CHAPTER 9
I’m Going Through a Phase

We are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind or whether to act, and in acting, to live.

—General Omar Bradley

For the first 10 years of his career, Michael Stern essentially followed in his father’s footsteps. “My dad didn’t like his job. His work was only a means to make a living and to provide for us. So it was not through my family that I learned about creating a rewarding life,” Michael told me. Although he had a job that might be the envy of many, and a salary to match, Michael began to realize that he wanted something more from his work and his life. He explained it this way: “Figuring out what I really wanted to do took me several years of doing something I didn’t enjoy. I was a computer and systems analyst on Wall Street. I was in my mid-thirties, and I knew I wanted to be a chiropractor.

“I decided to quit my job,” he said. “It was a huge gamble at the time. After years of living a comfortable lifestyle, I became a student again. I had to take out loans in order to move and pay for school. I was scared. That was more than 20 years ago, and I haven’t looked back.” Since then, not only has Michael been a practicing chiropractor, but he has helped to pioneer cutting-edge techniques in the field. He says that reinventing himself in such a dramatic way was “the biggest, riskiest decision of my life, but I’m grateful that I dared to do it.”

Dr. Michael Stern¹ was practicing in Minnesota when he heard about Mary. Her story illustrates what the world would have lost if Michael had not decided to reinvent his life. Because of a serious brain concussion, Mary had lost her ability to walk, talk, and function normally. She had been a writer, producer, and speaker when she was injured. While she was dining out with her family, a heavy lamp had hit her head. At first, the results were simply a large lump and a headache. But the next morning she woke up in terrible pain and with a level of dysfunction that was to keep her in bed for the next year, mostly sleeping or crying in pain. Her husband took her to neurologists; when they could not help, he started taking her to a variety of other practitioners. The appointments were too numerous to count, and only some of them were covered by insurance. After many months, Mary still could not walk unaided, and when she spoke, she made little or no sense. One year after the accident, the doctors told her husband that the brain damage was permanent.

Terribly concerned, a friend told Michael about Mary’s condition. Michael volunteered to come to her home and examine her. With gentle techniques he had perfected and made his own, he worked with Mary. Each time he left, she was a little better. Within a few weeks, she was fully functional—in fact, she was even better than she had been before her accident. Michael’s techniques seemed to have helped her brain to function even better than before. Math, which had once been her bane, was her new passion. Now fully recovered, she was participating with her family and in her community and went back to work.

Dr. Michael Stern is now a highly respected physician who has worked with thousands of grateful patients, including well-known athletes and celebrities. He is written about and sought after, and his unique techniques are taught at chiropractic colleges. The world is a better place for Michael’s bet on himself.

Making Time

Time is a precious commodity these days. We never seem to have enough of it. One result is that it can be easy to get so caught up in life’s daily demands that we don’t take the time to orchestrate a life plan for ourselves—or even to plan from year to year. Often, we don’t follow our dreams simply because we haven’t thought about them. We don’t take the time to build or create the life we want, let alone the time to appreciate the gifts we have.

If our attention is somewhere else, we miss the gift of our present experience. I recall that when I was a child, the days seemed long, and a year was like an endless stretch of road leading into the unknown. I realize today that this feeling of near-infinite time was the result of being fully present in the moment. We can experience the same sensation when we are fully engaged in doing something we love. Today, multitasking is the norm. Though electronic devices have their virtues, with all the gadgets we have available on which we can talk, text, browse, and play, the quiet moments to reflect seem ever more elusive. As a consequence, we are chronically distracted and inattentive. As time races ahead, life seems to pass us by.

Whatever we place our attention on will naturally grow. If we want to create prosperity, we must give it some conscious attention. The starting point is to take a serious look at the whole of our lives. This can help us understand not only where we are now, but what we have accomplished and where we want to go.

People typically look at their lives in terms of the chronological stages of physical life: birth, childhood, growing up, and aging. Of course, these general stages don’t capture the infinite variety of human experience that each stage may include; each person’s life is complex and unique. Yet each of us encounters certain cycles of experience that are universal. These cycles include financial ones—also known as “ups and downs”—during which our relationship with money can grow and evolve.

