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Feature
 What’s Really Important in Your Life?
by
Van
K. Tharp, Ph.D.
I’m a value-oriented person. My top values are personal transformation and helping others transform themselves. I’ll probably never retire because people continue to pay me the ultimate compliment when they say, “Your work has changed my
life.” As long as I can help people improve their lives, I’ll continue to do it.
Some people think life is all about money because they link money to highly valued states like freedom and happiness. For example, Robert Kiyosaki developed the
Cashflow game in which you try to get out of the rat race when you generate enough passive income to cover your living expenses. If you have played the game, you may have noticed that when you finally get out of the rat race, the game can get pretty boring.
I use the idea of “passive income being equal to your expenses” as a great definition of
finan-cial freedom. Robert Kiyosaki views it as a stepping stone to wealth. You may not have known this but Robert and I did three workshops together called
Infinite Wealth in the late 1990s. After he became famous from his
Rich Dad, Poor Dad books, I read that he believed that someone was rich when they had a million dollars a year in income. He went on to say that super rich meant that your monthly income was a million dollars. He posted recently on his Facebook page that every morning when he got up, he looked at the
Forbe's list of the 400 richest people in the world. If he wasn’t on it, then he went to work.
My reaction to reading that was “WHY?”. His next logical step would be that he keeps working until he is #1 on the list. And if he were to arrive at that position, he’d find something interesting. The relentless pursuit of money did not bring him any closer to the core values that everyone truly wants: love, happiness, and oneness. Given the
“competition,” Robert will probably never get to number one on the
Forbe's 400. If he did, he might find that he had become very old and still not achieved what he secretly desired. More likely, he’ll never get to number one and could miss a great lesson.
Quite regularly, I hear people comment, “If Van Tharp is such a great trader/trading coach, then why doesn’t he just trade? He still gives workshops so he probably doesn’t have the secret of success.” Comments like this originate from the assumption that having lots of money (through trading success) is the ultimate goal in life. But it’s not,
it certainly isn’t for me.
When someone says, “You changed my
life,” I’m motivated in deep and fulfilling ways that lots of money could never provide. I know that our products and workshops have had an immense impact on other people’s lives. My whole staff knows that because people email or call us regularly and tell us how much better their lives are as a result of one
of our workshops or products. That’s why I do what I do. I love it and can’t imagine doing anything else.
In order to help others transform themselves, I work on transforming myself. This makes it easier for me to help others do the same. For me personal transformation means that I’m moving
closer and closer toward total bliss, joy, happiness, and oneness.
Happiness is currently a very popular topic for workshops. For example, Robert Holden, an English Psychologist, now gives an 8-week happiness course in England. He’s proven that he can permanently shift people to a much higher level of happiness.
The most popular class at Harvard University now is a course on happiness. I’ve read the course based book, however, and it’s way too academic. It leaves a lot to be desired in understanding what happiness is and simply how to be happy.
And now the Van Tharp Institute has its own Happiness Workshop: Peak Performance 203. It includes three days of working on yourself to improve your happiness, including some very advanced exercises to show you how most of what you see in the “outside” world is really a projection
of what’s inside. This becomes a stepping stone for being naturally happy.
After the workshop, there is a six week home study plan to apply what you learned. The Super Traders who did the course in December are just now completing the home study portion and finding the process life changing.
For those of you who still think, “I’m not interested in happiness, I want trading profits,” I can assure you that trading profits are much easier to come by when you raise your personal level of happiness to new heights. I base that on personal observation of and feedback from a number of our clients. Why don’t you try it and see? As usual, we give a money back
offer on the workshop if you are not “happy” with the course.
About
Van Tharp: Trading coach, and author, Dr. Van K.
Tharp is widely recognized for his best-selling books
and his outstanding Peak Performance Home Study
program— a highly regarded classic that is suitable
for all levels of traders and investors. You can learn
more about Van Tharp at www.iitm.com.
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Performance Home Study 
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