The word has been bandied about and often cheapened when used to describe merely clever individuals or those who shine in just their chosen category. But Albert Einstein changed the way science, and specifically physics, works and is thought of, as well as moving the peace and anti-nuclear movements forward, inspiring and teaching hundreds of scientists who continue to make major and sometimes world-changing contributions to all of us, and still finding the time to produce many wise comments on every imaginable subject.

I immersed myself in the story of this greatest thinker of the 20th Century in preparation for my recent Moneylove Club audio selection inspired by and using 71 of his quotes, some not widely known. Some I had never seen before and I’ve chosen ten of my favorites from that category, and suggest that any one of them, if you plunge deeply enough into its core and deepest meaning, can have a profound impact on your imagination, your view of the way things are, and even your prosperity consciousness.

I wrote another post you might want to check out on my personal blog, also inspired by Einstein.

http://jerrygillies.blogspot.com/2012/05/seriously-not.html

1. “Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”

2. “I don’t need to know everything, i just need to know where to find it when I need it.”

3. “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

4. “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”

5. “We all know that light travels faster than sound. That’s why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

6. “Dancers are the athletes of God.”

7. “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

8. “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”

9. “Success = 1 part work + 1 part play + 1 part keep your mouth shut.”

10. “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

Though often humbly declaring he was just an ordinary man who never gave up until he found a solution, scientists discovered after his death in 1955 that Albert Einstein was indeed different–his brain was larger than normal and had some features not found in ordinary human brains.

Jerry

For at least fifty years now, so-called futurists, analysts, and economic forecasters have been predicting financial collapse that hasn’t happened–pretty similar to all the predictions wackjobs have been making about the end of the world. Sure we’ve had setbacks, most notably in 2008–but that fiscal maelstrom wasn’t really predicted by the doom and gloom crowd who thought that tax cuts, two unfunded wars, and an unfunded huge prescription drug entitlement combined with rampant deregulation of the private sector was a good way to manage the economy. They got their comeuppance, but are trying to blame the inevitable results on mismanagement by the incoming administration.

At some point, truth will tell. However, with the 24/7 news and information and absurdity cycle we now live in, sometimes it is hard to sort the truth from all the other flotsam and jetsam clogging up the pathways to reality. As part of our own discernment process, I think it may be time to start labeling bursts of news and information as either “good” and “bad” or “relevant” and “insignificant.”  One example each from my very personal such list.

GOOD–Obama’s coming out now in support of gay marriage.

BAD–More Americans leaving the workforce and not even looking anymore.

RELEVANT–The loss of up to $5 billion by JP Morgan Chase.

INSIGNIFICANT–The $100 billion valuation by Wall Street of Facebook.

Now, I’m not intending to go into detail about these choices, just to use them as examples of how I decide what to focus on in the limited amount of time and space we each have.

But in terms of our financial future, each of these pieces of news can be viewed in very positive and optimistic ways, whether they seem so or not at first glance. For instance, how bad can the overregulation of the private sector by the government be if JP Morgan Chase has enough capitol to smoothly weather the huge loss caused by bad choices in high risk hedging activities? And how bad can the business environment be if they have this kind of money to play with and this kind of loss they can suffer without collapsing? While the ordinary working American may be dealing with lots of financial challenges right now, this JP Morgan Chase story shows us that corporate America is doing just fine, better than ever in fact–and the Facebook IPO is another strong indication of the strength of the markets in spite of all the negative prophecy rampant in the land.

I think we need to stop using words like “Bad,” “Troubling,” “Failing,” to describe the economy, and use more accurate adjectives such as “Changing,” “Challenging,” “Paradigm Shifting.” For example, it is widely acknowledged that one of the reasons for higher unemployment is that the U.S. in particular has its highest productivity ratios in history. We are producing goods and services at the same level we did in 2007 with 5 million fewer workers. This is the kind of transformation in efficiency that needs to be addressed. It was discussed in futurist Alvin Toffler’s 1970 masterpiece, Future Shock, but few people paid attention. Even today, his analysis and suggested solutions make more sense than most of what is coming out of Washington and the business community.

