Control Money Before
Money Controls You
K. RAJ SINGH
My aim in contributing to this book is to inspire and motivate others through sharing my experiences – both successes and failures. My hope for you is that after reading, you realize you are just as, or even more, capable of becoming successful and having financial freedom as I have had the fortune to be. Don’t get me wrong; I have had to overcome multiple obstacles in order to end up where I am in life. I believe that we don’t go through mishaps and failures solely to benefit ourselves, but also so that we can impart our wisdom upon the general public and benefit humanity’s quality of life as a whole.
My drive and ambition stems from growing up in a single parent household with my mother and sister. Early on in life, my parents divorced and I was given the role of man of the house. I soon found that with that title came responsibility – responsibility to provide for my family, support my family, and secure a stable financial future. Throughout this time, my ambition was in the background, ever-fueling and driving my desire for more. I wanted more for my future, more for my family, but not just in a financial sense. I’ve heard of so many families that struggle not financially, but emotionally, because the provider was continuously absent due to their efforts to secure a stable lifestyle for their family. I didn’t want to impart that emotional burden on my family. I wanted to be there for them and not just function as their savings account or an invisible man who allows them to live a comfortable life. I wanted to be there for my sister’s graduation, or my child’s first steps and first words. I wanted to be present.
Being a good person and being successful are not mutually exclusive characteristics, but neither do they come hand in hand. You can be a genuinely good human being in terms of honesty and generosity, but not accomplished in terms of achieving your career goals. In order to become who I wanted to be for my family, I had to learn how to be both the best and most successful person I had the potential to be. To do this, I attended multiple seminars and workshops on personal development, investing, and financial success. To this day, I still continue to learn and grow as a person with every day I live, but one seminar has had a significant impact on my financial life, specifically. This was Peak Potentials’ Millionaire Mind Intensive by T. Harv Eker (now called New Peaks’ Millionaire Mind Experience*). The Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar taught me not to just wonder why life is the way it is and imagine my position in life as static, but to start asking myself how I could change my financial blueprint and future. And that’s exactly what I did.
I am now in a global mastermind group with New Peaks and feel blessed to have been able to spend time with the CEO, Adam Markel, who is also author of the book Pivot. I’ve visited him in his home in California, where we spent hours brainstorming ideas and solutions for our businesses, while also making time for fun and giving back to a worthy cause with our time and physical labor. The dedication that Mr. Markel and the rest of his team put into their company is wondrous and admirable. I, along with countless other people, have taken many of the courses and retreats they offer – my favorite being the Enlightened Warrior Training Camp. The name alone says a lot about the focus of the retreat as becoming an enlightened warrior means to conquer oneself.
As I mentioned before, I wanted to figure out a way to be financially successful but also be present for my family. The best way I have found to do this was to delegate and relinquish some control. For some people this may be hard, especially the types that are perfectionists and relish the ability to oversee every detail of any operation. But in order for me to have enough free time to spend with my family and loved ones, I had to realize that a significant amount of the work I did myself could be distributed and done by other people. I began to hire others to do the more routine work I had grown accustomed to doing myself and although at first glance this seemed like a big initial investment, I soon reaped its benefits. Not having to do the work of multiple people allowed me to focus on the more complex aspects of the projects I was working on and with greater focus came increased levels of productivity. That’s when the successes started rolling in.
None of the headway I made after bringing in others to help would have been possible if I hadn’t realized the importance of continued education, even after obtaining my Bachelor’s Degree. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean taking online classes or auditing courses at your local college – it can be as simple as reading an article on a topic you don’t know much about or taking a weekend and attending a seminar on smart investing. Having a vast store of a variety of information allows you to be creative in your problem solving and future planning, as you can take multiple viewpoints when looking at the situations you find yourself in. “Knowledge is power” isn’t a famous quote just because the sound of the words is aurally appealing; there is innate truth in those three words, dating back to 1597 in Sir Francis Bacon’s Meditationes Sacrae. As you can see, this book isn’t just about investing in stocks or bonds; rather it’s about investing in yourself – your education, your future, and your success. To take it a step further, I believe knowledge, when applied, is power. Warren Buffet, the biggest investor of our time, says: “The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself… The more you learn, the more you’ll earn.” I’ve noticed throughout my life that wealthy people tend to always have extensive libraries in their homes and I firmly believe there is a correlation between their success and the importance they put on accumulating knowledge. Knowledge, and the ability of correctly applying it, are the greatest assets in the world because the dividends are infinite.
*As a thank you for purchasing this book, I am offering a scholarship certificate for you and a family member to attend the 3-day Millionaire Mind Experience Seminar as my complimentary guests. Valued at $2,590 – free for a limited time! Go to
www.thepassiveincomebook.com THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
The law of attraction ultimately boils down to the idea that “like attracts like.” In a way, our thoughts are made up of energy, just as we are, and whether our thoughts are positive or negative can determine whether we encounter positive or negative experiences. The idea of similar energy types attracting each other, also known as the law of attraction, was brought to fame and popularity through Rhonda Byrne’s book-turned-movie, The Secret. I was blessed to come across this book at a pivotal point in my life and owe most of my beliefs to the lessons I took from reading it. I truly believe it to be the single most powerful and impactful piece of literature I have studied. When I met the greatest motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins*, I learned that all of us have a vibrational energy, and in order to succeed, we need to increase our energy levels to the maximum we can obtain. The more energy we have, the more of what we want from the universe we can attract. You can think of it in terms of gravity – bigger bodies of matter have bigger gravitational pulls, and ultimately attract larger amounts of mass. The sun is a good example of this. Surrounded by eight planets, a dwarf planet, and countless asteroids, the sun is a giant orb, pulsing of energy and attracting an incredible amount of matter towards it. We should all try to draw as much positive energy towards ourselves as possible.
An efficient way to attract favorable energy is to actively maintain a positive attitude every day. I cannot stress enough how important I have found having a positive attitude to be. Especially since we live in a world where negative happens all around us, this may initially be harder than it seems but with conscious effort, staying positive can become habit. To help you visualize this, I want you to imagine a field of dirt. Without doing anything or putting in any effort, grass and weeds will take it over and destroy its potential. However, by planting your own crops and nurturing them with fertile soil and water, you can eventually end up with a bountiful field full of fruits or vegetables. With effort, the positive has overcome the default negative. In this same way, actively trying to maintain a positive attitude can help you eliminate the negative that regrettably encompasses the world.
A more tangible way to do this in your daily life is to listen to personal development and motivational audio books in your spare time. I used to use the time I spent commuting to work to do this; I even called my car my “University on Wheels.” No matter where I was going, I was always able to feel as if I’d done something productive, other than driving from point A to point B. If audio books aren’t up your alley, you could also opt for the real paper version of the books. Reading every night before bed has become a deeply embedded habit for me, and I regard it as a habit everyone should develop. Most people spend their last minutes before sleep watching the news on TV, something full to the brim with negativity. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a common phrase that comes to mind when we think about the news – is...