little Omar realized over time that one of his biggest mistakes was to ever think he was in possession of the absolute truth – that he could declare certain religious beliefs to be unimportant or silly, and those who refuted it as wrong or just trying to cling to unjustified beliefs.  Over time it became very clear that every opinion possessed by a single person was based on that person’s unique life to date, and that the fact that some followed Jesus’ teachings while others took comfort in following Buddha’s made no difference whatsoever as to the quality of thinking and the integrity these people had.  Similarly, I was no better or worse off than others simply because I was going through a religious meltdown and did not follow anyone’s teachings. I was simply letting life teach me new lessons as I went through my days.

Over the past year I have been spending more time simply sitting and trying to be present.  This is one of those silly things you get to do when you have nothing else better to do — or so I once thought.  I realize now that even though meditation, being ‘in the moment,’ and paying attention to my breathing were activities I used to only engage in every once in a while when I had plenty of time at my disposal, they have become much more important activities for me over time.  I now seek the nourishment that meditation provides.  I look for the joy of being fully in the moment appreciating my breath and the sounds around me.  I find it shocking at times to observe that the world around me that I may sometimes block out or ignore can feel so alive once I let go of the incessant chatter in my head and choose to simply be present, right here and right now.  A great way to reset during a boring meeting, or at a time in which you feel anger boiling up inside, is to simply take a few deep breaths and observe those breaths and nothing else for a few seconds.

We live in a world that is constantly changing, and we seek to achieve more and more, but we go around trying to do that without truly paying attention to what is happening in the moment.  We strive for a better tomorrow, yet in constantly doing so we miss the days that are passing by.  We fail to appreciate that today we are better off than we were yesterday and we should be happy and grateful about it.  We forget that sometimes is time to reset, take a breath and simply be — be in the moment and not thinking about what will happen next or what happened yesterday.  Just appreciate this very moment we call present.  One of the most ironic things I’ve seen is that we spend weeks planning a great event, looking forward to it and how wonderful it will be, but when we are in the midst of the actual event our thoughts are elsewhere – wondering when the next great event will take place, or worrying about how much better dressed others are.  Let’s not lose sight of our present — at the end of our lives we realize it is all we ever had and will ever have.

According to meditators and scientist, a simple 20-30 minutes in the morning is all we need to make a big difference in our lives by learning to be present and mindful.  That’s less than 2% of our day for us to sit, feel our breathing, let go of all thinking, and that way reset and keep going with our lives feeling more nourished and alive than ever before.  The peaceful feeling I have after simply taking out that time in the mornings is good enough to convince me to wake up earlier, stop the urge to start doing, and simply sit.

“Don’t just do something, sit there!”

Namaste

Today you could get lost in thought and start the day by thinking about all the things that must be done, your plans for next week and next month.  You could even go on to think about how you will finally have a great time when you can take a vacation in 3 months.  Or you could instead take your time to enjoy the present moment and realize that life is perfect right this moment.  You are alive and have all the potential in the world within you.  Just as anything and anyone else in the world, you are made up purely of energetic atoms vibrating restlessly, giving you the power to create, inspire and enjoy each moment of the day.

Today you could feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities, or you could instead feel lucky and thankful that you have the potential to contribute.  That there are millions of people around and you can touch their hearts through your work or simply by offering a smile and showing that you care.

Today you can have the same cup of tea you had yesterday, finish it up and move on.  Or you could close your eyes and let yourself feel your body warming up as the tea moves down your body, embrace the experience and focus on all the feelings and sensation in your body. Find the innocent and inquisitive nature of the child within you and don’t let any part of the experience slip away.

Today you can simply get through your day just as if it were just another day, or you can choose to feel alive and cherish every experience, being thankful for each one of them.  It is you who decide whether today will be truly special.

Let yourself cherish every little miracle this day has to offer.  Who knows, it may make you happier than the alternative.

(Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/asphericlens/5661878892/sizes/z/in/photostream/)

The main issue most of us face when trying to save money is the idea of not having enough to actually be able to save.  This, however, is merely an idea.  You can probably think of someone making 10% more than you, with a smaller family to provide for, yet somehow they don’t have enough money to save.  You can also consider what would happen if your salary were 10% lower than it currently is.  Would you really have a grim life with no happiness or enjoyment?