Here’s something that has always been true in America:  When things seem at the worst, there are always people for whom the challenges faced will bring out their best. Maybe we each need to decide if we want to ride on or ahead of the surging wave, or fall back and drown.

JERRY

It was 1957 and the Silhouettes put out a song destined to make rock and roll history, GET A JOB. It was a catchy doo wop song, meaning it contained lots of sha na na, dip dip dip, and mum mum mum vocalizations, with very few actual lyrics such as:

Every morning about this time
She gets me out of my bed a-crying
‘Get a Job’

I wonder how many teenagers and younger kids were programmed by that song with the message that they were lazy and useless without a job. Before the Silhouettes were even formed, Rick Lewis had written the song, inspired by the constant nagging of his mother after he got out of the service and didn’t want to go right into the job market. She kept saying, over and over again, “Get a job!”

How much more nurturing and effective a message it would have been had the song been titled, Get a Life! One of the core reasons for high unemployment is that millions of people are under the mistaken notion that the key to success and symbol of making it in our society is to have a job. That is changing in that the ranks of the self-employed are steadily growing, but obviously some people are still stuck in the ancient paradigms.

When I wrote my longest chapter in Moneylove, the one I called Worklove, I wasn’t referring to just work that involved having a job. In fact, I have consistently pointed out that by working for someone else, you allow them to obtain more of the benefits of whatever you produce than you yourself enjoy.

What triggered this post was an email I received today from a woman who complained about the fact that for many years she has not been able to find satisfactory jobs. She says, “The ‘good jobs’ seem so invisible to me.”

I am, of course, not suggesting all jobs are unfulfilling poverty traps. Some can be uplifting, rewarding, and allow people to manifest their highest purpose. It’s just usually so much easier to have all of these aspects of doing the right work brought forth by working for yourself instead of someone else. There is no doubt some people are better at jobs than at creating their own employment. But I would suggest that today’s correspondent and millions of others should have gotten the message after decades of disappointment that a job is not their particular path to prosperity and contentment.

When I hear the high unemployment figures, I don’t want to know how many people are out of work or have stopped looking. What I am curious about is how many of those individuals actually lost jobs they loved, jobs that creatively fulfilled them, jobs that truly paid them what they were worth in money and other benefits. How many of those lost jobs are actually worthy of crying over?

One of the best gurus in this whole new paradigm is Barbara Winter. Her blog has some great posts on being joyfully jobless.
http://www.joyfullyjobless.com/blog

In one of those posts titled “8 Delightful Lessons Self-employment Can Teach Us,” Barbara cites a profound reason to let go of the job mentality, “Personal responsibility is heady stuff.” To those who haven’t yet tried taking that responsibility for their own employment, I suggest, “You have no idea!”

My temporarily final thought on all of this,

Being on your own is all about owning your own being.

Jerry

One of the primary foundations of any success we have in life is a curious, active, and always expanding mind. You don’t retire from being a creative thinker.

Chances are there are opportunities for a major booster shot to your imagination all around you. So here is the exercise I propose:  Imagine that you will be leaving the geographic area where you now live permanently in the near future. Now look around and think about what resource or adventure or fascinating sight or site is nearby that you have never yet explored. And simply go there, perhaps spend a day soaking it in. Living, as I do, in the San Francisco Bay area, for me that might be a visit to the campus at Stanford University, or taking a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, or spending a day in Santa Cruz, which I hear is lovely, but have never visited. Suppose, for some reason, I decide to relocate in Central America and never come back this way again. What would I regret never having done or seen?  There are neighborhoods in San Francisco itself I have never walked around, which is a shame in what many consider the best walking-around city in the world.

Just the other day, I had dinner with a new friend who lives in a neighborhood I had never known existed before. It’s known as Cow Hollow, for the dairy farms that used to be plentiful in the good old days. Her home was originally owned by her great-grandparents and has a magnificent view of the bay. I’m sure there are other parts of the city equally interesting and perhaps downright breathtaking. When is the last time your breath was taken away by some new place you visited or came upon? This is what keeps us young and alive, and what stimulates that part of our brains that helps us manifest prosperity.  After all, if you believe (as I do) that prosperity is a state of mind, the nourishment of your mind is an activity you want to keep replenishing with new stimuli.

