[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

You may think that enjoying an easily maintainable positive cashflow would make it easier to be courageous, but I usually see the opposite in people who have high incomes or lots of material possessions.

Really? The wealthy people I've met and know are some of the most curageous people I know. They minds are pretty fearless, and they hardly ever seem to worry about their material possessions. The people I always see worrying about material possessions, clutching onto them like there is no tomorrow are non-wealthy people. That's been my observation.

They get so attached to their stuff that they become even more fearful -- of losing it. For some people their stuff becomes part of their identity and self-worth, so anything that threatens the stuff threatens the self. People can become very uptight and controlling when they start earning a lot of money, and it actually drives them further into scarcity thinking rather than being an expression of abundance.

Do you actually know wealthy people like this personally through personal experience, or are you just speculating? The people I've personally known intimately who have are multi-millionaires are non-attached to material posessions, they are NOT scarcity thinkers, and their self worth has nothing to do with their material possessions.

Maybe I'm surrounding myself with Inspired Money Makers and the one's you're seeing are the bad apples? Perhaps living in Los Vegas could have something to do with it? I don't know, but your description of wealthy people doesn't seem AT ALL to match the wealthy people I know personally.

Courage-wise I think it's easier to start doing what you love when you're totally broke and even in debt because you probably don't have much to lose anyway.

Yeah, exactly. Once you've got a "stable job" that you're used to, and you've been working in it for 10 years and your family depends on that stable income, it takes COURAGE to get out of that and move into doing what you love and being wealthy doing it. Maybe you didn't have to go through that yourself because you took the path of self-employment and going against the grain from a very early age. ie. it's not hard to be different if you've always been different.

Many people fall into the trap of thinking they should get rich first doing crap work, and then they'll have the freedom to do what they love.

Yup, exactly. I don't know anyone who's become rich doing crap work. This is exactly why I started my blog to teach people how to Make Money Doing What They Love. In reality that is the ONLY way they'll make money, long term and enjoy it.

Erin and I have seen the long-term results of people who've pursued that path, and most commonly the person will just keep distracting themselves with one excuse after another. Year after year it only gets harder -- never easier -- regardless of how much money is amassed.

A lack of money or income isn't the real obstacle, but it's a very popular excuse.

Would these be people who have increased their income from like $50k to $60k/year as an example, or are you talking about people who have ammassed millions of dollars in net worth and they're still doing "crappy work" that they don't enjoy?