Today I want to share my opinion on the book I have read recently. Here is a short review of it. To find more reviews, essay examples or writing tips follow advanced-writer.com

           Chapter 1. Your Money Blueprint. This chapter introduces the inherent dualistic law of money circulation. It claims that as long as there are “outer laws” of wealth (investment strategies, banking structures, currency rates and stock institutions etc.), there also are so-called “inner laws”. The latter reflect the psychological attitude of a person towards wealth and money and explain how one should think in order to attract wealth to his/ her life. The chapter emphasizes on one of the wealth principles: “Your money can grow only to the extent that you do”. In other words, the ways you think and act, your whole worldview determine your success and its material equivalent. The author illustrates this with a saying: “It’s not enough to be in the right place in the right time. You have to be the right kind of person in that place and time”. Therefore, he claims, if a person wishes to be wealthy, he should analyze the way he thinks, i.e. what impulses he broadcasts into the environment, or his “money blueprint”. Essentially, the chapter brings forward the assumption that if a person wishes to increase his material standing and become wealthy, he should achieve balance between what he thinks (inner laws) and what actually is happening in his life (outer laws). This is the principle that many success coaches and inspirational writers call “think rich –get rich”.

           In this chapter, it is also underlined that large amounts of money come with certain responsibilities and require effort to be upheld and multiplied. This is not something most people think about when they express a desire to be wealthy. Unlike them, “naturally evolved” millionaires, or self-made men, as some call them, grasp the money flow and act in accordance with its law, which allows them to be flexible in any situations. That is why most people with a “millionaire mind” return their wealth quite quickly, should they lose it for some reason. Also, this part presents another principle that is repeated many times throughout the whole book: “If you want to change the fruits, you must first change the roots. If you want to change the visible, you must first change the invisible”. Then, a simple scheme is introduced to illustrate that a human being exists simultaneously in four planes – physical , emotional, mental and spiritual. The physical realm is merely a printout of what is happening on the level of the other three planes. This is reflected in a principle that everything we have and experience is a result of our previous thoughts (followed by actions, consequently). Also, a formula is given to illustrate the practical implementation of this principle: thoughts lead to feelings, which lead to actions, which, in its turn, leads to a certain result.

           Chapter 2. The Wealth Files. This chapter explores the practical ways of application of the aforementioned principles into real life. This part offers a list of “seventeen ways rich people think and act differently from poor and middle-class people”. In order to make the point more understandable to the reader, the author coins a parallel between the human mind and the file storage system of a computer. Both contain only those patterns and items that we have chosen to put there. Therefore, the way of thinking can be altered, and our thinking is a matter of free will. All of this is presented by the author “without degrading or disrespect to the poor people. The rich ones are not better, they’re just richer”. The list of the differences between rich and poor people can be presented in a form of the following table:

           The rest of the big second chapter is built in this way: providing a comparative characteristic for the difference between the two mind patterns. It is necessary to pay attention to the general rules that the author offers the reader: it is harmful to complain, blame others and justify one’s failures. Especially harmful is to blame, because by doing that, the person automatically refuses from his personal responsibility for his own life, and virtually asks somebody else to undertake the control. However, a dependable person loses free will and cannot develop a state of mind necessary to become rich.

           The book focuses on “bigger thinking” and urges the reader to think not only about his/ her personal well-being, but rather on contributing to the lives of others, being useful, helping others make their lives better. Many metaphors and parallels are used to illustrate the dynamical nature of money flows and wealth. In order to receive something, one first needs to give something, to broadcast into the universe the desire and readiness to receive and give success.

           The last thing that is necessary to say is that the book is very well structured, contains “a special wealth offer” generalizing the summary of the work, a draft of actions for people who would like to follow the advice of the author (entitled “what the heck do I do now?”), a vast list of recommended resources. In the end of the book there is an inspirational essay of the author.

