We all start out as Innocents, believing that everyone we meet have our best interests at heart. Before we even reach our teens, most of us have been disappointed way too often to remain that naïve. Not the die-hard Innocents, though.

Some adult Innocents may have lived very sheltered lives, delaying their disillusionment. But the majority prefer to maintain the illusion of a protected world, in which they don’t have to make an effort to financially educate themselves and where they simply outsource most financial decisions to either a spouse or a team of professionals.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of the large sums of money channelled towards it, the financial industry attracts more than its fair share of charlatans. Becoming one of the victims of yet another swindler, buying a product with more insurance or a longer investment term than you need, or paying too much commission are only a few examples of the high cost of remaining financially naïve.

On the other hand, the trust that Innocents place in people could also be a virtue. When they choose the people who work for them carefully, this trust will bring out the best in their counsellors and employees. Unfortunately, the unscrupulous can often only be kept in check by Warrior personalities. Innocents will therefore naturally be drawn to partnerships with Warriors, but it is only when they have developed the complementary Warrior-side of themselves, in conjunction with educating themselves financially, that they sport sufficient armour to face most financial battles.

PS: Innocents often also believe that the world is a meritocracy. In other words, as long as they work hard and produce good work, they will be rewarded. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always ring true. In a salaried environment, their relationships with their immediate managers, how well they fit into the company culture, whether the company rewards shareholders rather than workers and their negotiation skills all determine whether they are sufficiently rewarded for their efforts.

Always on the fringes, operating outside the ruling capitalist system, stands the Outsider. The Outsider has a negative perception of the type of work and working conditions that society rewards and therefore wants no part of it. She is often artistic or produces work that is appreciated by a very small niche market. At the extreme, she doesn’t really care whether anyone appreciates her talents and will reward them, because it’s her life and she spends every day as she pleases.

No wonder money is not exactly flying into the Outsider’s bank account.

The Outsider is at heart a child rebelling against the reality of a world in which none of us is completely self-sustaining and would always need to exchange our skills and talents for the goods and services of others. She may think that, by being ‘true to herself’, she will escape the stereotypical movie-version midlife crisis of the corporate executive who has spent his entire adult life doing work he despises to build up material wealth and please others. The Outsider does not realise that her midlife questions may eventually look like this: What if I really made an effort to find fulfilling work that also paid well? What would it have been like to be financially successful and secure at my age? Have I been avoiding the real world and its battles? Does my courage as a non-conformist have a shadow, namely the cowardly avoidance of a challenging and competitive professional life?

The Outsider is caught up in a false dilemma, a belief that her work has to be either fully commercialised or completely authentic. Dividing her time optimally between paying clients or commissioned work, and ‘own time’ to play and create is the key to the Outsider’s financial and emotional well-being.

Warrior-like qualities are essential for the day-to-day battles of protecting you and your family against a wide array of undesirables: from external forces like swindlers, spongers and unscrupulous sales people to internal forces like despair and inertia.

It is also no coincidence that so many leading business people attribute at least some of their success to the principles set out in Sun Tzu‘s The Art of War. The more competitive the industry, the more necessary it becomes to approach business strategy as warfare. Or that has been the thinking in the West, probably since the Industrial Revolution.

But the world is re-discovering cooperative behaviour, most notably by developing a plethora of free technology and by sharing knowledge on the web.

While there is a time and a place for fighting your battles, Warrior behaviour becomes debilitating when one start to see every interaction as potentially hostile or as a competition.

How could this affect the pocket? Because the Warrior tends to think in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’, he struggles to collaborate and therefore misses out on synergies, such as increased revenue through cross-selling, the sharing of resources and the creation of economies of scale.

Picked up the battle axe one time too many? Then you may find Dr Buffington’s ten tips for honing your collaborative skills useful.

Like the Rescuer, the Victim also suffers from poor self-esteem. While Rescuers feel that helping others maintain their superiority, Victims use their perceived helplessness and the accompanying guilt trips to gain and maintain control over others.