Things change–which is the one constant we can always depend on in our lives. There was a restaurant called Spork that I experienced a few months ago in San Francisco. There was one dish I was looking forward to trying on one of my future visits. But suddenly Spork was out of business, and that specialized meal is something I may never ever get to taste. If I do leave this area, a real possibility in the next year or so, there are many things I will have missed out on. One I didn’t even know about until last year was The Marsh, home of the theatrical solo performance, where I took a class with Charlie Varon, their artist-in-residence, and performed a brief workshop version of my one man show in their theatre. Another opportunity unique to this area is the San Francisco Comedy College, where I am now enrolled in a class and exploring a completely new career in stand-up. Whether or not I am successful at this, the impact on my brain will be hugely beneficial. In a few days, I debut a five minute stand-up bit at the famed Purple Onion club. I am already finding myself bursting with new ideas funny and serious.

Even though I will never get to explore all the possibilities in this part of the world, I can honestly now say I am soaking up some powerful local stimuli. Wherever I may or may not settle in coming years, I can feel that I have “done” San Francisco in some creative and most satisfying ways.  And if you can’t even think of something interesting and stimulating to do in your area, then you’ve probably overstayed your welcome and your time to move on is long overdue.

Jerry

If I ever am asked to make a list of the top ten things I’ve eaten that gave me peak pleasure, I always have to include a dessert that I can’t even remember the name of. It was at an almost deserted resort during the off season in Jamaica. At a former plantation called Sign Great House, the dessert was some kind of solid chocolate concoction that was about an inch wide and long and two inches high. Every bite was exquisite, and though not a large amount to consume, it was totally satisfying, and obviously memorable.

I remember a brief conversation I had with noted author and anthropologist, Ashley Montagu, at a psychology conference in the 1970s in which he said that all great discoveries and the answers to all profound questions were usually simple things. I have found this to be true in life and love and even politics. In relationships, for instance, the most solid advice I ever received and put into a practice as a guideline for success was for the man of any couple to be willing give the woman whatever she wants. This is based on the wisdom that the foundation of any relationship is a happy woman. Everything else springs from that simple well.

In politics and world affairs, the simple solution to almost everything is “Let’s sit down and find common ground and be willing to negotiate and each compromise a little.” Sounds easy.  It isn’t–but it is simple. Sometimes simpleminded humans find it difficult to carry out the simplest solutions and tasks.

In terms of prosperity, the simplest answer and mantra is to, “Find what you most love doing and then do it with total passion and commitment.” This is the basic law of attraction, the short and sweet answer to fulfillment and material abundance. It’s the essence of Moneylove and every other prosperity philosophy or teaching.

I suppose the point I am making is that in a world overwhelmed with complexity and complication, the path through all the clutter is often a direct line to the simplest of answers. Sometimes we dismiss these because they seem too easy, too simple, too obvious. But in our hearts and in our gut, we usually know these simple answers are the right ones. We just need to focus our minds to accept and enjoy the shortest, sweetest, most obvious answer.

Jerry

I recently posted the following statement on Facebook:

As a confirmed and certified optimist, I am absolutely certain that all pessimists will get what they deserve and expect.

Pessimism is not a winning strategy and is contrary to the principles on which the United States was founded. This is probably why the most optimistic candidate always wins presidential elections, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton being the most recent examples, though the value of Barack Obama’s 2008 slogan, Hope and Change, cannot be overestimated. FDR perhaps set the standard, being the first president to use mass media in his radio Fireside Chats, and with perhaps the most authentically American phrase ever uttered by a commander-in-chief, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” from his first inaugural address.