Necessary Expenses

The main culprit is our notion of what is a necessary expense.  Here is a great quote from The Richest Man of Babylon that is just as true today as it was back in Babylon’s glorious times:

“That what each of us calls our necessary expenses will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary.”

As a high school student, I had a cellphone plan that cost me just around $30/month.  Voice plan, little or no text messaging, no data plan.  It was for me to call my family.  Now, however, I live convinced that if I have no text messaging or an unlimited data plan my cellphone experience would be lacking the essentials.  Therefore, my monthly bill is just around three times as expensive, and I stress twice as much about remaining connected to others.  I tell myself that I need this data plan but when my iPhone broke a few months back and I was just a few months away of finishing my contract I decided to buy a cheap ($15) Nokia cellphone that could simply make calls and struggled to send a text message.  After 2 months with this cellphone I was just as happy, healthy and productive.

This may seem like a silly example, but it is meant to be, because it is through getting rid of all the extra “stuff” that we don’t need but may think we want that we finally take control of our expenses.  Why don’t you just give it a try and see how you feel after “giving up” this nice thing for a few months.  If you truly feel that your quality of life has diminished and you’d rather not increase your wealth, you can go back to spending the money on such things.  Here are a few tips that may be helpful:

1. Think about a bigger reward.  I pick something I really would like to do, such as paying for a flight to Italy, and think about how much I’d need to save each day in order to be able to go next year.  If I calculate the trip will cost me $2,000, that means that I would have to save about $5.50 each day to be able to go in a year.  Knowing that I need to save ~$40 each week to be able to go to Italy next year would make it a lot easier for me to skip on buying a $4 coffee and that $2 pastry at Starbucks in the mornings.
2. Reward yourself on the way to cutting expenses.  Say you find $300 worth of expenses you could control.  These are nice things to have that are not necessary, such as some subscriptions, clothes you may be able to buy cheaper if you wait a bit longer for a discount, etc.   Why don’t you make the bold move to cut all these $300 in expenses, but instead of depriving yourself of the rewards of the entire amount, you pick something you’d LOVE to do if you allowed yourself to splurge half of the money, and do it.  You could go to a great restaurant you’ve wanted to try and spend $100 there and save the other $200.  This way you’d reward yourself each month while still saving money.

The techniques are plenty, and the reasonings behind them are always great.  Just find a method that works for you and start being disciplined about your expenses.  When you do, you will be rewarded by a fatter wallet each month (or healthier bank accounts) and this will payoff by giving you stability and the peace of mind of knowing that you can take better care of yourself and those you love.

I had heard much about a book that sounded quite boring to me and hence I paid little attention to, “The Richest Man in Babylon.”  I assimilated Babylon with a beautiful ancient city, and as such I had little interest in spending my valuable time reading some sort of story with little relevance to the modern world and my own personal success.  That was my initial reaction simply from reading the title.  But after seeing the book come up over and over (particularly thanks to Amazon’s recommendations, which can be quite insistent) I decided to read it and see what this book was all about.  The reviews talked about advice that was just as relevant today.

I was pleasantly surprised to find, as many others had, that this book written in the 1920′s was in fact just as relevant today.  Written as a fable, the story is intriguing and the prose is beautiful and succinct.  I am not one to generally care much for the prose since I enjoy business books which, in general, don’t have an appealing prose.  Through this book I encountered a very rich city from some forthy centuries ago (that’s 4,000 years people) in which men and women woke up each day with the same thoughts and worries as most of us do today.  The details and particularities were different than today’s reality, but the essence was there and the parallels could be easily drawn.  We may not carry pieces of bronze, silver and gold in our pockets these days, but we have a currency we use to buy items.  We may not go to a “gold lender”  to get our loans, but we do have banks for this very purpose which behave very much the same as the gold lender used to in Babylon, charging an interest rate for the money that was lent to you.  Women used to leave their men when they ran out of money due to irresponsible behavior, just as today many marriages fail due to financial distress and disagreements.  Pretty much every lesson in the book is valuable today, and as such I encourage everyone to take a few hours to read through it.

I want to share with you a few gems from the book.