The Victim can be the child who grew up under disadvantaged circumstances, the mother who has sacrificed her career to raise her kids, the serial unemployed who doesn’t understand why he always ends up with an ‘impossible’ manager, or the family member or friend who earns less than the rest of the group and constantly needs to be ‘bailed out’ financially. It can be anyone who believes that the world owes him because of his background, bad luck or the sacrifices he has made.

Because she perceives herself as helpless, the Victim often suffers from financial paralysis. It is as if she just can’t bring herself to take the necessary action, be that to obtain the right qualifications, negotiate harder when it comes to salary discussions, or gain more and better-paying clients for herself. Instead, she waits for good fortune and a Rescuer to improve her financial circumstances.

Often the Victim’s friends and family recognise the pattern long before the Victim does. But if you are reflective enough to recognise your own behaviour for what it is, how do you break out of your Victim pattern? Start by working on your self-esteem. If you can’t afford therapy, at least become familiar with a few ego re-training programmes, like the one suggested in Jurriaan Plesman’s free online book, Getting off the hook (from page 36). Practise assertion every day. Develop your talents and find a way to express yourself creatively. Creating something from nothing does wonders for the self image.

Explore your beliefs that someone must first suffer before he is worthy of affection and happiness. Where does this come from?

Realise that, as an adult, you carry full responsibility for your own wellbeing. By sending others on a guilt trip, you are abdicating not only your responsibility, but also your autonomy over your own life.

Occasionally someone will ask why my website is called ‘MoreThanMoney’. Well, I guess I wished for content that has a little bit more soul than your average financial publication. And for visitors whose lives have always been about more than money, but who now, out of necessity or as part of their personal growth, have to learn how this financial industry of ours works.

Also, money may be just a commodity, a unit of exchange. But the way we earn it, use it, lose it, spend or save it, love it, hate it, or fear it tells us more about what we believe about this world and our role in it, than we would perhaps want to reveal.

While our beliefs don’t change overnight, our roles can vary from one situation to another, covering a colourful spectrum of personae – all in just one day. And this is the way it should be. Play the part which the situation calls for. Unfortunately, we sometimes take on roles that are not only unasked for under the circumstances, but which become debilitating over the long run and also counterproductive. What are the different roles, how do they affect your finances and how can you break a destructive pattern? Let’s start with the Rescuer.

While I’m relieved to live in a world where friends, family and even strangers still lend a hand, Rescuers have made helping out, fixing problems and protecting the helpless their primary reason for existing. If there is no crisis, no poor, sick or sad around, they feel pretty restless and useless.

Yes, some guilt around ‘having things easy’ may motivate Rescuers. However, it is more likely that they are motivated by a deep desire to have their own needs fulfilled, but they have too little self-esteem to ask directly for what they want. Rescuing others boosts their self-esteem. Also, by helping others, they hope that some of what they’re giving will return to them.

Being a Rescuer makes it very difficult to build wealth and just enjoy the rewards of hard work and wise investments. Whenever someone who appears worse off than themselves enters their lives, Rescuers feel guilty if they don’t channel time and money towards that person. Rescuers are easily exploitable. But even worse, they sometimes actively scan the social landscape for signs of any helpless creature that could feed their hero complex. Unfortunately, often their need to be needed does not only prevent themselves from getting ahead financially, but also prevent those being rescued from fighting their own battles in the future.

Don’t get me wrong, being there for friends and family in times of crisis is a virtue. But secretly rejoicing in every opportunity to support someone or save the day probably signals that you may have become a little too attached to your superhero suit.

How do you break the Rescuer pattern? Diane Zimberoff suggests that you become honest about your own needs and take the first step of telling people what you want most from them. Part of this is examining your own discomfort with receiving. Secondly, you would need to establish a new habit of deciding what kind of assistance would really help someone over the long term. Realise that you are only there to support someone while they solve their own problems. Thirdly, if you’ve been caught in the Rescuer role for quite a while, you may have feelings of anger and resentment. Why are you always helping out, but no one seems to care about your needs? If these feelings are not addressed, you could easily switch to the complementary role: that of the long-suffering Victim.

Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Birthdays, Christmases, weddings… There seem to be no end to the event calendar and the accompanying anxiety of searching for the perfect gift for the occasion. But are your efforts to express your affection perhaps a waste of time and money?

A few years ago, in his book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman introduced the idea that every person has a preference for one of five love languages:

• Words of affirmation
• Quality time
• Receiving gifts
• Acts of service
• Physical touch

And no matter how many gifts you purchase for someone whose primary love language is quality time, for example, she will only really feel loved when you set aside leisurely time for her and listen attentively to every word she says. What people tend to do, naturally, is assume that the other person needs the same gestures as them to feel loved. But as any good marketer will know, it’s less a case of Do unto others what you’d like done to yourself than Do unto others what they’d like done to themselves.

My short glossary for each of the five love languages:

Words of affirmation

Affirmation – letting someone know that they’re one of the best things that every happened to this planet

Sincerity – what that person hears more than your words

Love letter – the ’boxed’ version of your affirmation and something they can hold on to

Quality time

Quality time – It may involve only a few minutes, but when it’s over you feel like you’ve touched the essence of the person with whom you spent those minutes.

Active listening – open, attentive, non-judgemental listening to the words and the feeling behind the words

Receiving gifts

The thought – Which message do you want to send to the recipient? What have you noticed they need most at this point in their lives? What do they represent to you?

The value – The combination of creativity, perfect timing and thoughtfulness is priceless.

Acts of service

The service agreement – Always out of free will; sometimes on request; never on demand

Physical touch

Skin hunger – the adult version of failure-to-thrive syndrome, as observed in babies who are not held and cuddled

After all these years in the investments industry, I thought that I’d become irreversibly conditioned to keep all emotion out of the wealth creation process. For example, do you have any idea how many of these hope-greed-denial-fear slides I’ve seen in fund manager presentations?

What it’s trying to depict graphically, is how emotion distorts what should be the fairly straight, upward-sloping line of share prices growing with inflation and domestic economic output. An upward-sloping straight line is what you’d expect from a rational market; the curvy graph is how the market actually grows and declines due to irrational reactions and/or corrections over the short term. Investors’ euphoria or greed causes share (or property) bubbles. This means that investors sometimes end up hugely over-paying for an asset, leading to such a diminished return on their investments, that they would have done better by just leaving their money in a bank account.

So, for years I’ve believed that bringing emotion into your financial plans is always a bad idea. Until I recently read Kiki Theo’s Money Alchemy and had a slight change of heart. Firstly, she points out that wealth is a feeling. While Investec Private Bank may think you have too little assets to become one of their high net worth clients, you may feel wealthy because you have no debt, ample income for your needs and, in reality, no financial worries. Wealth is relative – not a new concept at all.

But Kiki takes the idea of wealth as a feeling a step further. She uses feeling to take you to a place of wealth. If you feel that you haven’t reached the end of your wealth journey yet, how then would that destination feel to you? Is it the feeling of safety when you switch of the lights in your children’s bedroom at night and know that you can provide in all their material needs? Or is it more the excitement of knowing you can catch any plane to a dream destination of your choice at any time, because there is plenty of cash in the bank for luxuries? Focus on that feeling. Hold it in your heart for a few seconds every day.

For the first time, the roots of the word emotion, which loosely translate to energy in motion, make sense to me. Rather than a force to be suppressed, emotion can be a powerful force that carries you to your dream destination, financially and beyond.

My brother bought a wheel alignment business in the Karoo about a year ago, in a town where business owners could easily while away the time in monopolistic bliss. And rosy were my sibling’s prospects – until the previous owner (to whom my brother paid good money) opened another workshop in town and equipped it with the very latest in wheel alignment technology. It was enough to dazzle prospective customers. And release the fighting spirit of my brother.