Eker reminds the reader once more that in the first part of the book, he introduced the reader to the concept of the money blueprint, which is said “to determine the financial destiny” of the person. The author repeatedly said that the he had trained his awareness and his mind so much to notice the “rich speech” and the “poor speech” that it is essentially enough for him to spend five minutes talking to somebody in order to foresee the future of this person in terms of money. Of course, such forecast is not a judgment and not an inalterable verdict, but rather a really good spur and a stimulus to change your destiny if you do not like the course that it has taken. The author also reminds that he had presented seventeen specific ways that rich people think differently from poor and middle-class people. He refers to those as “wealth files” stored in a person’s mind and defining his or her behavior just as it is done with a computer: there are primary, the most important programs that are installed on virtually every computer in the world. The same goes on with the implications, beliefs and prejudices about money” - everybody has them, but not everybody acknowledges them and even less people take certain measures to control them. Moreover, the writer pays special attention to persuading the readers that “talk is cheap”; in other words, he warns them from having read the book and laid it aside. There is no use in knowing the rules and principles and the tricks if you do not apply them. In this case, they will lie there just like dead load and be absolutely useless. The laziness and lack of motivation will keep you in your comfort zone and generate excuses for not moving forward. This is also the reason for constant procrastination.

The author underlines the seriousness of procrastination problem. It is not what it seems to be at first. Procrastinators are not lazy people, and they do not spend their time doing nothing. In fact, they can be busy doing quite useful things, but not the top priority ones. This sounds strange, but it is really so. People procrastinate for various reasons – lack of ability to perform well under pressure, fear of failure, perfectionism and so on, but the result is always the same: the high priority tasks remain not done or done poorly, “at the last second”. This period of “beating around the bush” and not undertaking any active measures takes away a huge amount of energy and force from a person, and it is very hard to get away from this vicious circle, but it is possible to do so. For those who lack self-discipline, the author offers his know-how: The Millionaire Mind “action reminder”, The Millionaire Mind “net worth tracking sheet”, and a Printout of Your “Commitment to Wealth”.

The latter technique deserves a closer investigation. It is implied that in order to “burn the bridges” and ensure accurate obedience to all of the new rules “to become rich”, a person has to announce, declare his or her intention, preferably to somebody he knows well and somebody whom he will with high likelihood encounter very often. This trick essentially reloads part of the responsibility from the “prospective millionaire” to the person he has decided to open up to. This way, the trustee person will virtually act as a “guarantor”, similarly to the guarantor that is necessary for a client of a bank to get a loan disbursed. This is a sort of an insurance that secures the newly born initiative from withering or being forgotten. This trick plays on the basic need for respect from the others – the person will most likely want to show the trustee that he is able to achieve the goal he had set. Even if eventually he would not become a millionaire, it is almost certain that such person will improve his or her financial standing dramatically compared to the past.

Eker, consequently, puts emphasis on the necessity of social responsibility for the wealthy people: in his opinion, they should engage into philanthropy and make at least part of their fortunes profitable for the communities. The basis for this appeal is the statement that each man’s wealth is not only the result of his own merits and talents, but also a credit of the community the descended from. Therefore, it is a direct duty of a successful person to return some of the amenities for the benefit of the society, in order to ensure some justice of the wealth distribution process. The problem is that, according to the author, large fortunes and often squandered by the heirs thereof; considerable amounts of capital serve to nothing but excessive consumption and make no difference to the communities. Wealthy people, exercising their responsibility before the society, should carry out projects that would contribute to the development of education, science, health service and so on. Therefore, the main goal of philanthropy should be not to support the mere existence of poor people within the bounds of their conditions. The well-doers should concentrate on giving people an opportunity to change their own lives, on providing them with instruments for that. As a proverb says, “Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime”. Also, when wishing to make donations and giving money for charity, one should take control over what the way those sums are spent. If money ends up in the hands of unjust and mean people, it will do more harm than good to the society.