Finding Your Way to Sustained Abundance
If you don't know where you are going, any path you take will get you there...
Abundance means different things to different people. If you are starving, abundance simply means having enough to eat. As your awareness of abundance increases your life may expand in a material sense or you may choose to focus on more spiritual things. Two different people, with very substantial differences in material posessions can feel that they are surrounded by total abundance. Some people can never feel abundance, even when surrounded by material things and especially when they have no awareness of a spiritual life.
My goal in creating "Sustained Abundance" is to help people find their own best path to a level of Abundance that is sustainable for their life and transferable to future generations.
Why do we confuse having material things with having abundance?
After the turn of the century in our country (and many others), the focus in most peoples lives became the accumulation of visible material goods and far less attention has been paid to the invisible (spiritual growth and saving or investing for the future).
Every decision or non-decision comes at a price. If you choose to do something, there is a material, spiritual or temporal (time) cost to each decision. If you choose not to do something, the same costs apply
My Vision
My vision now is to use the incredible power of the Internet to disseminate the tenets of an American life-style that creates "Sustained Abundance" for anyone willing to reconsider their foundations and make the changes that will be necessary to create that life. Ask any immigrant who has built a life here and they will still tell you that there is more opportunity to succeed here than anywhere else in the world, despite the quirks of our political and economic system. Why do so many native born Americans have fears and doubts about the future of America?
My emphasis will be on what are rational and truly sustainable approaches to building a life in our "Post-Industrial", now "Financialized" economy.
If you are the only living relative of a wealthy person and know you are the sole beneficiary of the estate, you need not read on. If you consistently pick winning lottery tickets, go to the liquor store and buy more. If you are fortunate enough to earn far more than you can spend and have wisely invested the difference in the right real estate, stocks or hedge funds, you may not be interested in what I have to say.
If you have children growing up now or young adults in college now and you are struggling to make ends meet and still hope for a future with financial dignity, read on.
If you are making ends meet or have a surplus to your needs and want to build on your current abundance for a better future, read on.
An Old Dog Learns New Tricks
I recently learned how to create an online Weblog or Blog as they are called and it was really very easy to do.
My hope is that this "Blog" forum will lead a full Website and to Webinars and Seminars on the topics that are pressing on "Middle Class" Americans today, namely:
1. How to survive the coming changes in an economy that has been based on unsustainable consumption rather than production.
- Recognize your true financial situtation and make a plan to improve it
- Understand what you need to retire with dignity and plan to achieve it
- Living more Simply and feeling good about it
- Attracting more abundance through a positive outlook
2. A mass mindset that has moved my generation completely away from the values that made our grandparents self sufficient and kept them solvent.
3. Americans, enabled by a financial system dominated by "Irrational Exuberance*", spent themselves into a financial coma, from which many will never recover. (Irrational Exuberance is a book by Robert J. Shiller*). For all generations, it is time to re-evaluate how we are living and to consider what actions will be necessary to create Sustained Abundance.
4. Exporting many of the worst mass market products of our culture to "emerging" economies around the world with the result author George Ritzer calls "The Globalization of Nothing" in his book by that name. We have done this to their overall detriment and ours as well, without a second thought. The tradeoff is and has been maximizing near term profits at the expense of a sustainable future while importing cheaply mass produced products for unsustainable mass consumption in America.
5. A Real Estate Bubble enabled by "Securitized" lending that has critically wounded the residential market on a scale unprecedented since 1929, with "Median Home values down in every part of the country" (ABC Evening News, 2-14-08, Charles Gibson) For an overview on the progression of the credit and lending crisis and the recent socialization of Home Loan lending, read my blog at http://unsustainabubble.com/ .
6. The systemic failure of our Petroleum based economy to fund and promote technologies that could and should supplement Oil as much as possible in the future to create sustainable life-styles for our children.
7. Politicians who seem to have never read a history book, consistently repeating the mistakes that destroyed the previous great empires of history.
8. The positive and negative effects of "Consumerism" on all generations of Americans.
Moving Forward toward Sustained AbundanceI have now created a forum on social, economic and moral issues affecting different generations of Americans I describe as "Boomers on the Bubble" (Baby Boomers) and "Echo Boomers on the Edge" (Echo Boomers) and the "GenX Legacy" (Generation X). I am concerned about rapid and (potentially catastrophic) changes in the American economy and society in general and how the most likely changes (Economic and Political) will affect each generation in turn.
For now, I want the emphasis to be on topics that support the awareness and development of financial "Survival Strategies", "Self Reliance" and "Self Sufficiency", "Sustained Abundance", "Surplus and the search for sources of Sanity and ultimately, sources for Serenity in America, including Simpler Living.
I look forward to lively discussions and feedback from the growing group of friends I am meeting at my "Best of the Best" Seminars and through my work in the area of Self Directed Retirement Plans (Blog at http://selfdirectioncentral.com/). The new website for sustained abundance should be fully tested and operational by mid-September, 2008.
Categories: Sustainable Living, Abundance, Opinion, Retirement planning, Personal Finances
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