The competition forced him to think really hard about additional services that he could offer his customers. For example, as his alignment technician had some experience as a mechanic, they discussed whether he could fix simple wheel-related problems too. The technician was delighted to have more variation in his day and customers now enjoy a one-stop wheel service. My brother dropped his prices slightly and probably makes less money now than he initially expected, but he is constantly coming up with new ideas to increase customer loyalty.

People react differently to competition. Some view business as a zero-sum game, in which it’s best to completely eliminate your opponent and carry away the entire bounty. By definition, this is destructive competition. Some actively seek out competition, narcissistically needing to always win to boost their self-esteem. Others are quite happy to exist without competition, but when faced with this particular challenge, they use the competition to:

• Adjust their ideas about what is possible (raise the bar)
• Bring out the best in themselves
• Help them find their own niche
• Test their commitment
• Be part of an evolutionary process (better products and services at lower prices)
• Confirm their belief that there’s enough for everyone

After all, the root of the word ‘compete’ means ‘to seek or to strive with someone’. And with competitors sharing so much common ground, there are many examples of initial rivals turning into very good friends – after having created a more efficient and affordable industry.

Liquidity (capital available for investments) has become very scarce. As a result, stock markets everywhere are collapsing and a global recession is looming. How do you keep up an abundance mindset while world economies are feeling the pinch?

What is an abundance mindset?

An abundance mindset views the universe as an infinite source constantly supplying inspiration to create more life and wellbeing. It is also a belief that there is enough for everyone and that someone else’s gain is not your loss. Life is not a zero sum game.

Why is it crucial for growth?

When you believe that you have everything you need to prosper, you become more generous with your time, knowledge and material resources, instead of hoarding it out of fear of scarcity. Sharing makes a community stronger, smarter and enables it to grow faster. No resources are left latent. www.myggsa.co.za and www.angelmoola.co.za are examples of how resources are circulated online among total strangers.

People with this mindset focus on the potential and creatively moves towards it, rather than focus on their current material resources only. They know it is possible to create something from nothing (especially from very little capital).

When you believe that you will eventually be cared for by a higher power (yes, an abundance mindset requires faith), you tend to be more adventurous and take on more risks – essential for material and spiritual growth.

An abundance mindset combats jealousy, one of life’s most destructive emotions. So what if your friends or colleagues all live in massive houses/go overseas every year/won the lotto? Their good fortune does not take anything away from you. By not wishing them this prosperity, you are wishing life to be smaller, more restricted.

What an abundance mindset is not

Believing that there’s enough for everyone doesn’t mean you can sit back and be lazy, passive or uncompetitive. It means using healthy competition to raise the level of your game and with it the standard in your industry.

Seeing abundance everywhere does not mean you can afford to be wasteful or reckless with the resources you have. Natural resources are the first to jump to mind, but the same applies to capital. Irresponsible lending to borrowers unable to repay the debt from the start of the bond was the root of the international liquidity crisis. It’s a chilling example of how substantial capital resources can be reduced to almost nothing overnight.

How do you cultivate it?

Like any new habit, it takes regular practice and persistence to establish an abundance mindset.

• Practise seeing the abundance around you every day. Even if you live in a desert (maybe especially if you live in a desert) you’ll notice how the whole planet is geared towards growth and more life.
• Focus on growing your earnings by adding significant value to your clients; don’t fixate on cutting costs.
• Practise being generous with yourself. Don’t deny yourself time and material resources – you need them to grow. Also, don’t feel guilty if you want to spend a fortune on a dream holiday and you created more value to your client or employer than the cost of the holiday. As a bonus, your holiday also helps to pay the salaries in the hospitality industry.
• Practise being generous with other people. Give more to people than they expect. You won’t dry up if you are also being good to yourself.
• Don’t spend any time on jealousy – rather count your blessings every night.
• Find a creative outlet. It’s good to have something like a melody, a drawing, a sculpture or some creative writing reminding you that it is possible to create something from nearly nothing.

