The following excerpt is from "The Seeds Of Wealth" by Paul Counsel.
Let me give you a bit of background first so you can see where some of the motivation to change my circumstances came from.
Basically, I’m a bush kid at heart who grew up witnessing the financial struggles of profoundly Deaf, working class parents locked away in the isolation of the Tasmanian bush.
Because both my parents were profoundly deaf, my first language is Auslan, the sign language of the Australian Deaf.
And, as you’ll see, this caused me enormous problems with trying to integrate into what’s considered “normal” society.
I began my formal schooling a bit later than most kids but the interesting thing about this was the attitude of my teachers.
Essentially, they either had no idea that my parents were Deaf or they had no idea about what being born to Deaf parents actually means. There’s a tremendous cultural and psychological divide between hearing children born of Deaf parents and hearing children born of hearing parents.
Basically, my teachers expected me to behave like all the other kids. But this made no sense to me at all because my language was sign language and I was used to the freedom of the bush, not the conformity of classrooms full of people speaking a language I really didn’t understand.
So, my early schooling was more about true survival than true learning.
In the early Catholic education system, if you didn’t behave like the other kids, you were singled out and made an example of.
My first introduction to the willow cane was in Grade 1 and this seemed to set the agenda for the rest of my schooling days.
A cane, a stick, a strap or a rubber tyre rim coming down across my hands, or being whipped around the bottom of my legs, were constant reminders that I didn’t fit in.
Some say it was ill-treatment by teachers and religious orders, but I think it was just a sign of the times and my teachers doing what they thought or felt was best.
An interesting aspect of sign language is that it’s a rather ‘black and white’ language. Or at least it was to me when I was growing up.
There weren’t any shades of grey and there was little or no conceptual or abstract capacity for thought in my early language. Everything was clear. Things were right or wrong, good or bad or black and white.
Even though my childhood was difficult, I feel extremely blessed for it. I feel as though I’ve always had the ability to make decisive choices. I feel as though I’ve always been following some sort of internal compass that wasn’t necessarily about what was being demanded of me.
I’ve never felt a compulsion to sit in the middle ground of indecision saying, “will I or won’t I.”
Not that my decisions were logical or well thought out or anything like that, they were all pretty much “feeling” based and going against the grain often felt more right than wrong to me.
Around the age of eight my family moved to Victoria, a State on the Australian mainland.
But little changed. The same punishment patterns I experienced as a child continued in other schools. Eventually, it became the trigger to leave school and seek my own way forward.
And this is where my story becomes like so many others - get a job, work hard, behave yourself and society promises that everything will be alright.
I knocked around for a bit until I decided to become a potter at the age of 32.
By the age of 40, I was running pottery classes in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining town in Western Australia. I loved what I was doing, but it was back breaking work and being a potter didn’t bring in much revenue.
That’s when I started to understand that society and social engineering had turned me into a “commodity” whose purpose was to earn and spend. Year after year I kept working but I wasn’t moving any closer to freedom or financial independence.
As a “commodity”, modern economies are not interested in your wealth, your freedom or your independence. For the profit makers to keep making their profits, they need the maximum years of work and the maximum years of spending from you.
Not only was I feeling unrewarded for the years of my labour, I simply couldn’t keep up with rising costs. Finally, there was a straw that broke the camel’s back and I found myself dead flat broke.
One year, my debts were greater than my ability to generate income and I didn't have a clue as how to reverse this situation.
Then it suddenly dawned on me that if I kept doing the same things over and over again, dwindling finances and increasing costs were going to be the "norm" for the rest of my life.
I couldn't see how to prevent this pattern from continuing if something didn't change.
In 1992, I was invited to display my artwork at the 1994 Festival of Perth Visual Arts Exhibition at the Crafts Council of Western Australia.
With high expectations of making $20,000-$30,000 by selling my work, I began beavering away for two years to produce 44 pieces for the exhibition.
By exhibition close, I had only made $4,500 in sales, one-third of which had to go to the gallery in commissions and one-third to the taxman. I walked away from that exhibition with $1,500 in my hand.
But this amount didn’t cover the cost of the clay I had used in my exhibition works. It meant nothing financial was available for 2 years of hard yakka art production and 13 years of skill development.
Every time I was invited to showcase my work… it seemed that someone was moving the financial success line further away from me.
