PNTV: The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles (#25)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do an episode on the Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. As always, we've got a great book and we've got the six page PDF philosopher's notes where I pulled out 10 or so of my favorite big ideas from that book. And, and I'm excited about this one. So, the Science of Getting Rich. A couple of things before we jump into it. Number one, I avoided it for a couple of years because of both the cheesy title and the funny sound of the author's name. Wallace D. Wattles. How great is that? But the Science of Getting Rich is actually a phenomenal book. It's a tiny little essay essentially, and just packed with goodness. It's also the basis of the movie the Secret. One of the inspirations behind that movie, and frankly, I don't think they did the book justice at all. I think it was way too focused on the thinking aspects and whatnot and the visualizations and kind of some magical thinking versus the true consciousness that we need to have in order to attract the wealth we want to see in our lives and the action required to actually manifest it and create it. This could be a very, very long discussion. We've only got another eight and a half minutes, so we'll jump in. So first of all, Wattles establishes the fact that there's a science to getting rich. He likes to say, like algebra, you can follow certain equations and you will solve problems. In this case, if you follow his Science of getting rich, you will attain abundance and wealth in every sense in your life. So that's interesting. And, and what I find most interesting that I talk about first in the note is the logic of why we should want to get rich. A lot of times we kind of distance ourselves from wealth and from abundance and from money. We have an ambivalent relationship with money. Sometimes we want it, sometimes we feel like we're greedy if we want it. And it's difficult to find that relationship where we really feel an integrity. And I know I struggled with that several years ago and continue to move through that and. But I loved this book and another great one called Spiritual Economics that we also profile in the notes that you can check out. I read those two about the same time, maybe five, six years ago, when I was going through my own challenges of integrating spirituality and capitalism. And they really helped move me through that phase. And this particular idea was one of the most essential. He says, when we're looking at the logic of why? To get rich. He says, first, let's establish the fact that there's no greater service we can give to God and to humanity than to make the most of ourselves, to become the most extraordinary human beings we can become. Right? That is the way we can serve God and humanity most fully. I think we'd all agree on that, might describe it a little bit differently, but I think we'd agree on the essence of that. So that's principle number one. Principle number two is if we want to make the most of ourselves, to truly become the most extraordinary human beings we can become in service to God and humanity, we need a certain amount of money. And he would offer. We need wealth, we need true abundance to be able to do the things, to be able to experience the teachings, the life experiences that really allow us to fully express ourselves. And, and if we want to honor our commitment to live our highest potential in service to God and humanity, we need to recognize the fact, he says, that we need a certain amount of abundance, riches in order to do that. And if you're really committed to living at your highest potential, you need a fairly significant amount of money. So that's the basic idea that he walks through. And it's something that I buy into. I think that for me, why I'm so excited about circulating wealth. And it's not accumulating it so, so I can spend it, it's circulating it by creating something that I love, like these philosopher's notes, and giving it to you for a price that I think is extraordinary. Receiving money from you and then circulating it in ways that help me grow and help me actualize so I can create more and I can give more in the months and years and decades ahead. For example, I have a massage in a couple of hours today. Well, I love having the abundance to be able to support people who have dedicated their lives to helping people achieve higher levels of health. I love organic food. Not needing to worry about the types of food that we get and my goddess prepares for us. Every once in a while I make a smoothie. But this idea of having the abundance so that I can become a better human being, so that I can serve God and humanity better, is a really, really, really big idea. And that's the essence of his logic of why we want to get rich. A lot of people have ambivalence, like I mentioned, and I used to be one of them, and will often say things like, you know, yeah, what about Mother Teresa and what about Gandhi? They didn't have money and they changed the world. And it's an interesting thing because although Gandhi and Mother Teresa may have renounced their own personal possession of money and wealth, and we need to recognize the fact that a lot of money went through Gandhi and his organization, and Mother Teresa and her organization, they just didn't hold on to it. They circulated it, but it took an extraordinary amount of wealth for each of them to be in greatest service to humanity. And one of my favorite quotes that I mentioned in the note is from an industrialist who said, no one realizes how much money it cost me to keep Gandhi poor. Pretty funny. So this is part of a much longer conversation we're going to have in the months and years and decades ahead. How we integrate spirituality and economics, spirituality and capitalism. I'm a huge fan of free markets and capitalism for reasons we'll talk about another time. But I think that business can be a force for good. And as we align with our deepest purpose, our deepest intention, we can do extraordinary things in the world. For now, let's see what other ideas we want to cover. I love the idea of becoming a creator, not being a competitor. So when you look at the science of getting rich, one of the rules we need to follow or variables we want to plug in is this idea of creating, not competing. Too often we look at competition, we look at business, we look at making money as a zero sum effort, right? If I win, you lose. If you win, then I must lose. And that's just absurd. I remember a mentor of mine, I was talking about competition. One of my prior businesses, I think it was when I was running ZODS in the early days. And he said, look, you have no competition until you're cloned. You have no competition. Just create. Just give yourself to the world. And it really, really stuck into my consciousness. And Wallace D. Wattles talks about it here in a beautiful way. So I'm all about contemplating and really feeling into how I can best give my gifts to the world and then giving them fearlessly, passionately, consistently. And I'm not competing. A lot of people come up with ideas similar to philosopher's notes, and I celebrate it. It's awesome. And when I had my other businesses, I used to kind of worry about that more. And I found myself just celebrating the idea of creativity. How do we fully give ourselves to the world and just enjoy that process? So try to check in and see if you're competing when you could be creating more. We can talk about that for a really long time. We will. In the future. I'm going to do a lot more on business Obviously, we want to focus on what we love to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, which we talk about throughout the notes. But what do you really love to do that's going to be the best place for you to circulate an incredible amount of abundance? Gratitude. If you want to plug into Source, do so through gratitude. I'm a broken record on that one, but check it out. Gratitudelog.com BrianJohnson, you can find me. I'm keeping track of my gratitude every day that I'm online. Every night I'm online, I do it on gratitude. Otherwise, I do it in my journal here, right over here. But gratitude, it's impossible to be depressed and stressed and grateful. So connect to Source, live from that place with gratitude. That's a big idea. And then the final big idea here is taking action. One of the things I didn't like about the Secret was the idea that was presented, that if we just think hard enough and long enough about the red shiny bike or the beautiful home or the fast car, it will suddenly show up on our porch. And I don't believe in that kind of magical thinking. I think we want to get clear on what we want to see in our lives. Of course, we want to have a vision of what's possible and we want to take action. And Wallace D. Wattles talks about this a lot. We've got to consistently take action. He says it's not enough to simply imagine what we want. Obviously, what are we doing? And he says it's not enough to pray one day a week or on the Sabbath. We've got to pray consistently throughout the week, and we've got to pray while we move our feet. Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about that. When you pray, move your feet. Right. An old adage out there. So we want to think about what we can do to create value in the world as we're holding this vision of what we'd like to see in our lives and imagine who we can be and how we can give our greatest gifts in greatest service to the world. So that's a really quick look at this great book. Hope you enjoyed it and look forward to sharing more and discussing this with you. See you.