Posted on 01 Apr, 2010 -
Success is what you’re doing RIGHT NOW
Some wise (and funny) words to make us all feel more positive about our finances and realise it’s not just us
How one reader turned her sewing skills into a lucrative stream of extra income
How to realise what skills you have and turn them into a small form of income you can get pleasure from too
Everybody seems to be worried about money these days.
People, of course, have always worried about money and probably always will. There did, however, seem to be a brief period during the 20th Century when for a couple of decades we were close (or at least closer) to feeling that we could all be comfortably off - and that as long as we worked until retirement age we’d be able to live free from financial worries for the rest of our sunny lives.
Well, whenever it was, we are back now to a permanent state of wondering whether we’re going to be able to sustain our current lifestyle… whether everything we’ve ever worked for could be whipped away from us… and how we can get hold or more - or keep hold of what we’ve got.
As Romain Rolland (French writer and good friend of Gandhi’s) once said:
“I know at last what distinguishes man from animals: financial worries.”
But then I can hardly imagine that the most pressing worry for your average prairie dog is whether they should downsize their car or whether their retirement fund is going to stretch to a fortnight in Venice…
A lively buffet of wise words for your worries about money
It makes sense that if we all feel so bad about money then we should take a few steps to try and help ourselves feel better. I was rather taken by the following quotes which compliment each other nicely by working in such different directions:
“You don’t seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.”
Jean Kerr, comic novelist
On losing his entire life-savings of $70,000 when the Alabama Bank crashed, George Washington Carver (1864-1943) said: “I guess somebody found a use for it, I was not using it myself.”
And, to give a more serious, positive and spiritual take on the problem of why we spend so much time worrying about and wrongly believing that more money would offer us more security, I offer you Eckhart Tolle’s opinion on the secret of happiness:
“How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else. Once you have made peace with the present moment, see what happens, what you can do or choose to do, or rather what what life does through you. There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realise that you don’t live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.”
From New Earth, Awakening to your life’s purpose
But is stopping all spending really the answer?
The problems in life, of course, cannot be entirely solved by changing our attitudes towards them. We sometimes also need to take some form of action.
While still an advocate of not spending more than you need to on things and a firm believer that lots of material goods cannot buy happiness… I also believe that simply stopping spending is not the answer. Why? Because:
1) Anyone who says that you don’t need money to be happy obviously hasn’t seen my council tax bill this year.
2) We all rely on other people spending money for our own source of income.
3) As Robert Lembke said, thrift is “a way to spend money without having the least little bit of pleasure from it.”
How one reader is making good money from her hobby
Another answer, of course, is to try and earn a little more. Which - yes I finally got round to it - is my major theme for this week thanks to an inspiring reader who sent me the following email about how she turned her hobby into lucrative employment:
“Your last ‘Bag of Revels’ letter struck a chord with me! I retired a couple of years ago, but then found that my pension wasn’t stretching as far as I’d expected/hoped. So after looking round for part time work for a while, I decided to utilise a long-term hobby of mine, and in May 2008 I started advertising as a dressmaker.
I appear to be the only one in my home town (population 90,000). I have had more than enough work, I very much enjoy the manual side of it, and there are also creative bits too, such as designing ‘special occasion’ wear and wedding dresses.
My point is that I am asked to do things like sewing on buttons (!!) as many people can’t even do this nowadays, and my most frequent job is simply taking up trousers.”
Makes you think a little doesn’t it? In fact, this is really worth thinking about.
Most of us won’t become millionaires by turning our hobbies into a business. But most of us could certainly generate some extra money simply by doing what we love. Even if it’s just enough to pay for the equipment we need for our hobby.
Tips for turning your hobby into a money-earner
A few more ideas and pointers to get you thinking:
Don’t underestimate your abilities. Like the reader above, you may be amazed to find that people will pay you good money for doing jobs for them that you consider really basic. Or there may be a market that will love to buy the things you make. A friend of mine recently told me, for example, that she loves buying knitted toys for her daugher from eBay. And I’m sure there would be a lot of busy people on my street who’d be happy to pay £30 at a time for somebody to come along and tidy up their garden.
Have a good hard think about your skills, about your hobbies and about the things you know about. Are you knowledgeable about cars or repairing bikes, for example? Good at decorating cakes or crochet? Could you write a small pamphlet about your field of interest and sell it on the internet? Make unique clothes for Barbie dolls? Or even ironing or babysitting?!
Think wild - think big! I have just been reading about a man who made a couple of thousand pounds a month selling stuffed animals on a roadside - and another who made a living making walking sticks out of trees that people wanted to get rid of in the local area.
Selling things locally. My grandfather, while working in the cavalry in London, accumulated enough money to buy a farm by working nights in a factory and running a tuck shop from his locker. He offered credit to all the men on what he sold and they paid him back on salary day.
Where to sell? Think craft fairs, perhaps, or a stall at a market. Or ask local shops if they’d like to stock your work. Ebay, of course, is the other obvious solution. It’s very easy to start selling on eBay but do make sure you research well first, checking out if there is a market for what you sell by looking for similar items already being sold or by doing a few test sells.
The most important thing is to advertise. As Loral Langemeier says in her book, The Millionaire Maker:
“Where I see most entrepreneurs fail is in marketing their business. They don’t know how to get the word out. Or if they do, they stop once they get some clients or customers and fail to fill the pipeline.”
Put adverts in local shops or newspapers or drop small flyers into homes. Give flyers or business cards to satisfied customers to give to their friends. Keep costs very small at first until you have proven that your methods of advertising work.
Be open to possibilities and change. Try imagining how this could turn out if it actually works and keep that idea in your mind. Avoid the temptation to crush any idea you have by bombarding it with problems or doubts or buts before it’s even had time to germinate.
How to really feel like you’ve achieved success
And finally, because I’ve got the book out and this is another great quote from Eckhart Tolle on what success should really mean:
“What the world doesn’t tell you - because it doesn’t know - is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action. Quality implies care and attention, which come with awareness. Quality requires your presence.”