Acknowledgement: Much of my belief in the magical power of an abundance mindset was inspired by Wallace Wattles. Thanks, Nicky, for introducing me to his thoughts.

I’ve seen that look in their eyes when people start telling me how they want to quit their jobs and start their own businesses, or tackle a life-long dream, but something is holding them back. It’s the look of frustration mixed with self-doubt and fear. Mostly fear of failure and fear of the unknown.

I haven’t conquered either of the two big fears, but I’m slowly catching on to the idea that failure is just a normal, integral part of life. In fact, repeated failures and eventual successes are the reasons humankind make any progress at all. Like Tom Watson, the president of IBM observed, ‘If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.’ The more comfortable a society is with failure, the faster is its collective learning.

Failure could even make you brighter. According to creativity and learning guru Tony Buzan, learning to learn is the real achievement. Many people won’t try a new challenge until they’ve done all their homework and are 100% sure that they will succeed. But your brain is designed for a more experimental and explorative model. Remember how we all learned to walk, talk, ride a bicycle…? Buzan uses an acronym for the steps your brain has to take on the road to success, TEFCAS:

1. Trial – this is every attempt to achieve a goal (depending on the goal you may need only a few or thousands of these).

2. Event – this is the memorable moment when you miss the ball, go blank in front of your audience or is unable to deliver on a promise to a client.

3. Feedback – When the Event happens, your brain receives information through your five senses and intuition.

4. Check – Your brain will consciously and automatically check how you have performed in relation to your goal.

5. Adjust – You will then make the necessary adjustments for your next trial, always keeping your goal in mind.

6. Success – Reaching your goal after repeating steps 1 to 5 as many times as needed. But watch out, during the learning process your brain usually doesn’t judge your goal. If it is something negative like harming yourself, it will still view reaching that goal as success. Therefore be careful how you formulate your goals.

When Buzan asked people why they practise or repeatedly try something, 99% of the response sounded like this: ‘To get better with every attempt’. But this is an unrealistic expectation and not the way human learning works. Skill or performance does not develop like an up-ward sloping line – even the world’s greatest sport people have days when they just can’t do anything right. Thomas Edison failed 9 000 times before he perfected the light bulb. If you expect to progress all the time, the first Event that looks like regression could make you quit on the spot. Prepare for ups and downs and endless displays of no-progress. Some you win, some you lose.

I recently heard a striking definition of an expert: ‘someone who has already made all the mistakes possible in a particular industry’. Meant as a joke, but there is some truth in the statement. While it’s a great achievement to reach success after only one trial, a few mistakes or even a major failure could equip you better for future projects – and leave you with more stories to tell.

While it makes sense to have your big failures early in life when they’re usually cheaper and you’ve got more recovery time left, failures later in life can also be a blessing in disguise. In his famous Stanford address, Steve Jobs has the following to say about getting fired from Apple 10 years after starting the business from scratch, ‘(It) was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.’

J.K. Rowling’s recent speech to Harvard graduates echoes that of Jobs. ‘Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.’

I don’t have the same glamorous story, but I can identify with Rowling. I had always believed that I could do anything until I collided head-on with Mathematical Statistics 314. I did so poorly in the exam that they wouldn’t even allow me to re-write. As a result, I never qualified as the professional, admired, well-paid actuary which I thought I was on the road of becoming. It was painful and a severe blow to the self-esteem at the time, but it prompted me to start and complete my humanities degree a few years later. I don’t even want to imagine missing out on topics like satire and subversion, post-colonial thought, advertising, editorial practice, eco-criticism, gender studies, African prose, magic realism – an intoxicating journey through the world of ideas.

Yes, sometimes repetitive failure embitters people and that will always be one of life’s great tragedies. But I suspect that a little bit of failure now and then actually turns most people into nicer, more empathetic human beings. Every trial, every leap of faith may not always allow us to touch our goals, but it keeps us in the hero-zero relay called human existence. We’re on track.

