Many people dream of wealth. Some dedicate their lives to generating it. Others come by financial fortune through inheritance or unexpected means. But, as worldwide economic institutions and forces have shown during the past few years, wealth can be fleeting. Stock markets falter, property values decline, unexpected emergencies or misfortunes can wipe out family, business or institutional savings seemingly overnight.
Keys to sustained abundance
Have you ever wondered why some people have the gift of right timing, reallocating their investments to sustain or even grow their capital regardless of stock market trends? Or why some families maintain their financial good fortune while other families face a sudden decline when family enterprises pass from one generation to the next?
The invisible forces that lubricate wealth are linked to the virtue of generosity and altruism—the keys to financial freedom and sustained abundance.
Success v/s fulfilment
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the last few years is the realisation that success involves more than climbing the corporate ladder or reaching the pinnacle of educational accolades. How you live your life, what you do with your time as well as your money spells the difference between fleeting success and a life of fulfilment. Fulfilment comes by balancing five areas of life and results in:
- Financial security and career success
- Good relationships
- Status in ones community through volunteerism
- Good health
- Peace of mind that comes through spirituality.
Altruism is the answer
Who wouldn’t want this heaven on earth lifestyle? Being altruistic is essential to moving oneself, family and your organisation towards lasting fulfilment. This involves more than being generous with money or material assets—in many ways that is easy. True altruism occurs at the spiritual, mental, emotional and energy levels.
The habit of altruism builds invisible prosperity. It can be called good luck or good karma of entitlement. Good luck and the ability to be entitled to good things go to people who work for them. There are different levels of expressing generosity and altruism, starting from physical and material levels. When people are financially generous, they tend to become wealthy.
Financial and material prosperity are usually the result of not only hard work, but also generosity and abstention from stealing and unfairness. However, hard work is not enough.
There is a need for intelligent disciplined work. Intelligent disciplined work equals hard work in a well-organised manner with right timing, plus the good karma of entitlement.
The speed of achieving goals and removal of obstacles is directly related to the amount of karmic entitlement of both, the business leader and the spiritual practitioner.
Inherited prosperity of many wealthy families serves as a good example. Their wealth was earned by ancestors, who practiced some of these principles of entitlement. When their descendents cease to be generous, the flow of prosperity stops. Therefore, it is wise to pass to the next generation the virtue of altruism as the key to sustained abundance.
How to practice altruism
Give what you need most. If you want to increase your income, then give monetary donations [even if in small amounts] to a good cause that benefits many people:
- Form the habit of giving financially to a good cause. Choose the most evolutionary projects that uplift the greatest number of recipients.
- Evaluate your rewards of giving. Observe the difference in your life. Be scientific and patient.
- Teach the virtue to others. Start with your family, and also to those in the organisations you lead.
Self-interest in the return on your good karmic investments is not against altruism. It is an intelligent way of using resources to receive more in order to give more. As long as the intentions are good and your self-interest is not hurting anyone, it is not selfishness.
Other levels of altruism
Altruism is not confined to material or financial giving. Let’s look at other levels of altruism and generosity:
Emotional altruism
Nurture people with good and pleasant feelings and expressions of emotional kindness. Utilise love, compassion and understanding as tools. Project emotional altruism daily to as many people as possible. Emotional altruism involves a more detached expression of love that is not tied to the outcome of another’s behaviour.
Mental altruism
Sharing good ideas with others is the key to mental enlightenment and the good karma of receiving better ideas. If you want to receive new higher ideas, release the positive ideas you have and let others benefit from them.
Teach others the topic you want to master to become an expert on the subject matter. Mentally nurture and motivate others to become better. You can even mentally create or express good intentions and wishes to others.
Spiritual altruism
The key to rapid spiritual growth is to be spiritually generous—support people to grow spiritually and facilitate them to fulfil their life’s purpose. Give advice on spiritual values to others, especially to those who need help.
Forgive people or organisations that truly cannot fulfil their financial obligations to you—bad debts. You may even help the people or organisations to recover. It might be too much for some people to imagine, but practising such altruism brings a deep fulfilment to the those who are able to forgive and forget the shortcomings of others.
The roadblocks to avoid
- Don’t delay cash flow or withhold what is due to others.
- Don’t look down on those with less money or education.
- Avoid pride. Be humbled, including in financial status.
- Avoid excessiveness and fanaticism. Rich people or even countries go bankrupt when they violate this principle. Always save; for the present and also for rainy days.
The virtue of altruism is first formed by small doses of generosity until it can automatically express as greater emotional, mental and spiritual altruism. Like any other attitude, it takes a good reason to develop it—like the fact that altruism is essential in the acquisition of power—and a lifetime to master. It’s never too late to start practising the concepts. Make the positive intention today and the action to do it will follow.
As the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, has said: “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.”