Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Taking Your Thoughts and Life Out of the Shadows

One of the largest challenges to finding a job, changing direction in our lives and becoming the people we are capable of becoming, is learning to see the world in different ways.  Several years ago I was on a jet with one of the wealthiest men in the country.  This guy had recently purchased a jet that I estimate was probably worth at least $25,000,000 at the time.  He used the jet to hop around the United States for leisure purposes.  He really did not do any business at that point anymore, and had been retired for a few years. I had been brought along as a passenger with him at the last minute because we were both traveling to a wedding together.  I want to be clear with you at the outset that this is not the sort of society I normally travel in.  However, on this day I had the opportunity to spend a few hours with one of the richest men in the United States, and someone who by the time he was in his mid-40s was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What I am about to tell you right now is not about how this guy got so rich.  What is most interesting about this particular guy is how he thought about the world and the opportunities in it.  I spoke with him during the flight that day and then I spoke with him for several hours once we arrived at the wedding.  This was some time ago and I was just starting out in some respects, and was very eager to learn the secrets of someone who was so successful.  In fact, I thought this person had a tremendous amount to teach and the more I spoke with him and asked him questions, the more I realized that he had a way of looking at the world that was much different from mine. A few weeks before traveling with this mogul, I had been to a party at one of his friend’s houses.  His friend was an electrician.  The two of them had gone to high school together and stayed best friends ever since then.  His friend was uneducated and had not gone to college, but was someone who worked very hard.  The house I visited for the party was the most unbelievable house I ever saw.  They guy had done so well as an electrician that he had actually had gold laid between the cracks in marble on his floor.  The home must have been at least 20,000 square feet. I had never seen anything like it.  On the airplane that day the guy started telling me about how his friend had gotten so rich. “When I made all this money I started getting disappointed that all my friends were uncomfortable around me. If I ordered a $300 bottle of wine at dinner, they would be worried they would have to contribute to the bill and then would not order entrees.  It was very uncomfortable.  People did not want to travel places with me because they were uncomfortable with me paying for their hotel rooms.  So at some point I decided that my best friends needed to be ridiculously well off as well, and I made sure they were.” “What did you do?” I asked him. I was expecting him to tell me that he gave them the money they needed.  Instead, he really opened my mind about how some of the wealthiest people out there think. He explained that his friend who was an electrician had spent 20 years with a little ad in the Yellow Pages driving around doing electrical work in the blue collar area of Los Angeles he worked in.  The guy had one helper and they worked Monday through Friday traveling around doing some work, giving estimates and so forth.  When the electrician’s friend got really rich he sat him down because he realized they could not be friends if they were not both obnoxiously wealthy. “How much do you make a day?” he asked him. He explained how he billed out at $65 an hour, his helper at $32.50 an hour, and how the two of them spent [Read more]

Your Perceptions Will Control Your Outcome and Life

When I was in middle school my girlfriend announced to me she was going to be trying out for the cheerleading squad. Our relationship consisted mainly of us riding our bikes to school together each day. Occasionally, I might call her after school. The cheerleading squad in our school cheered for the basketball team. I attended a public high school in middle school and the basketball team was the most important one in the school. The entire gym filled up with students, parents and teachers every Friday night. Everyone was very enthusiastic about it. [Read more]