‘But isn’t not wanting anything one of the symptoms of depression?’ Hearing these words of Julie Delpy in Before Sunset I was glad to find an excuse, even though I greatly admire Buddhist philosophy, to never take my orders.

The Buddha was just using common sense when he noted that desire is the root of all unhappiness. One could easily imagine that he was spending a lot of time with either a two-year old or a highly ambitious or obsessive melancholic at that stage. If you do not want anything, you cannot be disappointed or frustrated, and therefore we have a few less tantrums and sulking in the world. Maybe the search for moderation in all things can guide us through the minefield of desire and ambition.

But first I want to tell you about a book that a friend recommended and which I read last month while on holiday in Provence, my favourite part of the world. It’s called How to get rich by Felix Dennis. Horrible title, but don’t let it put you off. The book is a must-read for anyone who is serious about becoming a self-made billionaire, but the less ambitious may also enjoy his writing style (he’s also a published poet), his honesty and his sense of humour. His only regret, it seems, is that he did not stop working on getting richer and richer earlier in his life. To write more poetry.

When he reminds readers that all that can sustain them is ‘a fierce compulsion to succeed at any price’, he also warns them about the ‘sliver of razored ice’ in the heart of every self-made wealthy man or woman. ‘The love of another, or of family (or of their God, if they have one) can help to contain it. Seeking great wealth will release that sliver to grow. It is in the nature of the beast,’ he tells from experience.

And even if a heart of ice does not make us unhappy, it will certainly shield us from any true happiness. The Buddha knew. One of the reasons I take some time out in Provence every year – if possible – is thaw mine a little. At the end of a year of ambitious discipline and being totally task-driven, I call for a month away without an itinerary and very few goals. Just to learn some French and read a few books. These alone cannot fill my waking hours, of course, so I start to notice how interesting strangers are. Or catch up with old friends. Or just look at the way the light changes during the day and appreciate why artists are never bored.

I wonder how much I miss out on back home with my goal-orientated blinkers on, but I probably won’t change my ways. Drive and ambition are signs of life. It directs us and motivates us to act (which is almost always more memorable than not acting). It gives us a sense of purpose and as a by-product generally creates material growth in a society. It quickens the heart – which also melts the sliver of ice.

I guess, to live life well – with meaning and with warmth – is an art and needs a balanced composition. Nobody else can guide us to find the right balance: rules have exceptions, a guru may be on a different journey from ours and books are condensed and stylised. To create good art we need passion, sensitivity, both an inner world and the time to really look at the world around us. We also need material resources (even Van Gogh did).

So, wake up in the morning and want a great cup of coffee, wish for a productive day, desire that person with whom you feel a connection, strive for overwhelming material abundance. Whatever keeps your heart warm.

PS: I had the privilege to see Leonard Cohen perform in Lyon on 9 July – a life-long dream finally came true. Even though I thought I knew the lyrics of each and every one of his songs, it felt like I really heard some of them for the first time. Like the words of In My Secret Life – ‘… And we’re still making love in my secret life … I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie, I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what it is wrong and I know what it is right. And I die for the truth … But I’m always alone and my heart is like ice. And it’s crowded and cold in my secret life.’ I suspect Mr Cohen, after all those years in his Californian monastery, is much more enlightened than me when it comes to letting go of ambition. But lovers are another story altogether…

For the greatest part of my life I heard myself say, ‘I don’t want to be rich; I just want to be happy. Getting rich sounds like too much hard work. And you have to sell your soul. Most rich people are arseholes, anyway’. So, what happened? I ended up at 28 not having any money. I was renting a bachelor’s with just a futon and a fridge to my name. One night, listening to the soothing sounds of quarrelsome neighbours through a paper thin wall, I decided that maybe a little bit of money wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

A year later, I got a job in the UK, working 7-hour days, earning a good living and saving more money every month than the cheque that I used to take home in SA. But I also had more money to spend. For the first time, I could buy all those books that I used to have to borrow from friends. There was money to travel, to entertain, to fly family over for a visit. I was working shorter hours, feeding my soul and I felt like I had more to give. Money did not only make me richer, it actually enriched my life.

