How to be self-confident ...

If you knew you couldn't fail:

• What would you do?
• Who would you be?
• When would you do it?

That are big questions. Did you ever really thought about it? My answers are:

• What would you do? - I would definitely invest in Real Estate and businesses. I would create my own businesses. I would teach and spread the knowledge the world really needs. I would go to places where people really need help. I would build hospitals and schools. I would give people the means they need to survive and even improve their lifes.
• Who would you be? - I want to be a successful human being, that spreads wealth and gives back.
• When would you do it? - There is only one answer for this: NOW

And I am on my way. I know there are no limits and nothing can hold me back. I saw that differently a year ago. I was limited mainly by myself. This past me was influenced by others, like society, believes, family, religion. I learnt during the last couple of months one main thing: I am the result of my thoughts. Therefore I changed my thoughts. The bigger my dreams are, the more people I can serve. That is a fact. And damn, my dreams are big ... and I work on them every single day, when others are partying.
What I still have to work on is my self-confidence. I tend to mix up arrogance with being confident. Putting my chin up, and I am afraid that people judge me being arrogant. And I am still judging people as well. What I do now is, as soon as I catch myself doing so, I change my believe, I am ok like this. And this will become a habit finally.
It is so easy to fall back into the comfort zone. But putting the chin up doesn't mean being arrogant, I am just creating my new ME, the ME out of my comfort zone, the ME I want to be, confident. And people can see, if you are confident, and this attracts more opportunities.

Last Saturday, Stephane and I went to a NLP seminar. I think it is amazing. And when you mix New Age with NLP, you will get incredible results. Depends who you want to be.

mm, I am freezing and my fingers are really stiff ... I will tell you more later!

Water continually dropping will wear hard rocks hollow - Plutarch

Being positively busy ...

A day has 24 hours, but I have plans for hundreds of hours ... all these books and magazines I want to read. All this studying and learning I want to do ... and I really want to apply what I have learnt and share all this ....

Currently I am struggling with focusing on one project. Too many things are going on in my mind these days. Boutique Wineries is booming and J & J are moving to Kuwait. How exciting is that! My mentors and friends are in Kuwait, yeapiieeehhhhh. Then all the projects Stephane and I have planned, incredible how much I will learn. In two(!) weeks is Wealth Flight Experience .... ahhhhhh. I will learn even more about me and all the other profiles. Next Saturday, I will go to a whole day NLP seminar. I am sooooo curious about this. Everyday is something .... I could spend every minute working on(!) my businesses. I am emphasizing the on, as it is quite a difference.

I just had this discussion with Jeremiah yesterday, being redundant in a business is great. Someone else can do the job, and you just do what you like. For me it would be coming up with more ideas how to systemise the business. Just yesterday, we had such a brilliant idea for Boutique Wineries. It is soo hard to wait until we actually do it, hihi! But this will be tomorrow on another BTW session.
Anyway, will do some PhDing now ... as this year will be even a great year for my PhD ... I am closer to finish it! And then I am free ....

All limits are self-imposed - Icarus

Victor Frankl - Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose

I am currently reading THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE from Stephane R. Covey. Printed in 1989, it has still a high impact on people around the world. This book is recommended in every New Age magazine or seminar.

I just started this book, but almost every paragraph makes me think. Here one example:

... Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination - the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality. We have conscience - a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And we have independent will - the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.
Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer metaphor, they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be responsible, but they can't take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can't direct it. They can't change the programming. They're not even aware of it. ...

Doesn't this sound familiar to you? Isn't the majority of humankind either aware of the training they receive from parents, from teachers ... from the system? They cannot direct the education they receive, they cannot change the "program". The program is written by the government or by people in the history, set up as so called tradition for example ... But we are human, we should be aware of the program we get taught, and we should be able to change it.

• But why don't people do it? Scared to be out of the comfort zone?
• Why do you let other people decide about what you have to believe? Why do you let other people decide about your lunch time, about your holidays?
• Step out of yourself for a moment and watch yourself. Where is your imagination? Create your own reality, and just be aware of the reality other people force at you.
• Why do you let other people decide about what is right or wrong? Use your conscience and you will feel what is ok with you.
• Where is your independent will? Why do most people let tradition guide them through life?
• Are you aware of yourself?
• Where is your human behavior?

Think about it!

Practice yourself in little things, and thence proceed to greater - Epictetus

Passive Cashflow

Jeremiah was right last night:

Don't think about your expenses, think about your income.

My financial state is similar to being broke, except that I don't have any debt ( and I am proud of this one). So, living from a scholarship is not really fun, but it gives me more opportunity to read and learn about possible passive income sources.

Real Estate

Real Estate can be good fun, and with Jeremiah and Jodie I have pretty good mentors. Reading Rich Dad - Poor Dad from Robert Kiyosaki
cash was the first kick. Then the book from his wife Kim - Rich Woman is quite motivating for women to aim for independence. Last Saturday I had my real first seminar about Real Estate. I left with the feeling, yes i can can do that too. Now action ... that means talking to the right people, getting the information out of the web and visit property that is for sale. Just getting the knowledge of the terms used in this sector and who are the people I should know, except J & J ;o) This is part of my plans for the coming weeks and months.

Stock Market

Another opportunity will be the stock market. Stephane and me are trying to set up a software for that. It is currently in its test phase, so I cannot really report about it. But I am pretty excited about it. I started to learn about stock market last year, of course the ASX - the Australian Stock exchange market.

