Plane Waits For No One

There was no way I was going to let grandma beat me. Ok, I did not know if she was a grandma or not. She did not even look that old. But I needed a way to motivate myself because I was not going to lose this race.

Alright, it wasn’t a real race but it sure felt like one. Six of us dashing through the Chicago airport as fast as we could go. The less experienced travelers fighting to control more than one carry-on.

At that time I was traveling every single week running events for the Rich Dad Poor Dad corporation. After tens of thousands of miles, I knew how to travel lean.

This was a BIG advantage and I was pulling ahead.

All I had to do was make it to the gate. Then I could relax on my flight home to Toronto to my wife and kids.

I could see the gate as I bound over not one but TWO small children. Not even adorable twins could stop me! I considered doing a baseball slide into gate check but I thought that might be overdoing it.

I arrived at the gate and held my boarding pass above my head in triumph. Treating it as if it was a golden ticket from Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.

The gate agent looked at me with what looked like pity. She cocked her head toward the window. The gesture confused me. She did it again and I looked.

There went my plane home. Without me.

“But the transfer agent said I had enough time! That they would hold the plane!” I said.

The agent shook her head no. And walked away. In my imagination, she suppressed a gleeful smile while departing.

My race competitors were streaming in and realizing their exertion had also been in vain. There was a lot of muttering. The majority of it revolved around the concept of lost time and lost dollars.

“Time is money.”

Or so goes the saying.

But that is a myth.

And a prevalent one at that.

So prevalent that it is a very difficult notion for most people to break. But break it you must if you want to become wealthy. It is a topic I tackle early on with my students.

In fact, I talk about it in the first chapter of my book Undiscovered Riches: How To Find Your Hidden Wealth, in the chapter title “The Time Is Money Myth” Viewing time in the right way is critical to crafting the life of your dreams.

The hard part is not mastering time at all actually. It is changing your mindset. Once you do that, everything else starts to fall into place.

Have you ever missed a flight and thought about the hours lost?

Have you ever thought the best way to make more money was to get another job, or a 2nd job?

If so, you might be running a losing race like we were trying to make that connecting flight. It was a rigged game. Nothing we could do was going to matter for us to get what we wanted. To make that flight.

The good news is, you don’t have to play the losing money game in your life.