But it is not just about politics, which after all is a reflection of the national psyche. A Harvard study just released shows that people who optimistic and upbeat about life are less likely to have heart attacks. I have talked extensively about the importance of having “robust expectations.”  And sixty-three years ago, Rodgers and Hammerstein encapsulated this hallmark of the American spirit in that great song from South Pacific, A Cockeyed Optimist.  You can Google the lyrics, but here are a few of the most essential ones:

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow
That we’re done and we might as well be dead,
But I’m only a cockeyed optimist
And I can’t get it into my head.

Just recently I coined the word, “neopessimism” to describe those people who are whining about the economic catastrophes facing us, and the lack of opportunity today. In other words, focusing on the doom and gloom rather than the boom and bloom.  One definition of bloom is a condition of vigor and freshness. This is what really is going on now as Americans have broken all records on productivity, foreign exports are at all-time highs, and we have survived an economic challenge that, when history looks back on it, may actually have been more threatening than the Great Depression. There are certainly problems, and lots of hard decisions to be made, but, as was true in the 1930s with FDR, the best decisions need to be made in an aura of hopefulness and genuine optmism that we can do it. FDR tried some things that just didn’t work, but he never gave up, and many of his experimental solutions are still around today, like Social Security. The challenges facing us now are nowhere near as daunting as those we have faced and triumphed over in the past.

Those who count the nation and themselves out, who see current challenges and obstacles as insurmountable are sadly ignorant of our own history, and how time and again that indomitable American spirit has kept our heads above water. The basic definition of “indomitable” is “impossible to subdue or defeat.” Someone recently pointed out how many potential catastrophes we survived in the 20th Century–the great flu pandemic, AIDS, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and countless others. A part of our national psyche that is not emphasized enough, I believe, is our resilience.

In other words, we are very, very good at bouncing back.

Jerry

Since Rick Santorum’s dropping out today makes it certain it will be a Romney-Obama choice election, with the economy playing a major role in the campaign, it may be time to take our collective heads out of the sand when it comes to what is really going on with the economy.

For over thirty years now, I have been talking about basic structural changes in our economic structure as we move from a manufacturing economy to an information/high tech economy. I have not been alone in discussing this, but the politicians and a majority of the population have not been listening, which is exactly why we seem to be in an economic mess right now. I say “seem to be” because the mess is largely illusory, fostered by politicians in the opposition, whichever party that happens to be.

In Moneylove Seminars in the 1980s, I talked about the best opportunity for prosperity being one that involves leaving the job market. I stressed that in order for a company to pay an employee a certain salary, they had to be able to make five times that salary as the result of the employees work production. This constituted, I suggested, a lot of wasted energy on the part of the employee, and was not a very fair arrangement. It has gotten even less so as technological breakthroughs have made companies more efficient and workers even more productive, so that many firms lighten their load by getting rid of employees, thus contributing to the joblessness problem. But it’s not really a problem of joblessness, it’s a problem of no one figuring out how to effectively use the increased productivity of workers to the advantage of those workers.

In 2007, according to a report just yesterday by The Wall St. Journal, the revenue per employee at Standard and Poor’s 500 companies was $378,000–and in 2011 it had increased to $420,000 per employee. For an employee making $42,000 a year, this means the company is making ten times what they are paying that person on that individual’s work output.

This is not economic catastrophe, it is unfair distribution of wealth–and confirms many of the complaints of the Occupy Movements. As David Brooks wrote yesterday in the New York Times,  two years ago President Obama promised to double U.S. exports in five years. It now looks like we will reach that goal even sooner. America’s export revenues are expected to surge for the foreseeable future.

Another positive factor in my optimistic economic outlook is one that means outsourcing will slow down and we will be much more competitive in the global economy. We lead the world in the development, design, and production of robots and super smart software. This means factories with workers on very low wages crowded together will not longer be able to compete with our manufacturing companies, operating with fewer, more productive, and a lot better paid workers.

Of course, the more efficiently American companies are run, the more workers need to get away from the old paradigms, need better education and training to be available to the many higher tech jobs that are now screaming for applicants, and will continue to do so for years to come. And need to have more support, encouragement, and training programs that will allow them to follow the true American Dream: being in business for one’s self.

