Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
My Rich Uncle — FOREWORD
Foreword
Whenever I was young and needed money, I called my rich uncle.
At least, that’s what I thought I needed.
Sometimes it was twenty dollars. Sometimes it was two hundred. Once it was a few thousand. There was always some emergency. My car was broken. My rent was due. I had a business idea. I needed a loan. I needed a shortcut. I needed someone to rescue me from the consequences of my own decisions.
My uncle would listen patiently.
Then he would do something that drove me absolutely crazy.
Instead of giving me money, he would ask me questions.
Questions I didn’t want to answer.
Questions like:
“How did you get into this situation?”
“What could you have done differently?”
“What skill are you missing?”
“What lesson are you trying not to learn?”
I hated those questions.
I wanted cash.
I wanted solutions.
I wanted him to reach into his wallet, write a check, and make my problems disappear.
Instead, he would tell me stories.
Stories about people he had known. Stories about businesses that failed. Stories about investments that succeeded. Stories about mistakes, bad decisions, lucky breaks, and hard lessons. Sometimes the stories were funny. Sometimes they were painful. Sometimes they made no sense until years later.
What frustrated me most was that he almost never directly answered the question I asked.
If I asked about money, he talked about habits.
If I asked about business, he talked about people.
If I asked about success, he talked about failure.
If I asked about getting rich, he talked about responsibility.
At the time, I thought he was avoiding the question.
Now I realize he was answering a bigger one.
You see, my uncle wasn’t rich because he had money.
He had money because he understood things most people never learn.
He understood that problems are rarely about the problem itself.
A broken car is usually a budgeting problem.
A budgeting problem is often a discipline problem.
A discipline problem is frequently a thinking problem.
And thinking problems have a way of showing up everywhere—in business, relationships, health, politics, and life.
Over the years, I began to notice something.
The people who constantly needed rescuing usually kept having the same problems.
The people who learned the lessons eventually stopped needing rescue.
My uncle knew this.
That is why he was often reluctant to give me money.
Money fixes today’s problem.
Wisdom fixes tomorrow’s.
Looking back, I realize my uncle gave me something far more valuable than cash.
He taught me how to think.
He taught me how to look at the world.
He taught me that almost every problem contains a lesson, and almost every lesson has a price.
The lucky people learn from the lesson.
The unlucky people keep paying the price.
The conversations in this book are based on years of talks, arguments, debates, questions, observations, and stories. Some are exactly as they happened. Some have been simplified. Some combine lessons from many different conversations into one. The wisdom belongs to my uncle. The mistakes belong mostly to me.
If you are looking for a book full of quick fixes, easy answers, and magic formulas, you may be disappointed.
My uncle never believed in those things.
If, however, you are looking for the kind of advice that grows more valuable with age, then pull up a chair.
