That’s a bold claim, but by studying these diagrams and reading their meaning you main gain some new ideas or distinctions which may influence your choices, which will change your outcome and ultimately change you life.
Diagram 1 considers the possibility that Passion alone is not enough. We can be passionate about art or music or being a sportsperson but if we lack the competence to make it as a professional in these areas then we need to consider other options.
A football mad teenager with a competence in Maths could become a data analyst for a sports team. Or someone with a passion for music but a talent for tech could end up as a producer.
The third sphere to consider is whether there is a demand for your skill and talent. Is that sufficient to become a full time career? A passion and talent for poetry may not be sufficient to make a successful career, but can still be a fulfilling hobby and creative outlet.
Think about what you love, what you are good at (or willing to develop) and then see how that can also earn a good living.
Diagram two. This one came courtesy of Vishen Lakhiani, founder of MindValley. On one axis is Happiness in the Now from low to high, and on the other is Vision for the Future, again from low to high. So if you were to score yourself out of 10, how happy are you in this moment and what is your strength of vision for the future?
If you find yourself in the bottom left hand box, with a low score for each, you’re in what he calls the negative spiral. So you’re unhappy now, you don’t have much of a vision for the future, you’re just going to stay stuck and feel pretty down about things.
If you’re finding yourself quite happy now, but again, with no vision for the future, I’ve coloured that one pink because of rose tinted glasses. You might think everything’s okay, but unfortunately things external to us can change, which is going to affect how we feel. So that might be loss of a partner, it might be illness, it might be losing your job or a global pandemic. So, being happy now but with no vision for the future while it might feel ok short term is not necessarily a safe place to be.
So, what about a strong vision for the future but not very happy in the moment? Well, that way leads to stress and anxiety. You set goals, you have visions, you’re ambitious for the future, but you’re discontent in the moment. And that negativity you experience now is not going to help in fulfilling that vision for the future. So what it means is you suffer from stress and anxiety in the present time. Which is why expressing gratitude is such an important aspect of many self development teachings.
So where would we like to be? We’d like to be happy now, grateful and accepting of our situation, but also have a very strong vision of the future to pull us forward. And that Vishen calls bending reality. Other people call it the flow. This is where you’re able to draw the people, the circumstances, the resources you need to you. You are happy in the moment and even happier when the reality comes to fruition to change your life.
And finally, diagram number three. This one comes from Rich Dad, Poor Dad author, Robert Kiyosaki. He looked at different ways in which people earn money. So to begin with, in the top left, we’ve got the employee. That’s people who spend their time at work and they’re swapping their time for money. Their conditions and their pay is largely controlled by somebody else.
Then, bottom left, we’ve got those that are self-employed. They run their own business, they work for themselves. And that covers a whole spectrum. That could include trades people or it could be self-employed sports stars earning a lot of money. Regardless in this category they’re still effectively swapping their time for money even though they’re their own boss.
Over the other side, in the top right we’ve got the business owner. That’s different from being self-employed because they’re leveraging other people’s time, other people’s skill, other people’s resources to run a business. And that business may exist with or without them. So they’re in a stronger financial position as they are not restricted to swapping their time for money.
But ultimately, the investor in the fourth quadrant is where the wealth gets made. Here these people are not limited to owning one business. They may have stakes in multiple businesses. They may invest in property or real estate. They may have stock market investments. They may have other investments, which all bring them money from different sources.
So there you have it, three of my favourite diagrams, which can change your life by making a big impact on how you feel about money and your choices about being successful in life.