The export boom alone guarantees America is not in economic decline, but more productive companies needing less actual bodies to do the producing has created a major challenge. It is the candidate who talks about education, training programs, green energy, infrastructure and programs to develop more entrepreneurs who will be in synch with what we actually need. Not the candidate who talks about lowering corporate tax rates for companies already making record high profits, and lowering taxes on millionaires and billionaires. They’re doing just fine–they’re not the Americans needing retraining for the new economy. I will leave it up to you to decide which candidate and political party has the best policies for our changing economic reality.

Jerry

I got this one from the amazing Sara Blakely, just added to the Forbes list of the billionaires of the world as the youngest (41) self-made woman to make the list. She’s the inventor of Spanx, and creator of the whole industry known as shapewear. I feature her among the billionaires I think we can all learn from on my latest Moneylove Club audio. This fits in with my Law of Attraction, which I discuss on page 5 in my 38-page Moneylove Manifesto, which you can download free by clicking on the cover in the righthand margin of this page.

It also fits in with a wonderful teachable moment I had over thirty years ago. Five women millionaire entrepreneurs were on a TV talk show, perhaps Phil Donohue. They included cosmetics tycoon Mary Kay Ash and Ruth Handler, who invented the Barbie doll and then went on to head the huge Mattel toy company. All five women agreed that the secret of success they all had in common was that they didn’t know enough to realize how impossible it was to accomplish what they were determined to accomplish. Unlike men, when they were younger, they weren’t indoctrinated with all the rules of how to create and run a business, and therefore were able to innovate without the restrictions of preconceived notions.

Sara Blakely put it like this,

What you don’t know can become your greatest asset.

I got the title for this post from the Gershwyn opera, Porgy & Bess:

I got plenty of nothing
And nothing is plenty for me.

Back in 1990, TIME essayist Lance Morrow did a piece on how important it was in the age of information overload, just starting then, to empty one’s mind of unnecessary, inhibiting, and cluttering ideas and information. One sentence of his became one of my favorite quotes, and I used it in the Moneylove Manifesto:

“The mind takes its shape from what it holds, and therefore, Zen-like, sometimes grows more graceful because of what it has kept out.”

There was an old and very popular radio show called, It Pays to Be Ignorant. It was a spoof of quiz shows, running from 1942 to 1951 and even spent a few years as a TV show. Panelists would be asked very dumb questions and come up with wrong and funny answers. Questions like, “For what meal do you wear a dinner jacket?” But I am being serious when I say it sometimes pays to be ignorant of the way things have always been done. In recent generations, young boys have been taught to be good, get a good job and stick to it for forty or so years and the company will take care of you and provide you with a good pension so you can live out your golden years in comfort. I doubt any of the 1226 men and women on that current billionaires list paid any attention to that advice, and in the case of the women, they probably never even heard it.

A useful exercise might be to look back and decide what early advice you received that did not serve you well, that you would have been better off not knowing.  What haven’t you known that turned out to be an asset?

Jerry

None of the economists or politicians really have a grasp on the central issue of the current historically high unemployment rates. This is simply that we have moved past the point where working for someone else is the best option for being successful. Thirty years ago, in my prosperity seminars, I pointed out that in order for you to be worth the salary and benefits an employer paid you, your labor had to create five times that amount for the employer. I suggested it was time to cut out the middleman and get to keep a much higher proportion of your daily bread.

It’s not the deficit, unrest in the Middle East, stringent government regulations, higher taxes or higher oil prices that are shrinking the job market. And it is not only that we are not educating and training people for the skill sets needed in today’s information-oriented economy. It’s that we are not teaching students to be out on their own, creating their own wealth without the dubious benefits of an employer hiring them. Instead of teaching how to create an attractive resumé or be impressive during a job interview, we should be teaching entrepreneurship–how to thrive without the faltering crutch of a job, without the co-dependence of the employee-employer relationship. When the average CEO earns 400 times what his or her average worker earns, we should have gotten the message years ago. Of course, many have gotten this message. This is one of the reasons fewer people are actually looking for work. This is often cited as part of the problem, but it actually is part of the solution.

