Book Review: Think and Grow Rich, Chapter 1: Burning Desire

This chapter is a little bit of every succeeding chapters of this book. I think the reason why it’s chapter 1 is because it’s the most important, and I couldn’t’ agree more.

 

As what I shared with my Mastermind Group (like-minded friends who I meet every week to share ideas with) – burning desire is important because that’s where your faith, your imagination and persistence will come from. You may have all the right values in the world but if you don’t have that focus on your goal, you will end up wandering around and accomplish nothing.

 

I see people who are very skilled in their job, their business and many other things but lack the plan to achieve certain goals. Burning desire will help you be creative enough to find a work around to achieve success.

 

I want to share my story here too about the topic.

 

11 years ago, I just graduated from college, earning a measly salary and started to set a goal that I wanted a have my own house by the age 30, in Metro Manila. It’s way beyond my reach to tell you the truth, that one specific goal, just one, is too overwhelming for me. Why? Because the price of house and lot here in Metro Manila are millions of pesos and I’m earning what? Php 12,000 a month. Then I had to allot a budget for transportation, food and few more bills. How much do I need to save as compared to the reality of what I can save?

 

Well, I save Php 1,000 anyway. It’s way too low to buy a house and by the time I earn enough, I’m probably 60 years old already and prices of houses in the city is way more.

 

So, one day I had a business opportunity and with the amount of money that I saved, I used it as capital. Fortunately, it grew over time. I kept on working on my job to pay for bills and if I have extra like bonuses, incentives etc. I inject it to the business and earnings from my business was just getting reinvested because I can pay the bills from my salary.

 

Age 28, I was able to buy a house because of that. Not just that, I was able to invest in certain companies, have rental properties and build other businesses.

 

You see, if your desire is that important for you. You’ll never lack creativity to work on it. Put your mind, body and soul in it. And yes, it may sound a cliché, “the universe will conspire to make it happen”. I don’t even know how it happened, it just did.

 

Final thoughts

 

Do it. Show up not show off. Regardless of what people say about you or your goal, it is you who will determine the outcome. Yes, there’s reality but even you did not achieve your goal that’s so high, you’ll end up far more than you were before.

 

PS. All the things I achieve, I was able to because of my wife. She’s the very core of all my endeavors.

Book Review: Think and Grow Rich, Chapter 4 - Specialized Knowledge

Education is important but does not guarantee success. At least when we’re talking about accumulation of wealth. For some just pursuing knowledge is success enough. I don’t rule that out. In a way, it doesn’t matter if you’re earning a lot with your pursued field. If it pays enough to cover your bills, food on the table, insurance and college education for your kids, then I’d say it’s okay. For me, education is a life-long journey that must be pursued. For some it might be boring and tedious, but if you love what you do, there’s no stopping you from doing the things that you must do. It’s going to fun and exciting if your heart is in it.

Here’s my realization for this chapter.

• Focus is key. Specialize on something that’s important to you, leave the trivial things to others. You don’t need to know everything, you need to know the right person who knows things and when you can get that information.

• Mastermind groups are important. Not only that you talk with like-minded people, you also get to share, contribute and get as much knowledge from them. It takes commitment though, but the benefits of this groups are way too valuable.

• Education does not end in school nor it starts there. You probably heard about people who are very successful now and yet they haven’t even finished college. Pursuing education is a life-long journey. I finished college more than a decade ago but until now I’m still attending seminars, conferences, reading books, watching videos that would help me gain more knowledge in a certain field that I’m pursuing. It’s endless and you should enjoy it. It’s not something that your parents will require you to go, it depends on your initiative.

• Organized thoughts will be realized if you pursue education on your field. If you don’t have enough concept that you read or hear about, there’s not much to organize. So learn as much, experience as much and then organize it to have a clear path of pursuit.

 

Final thoughts

Henry Ford one of the most successful entrepreneur of his time was asked with general information in a court during his trial. It was about history and trivial things, he got tired answering those questions and he was honest enough to tell them that he didn’t know those things. Then he replied that they can all put their questions together then he will have his men to answer these questions for him. He added that he was too busy accomplishing things that matter to him, his business. Same is true for all of us. We can’t possibly know everything. Someone will always be knowledgeable about certain matter. It’s not about not pursuing knowledge at all because someone will always be better but instead focus on things where you could be at the top of it. Educate, experience and ask questions about what really matters to you, be it financially, relationally, spiritually or emotionally. The choice is yours to pursue.

Think and Grow Rich: Chapter 3, Auto-Suggestion

The chapter talks about how the conscious mind affects the subconscious mind and how it could affect our performance, the way we think, our persistence and many more aspect that would help us achieve our goals. The conscious mind can dictate what the subconscious mind would believe whether it’s realistic, already happening or will happen in the future.

Therefore, subconscious mind is very powerful in making things happen. With this concept, it implies that what we believe and feel will most likely to happen.

Then how do we apply this in our normal lives.

• Write down your goals and read it often. The book suggests to read it aloud twice every day to imprint it to your subconscious mind. It’s like hypnotizing yourself and being comfortable in achieving goals way beyond you now.