Still the prejudice against really wealthy people ran very deep. ‘Selfish’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘out of touch with reality’ were still my associations with wealth. My money attitude sucked.

Then a few friends with much healthier attitudes introduced me to the ideas of Robert Kiyosaki (author of the well-known ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ series) and Wallace Wattles (relatively unknown author of ‘The Science of Getting Rich’ – available online for free).

If you can look past the awful design of the book covers and the American, almost evangelical tone, Kiyosaki addresses a few important psychological barriers to wealth. His warning about the power of your words (both negative and positive) stuck with me. But it starts even sooner: what are you thinking? Can you SEE yourself living in abundance? Do you think you will still like yourself when you have more money than you could ever use in your own lifetime?

Wallace Wattles echoes the power of visualisation. His style is as old-fashioned as you would expect from a turn-of- the- previous-century writer, but the idea of positive thinking is timeless. Like Kiyosaki, he’s also faced opposition from human money repellents. Wattles believe people, like trees, cannot grow to their full potential and bear fruit if they don’t get enough water and nourishment. People need material, emotional and spiritual resources to realise their potential.

But money can also become addictive. Before you know it, you’re tilting to the other end of the scale and obsessed with making more money. And it never seems to be enough. Some of the best advice I ever got was from someone who told me to decide early in life how much I need. Three-bedroom house? One overseas holiday per year? One car and one boat or plane or bike? Then stick with those goals. Maybe someone taught this to Warren Buffet (the world’s richest man) as well – he’s been living in the same modest family home in Omaha for decades now. At some point you need to sit back, celebrate the personal material goals you’ve achieved and either channel the surplus money into investments or give it away to charity.

At the moment I’m just trying to keep the balance and keep my money goals secondary to my life dreams. I don’t want to find out I was right after all about rich people having to sell their souls.

‘She’s hugely successful.’ I wonder why that pronouncement always makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. Especially when the judgement hinges on a flash new convertible or expensive taste in suits. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine personal success to be something that can be observed with the naked eye. Is real success not that feeling when you realise you are doing/becoming what you believe you were destined to do/be?

‘Know thyself’, the ancient Greek sages are still whispering today. What drives you? What gives you energy? What makes you feel ALIVE? What chases you out of bed because you can’t wait to get back to your waking life? What keeps you up until the small hours of the morning and turns sleep into an unwelcome interruption? As children we have no problem figuring this one out. We all are successful.

Over the years many of our dreams become compromised, replaced by fear of falling behind financially, of depending on others or becoming a ‘nobody’. When fear replaces trust we start to feel lost.

Trusting his gut feeling, believing things will work out alright, Steve Jobs dropped out of college, not knowing what he wanted to do with his life. Instead, he started dropping into only the classes that interested him. He took up calligraphy and learned all about creating really beautiful typefaces. Ten years later he worked that into the design of the first Macintosh computer, and much later his highly developed eye for aesthetics also gave us the coveted i-Pod and i-Phone. Successful – just by trusting himself and his own curiosity.

The first step on the way to success often seem to be a simple ‘no’ – dropping activities that you know are somebody else’s idea of time well spent. You might not have come face-to-face with your greatest passion yet, but you know what you’re not passionate about. If Jobs succumbed to the ambitions of his biological mother who insisted on his graduation even before his birth (his new parents could only adopt him after promising he’ll go to college), we might not have seen any other typeface but Times Roman today!

Does life have to be a choice between being rich and following your heart? Jobs never chose against wealth – he chose to follow his gut feeling and wealth was a by-product. I have met many people who would do their line of business even if they did not get paid for it: art, photography, design, cooking and other livelihoods so expressive and exciting that you would expect the thrill of the job to be a big enough reward in itself. But I continue to be amazed at the material abundance in their lives. Maybe rich and successful can be synonymous after all.