The  Ultimate Economic Disconnect

Here’s where we have it essentially wrong: At a time when Americans are at the height of productivity, and more and more jobs that were once performed by people are now performed by machines, robots, and computers, we are reacting by bitching about the lack of jobs. Instead, we should be celebrating the freeing up of former working drudges and drones so that they can more creatively and joyfully earn a living by being self-employed.

I know the argument is that not everyone is equipped by education, skills, or temperament to be out on their own. And it is true that worker bees will always be needed. But not nearly as many as in the past. And it’s time politicians told the truth about the massive changes in our education/preparation system required to deal with the realities of the 21st Century.

I’m amazed that I hadn’t realized the following truth before, and a bit embarrassed that I never thought it completely through. It’s simply that of all the thousands of people who have written or spoken to me over the past thirty years about the positive prosperity changes they’ve made after reading Moneylove, or listening to my tapes or audios, or attending my talks or workshops–I can’t think of a single one who attributed their success to being able to get a job, or a higher salary or promotion. In fact, the ultimate phrase that indicated to me that they really were on a path to more prosperity in their lives was simply, “I finally was able to quit my job.”

Jerry

Some years ago, I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life–that the best way to have a successful love relationship is to give the woman whatever she wants. The premise is simple but potent: a happy woman is at the heart of any successful relationship. For dubious and skeptical men, I have this one suggestion:  try it out as a sociological experiment and see if the results don’t amaze you in terms of not only getting back what you want, but wondrous female gifts beyond your fondest dreams.

I see now, however, that the terms of this knowledge have to be extended well beyond the realm of relationships and into business and politics. We see some of the Republican presidential candidates getting into trouble by not being willing to give women what they want, like control over their own bodies. And what triggered this essay was a news item I saw on Politico.com:

Carly Fiorina, National Republican Senatorial Committee Vice-Chairman, on Friday condemned Rush Limbaugh for calling law student Sandra Fluke a “slut.” Fiorina said, “That language is insulting, in my opinion. It’s incendiary…”

What I find amazing about this item is that Carly Fiorina is the first Republican of national prominence to come out so strongly against Limbaugh’s insensitive, bullying attack on an articulate and attractively smart young Georgetown law student. Arguably, Carly Fiorina is the most successful business person now in politics, as the former CEO of Hewlitt-Packard. While she did lose her Senate bid in California to incumbent Barbara Boxer, she is an upcoming political force to be reckoned with. And her putting Rush Limbaugh in his place as a small-minded blowhard won’t hurt her future aspirations.

More importantly, however, this got me to thinking about a number of reports I’ve seen in the past few years about women in business, especially in the upper realms of business. There is much information, including a research study at Harvard, that shows having women on corporate boards increases profitability and stock prices. But the most provocative part of this involves the idea–backed up by some solid statistical data–that suggests testosterone may be a negative factor when an overabundance of it is present in the boardroom. The bottom line is that the information suggests that higher levels of the male hormone lead to bad decision-making. Women on a board may be just the ameliorating factor needed to counter this negative effect. Of course, a lot more research is called for. However,  just the fact that time and again it has been demonstrated that giving woman more upper management status leads to more financial success should help change their under-representation on corporate boards.

And it goes well beyond this. Men, we can be more successful at whatever we do in the world if we focus on giving women what they want. Especially in whatever skills, services, information, or products we offer and expect or hope to receive money in exchange for. Women have more money than men, and tend to be more loyal customers.

In terms of having women as business colleagues, just the fact that they have not received the antiquated business model indoctrination most men get at an early age makes them more able and willing to think outside the box. I admit I am biased in this, having come to the conclusion at a very early age that women are not only equal to men in many endeavors, but often superior. And I’ve acted on this belief by usually choosing women literary agents, doctors, dentists, and coaches. All other things being equal, I would always prefer to partner with a woman in any project requiring innovation and rational decision-making. Not to mention how much better it makes the workplace look and smell. (Okay, I apologize for that one–I just couldn’t resist!)

Jerry