Gem #1: A tenth of all you earn shall be yours to keep

This is probably the most powerful and simple lesson the book teaches, yet it can be the most difficult to apply in our lives if we buy into consumerism.  Although you may currently think that everything you earn is yours to keep, the reality is that you must use this income to pay for your debt, buy food, clothing and pay for shelter.  If you are not careful, before you know it the money you receive is gone and you have to wait until your next paycheck in order to continue paying for your living expenses.  The The Richest Man in Babylon teaches us that no matter what we do, the only way to build wealth is to live BENEATH your means, notice that it is not WITHIN your means, but beneath.  You must not use more than 90% of your income to pay for your loans or other debts and pay for all of your living expenses including vacation, giving to charity, and emergencies.  10% of all of your income should be used to fatten your purse and create passive income streams or investments opportunities.  You may not find this appealing at first, since it would make you live as if you had a 10% “pay cut,”  but consider your two options with respect to this and judge for yourself what would be best for you.  With smart decisions you will be treating money much more wisely and will be able to upgrade your living situation without relying on your employer’s will.

Here are your two options of things you can do with your income:

1. Bad option.  Spend all of your income each month.  In this option you live paycheck by paycheck and at the end of each cycle you have no money left over from the previous payment you received.  You may have more clothes, have eaten more food, and given yourself a few luxuries, but your bank account or purse are just as lean as they started.  You may have even given to charity a little amount and felt good for doing that, it was a worthy cause, you say.  The problem with this option is that we always rely on a corporation to pay us, which they won’t do unless the price seems right to them, and this means we need to be working continuously doing what others want us to do in order to be paid.  If we choose this option, we would also rely mostly on the government in retirement, which we should all have learned by now it is not a wise option given our levels of debt and rising health care costs. This is not only risky but also dangerous and a sure way to NOT achieve financial freedom.  In case of disability or an emergency we quickly go in debt, and coming out of debt can be painful and stressful.  The good news is that this is not the best option we have, and we should instead follow the teaching of the The Richest Man in Babylon, Option 2.
2. Good Option.  10% of our income is ours to keep, forever. The concept in Babylon was simple, for each 10 pieces of copper (or silver, or gold) you received, take one and declare it yours.  This piece of copper would be yours to keep forever and would become what I refer to as a my personal Wealth Soldier, which you would invest and have it work hard for you to make your more and more little Wealth Soldiers.  This money would be there to make you richer and, eventually, you will have a strong army of soldiers working for you.  Different from Option 1, if you save 10% of your income no matter what, that means that after each cycle your wallet and bank account will be fatter and ready to provide more for you (assuming you are not going further into debt each month).  The simple feeling of knowing that you HAVE and OWN more money should give you the motivation to continue saving.  At the end of 1 year you could have thousands of Wealth Soldiers (money) working for you in investments to provide for you a better living in the future.  You are becoming richer, wealthier month by month.

Given that we do not live in Babylon, we may not be able to (or want to) follow exactly the same system they did.  We do have many options to make use of this great rule when making financial decisions.

How to Apply this Lesson

1. Crucial Step – adjust your spending.  If you are spending all of your income each month, or borrowing through loans and credit cards each month, it’s time to either bring in more income (be creative here) and/or re-examine where your money is going and cut some expenses.  You will never build wealth if you spend all of your income or more. For every hundred dollars (or euros, pesos, yen, won, etc.) you receive, put ten away and declare them your personal Wealth Soldiers.  These must not be spent unless you do not desire to build your wealth.  Use the other ninety to pay for debt (and make sure your total debt is going down), buy food, clothes, donate to charity, etc.  You’d be impressed on how little your life changes when you cut your expenses by 10% and how much your savings increase when you do so.
2. Start simple.  If your employer provides you a retirement account (possibly with matching benefits!) have them take this 10%  you want to save and put it in your retirement account.  If you do not have an account through an employer, make use of a IRA or Roth IRA account which you can easily open with any major bank.  Just pay attention to investment options and fees they may have.  At the end of one year, you will have invested 10% of your income, which is more than your average income for an ENTIRE MONTH!  In general, put the money where you feel safe putting it, in investments you understand or investment recommended to you by SOMEONE YOU TRUST.  If you do not know about investments, learn about them and seek the advice of someone who knows what they are talking about.  A lesson we will review later is that advice is freely and willingly given, but it is your responsibility to only accept good advice.
3. Although the previous step is simple and neat, some of you may want to use this money (your Wealth Soldiers) for investments other than just bonds/mutual funds.  You may want to invest this money in businesses or other money generating ideas.  If this is the case, open an account ONLY for this purpose.  Do not use your regular savings account if you are going to do this, as you do not want to mix the money you declare as YOURS with the money you may be going to use to spend in case of emergency or for travel, etc.  The money you have declared as YOURS, your personal Wealth Soldiers, deserve special treatment and as such you should put them in a separate account designated as your Wealth Building account.  This way you will never spend them for anything other than buying assets or investments that increase your wealth, rather than buying items that decrease your net worth.
   HINT: Money contributed after tax to a Roth account can be withdrawn and used.  The earnings can’t be withdrawn early without penalty, except for in a few cases.  I do not recommend you withdraw your contributions to a Roth account simply to spend them, but it would be wise to consider doing so for some types of investments.

