The Wealth Chef’s 11 Principles of A Wealthy Life Based on the 11 Principles of Afrika Burn!
Getting to experience a life beyond your wildest dreams is my wish for you!
There are two ways to get this gift:
1. Lower your standards!
Stop anticipating wonderous things and be cynical about life - that way you can’t be disappointed. (spoiler alert - this is a crappy option)
2. Raise your standards!
Expect great things. Have a blast with your dreaming and envisioning but don’t base your happiness (or significance, or sanity, or safety) on needing life to match the great expectations built up in the movies of your mind!
As I’ve already hinted…
… stopping dreaming, imagining, expecting, creating and constructing wonderous futures for yourself and the world is the fastest path to a devastatingly poor life.
Stopping dreaming is NOT the non-attachment path to nirvana.
Saying it’s too late, or it’s silly or we’re too old or too busy or whatever other protective reason we give for not going hell-for-leather after our juicy life dreams - is the sad ineffectual defences of the broken hearted whose dreams have been so dashed in the past that now it feels too traumatic to dare to dream again.
Protective cynicism does not drown out the pain of dying dreams.
This quote from Margaret Mead sums it up beautifully.
“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put
all the play and learning into childhood,
all the work into middle age,
and all the regrets into old age.”
To receive the gift of wealth from life requires us to raise our standards and expect great things - but not require them!
And this is what a recent “first time” experience reminded me.
We can have the childhood we wished we had had!
The greatest joy and wealth in life is found when we remember to engage with life as our free child with our adult resources!
That’s the whole point of your resources.
Your money is meant to be used in service of your wealthy life - not as a means to define it!
That’s what this experience was - a magnificent and wondrous free child play space to experiment and experience what it would feel like if I remembered I was already free!
Yep - we finally made the pilgrimage to AfrikaBurn and loved the gifts it gave us.
Free to play and explore and create and dance and laugh and cry and sleep and be delighted and wowed and bored and naughty and curious.
Free to be curious about our fear and shame and judgement and stories of obligations.
… supported by the resources I have accumulated and worked hard for up to this point as an adult.
Emotional resources, mental resources, behavioural resources, relational resources and yes - financial resources too.
Let’s face it - it is hard to let your free child come out and play if you’re hungry, or scared or stressed about how you’ll pay the bills, keep a roof over your head or give your child the life you want to give them.
AfrikaBurn is an incredible wonderland of creativity, play, learning, self expression, self reliance and did I say play!
This is created by a group of extraordinary volunteers that come together each year to make this magic happen in the very remote Tankwa Karoo in South Africa.
A place where there is NOT internet or phone signal! Now that's really amazing. Freedom from digital distractions for 9 whole days!
Guided by 11 powerful principles that govern AfrikaBurn which in turn were conceptualised at Burning Man.
Which in turn have been used to create the…
The Wealth Chef’s 11 Principles of A Wealthy Life
* All the illustrations are by Gabi Brunhoso
Radical Inclusion
The doorway to wealth and freedom should be open to all!
Everyone should be able to be a part of life. As an intentional community, committed to inventing the world anew, we actively pursue mechanisms to address imbalances and overcome barriers to participation, especially in light of past, current and systemic injustice.
Gifting
We have already been given the greatest gift there is - the gift of our life!
We are given this with no requirement for reciprocity or barter.
We are free to do with this gift what we will.
This is free will and why freedom is always a choice.
And why getting to live a wealthy life is a conscious commitment.
To be free means being devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
To be free in our gifting means we must also be generous and unconditional in our receiving - as a gift cannot be given if it is not also fully received.
Decommodification of Worth
To preserve the innate enoughness of each of us - and the truth that we are all already worthy, we seek to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial worthiness labelling.
We remember we are NOT what we own!
We are also NOT what we OWE!
Nor is our worthiness defined by our circumstances!
However we choose to label them.
We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-Reliance
Freedom encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
You are the one you were always looking for.
You do not need fixing or rescuing!
Radical Self-Expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual.
What we each define as a wealthy and well lived life is up to us!
No one other than the individual can determine its content.
This is our greatest freedom and the geratest quest we are each given.
To find the life that is truly ours to live!
And in living that life fully - it is offered as a gift to others.
While respecting the rights and liberties of others to live their life, their way.
Communal Effort
Real wealth and freedom values creative cooperation and collaboration.
Strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
Value civil society. Value the world that is our home.
Assume responsibility for public welfare and be aware and concious of your impact on the world around you.
Leaving No Trace
Respect the environment.
The Afrika Burn community principle is a commitment to leaving no physical trace of their activities wherever they gather.
What would that look like for each of us in our lives?
Imagine of we let go of a need to “leave a legacy” and instead we made a commitment to clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave this place in a better state than when we came into it.
Participation
Freedom is created by radically participating in your life!
Wealth and life are participation sports.
Transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through deeply personal participation.
We achieve being through doing.
Everyone is invited to work.
Everyone is invited to play.
Everyone is invited to create.
We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy
Immediate experience is the most important value we have to know ourself and our world.
Our life is what is happening now. Can you be with it fully?
Seek to overcome barriers that stand between you and a recognition of who you really are - your inate worthiness and freedom.
No idea can substitute experience.
Be in your life now!
Each One Teach One
The responsibility of spreading the truth of freedom and wealth lies with each and every one of us.
First we must be the change we seek and then when the opportunity presents itself, we pass knowledge on.
This is how the ripple of liberation happens.
These principles epitomise what it takes to have freedom and true sustainable wealth.
There is so much I would love to share with you about this experience, but like all experiences they can only be fully experienced by doing them. See Principles 9 and 10!
What I hope my sharing sparks for you is…
… when was the last time you did something for the first time?
If it’s been a while - get out there live.
Open up your dream box, dust off some of the things you’ve said you’ve always wanted to do but have ended up being sidelined by the busy-ness of life.
And if you are really committed to living your one precious wealthy life (and you’re a little crazy and remember it’s OK to be a little scared) - open up that can of true heart desires that have been relegated to the darkest recesses of your being because ‘daring to dream again risks being heart broken’.
After all, what do you have to lose?
Think about it, you have already experienced the worst by being prepared to put your dreams aside.
If you don’t at least give it a go you really will be heartbroken because then you will know YOU gave up on YOU or left it until it truly was too late!
That is the saddest and riskiest thing of all.
And hit reply to this email and tell me…
What is the last thing you did for the first time?
Or if that feels like a lifetime ago - tell me the dream you are resurrecting!
What is the next thing you're going to do for the first time?
You can see some snaps of me and Nic at AfrikaBurn practising being our free child spirits with our adult resources!
Big “it’s never too late for first times” love
Ann
See if you can spot Nic and I belting out a tune in this Video.