As an artist, I felt as though I was a beggar who had to beg for a living.
That’s when I swore to myself that I never ever wanted to feel this feeling again... ever.
Never was I as dead flat broke, or so low, as I was in that moment.
Devastated was an understatement but as difficult as this feeling was for me, it was also the beginning of my freedom.
If you can resonate with this feeling, I want to tell you that it’s OK because it can also be the starting point for you. There is a silver lining to this feeling. You can achieve the same outcomes as I have in only a few short years from now.
When you finally reach your point of enough’s enough... strange as it may seem but you should celebrate this because you’ll have finally arrived at a point where you can truly begin your freedom journey too.
Sadly for most of us, we tend to need a lot of discomfort and distress to eventually motivate us to take on big changes… otherwise we tend not to do much about anything.
(Trust me, looking back at my journey, this enough’s enough feeling was the best thing that happened. Over the past 20 years… I’ve literally helped hundreds of people past their point of enough’s enough and now they’re experiencing the freedoms that go along with financial independence. If you want similar results, and are prepared to do some work, just reach out when you’re ready to make a start.)
When I had finally had enough, it was at this point I realised that the only person who could change my circumstances was me.
Unless I took control and did something about my financial situation, nothing was going to change.
I began by taking a good look at my life’s results. I wasn’t particularly happy with what I saw because I knew I had more potential than what my current results were showing.
I wondered how come I got so far down the track and yet had so little to show for it. While I had great memories and achievements, I needed to seriously start providing for a future based in economic freedom, not the continuation of being a “commodity” for an economic system that doesn’t particularly care about you.
That’s when I felt this overwhelming desire to free myself from the pressures of everyday finances and the incarceration and commodity servitude I found myself in.
And that’s when I made a life changing decision. I decided that I no longer wanted to be imprisoned by the lack of money, the lack of time and the lack of freedom.
I no longer wanted to be incarcerated by my circumstances and the lack of real financial knowledge.
Instead, I wanted to use my circumstances as a motivational driver towards new results.
I made up my mind to begin my quest for both economic and personal freedom so that I could experience the freedom of time, the freedom of “money” and the freedom of choice.
Finally, I got to a tipping point of enough’s enough… and it had an immediate impact.
Never again was I going to be in a situation where I felt I had to beg for a living. I was determined to become wealthy – financially free – and never be dependent on jobs, wages, commissions or economic ups and downs ever again.
I started by carving out a new reality in my mind.
Essentially, I followed the same processes I did as a potter, only this time, instead of using clay as a medium of my artistic expression, I decided to use money as a medium of my knowledge expression.
As a potter, everything starts in mind. I had to see the finished work before I could create it with my hands and ready it for exhibition.
So, I applied the same process to becoming wealthy. I had to be wealthy in my mind before I could experience the physical realisation of wealth in my daily life.
And that’s one of the biggest mistakes people make... They trap themselves in cycles of earning, spending and borrowing because the experience of spending gives them a momentary kind of satisfaction.
Then they need to go back to work so they can earn more so they can spend it again and have more momentary satisfaction.
If they spend more than they earn, they borrow on credit so they can spend money they have yet to earn.
It’s crazy when you think about it… spending future money before you’ve earned it.
I realised that it wasn’t the amount of money I was earning that was the problem. It was the fact that there was no “residual value” to the money after I’d spent it.
I was buying four coffees a week for approximately $20… at the end of the week there was nothing left of my $20… only the memory satisfaction of four cups of coffee.
However for the same $20, I could have bought 1 ounce of silver. And although the price of silver can go up or down… it never goes to zero. There’s always a “residual value” to it.
But the way I was spending meant that the value of every dollar was eventually going to zero.
When you’re locked into patterns of earn, spend and borrow, you never become wealthy.
It’s all part of the social engineering that makes you a predictable and obedient commodity who spends decades of time earning and spending without really getting anywhere. You never get close to experiencing the freedom and independence you’re promised.
I knew that if I couldn’t exist as a wealthy person in my own mind first, there was no way I was going to be able to experience wealth and freedom in my external environment.
So, I made a decision... and in that moment, I became financially free in my mind.
I “thought” financial freedom into my mind’s reality first.
The transformation was instant. I took on the identity of a wealthy person and in my mind... this image was as real as anything I could make as a potter or anything I experienced as a child in the Tasmanian bush.