I will elaborate on many other lessons later on, but for now, I believe this is lengthy enough.  I sincerely hope you find it useful enough to apply some of this in your life and recommend it to your friends.  Opportunities to build our wealth are around us, we just have to be smarter with money.  Financial education is just as important as any other type of education, if not more.  Use your money wisely!

Omar

(Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31284576@N06/5036712014/)

This lead me to continue pondering about the options I have.  Thankfully, we are blessed with living in the information age, in which most of the information you want to know about is just a few clicks away.  You can purchase great books in less than a minute, and have it delivered to your eReader or any other electronic device almost immediately.  You can also access fantastic online resources and learn just about any topic.  The two things that I lack from this approach, however, are direction and the opportunity for conversation.  A lack of these two makes the process of improving my life less efficient, hence why I decided to find mentors to help me.  Here is what I want to get out of my mentor or mentors.

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.
- John Crosby

Direction

I could try to learn everything there is to know about calculus on my own (with all its derivatives and integrals), or I could choose to go to school instead and have a professor guide me through a curriculum of what he or she thinks is more appropriate for me to learn.  If I choose the right place to study for my purposes, the assumption is that the latter would yield me much better results in a much shorter period of time.  The guidance and mentorship of a professor would help solidify the right knowledge and help me apply it in the context of what matters to me.  This is the kind of direction I am seeking in a mentor.  Someone who can see where I am coming from, where I want to get to, and help me set a direction to close the gap.  This is what I refer to when asking for direction from a mentor.

Conversation

I learn the best, and I assume most people do as well, when I have a chance to bounce my thoughts around with someone knowledgable responding to them and challenging them.  When I started learning Japanese in college I quickly realized that memorizing words before the quizzes was VERY challenging for me.  I would sit and read the list over and over, write the words over and over, and try to memorize them.  Inevitably, there would always be at least one word during the quiz that I would forget.  After a couple of weeks, however, I studied for one quiz with one of my classmates, and we quizzed each other out loud.  We also attempted to use the new words in the sentence structures we had learned, and that’s when it hit me, this wasn’t so difficult after all!  I realized that the easiest way for me to learn new vocabulary was to actually put it in context of conversation and actually attempt to use/understand it.  Having someone there to listen to me say my newly formed thoughts/sentences and respond to them solidified for me the knowledge I had just acquired.  It also gave me the opportunity to learn alternative ways of thinking about the new concepts I was learning from my classmate.  Now, if this approach was so effective to learn while in school, why am I not using it to learn about important life topics such as finances, spirituality and life in general?  It doesn’t sound like something wise.

Mentors come in all different shapes and forms, or so they say, and some of the most important advice I have received has been given to me over a casual meal or while chatting on the phone.  I have been lucky to find a few great mentors at different times in my life and am now looking forward to find one more (or a few) to fill in the gaps that I am currently experiencing.  Most of the mentors I have had, however, have been there for me without me having to go and find them.  I simply met them at my workplace, at school, or through a friend.  I never had to go out of my way to find a mentor, the relationships just grew organically.  So I am left to wonder, how do you go and find a mentor when you need it?  There’s only so much Oprah I can watch/read, and doing so only gives me the advice I seek, not the advice I may need and don’t know I need.

What do you think about the importance of mentors?  Where do you find mentors?  How have you found your mentors?

(Image Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shande/3855788935/)