Religious Zen

Are you sure you want to be a millionaire?

Let’s take a look for a second at how many millionaires are made in the world of business. First, you work hard to get into a prestigious University while in High School, often forsaking many social engagements in order to study and get straight As. After you’ve worked hard and finally get accepted into that Ivy-League school you put in 6 and 1/2 years on a 6 year bachelor’s MBA degree and graduate tens of thousands of dollars in debt. After that you begin the climb on a corporate ladder. If you’re lucky, you will find a job that treats you like a soulless cog in a machine that exists only to make money. If you’re unlucky, they fire you after you work for them 20 years and get rid of your pension.

You are willing to put in 80 hour weeks because someday you might become a top manager in a wealthy industry and make 10 million a year as a regular salary. By then you have put your life aside so much on the hope of someday getting a lot of money, and for what? Is working for 50-60 years of your life worth it or even needed in order to truly enjoy the last 30 or 40?

Take the story of the Mexican fisherman as an example:

The American Tourist and the Mexican Fisherman

An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.

Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.”

The tourist then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”

The Mexican said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.”

The tourist then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life.”

The tourist scoffed, ” I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?”

The tourist replied, “15 to 20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The tourist laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?…Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

The Mexican Fisherman had all he needed to make him happy. The American Tourist kept trying to convince the Mexican Fisherman that he needed to work a lot and make millions before he could be happy with the things he had anyway.

If you really look at the big picture, is it the millions of dollars that you really want, or what the millions of dollars bring? Unless you want to have a lot of money to impress all the other people with a lot of money, most people would say what the millions of dollars bring. I don’t believe anyone wants to go through some of the soul-crushing things that people do in order to hopefully become a millionaire one day. Being a faceless part of a giant corporation that cares little about the real, living, breathing, human being, can be disheartening.

Money isn’t everything?

What do millions of dollars bring? For the most part: leisure, time, traveling power, and not needing to work.

It is sort of a paradox. If somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money decides that they would rather spend time doing what makes them happy- and only focus on working enough for what they need- they are called lazy. However, if they have gained a million dollars, or some other large amount of money, they’ve somehow earned the right to focus on personal development, leisure time, and traveling to places you enjoy.

What is it with today’s society that says we have to work 9-5 to put back a lot of money in order to be happy? Why can’t I bypass the million dollars altogether and get what they bring in the first place?

Begin living like a millionaire.

If you are looking to acquire vast tracts of land and several houses in various countries, then perhaps you should look into becoming very monetarily rich. What I am suggesting here are ways to live like a millionaire that are within reach. Some of these may or may not be practical for you, but at least consider them.

If you are waiting for, “just enough money,” to be able to sit back and relax, then you never will. There is always an increasing amount of money to be made. It is better to sit back and relax now knowing that you don’t need to go into the rat race in order to feel rich and fulfilled.

1. Not needing to work.

Ever want to live life as if you don’t have to go into work the next day? Then take off work for a year! Save up enough money to live comfortably for the next year. Take a tally of all your bills and budget- make sure to add plenty for entertainment! Many would call this being lazy, but who says you need to put off your life in order to enjoy it when you are old and less able to do the things you enjoy? Use this nearly unlimited amount of time to get in shape, learn a new language, volunteer your hours for a cause, take up a new skill, or nearly any other limitless amount of things. Who says that we have to live our life like the rest of the world? Be different, and be more fulfilled for it.

2. Traveling Power.

This goes a long with the first point. It is much easier to travel the world than people think. There is a huge amount of books written every year on budget traveling. The American Dollar, at least for the time being, isn’t going down the tubes yet. Your money goes a long way in other countries so look up the resources that are available to you and make it happen.

You can learn much more in traveling about other cultures, countries, food, languages, ways of life, religions, and philosophies than any amount of books that talk about the same thing. It is an enrichment process that can’t be explained in words like these. So do it! Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you need to have a million dollars in the bank account in order to enjoy the world.

3. Leisure

When most picture a millionaire they think of a person laying on a hammock between two palm trees on a beach somewhere. Again, who says you need lots of money to truly enjoy laying around? Everyone deserves a little lazy time as long as it is in balance with being active or stimulating the mind (in a word, be lazy as long as it doesn’t involve sitting in one place on a couch and watch TV 8 hours a day). Get that glass of wine and sit on your porch.

Make it a mental ascent in your mind that you are rich. The world gives us everything we need to live comfortably. The lowest of the middle class today lives like the kings of antiquity.

I like to sit by my large window and watch the pine trees outside. They’re just there, being pine trees. They don’t stress about not having a lot of money, nor do they work meaningless labor that doesn’t help them improve as an entity. They’re just trees, doing what trees do best. As with my other points, you don’t need a million dollars to have a leisurely life.

4. Time & Conclusion.

Time is what will allow us to do all of the above. The good (or sad?) part of it all is, both the rich and the not-rich have the same amount of time. If you and a millionaire live to be 90, you both will have the same amount of time on this earth. So what is it you are willing to fill your life with? Something that you enjoy doing? Something that fulfills you as a person? Something that raises your consciousness and allows you to be a better person? Or would you rather wear a monkey suit and spend an unholy number of hours per week in order to make someone else rich, while hoping for a lucky break, in order to make a lot of money in order to do something that fulfills you as a person, something that you enjoy doing…etc, etc, etc.

Again, if living on yachts is your thing: go for it! Do what it takes to make a lot of money, because those yachts don’t come cheap. For myself, though, I’d rather live a fulfilled life rather than a deferred life.

If you’ve enjoyed this article then I recommend picking up the book: The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Many of the things I have talked about are discussed within those pages. Also I am not being paid to endorse this product, it has genuinely helped me improve myself. I simply thought I would return the favor to the world.

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