The Four Phases of Life

I characterize the four phases of life as Learning, Creating, Perfecting, and Freedom. These cycles aren’t necessarily tied to a particular stage of life, such as growing up or growing old. They may march in sequence with our age, or they may be repeated many times in a single lifetime. They may even overlap. They reflect the fluidity of life and the ways in which we can—and sometimes must—start over, reinvent ourselves and our financial lives, and remain open to opportunities and challenges.

Learning

The Learning phase is the period in our lives when we are beginning something entirely new and have the innocence of the beginner. Like a young child, we are open and taking in everything. We are like sponges, absorbing new information that will prepare us for what comes next. In chronological terms, our first experience with this phase includes the years from birth to around age eight, when we are taking in information about the world at a rapid rate but are not yet exercising discrimination about what we’re learning. We are still dependent on others and are not yet ready to make major decisions for ourselves. From age eight to eighteen, we continue to learn and absorb rapidly, but our powers of discrimination and decision making grow as we prepare for the next phase of life. When seen through a financial lens, the Learning phase can happen several, or even many, times in life—such as when we are starting a new job, career, or business, or when we are taking on a new responsibility that requires preparation, like the birth of a child.

Creating

The Creating phase is marked by moving into the world and taking on new responsibilities. We are starting to build a life in which we can stand on our own. In this phase, we may lack the resources to make it entirely under our own steam. To prepare us for independence, we might need to receive some support from parents or to borrow money to get a leg up. Unless we have inherited funds, in this phase we work to earn money, establish ourselves, and start saving.

During this phase, consciously obtained debt allows us to do and acquire things that we need in order to move ahead, such as buying a car. We invest in ourselves and in our future. In chronological terms, this phase follows schooling; we start to achieve some real independence, such as moving out of our parents’ home for the first time. Chronologically, this phase may last well into our thirties—or, just as with the Learning phase, it may be experienced later in life when we are starting a new career.

Perfecting

The Perfecting phase is the period when we are established in a path and are standing on our own. It is the prime period of the cycle of life, when we have mastered our work and we are producing and earning at our full potential. With the demands of the Creating phase behind us, we are expanding our prosperity by saving or investing for retirement or the next stage of life. Although we are still producing, we are enjoying the fruits of what we have accomplished so far. We are independent, and we are entirely responsible for our own financial well-being. In this phase, we are the ones who can help others, such as our children, by giving them a hand up in life. Chronologically, this phase encompasses one’s forties and fifties, and possibly beyond.

Freedom

The Freedom phase represents liberation from the need to work full time. With this phase comes the freedom to choose what’s next. This may mean time to garden and travel, devote ourselves to an important cause, or explore a new vocation or career. It may also mean simply being able to structure our days exactly as we wish. We reflect on what we have accomplished, and yet we may wish to try something new. This is the phase in which we might decide to volunteer at a local children’s center or bring our life and career skills to an area in need or to devote more time to our family. The essence of this period is having greater freedom to make choices. Whether our means are modest or extraordinary, we make our way as we wish.

We can experience any of these phases at any time in our lives. For example, at any age, we may want or need to start a new career or a new adventure. It is no longer uncommon for people to begin a new job or career in any decade of life, including our sixties or older. When this happens, the entire cycle begins again. We once again experience the Learning phase and, if all goes well, move to the phase of Creating a new way of life, then on to Perfecting, where we become established in our new career. With each repetition of the cycle, we bring more experience, discipline, and focus to it than we did before. As we move into each new cycle, nothing in our experience is lost.

Today’s world is an extremely fluid and dynamic place. “Highspeed connection” not only captures the way in which many of us access the Internet, but also describes what is required if we are to keep pace with our own needs and the demands of a changing economy and culture. This high-speed connection is also an internal requirement. Staying true to what we want and need in the midst of rapid changes keeps us on the path to our personal goals of prosperity.

