“Adding Horsepower To Habits” – Money is a Magnifier

Let’s suppose this was your car (pictured in the video blog). What would be the first thing that you would want to do to be able to get the most out of it. Would you first want go out and get the most expensive turbo charged, souped-up engine that you can possibly find, to throw under the hood of this bad boy, so that it could go like stink?

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Maybe it just needs more attention, more fame, more fans. Start a Facebook page for it, with tens of thousands of followers, and that’ll make it run better.

Well that sounds ridiculous when you can stand here and look and see what shape this car is in. Yet I would submit that we do this to ourselves all the time, by thinking that we can take something like, not an engine, but a whole bunch of money, that once we finally get enough resources, then all our problems are gonna go away.

Or, in business or with our creative pursuits and projects, if we could just get more attention, more fans, more customers, then everything would become easier. It doesn’t seem to work like that though.

See, there are all sorts of stories of people that win the lottery, and then within a very short amount of time are right back where they started, or worse, just flat broke. And this endless parade of athletes, and celebrities, and musicians, and other people that come upon this avalanche of financial success and fame and adoration, that end up distraught, depressed and dead; some of them, sad to say. Why is that?

Thinking that you’re going to get a sudden windfall, or amount of money, or result and that’s going to make everything easier is like suggesting that we could put a NASCAR style engine under the hood of this car, and it would be ready for Daytona.

In studying people that have been successful – and I mean what I would consider to be a true measure of success, in all areas of your life; with health, with great relationships, with contribution to your community and certainly, the financial resources and a healthy career, as well – each of those people that I’ve studied has something really similar to say. And that is that money is a magnifier. It takes what’s already there and just makes it bigger.

So in other words, if you’re a jerk, having a lot of money is just going to make you a bigger jerk. If you’re a flat out idiot, a windfall of cash is just gonna open up opportunities for you to be able to broadcast that out more and make you look like a bigger idiot. Consequently, if it’s in your nature to be caring and compassionate and to contribute to your community, having more resources is going to expand your capacity for your compassion and giving.

But thinking that you’re going to get a sudden windfall, or amount of money, or result and that’s going to make everything easier is like suggesting that we could put a NASCAR style engine under the hood of this car, and it would be ready for Daytona. No, that engine is just going to expose what’s already there and magnify it.

So before we run out and buy that next lottery ticket and dream about how our problems will soon be behind us, if we could just be that lucky one, maybe we should think of ourselves kind of like this car, and check the chassis first.

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