Job

Of course, having a job is another opportunity to get some cash. I haven't completely rejected this idea, but I tend to work as a freelancer. Will see where this idea will bring me.

Yes, I am in the office and should do some PhD work, but I got tired, so I thought I do something more exciting ;o) ... planning about my future incomes

I wish you all an amazing day and Happy Valentine's Day! :o)

Love conquers all - Virgil

The Magic of Flow

It just happened again. Do you know this feeling? You read something or you see something and you have the exigency to tell everyone about it. Or at least your friends. So, you want to write it down, record it, just put it somewhere, so you can refer to it later .... and then it is gone. When you are lucky you remember it later during another conversation, but it does not have the same effect on you, so you resist to tell about it.

But I have my blog, so when I read something on the internet and I get terrible excited about it, I can put it in my blog :o)
This paragraph is from the blog Zen To Done (5th of February). And he is just sooooo right

The Magic of Flow
There’s a concept called Flow that’s been pretty popular among productivity circles in the last couple of years. I’m a big fan of it myself. In a nutshell, it’s basically losing yourself in whatever you’re doing — reaching that magical zone where you forget about the outside world and are completely doing what you’re doing, whether that’s writing or drawing or coding or whatever.

It’s a wonderfully productive zone to be in, and a state that also, incidentally, makes you happier. Productive and happier at the same time. Hard to beat that.

However, it can’t happen if you’re switching between tasks or thinking about the past or the future. It basically happens when you are in the present. So practicing being present will help you get to flow, which makes you happier and more productive. Best argument yet for being present, perhaps.

And unfortunately this is missing in my PhD, it became some kind of job. Is like being trained to fit in the academic world. Following the rules ... gggrrrrr

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you quickly about this paragraph and the definition of Flow for me. I hope you all are having an incredible day!

Please take care!

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph - Thomas Paine

Thoughts on a Sunday afternoon ...

While academics continue to question how our world works, and as many of us struggle to get by, there are Wealth Creators amongst us to continue to turn flow to fortune, making money to give away. - Roger Hamilton in "Your Life Your Legacy"

There is the question again ... what do I want to do with my life? Leave a legacy or making common people struggling? I know, that is an unfair question, but a valid one for me.
Therefore, if I just find my flow, I can make money to give away ... great. That will be a long journey. But I did start it already, and I learned and applied already a lot.
Roger describes in his book the eight Wealth Profiles. As I said, I am a Mechanic. But about this later. These eight states are derived from a famous ancient book - I Ching. This book is the basis for the two chinese central philosophies, Taoism and Confucianism.

In the beginning there was yet no moral or social order. Then came Fu Xi who looked upward and contemplated the images in the heavens, and looked downwards and contemplated the occurrences on earth. He united man and wife, regulated the five stages of change, and laid down the laws of humaninty. He devised the eight trigrams, in order to gain mastery over the world . (From the I Ching)

• Trigram => Mountain


• I Ching => Completing


• Ying/Yang => Mature Yin


• Wealth Dynamic Profile => Mechanic

This trigram represents the Mountain.

The strengths of a Mechanic are as followed (I absolutely agree with that): Innovative, perfectionist, detail-oriented, completes things well, able to quickly fine-tune, spots inefficiencies in the system, able to simplify and replicate. I would love to present more here, but I don't think I can copy Roger's book here. Hopefully from blog to blog, you will discover what it means to be Mechanic and I might quote his book from time to time. In March I will go to a three-day seminar, the Wealth Flight Experience. Then I will get all this live :o)
If I made you curious about this Wealth Profile thingy, have a look at wealthdynamic.org

Mmm, my creative phase is over ... you will hear from me later!

We must be willing to get rid of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us - Joseph Campbell

Being a perfectionist ...

Do you know the 80/20 rule? Finishing 80% on a project is most of the time enough, the remaining 20% no one will notice. This would be perfection. Being a software engineer, the 20% could be making a nice code, e.g. for example with the right insertions ;o) .. and presenting the wealth profile 'Mechanic' I am a bit suffering with this urge to finish things 100% or even 110%. Being successful means to show progression, and not really perfection.

What I've learned from Zen To Do (ZTD) is just keeping things simple. But this means, one has to be organised. I am not lacking discipline, just a bit of organisation. I am working on it ;o) I made the mistake and kept all my emails for the last 3 years in my Gmail account. That means I had everything I needed at one place, useful when u work on three different computers, but ... ZTD is right, it is much easier to work with an empty Inbox, and Gmail doesn't have this feature. You can label the emails, which is great, but it is still everything in your Inbox and you won't see any progress when your projects include communication via email.

Boutique Wineries is such a project, completely email based, completely automatized which is amazing. I love it, and I love to work with Jeremiah and Jodie. We are just a great team. Yesterday we had a so-called BTW-session again. That means, Jeremiah and me are working on the database and on the website to improve the automatization and usability for customer, wineries and mainly us. For the evening I was invited to dinner. We had really great food and I had a good time. Don't ask me for the next morning, because we really had to practise some wine-tasting.

According my PhD ... yep, I received nice data from my collaborator Robert (MIT, Cambridge, US). Because I am in the process of mind shifting ... I enjoy going through ca. 8000 rows in a spreadsheet one by one and analyse the data *rofl* ... no, really, it will take a while, but it will give hopefully nice results.

I really want to blog a bit more and I hope to describe you a bit more about this process of mind shift. Why do I what? Sounds good? Then stay tuned ... hihi

Take care !