Understanding these phases allows us to use them to our advantage and to appreciate that our personal evolution never ends. Starting over is an opportunity to learn things about ourselves that, as Thomas Edison said, will astound us. If for no other reason, the occasional need to reinvent and reimagine ourselves—to stretch and find new pathways to a prosperous life—is something to embrace.

Genius in Boldness

I attended a speaking engagement at which a man told his story of self-reinvention and resourcefulness. The man and his wife, both in their fifties, were speaking to thousands of people about the loss of his longtime job in the recession that began in 2008. Because of his previous success and experience, he was confident that he would find a new position quickly. But two years went by in which he had no meaningful employment. Prospective employers told him that he was too old or that he was overqualified. In order to survive, he and his wife had exhausted their savings and depleted their credit. They had reached a stage where they were concerned about paying for food. All they had left was their house, and the proverbial wolves were at the door. Then the man heard about a sales opportunity that produced income strictly on commission. He was intrigued. The position required a relatively small investment of $500 for training. It would be his own business, and he liked that idea, too. He talked to his wife, but she was cautious.

At this point in his story, the man’s wife shook her head and looked at him. She explained, “I saw absolutely no way he could start a new business, no matter how small the investment.” She just wanted him to take any job with anyone who would have him. The day after her husband described the opportunity to her, she arrived home from work, weary from the day and the near-constant worry. She asked him why it was so cold in the house. “I sold the furnace,” he said. “I got $500 for it.”

At this, the audience erupted in laughter and simultaneously groaned. How could he have done that? What was he thinking? Then he told us, “I knew this was my chance. I had to act. We would be a little cold that winter, but I knew how to work hard and to sell, and the opportunity looked great.” He apologized to all the wives in the audience, but he explained that his wife had since forgiven him many times over.

On stage that day, she was beautifully dressed and held a dozen red roses. His kids were there, too. He was now making more money than he had made in the original job that he had lost, and it had been less than a year since he had started. He had reached a level in sales that qualified him for this moment of acknowledgment. Something tells me that the first thing he did when the money started coming in was to buy his wife a nice new furnace.

What is extraordinary about this story is the man’s audacity and courage—and his outrageous creativity and commitment. Although he wasn’t chronologically young, he was thoroughly willing to start over and try again—and to take a certain amount of risk in doing so. He recognized his opportunity, and he took it. He didn’t accept that he was too old to create something new. His relationship with money was obviously on a solid footing, and his self-respect was high. He spoke for only six minutes, but he received a standing ovation.

A Tale of Debt and Failure

When he was 22 years old, a young man lost his job—it seems that his boss was a lousy businessman. The young man had transported goods from his boss’s store in Illinois to New Orleans, with the promise of running the business upon his return. His boss fulfilled the promise, and for the few months that he ran the business, the young man did a fine job. But the owner’s financial troubles eventually caused the store to shut down. Our young fellow was out of a job. The following year, his friends encouraged him to run for a seat in the state legislature. He lost miserably, finishing eighth in a field of thirteen. He and a friend opened another store, but competition was too stiff, and this store also failed.

With no way to pay off his debts, our young man was in dire straits. The sheriff seized his possessions, and when his business partner died shortly thereafter, he decided to assume his partner’s share of their debt as well. In debt and struggling, the young man worked diligently and succeeded in paying off everything that he owed. He attained a new position as local postmaster. But his real love was for the law. Throughout his travails, he had been studying for and ultimately passed the bar exam.

With his confidence renewed, he again ran for the legislature, and this time he won. A series of successes and failures came and went—including losing bids for the U.S. Congress and Senate—even as the man rose in his state’s political hierarchy. In 1860, he was nominated and elected president of the United States. Such was the life of Abraham Lincoln. It was not a straight line through the phases of life, certainly, but it led to a career as one of the most revered presidents in America’s history.

---

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.