When I made the decision to be a millionaire in my mind, I was instantly a millionaire.
Making this initial decision was the single most important step on my whole journey to becoming a multi-millionaire.
I was very clear about what financial freedom meant to me. It was all about having control over my time. It meant not having to compromise any choices simply because I couldn’t afford them.
It meant not continuing to be a “commodity” by exchanging my time and labour for money.
It meant no longer fearing the consequences of having decided to leave my old world behind so I could enter a new world of possibilities.
Until you no longer fear the consequences of moving forward, until you are no longer affected by what other people think, or say about you, until you no longer fear the obstacles and challenges in carrying out your decision...
There is no forward movement. There is only desire!
If you are still at the stage of desire… your possibilities for a new future still exist. But there is “no” decision at desire... there’s only longing. When there is “no” decision, there is no freedom, just a continuation of the circumstances you’re currently experiencing.
When a decision is truly made, there is no turning back; no ifs, buts or maybes.
After reaching a point of enough’s enough, my decision was easy because what I had been doing up to this point was not getting the results I wanted.
I totally accepted that I had to do things differently, to change my thoughts, my feelings and my psychology, in order to change the results I was getting.
I knew I had to be more flexible in my thinking and that I had to seek growth wherever I could find it.
I knew I had to step outside my comfort zone. And I was okay with that because all the growth I was seeking was in my expansion zone, not my comfort zone.
Although I knew I’d be “uncomfortable” moving forward, I decided to control the one thing I could control... I could change the meaning of “discomfort”.
Normally, discomfort meant danger which then had me stepping back into my comfort zone. But I knew that there was no learning, no adventure, no evolution and no growth in my comfort zone.
So, I decided that “discomfort” should mean something positive.
Discomfort meant leaving an old lifestyle in search of a new lifestyle. It’s the feeling of being on a new track... Comfort was the old track; discomfort meant a new track of possibilities.
I connected the meaning of discomfort to the reward of learning. And I knew that whenever I felt discomfort; my compass setting was truer than that of the return to the familiar.
Although I had not created wealth on the outside yet, I seriously believed I was a wealthy person. I became a wealthy person the instant I thought it into my existence.
The point I’m making is that in an instant I decided that I had already achieved what I wanted to achieve. By working this thought into my subconscious mind, I had already achieved everything I wanted.
There wasn’t any “conflict” in my new image of myself... there was no monkey mind chatter telling me that I was stupid or that I didn’t know what I was doing.
This was the first part of my self-made wealth and if you don’t make it this far, you won’t make it any further. On a mental level, I truly believed with my whole heart and soul that I had already achieved what I wanted to achieve.
Part two of the process fell into place when I started to feel the reality of my new sense of self. I “thought” my new image into reality first then I “felt” it into reality second.
Then I began working on my physical reality by reading as many wealth books as I could because that’s all I could afford.
I started with a logic suggesting that if others could become rich, why couldn’t I?
All this was happening around the age of 40. In the past, I was definitely not a big reader. In fact, I could count the number of books I’d read on one hand.
My early attempts at creating wealth were not successful, and in fact, I failed many times at share trading.
However, I have a couple of qualities which made the journey more doable. One of them is stubbornness and the other is my belief in the powers of self-efficacy.
I started with a belief that there were no set of circumstances, challenging times or painful lessons that were going to make me give up. Once I set my mind on something, I stubbornly target it with a laser like focus.
I reasoned away my early failures as just the price of learning, the price of entry to a much bigger prize.
I continued reading and listening to everything I could. I became hungry for information and I learned from everybody who was willing to teach me. I attended seminars on any financial subject, I listened to recordings, and I spoke to as many interesting self-made people as I could.
The best people were those I could personally interact with because they allowed me to ask lots of questions. And the answers they gave made sense for the stage I was at on my personal journey.
That’s when something really important fell into place.
I started to see patterns in my own money behaviour and in the money behaviour of others. This led to the discovery of the social engineering behind “reward” spending. It keeps people glued to their “commodity” status on their "work/stress, not enough time, not enough money treadmill".
It was this one discovery that allowed me to breakthrough my previous money limits.
Over and over, I practiced each piece of the money jigsaw I was learning and3.8 years later, the physical reality of my first million dollars was achieved.
And now it’s your turn if you’re up for a challenge.