New update: this proves my point.

How to make money: It’s all about trading and manipulating human nature.

As a result, it’s essential to know what people want. If you do not know, create demands by evoking an intrinsic desire within people. If you can grasp a part of the human nature, and leverage it to your business, then you don’t have to worry about people handing money to you.

For example, this can be observed through the diamond industry. The famous commercial campaign of “a diamond is forever” successfully brainwashed people and implanted the concept of the so-called precious and everlasting stone. It’s just a hard stone by itself. There’s nothing precious in the world, only when people perceive something as precious is it described as this.

Part of the money making process is making people more dependent and by creating extra demands, to cause them to think that material goods are essential to their happiness and success.

You can control one’s behavior either tangibly or intangibly. Tangible – from providing the most basic needs to extending that “need” by making eloquent, yet unnecessary, products, such as eating caviar and truffles for the sake of taste and wearing luxury brands to show off status. Then with intangible influences – manipulating human behaviors through cultural influences and media. Such a concept is well used through the iconic iPhone. The iPhone by itself is not the most technologically advanced product. However it is so sought after by so many people around so many parts of the world (showing how human nature is similar all across) largely because of its inflated values of branding and that concept stuck in people’s head. Then, when the majority thinks an iPhone is “the-phone”, an unintentional fear in those who do not have such a phone, is generated, which further facilitates the iPhone’s influence. Being able to manipulate with people’s fear is also an effective strategy to make money.

Then, people that know how to make money gather together and bond to form a stronger control of the system, thus making mega-corporations have control over every aspect of society.

This is a story that mocks these occurrences quite intuitively. Once upon a time, a bunch of monkeys lived in the woods happily and freely with all their needs fulfilled by nature. One day, some businessmen came and thought, “We could use these monkeys for a very low cost while generating high productivity out of them,” so they created a system involving banana-coins and banana-credits. Those monkeys could earn them through working for those businessmen, in exchange for enough bananas for food for their families and the feeling of receiving higher security in their lives (Wealth always goes to those who can control the resources). However, those businessmen thought it wasn’t enough, so they decided to infiltrate the societal norms of the monkeys and implement the concepts of buying nicer treehouses, and that all monkeys must wear clothes in order to be considered civilized. Monkeys could also buy that stuff and pay later with banana-credits. Slowly but surely, the perceptions of what was normal began to change; monkeys that worked hard to earn their banana-coins and buy expensive stuff were considered the most competitive and attractive, while others who also wanted to be like they were began using banana-credits and racked up a lot of debt and unnecessary responsibilities on themselves. To extend the influence, those businessmen also introduced an education system that was said to prepare a better future for the monkeys’ children with proper skills and knowledge, which would help them earn more money-coins faster. This cycle continued while the system grew ever more strong with the development of a tailored education system and media, and the concept of “what’s needed” got into those monkeys more and more. Many of them had lost the freedom and pure happiness they once had, and exchanged their lives to chase the concepts with which they fooled themselves. Most of them never thought about it for themselves and kept on going along with the crowd.

This does not go to show how an organized society is bad, but rather that people had lost their initial intentions and had forgotten the meaning behind many seemingly obvious things. Of course, there’s much more to the story and it is open to interpretation.  

To wrap up the concept of making money, you either fill a hole, or dig a hole into which others will fall.
Wealth itself isn’t good or bad; it’s merely a tool. Only the people that are using it can determine its value. Too little money makes your life harder to live, while too much money can make you lost in a miserable state. What’s important is whether we have the ability to create wealth and know why we’ve created wealth, and only then will we have the ability to walk on this earth consciously and freely.

Proofread by Anna Johnson.

After I made the big decision about not applying to any traditional four year college, my mindset changed consciously or unconsciously. I was able to gradually accept on what was pressuring me before, such as GPAs and others’ irrelevant opinions. None of it matters now. The decision somehow provided me a guideline of what’s important and what’s not, so I suddenly was able to think more freely and boldly.

There I developed a different approach on planning my schedule.

Before I had schedules like this:

• Do homework 1700 to 1930
• Work on website 2030 to 2130
• Read from 2200 to 2330
• Sleep by 2430

The pretty plan was almost always never taken to execution.

But now, I do something like this:

• STOP doing homework by 1800
• STOP making my site by 2000
• STOP blogging by 2145
• STOP reading by 2300
• STOP everything and anything by 2330

As a result, I was able to force myself to finish something by that day or else it would only have be done by the next morning. (It only works if you don’t give yourself any excuses to extend the time) Another bonus is that I am on track of paying off my debt, my sleeping debt that I borrowed and had snowballed on me a long time ago.

Done is better than perfect.

Now I am on my way to learn more relevant things, do more of what matters to me, and setting no regrets for my future self. You’re welcome.