—Abraham Lincoln

---

Reinventing Your Life

It makes me smile just to think about Denise Fast. Denise is a poet. She has written 16 books of poetry, and she weaves her poems into talks at the many events at which she is invited to speak. Her poetry tells the story of her life and, in so doing, hints at the depths and heights that we all experience. She is also a top broker in West Los Angeles and a go-to person for all matters regarding real estate. In fact, she is a go-to person for just about everything. Her phone rings constantly, and I’m sure to hear a celebrity’s name if I sit in her office even for a little while. In a real estate downturn, she is still busy and successful. She has received sales awards for extraordinary achievement annually and has placed in the top 100 real estate agents internationally four times. Denise is also a generous person who finds many ways to assist others who are less fortunate than she. She understands their plight, because she’s been there.

We all have a gift to give to the world—and a place where we can do our best work. Sometimes it takes patience and persistence to find that place. Fortunately, through the twists, turns, and phases of her life, Denise took the time to find her true place. Seeing her today, however, supporting and empowering so many others through her business, it’s hard to imagine her in any other role.

“I was a single mom, struggling and waiting tables. In order to better support my daughter, I decided to make a shift from waitressing to getting a manicurist’s license. This would allow me to work days instead of nights. The only way I could make it work was to go on welfare for a short period. The state paid for my schooling. Once I graduated, I got a terrific job and started to do well.” Denise was grateful for the help. She went on to develop a large and loyal clientele and managed to put her daughter through private school on a manicurist’s salary. She became entirely self-sufficient, and she remains thankful for the support she received along the way.

Today, Denise could still be one of the many single mothers who are waiting tables or doing nails and surviving from paycheck to paycheck. She didn’t have a college education; in fact, she had barely finished high school. But she took the time to reflect and consider her dream. “I was at work as a manicurist in Santa Monica, when one day my new husband commented that I was really smart. He asked me, ‘Why don’t you do something that allows you to use your brain?’” Denise thought about it and recognized that she had always been very resourceful. She thought that perhaps she could help people find houses and even own one herself someday. With that realization, an exceptional real estate agent was born.

“Growing up, I watched my self-supporting mother lose a home to foreclosure. This was very painful, in part because I knew how important homeownership was to her.” Denise continued tearfully, “When I was older, I wrote my mother a letter promising her that someday I would be successful and restore her to the lifestyle that she deserved. I folded the letter and placed it into the pages of a poetry book I had written. Then I mailed it to her as a gift.”

Several years ago, Denise was helping to pack her mother’s belongings to move her mom to the new home that Denise had just bought for her. The poetry book that Denise had sent years earlier fell out of her mother’s things, along with the letter. Perfect timing. With gratitude, Denise recognized that she had made not one, but two dreams come true—her own and her mom’s.

Even knowing that purchasing and selling real estate could change her life for the better, Denise cried at the thought of leaving her clientele as a manicurist—the 40 loyal customers that she had befriended over the previous eight years. But she found the courage to push beyond her cozy world, go back to the beginning, and learn something entirely new. She and her husband, a general contractor, have now purchased and sold more than a dozen homes of their own. With all her success, Denise feels that her business is merely a platform to bring value to the lives of the people she serves—an expression of a true psychology of wealth.

Our Cousins, the Amoebas

What keeps us from realizing our personal dreams of fulfillment and success? From my observation, it’s primarily fear and inertia. Fear of failure and of the unknown is human and universal. What we do in the face of that fear either keeps us locked in one life phase or propels us to a more fulfilling life.

Inertia can result from an overattachment to our comfort zone. Many of us won’t stray far beyond that zone unless we are forced to, either by events or by some threat to our well-being. The avoidance of pain or discomfort will often push us forward, but as life strategies go, pain avoidance is less than ideal.

---

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.

—Anaïs Nin

---

During an undergraduate biology class, I had the opportunity to observe amoebas under a microscope. The behavior of these tiny single-celled organisms was fascinating. They seemed to be entirely governed by their responses to external stimuli. Without fail, they moved away from any unfavorable stimulus and toward any desirable one. As B. F. Skinner would say, this was “operant conditioning” at its finest—a primitive but effective survival mechanism that is purely instinctual. I wondered: as human beings, how different are we from the amoebas?