• Print your goals and put it in the frequently visited areas. Like in your office, desk or even in your room. The more you see it, the more it becomes real.

• Share it often to your confidants. In my case, I share it with my wife, close friends and my mastermind group. In that way, they’ll be aware or aligned and can even help you with your goals.

• Say yes to every opportunity that would make you one step closer to your goal. Sometimes, opportunities may seem irrelevant but you should do it anyway because there’s always a hindsight. And even if it’s totally not relevant to your goal, it would still be beneficial experience for you. There’s a lot of realization on everything that has happened.

• Refer to your inner thirst. Remember when you were a kid and can’t buy thing, not even a candy. Well, it may seem a simpleton but those kind of hurt would still be beneficial if you use it right. This would make you think more of your goal and make you feel that it’s already there. You’re excited to get out of the situation or you don’t want to go back there.

• Meditate. Have a quite time with yourself and think about all the possibilities. Just don’t overthink yourself and end up thinking about the struggles or challenges that you’ll be facing. Leave it to your future self, they can handle that.

  • Journaling. Write about stuff that has happened about every opportunity that you took or experiencing now. In that way, you’ll have a channel for realization. I’d say that it worked well for me, because most of the creative things that I did was a realization of my journaling.

To summarize, repetition of your goals to every channel will help you make your goals seem real and as you go along the way you’ll find out that you become more creative in working towards it because there’s no going back, you said it to the whole universe. It’s either you make a fool of yourself for saying those things or you prove that it could happen with sheer persistence.

How to Use GCash and Why You Should Use it

With the recent events happening all over the globe brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Payment methods on some transactions has shifted as well. Instead of cash on delivery items, some used their credit cards / debit cards already. Now there’s new way to pay your online shopping, utility bills and bank transactions.

GCash was actually been around for quite a while, since 2004. It’s not that popular yet back then. But now with the encouraged contactless payments, it became one of the leading market player in FinTech industry.

Here’s the summary of what it can do:

1.  Scan to Pay.

A contactless way of paying with GCash’s partner merchants (Grocery stores, Convenience Stores, mall tenants and many more). All you need to do is have an internet in your phone, make sure to have available balance in your app and scan the QR code in store. No more coins and bills that you need to touch to and from the cashier. I love this when I do groceries. We all hate touching things these days, so better take advantage of that.

2. .  Pay using GCash in your online shopping apps.

Just add GCash as your payment method and purchase online. Two of the leading shopping app – Shopee and Lazada is now accepting GCash as a payment method. It’s convenient and safe. No need for you to worry, even though it’s linked, they still ask for MPIN to pursue the transaction. There’s only one thing that I consider as downside of this, it’s tempting to buy stuff!

3.    Skip the long lines in payment centers.

When I used GCash to pay my bills for the first time, I don’t see the relevance of payment centers anymore. I don’t know why there’s still long lines there, when they can pay their bills online anytime, anywhere. We do have lots of bills to pay, that’s hard enough. We don’t want the hardship to extend on long queues, commute, heat of the sun and system outages.

4.   Branchless bank transactions.

      When I started using GCash, I skipped the queues at the banks. If I have to pay someone in their bank accounts, I do it online using GCash. If I need to send money to anyone, it only take me 3 minutes to do it. I mean, you don’t really to go to the bank these days. Except for some big transactions of course, but most of the time? I don’t think so. With the use of Gcash, it’s all FREE, you can do money transfers faster.

5.   Buy mobile load and get rebates.

      I haven’t gone to store to buy load for many years now and YES, thanks to GCash. Going out to store to just buy a load, it’s so inconvenient. This is another way to go contactless. Plus, you save on some fees. Usually when you buy load at Php 20, you need to pay Php 23. With GCash, you eliminate that fee and you get to hae rebates. For Php 20, you get it for less. Talk about savings, right?

6.  Higher interest rate with your savings account.

      In partnership with CIMB, you can now get higher interest return for your savings deposit. Big banks like BDO, BPI and Metrobank, they usually give you less than 1% return for your deposits. With GCash and CIMB, you can get as high as 4% per year – money works for you. This is actually an equivalent to investing in some bond funds. Savings account has a limit though of Php 100,000 but here’s another thing to consider. If you save Php 100,000 with them, you’ll get a life insurance coverage of Php 1M. Just make sure to maintain that amount for a month and they’ll message you for the coverage for next month.

7.  GCredit, get to have an online credit for your purchases and emergencies.

      Here’s another product of GCash, you can now purchase on credit for your business or personal needs. GCredit can lend you up to Php 30,000 depending on your GScore. This goes with 5% monthly interest, way lower than “bumbays”. You can now maximize your margin with the credit they offer and it’s convenient to pay them too, just use their app and go to manage credit.

Summary

Using GCash is a way to go to adopt to this new normal. You’ll be eliminating a lot of things that was not necessary anymore. You’ll save time in going to and from payment centers, banks and malls just to pay your bills or do your transactions. You’ll save money too from gas money, parking, transportation and unnecessary eat out because you went to the mall or somewhere. This is way too convenient not to do.