I watched one of those “abandoned mansion” tour videos on youtube today.
My biggest takeaways?
1. The guy taking the video had no idea how houses were built back in the day (he thought the cistern was an indoor swimming pool) or how the wealthy live (he thought the small bedrooms on the third floor were for guests and the staff were housed in the basement and he thought the walk in safe was a saferoom instead of where the silver would be kept when not in use).
It took him 45 minutes of video time (not sure what that related to in real time, but he mentioned being in there for hours) to realize that the classrooms may not have been used by the original family.
2. Most of the commenters seem to be people who would love to either break into this house whenever the mood strikes (the mood seemed to vary based on the commenter), think that the house is inherently haunted by evil spirits and needs to be destroyed, or feel that every dilapidated old house in the world needs to be restored and used to house the homeless. None of them had a solid plan for how any of this might come to fruition.
3. Most of the commenters had a real disdain for the wealthy and the trappings of wealth.Being completely honest, what were your first thoughts as you read about this old mansion? Three stories (plus a basement and a subbasement), servants’ quarters, rooms to store the household silver?
Did you think “oh, I would love to live like that!”
Or, “that would be a nightmare to maintain!”
Or, “I just know the staff would steal anything not nailed down or locked up!”
Or, “they should donate it to the homeless!”
If your thoughts were envious or distasteful, you will have a difficult, if not impossible, time becoming wealthy.
And, if you do become wealthy, you are unlikely to maintain your wealth.
After all, how can you expect to ever be wealthy if you dislike- or even hate- the wealthy? Your values will be at odds with your goals.
Spoiler alert: your values will win.
But, the good news is that you can change your values.
Most likely your values were inherited from the adults in your life when you were a child, whether purposefully (as in, someone told you that is what you should think) or accidentally (where you assumed something based on something you heard or saw).
All you need to do is question your beliefs and values to see if they truly belong to you or if you have been blindly following someone else’s.
Tip: this works even better if you say your thoughts out loud to someone else.
Action steps:
1. write down your immediate thoughts and reactions as you read the above
2. ask yourself where this thought came from
3. if you find the thought is not truly yours- or if it is out of alignment with your goals- rewrite the thought to match what you want to believe
4. remind yourself of these new beliefs, whether by writing them down daily, correcting yourself when the old beliefs pop up, or saying them out loud regularly
It takes a little work, but it is totally doable.
After all, do you want to own the mansion or be working in it?