One of our unique abilities is the power to override such instincts, either to our benefit or to our detriment. In my private practice as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen this at work many times. When people are stuck in dysfunctional reactive patterns or relationships, they often remain in an undesirable situation rather than doing something that might bring them relief and comfort, or even pleasure. Since we can override our natural survival instincts to avoid pain and discomfort, our inertia suggests that we are sometimes even less adaptive than the lowly amoeba.

Some people are highly motivated to do more, be more, and stretch beyond the point of comfort. Bravo! However, for a person in whom that high level of motivation is not inherent, new learning and behavior may come only when the discomfort of remaining stuck is greater than that of learning something new. Somewhere along the way, such a person has lost, or hasn’t yet found, the impulse inherent in all life to discover new things and even to face new challenges.

People who have a psychology of wealth challenge themselves to move beyond their comfort zone to pursue a goal or a dream. They write down goals. They plan. They visualize. Like brave children intent on conquering the world, they move beyond mere reactions and old patterns to face challenges and the unknown. Even if some people seem to have lost this spirit of openness—and, well, fun—they need not be completely adrift. The childlike part of adults that loves to learn is still inside each of us, and the successful people are the ones who harness it. We can go beyond the amoebic approach to life. We can recapture our enthusiasm for moving toward what we desire, as opposed to merely avoiding what we don’t want.

Even as you read these pages, you’ve probably thought of certain things that you could do—of dreams, goals, or opportunities that you’ve wanted to realize. When are you going to start? When will you begin to manifest your dreams? Why not today? Why not this very moment? Even a small step is a start. In fact, a series of small steps may get you where you are going more quickly than a giant leap, and sometimes with fewer bruises. The first step may not be easy, but it’s important to take it. As Tony Cupisz says, “To find success, you have to do something every day. Just do something!”

Whose Job Is This, Anyway?

Most of us have gone through periods of financial challenge and struggle—times when we have no idea how we will get from point A to point B. Things usually seem to work out in the end, but when we are in the thick of the difficulty, we often imagine the worst. I’ve observed that life never presents us with an unsolvable problem. The solution may humble us or require us to do things that we’ve never done before, but there is always a solution.

---

A series of small steps may get you where you are going more quickly than a giant leap, and sometimes with fewer bruises.

---

During graduate school, I worked at a psychiatric hospital for three years. The rate of patient recidivism made it feel as if the hospital had a giant revolving door. Mental health patients would be treated and discharged, only to return weeks later. During my last year there, I began to feel that my efforts at the hospital had no real value or significance. I wanted out, but where was I to go? Since I needed to make a living, I wondered what other employment I could find that might be relevant to my training. As I contemplated this puzzle, I realized that it might take a while before I could change my job, and I might as well make the best of what I had in the meantime. I decided to notice the aspects of the job and my patients that I genuinely appreciated. My idea was to bring more meaning to my work.

The moment I began to practice appreciation, things started to change. Not only did my attitude improve, but a short time later I was offered a paid counseling internship at a new clinic near campus. Had my change of attitude profoundly changed my world? Perhaps. I was certainly grateful for the opportunity that the new position afforded me. It was an ideal next step for me, and it prepared me for the private practice that I opened after I received my doctorate.

Ideally, our work is both lucrative and a way to express meaning in our lives. Yet if it isn’t, we can still learn and grow wherever we are. By applying the principles of the Learning phase—being open to new ideas and ways of seeing our world—we can begin anew even in our current situation. We can also reexamine our values and interests and look for opportunities to follow our nose and our dreams. This is what Michael Stern and Denise Fast finally did. And this is what Jane Pulkys did too.

Rewriting Your Life

My friend Jane is a petite blonde with a big personality. She was 39 years old when her husband’s company had a massive layoff, and overnight her family went from a six-figure income to having nothing whatsoever. “It was several long years before our family of five would see a paycheck again,” Jane told me. “We sold the ‘big’ house and used our savings to pay bills. We scaled back. We got by.”

