Financial success is different for different people. For example, for Liberace it was costly apparel. For the Dutchman, it is a fat wife. For an East Indian, it is gold jewelry on his wife. For a Kenyan, it is goats or camels. For some it is cash in the bank, a house, a car, a boat, furniture, or modern gadgets. Most often it is measured by the accumulation of material things beyond one’s need.
Some are prosperous and others are not. We all would like to be prosperous. We might not think that we are prosperous but others may think so.
A sick man in the hospital looking at a cripple hopping along the sidewalk on two crutches says. “You lucky guy, you enjoy the outside air while I lie here and suffer pain.”
The cripple looks at the man walking along and says, “You are able to walk while I struggle on crutches.” The one who walks, looks at the cyclist and says, “See how lucky you are. You have bicycle and can go places quickly. I have none.” The cyclist looks at the Volkswagon driver and says, “Lucky you. You have a car which I don’t have.”
Thus, each person fails to see his own prosperity and thinks himself poor.
It is not necessary to clutter our houses with things we do not need. What is important is that they are available to us when we need them. As long as we have the purchasing power or the potential to obtain what we need, we don’t have to have it in our house. Therefore, true prosperity is not possession but potential.
Alexander the Great is said to have cried that he had only one world to conquer. We hear frequently of millionaires committing suicide. So, prosperity is not the amount of one’s possessions, neither is it the total value of one’s possessions. Then what is it? Prosperity is defined as one of the following.
1. Financial success
2. Health and healthy growth
3. Making use of our potential
Some will say that financial success is a matter of luck. But luck is the lazy man’s term for the result of the hard working man’s efforts.
To obtain financial success, we have to put our resources to work, If you lock them away in a box, they won’t bring any advantage. What are they? Our health, our environment, our assets, our climate, our families, our friends, our education.
If we don’t use our land to its best advantage, we will not benefit. We have to use our own capability. Sometimes we can and have to improve our capability. We have to learn what we can do and do what we know best.
How many of you have read the book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill? In that, the author describes the money making secrets which made fortunes for hundreds of exceedingly wealthy men. It is not easy but it is not only possible, it is even practical. Hill describes determination, a burning desire, imagination, faith, autosuggestion, and persistence as the essential elements of becoming rich.
Paul Getty said for people to become rich, they must find a need and fill it. It might be a travel facility, a rice mill to mill the rice, horses to plough the land. If we can detect anything that the people really need and supply it there will be demand, and demand improves its value.
I remember the story of a man who, in 1965, was determinated to buy a Cadillac. He could not make enough money that year to buy his Cadillac but did not give up. He kept up his determination and every new year’s day renewed his decision. It was ten years before he made enough money to buy his Cadillac. So, in 1975 he bought his Cadillac - his 1965 Cadillac.
Becoming rich is not prosperity in itself. What is the good of wealth if there is no health. Even if we have wealth and health, what profit have you if you have no peace of mind? Jesus said, “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul.” (Mark 8:36)
Therefore, our prosperity depends on our potential - potential for wealth, potential for health, potential for peace of mind.
Do we have those potentials? Some people cannot see their own potential. They think they have no potential. They are poor, they are sick, they are foolish, they are incapable. They have nothing that is good. They always look a t the negative side and lack of things.
Khalil Gibran wrote in “The Profit”. “What shall I say of those who stand in the sunlight but with their backs to the sun. They see only the shadows. And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows.”
We read in The First Epistle St. Paul wrote to Corinthians 10:26 “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Everything that belongs to the father belongs to his children and we are his children. In the west, children say “It is my Dad’s car. It is my mum’s sewing machine.” But in the Orient it is different. There, everything is ours. Children will say “This is our car, our house, etc.”
I can see each one of you as perfect wise, healthy and intelligent person. I know each one is perfect. You cannot be nothing but be perfect. Why ? Because the maker is perfect. Therefore, everything he made must be perfect.
Supposing I showed you some paintings of Rembrandt, Michelangelo, or Leonardo Da Vinci. What would you say. I will say they are perfect. I would not dare say something is wrong. I may not understand every stroke of the brush. Since it is the master painter who created the piece, it is a masterpiece.
And who created this piece which is sitting in front of me (pointing at the audience). Each one has been designed and executed by the master of masters, the supreme intelligence and the totality of pure love. Therefore, we are sons and daughters of the master of masters.
The scheme of creation is to make a perfect man and the cause of creation is love. Then how can the process be a calamity?
If we are the sons and daughters of the king, we will eventually own everything in the kingdom and if we are the sons and daughters of the creator of the universe and the fullness thereof, then what can we say of ourselves? We are the owners of the universe.
Therefore, stop saying that you are poor, foolish, weak, and sick. Moreover, you become what you frequently say you are. The second thing is that any right that is not exercised will be lost . So exercise your rights..
Give as if you are the spring of water and it fills as you draw from it. You are the well and you are the channel. The more you draw from the well, the more it fills.
Without your own thinking, knowledge is like borrowed funds. Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries, all inventions, and all achievements. Without it there will be no empires, no great fortunes, no trans continental railways, no space laboratories, no Martian exploration, no T.V., no video, no dishwasher, in fact no advance in life over that which existed in primitive ages.
Rene’ Descartes believed that thought is more real than the body. Hence his dictum “Cogito ergo sum.” I think therefore, I am.”
Einstein’s discoveries could not have been made by working with tangible objects. During the eclipse of the sun in 1919, he predicted that light would be deflected in the neighbourhood of the sun and it did exactly as he predicted in the direction and to the amount he calculated.
How to build prosperity with thoughts. You are the product of your thoughts. Instruct your subconscious mind to perform your duty and abandon attachment to success or failure.
A Positive Motivation Word a day will make your day a GREAT DAY.Dr. Simon is a retired research scientist, philanthropist and author of two books: The Missing Piece to Paradise and The Philosopher's Notebook. Visit his website at
http://simonsecret.org
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