The Science of Getting Rich

If you have never read the book ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ by Wallace D. Wattles, I highly recommend that you check it out. One of the best tests of the true quality of the written word is whether or not what is said will still matter generations later, and that is certainly the case with ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ which was written almost 100 years ago in 1910.

Another great thing about the book is that even as powerful as it is, the entire read is only 77 pages, and even at my painfully slow reading speed, I read it in less than 3 hours. Lyman Reed over at Creating a Better Life has a page on his site with a ton of free eBooks, including several different ways to get your hands on ‘The Science of Getting Rich‘.

This post is actually not about that book, although a recent discussion of that title struck a chord with me that I wanted to share with you.

Someone that I know is reading ‘The Science of Getting Rich’, printed out the .pdf version that was downloaded from the ‘net, and had the book out in public one day where it was spotted by a “corporate citizen”.

Now, for the sake of this discussion, I will define “corporate citizen” as someone who believes that getting a good job and being an employee in order to help someone else get rich is the only true path to success. This particular individual works for an American company, although I imagine a similar concept runs rampant through pretty much any industrialized country.

This corporate citizen saw the title of the book and said, “There is no science to getting rich”. Upon hearing this story, I was immediately reminded of why I disagree with corporate life so much.

The average corporate citizen may be a truly talented individual with the potential to accomplish huge things in the world, but they have been brainwashed by this total B.S. belief that working for someone else is the only way to truly create a future for yourself.

Any of you who have spent any time learning about self improvement or self development will recognize that type of attitude as what we call a “limiting belief”. Limiting beliefs are things that we believe to be true simply because “everyone else is doing it”, or because we were raised to believe in that concept, so we don’t know any better.

I’m not sure why, but the term “the blind leading the blind” comes to mind…

Once again referring only to the American economy, but recognizing that similar situations exist elsewhere, here is why this whole thing rubs me the wrong way:

In the United States, most children are brought up to believe that they have to do really well in school, go to a great college, and then get a job with a company that has a bright future.

Now, although that sounds good in theory, there are many reasons why that potential path might or might not work. The truly scary part, however, is that the largest part of that equation – getting that awesome job – is almost a crap shoot in today’s society.

There are people with college degrees working at fast food restaurants. I’ve seen ads in the employment classifieds that require a 4-year college degree, yet only pay $35,000 per year. You can barely even LIVE off of $35,000 per year in America, and we’re being taught to spend 4 years in college in order to get a job that only pays us enough to barely even survive???

I worked for a company once where I started out answering phones as a customer service rep (with NO college education), and I got promoted up through project management and eventually took over the company’s corporate intranet. Salary: $42,000 per year plus stock options

As a self-employed personal trainer, I worked part-time and made over $50,000 a year, and I could have made over $100,000 a year if I had wanted to apply myself more. My personal training certification cost me $595.

The point to all of this rambling?

There really IS a Science to Getting Rich, and it is available to each and every person no matter who they are, what their background is, or what “opportunities” are put before them – or NOT put before them.

However, in today’s society, we are surrounded by these loyal corporate citizens who have probably never even heard of Wallace D. Wattles, and they certainly haven’t read his life-changing book, yet they can say things like “there is no science to getting rich” and they can believe it with every fiber of their being.

Taking a quick look at the retirement options of the average American (college educated or not) will reveal that most retirees will end up giving you a shopping cart at the door of a certain large retail establishment that starts with “W” and ends in “mart”, and others will be sure – on every single visit – to ask you the very important question: Do you want fries with that?

So, at the end of my rant on this subject, I will throw one more question out there for you to chew on.

If our entire society is taught to do well in school, get a college education, and then work for some high-profile company for several years before being shafted out of their retirement options due to corporate down-sizing or blatant back-stabbing, the question that comes to mind is this:

Why the hell are we listening to people who advise us to do that???

p.s. – Since this Blog is mostly about self improvement and personal development, I feel obligated at this point to tell you that you HAVE the choice to not be one of the people that I just described, and in order to do so, all you have to do is reach out your hand and take hold of your life.

Because, after all, there IS a Science of Getting Rich!