Jane had been a stay-at-home mom with three boys, but now it was time for her to dust off the enterprising person she had been as a young girl. Growing up in Ontario in a family of nine, Jane had started working when she was quite young. “I always understood that there really wasn’t extra money in the household. I took it upon myself to get my first job when I was 11. I was responsible for my own money, and I also had to give some of it to my mother to help support the family.”

In college, Jane earned a degree in nutrition, but after graduation, she decided to dedicate herself fully to starting and raising a family. When her husband lost his job, she had to look at different possibilities for work. “One day I took my friend to visit a clinic that offered specialized nutrition counseling. By the time we left, I just knew this was what I needed to do.”

Jane continued, “There was so much to do. I had to really stretch, but I am so glad I did. I scheduled a trip to take a course from the top practitioner in the field, and I also had to buy some rather expensive equipment. The following year I opened my own practice. Because I still wanted and needed additional training and education, I went back to school at night for two years and worked during the day. Once I’d received my degree as a holistic nutritionist, I pushed myself to contact television stations about the innovative work I was doing, and I was invited to appear on a morning TV show. The day I did, the floodgates opened. I had no idea I would have so many people wanting appointments. Since then, I’ve appeared on television and been interviewed on radio many times, and my practice continues to thrive.”

---

True wealth is having a job that you love so much, you don’t realize you are actually working.

—Jane Pulkys

---

In short, out of necessity and desire, Jane rewrote her life and far surpassed her own expectations. “The changes I made have allowed me to teach wellness seminars at Fortune 500 companies and to develop a holistic psychology of disease course. Recently I was invited to teach my course in Thailand. I‘m helping others, and I love that.” In the process, Jane’s idea of wealth has also been rewritten. “True wealth is having the love and support of my family and friends, certainly. But I’ve learned something else, too. True wealth is having a job that you love so much, you don’t realize you are actually working. I go to bed every night thinking, ‘I have made a difference in someone’s life today.’ The bonus is that I get paid for it.”

---

A WORD FROM THE WISE

In It Is What It Is: The Personal Discourses of Rumi, author and speaker Doug Marman retells a Rumi tale about our individual purpose in the world: “There is one thing in this world that must never be forgotten. If you were to forget all else, but did not forget that, then you would have no reason to worry. But if you performed and remembered everything else, yet forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever.

“It is just as if a king sent you to the country to carry out a specific task. If you go and accomplish a hundred other tasks, but do not perform that one task, then it is as though you performed nothing at all. So, everyone comes into this world for a particular task, and that is their purpose. If they do not perform it, then they will have done nothing.”³

---

Time to Smell the Roses

The Freedom phase of financial life, in which a job or a career is no longer required to support our prosperity, is a golden goal for most of us. Having the freedom to apply our attention, energy, and love to an endeavor of our choosing is a gift that we will have earned well when it arrives. For many people, this idea may seem like an impossibility. And, indeed, especially during tough economic times, achieving it may be more of a challenge than ever. But that doesn’t mean that we have to put off many aspects of this prosperous state until our later years. We can appreciate what we have and feel a sense of satisfaction in what we have achieved right here and now by consciously living in the moment and accepting each day as priceless. Far from being old-fashioned, the needlepoint advice to stop and smell the roses is timeless. Ah, sweet, sweet rose—perhaps it’s time for us to take a break and appreciate you.

More and more people are finding themselves in the position of needing—or wanting—to begin anew and reinvent a life that they had thought was settled and satisfactory. If the need comes unexpectedly and even with some distress, it can still be a great opportunity to ride an upward spiral to an even more prosperous life.

Our economy and the dynamic nature of our society today require flexibility and fluidity and recognition that life can be rejuvenated again and again. We can use this fluidity to our great advantage. Even when opportunities may seem limited, we have wells of invention and creativity within us. With openness, consciousness, and a willingness to work and focus on our goals, we can achieve prosperity.

After all, it’s not the pursuit of wealth that brings value and meaning to life; it’s the pursuit of meaning and value that brings wealth. This wealth is greater than a full bank account. It’s the wealth that is experienced by living a life of quality, joy, service, and fulfillment. This is the true wealth that we all ultimately seek to achieve. Anything less leaves us hungry for more.