Swimming with Piranha makes you hungry

Swimming with Piranha makes you Hungry is a metaphorical must read – a unique book humorously illustrated and packed with priceless advice – essential facts to enjoy life more, work less and have more money!

Discover powerful practical secrets to simplifying life.

Know the Seven Proven Laws vital for gaining wealth.

This book is guaranteed to improve the quality of your life;
and increase your disposable income!

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A Prologue

Renowned for the voracity and reputed ferocity, piranha travel in groups and usually prey on other fish. They are attracted to the scent of blood and can reduce even a large animal to a skeleton in a short time. Before Modern Man appeared they enjoyed the top position for consumption.

Although they have a herd instinct when a tasty morsel, or any morsel for that matter, is discovered, it’s every piranha for him or herself. They will dive right in at the slightest indication of any deal and take advantage of the situation to grab what they can, not stopping until they reach the bone. Nothing is left in the path of their voracious consumerism. More and more doesn’t seem to satisfy them, it doesn’t even phase them. Amazingly, it’s as if they still remain hungry however bloated they may become.

A happy piranha is one who is in the thick of the action. Only when the water is literally boiling with grabbing whatever it can, does it feel at its most secure. Those times that it finds itself in calm waters do not rest easy with it at all, so, usually it will create the opportunity to pick a fight with a neighbour, particularly if that neighbour appears to have more. After all that wouldn’t be fair, would it?

Pete Piranha wondered if it had always been like this. He felt different from the others because something inside told him that life didn’t have to be this way. He had been told he was really lucky because the neighbourhood that he lived in had not always had such an abundant food supply. Since the floods of a few generations ago had joined two rivers together every fish said there would be more than enough. But no fish seemed to know exactly what enough was. It was as if the more they had of everything, the more they not only wanted, but the more they complained and bickered.

The abundance and ease of having all they desired, it seemed to him, made every fish even hungrier. It was as if no matter what was available externally to consume, there remained inside every fish an emptiness, almost a hunger for something else. He couldn’t quite put his fin on exactly what it was, but he was determined to try and find out, because the more he competed against other piranha to make a comfortable home for his family, the less he seemed to end up with.

The new, bigger set of teeth he had bought was really going to stretch him, and as for all the flipping and flapping up and down the fast currents everyday, well, that was exhausting. But the schools of elite fish that his children wanted to swim with, and his wife’s insistence on owning the latest descaler, meant that he had to carry on.

Pete would often think about the great stories he had been told years ago about how it was in the days before the flood. Fish would only consume when they genuinely needed to and the currents made swimming enjoyable. The new fast currents did not exist at that time, yet now they were so jam packed they were almost at a standstill.

Apparently no undercurrents existed either. Imagine that, he thought to himself, yet now they were everywhere. He was certain that they were the cause of so much of the envy and friction that was now part and parcel of herd life. If you didn’t conform to swimming in the way that society deemed was correct, then my goodness you certainly felt the undercurrents. Those who had tried to do their own thing, even though it had not affected others, experienced the full tide against them.

CHAPTER 1

Hook, Line and Sinker

The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

H. D. Thoreau

Are you comfortable with the way you handle your time, money and life? Certainly there seems to be a correlation between the three. Our 24 hour non-stop society has developed its own motto of ‘time is money’. Is it? Is this how we view our time? To get as much done, in order to earn as much as we can, to allow us to live in a style that society has deemed is appropriate or ideal. Is it possible that we have been caught in a self-created hook because of what we have been conditioned to believe?

When we have too much time we often feel guilty because we are not using it to the full. When we have too little we either feel frustrated, because we are unable to get everything done, or, important, because we are so busy. It has been said that time is money and, in a way, that is true. For example, imagine a bank that credits your account every morning with £1,400 but, regardless of what you choose to do with this money, at the end of each day the bank cancels out whatever you have failed to use. It goes without saying that you would ensure you used the money in an optimum way. Well, every day we have 1,400 minutes. Every night all lost time is written off, there is no overdraft and no balance carried forward. If you fail to use the day’s deposits the way you want it is your loss, no one else’s.

We can either choose to live in the present on today’s deposits and plan our lives so that we have enough time for what is important to us, or, we can spend it all in continually rushing around dealing with the urgent stuff in life that incessantly bombards us, desperately hoping we will make enough money. Can we ever have enough? Isn’t it rather that we never have quite enough, regardless of the time and effort we put into our life?

Do you have enough money? Are you able to enjoy your children growing up or have enough time with the person or people that you want to spend time with? Do you enjoy the work that you spend your time doing, thinking and worrying about? Or is it what you do in order to earn enough to be able to consume more, thereby sustaining, and justifying, the earning? Is yours a life of frantic earning and spending, making more just to consume more?

We have been conditioned to believe that the success of our lives is best measured by the economic gain made during it. So we go for it. Yet as expectations have a habit of rapidly rising to meet, even overtake, their incomes, many people are broke, regardless of how high that income is. And debt is an unforgiving enemy that will immediately appear at the first opportunity provided, such as the disappearance or reduction of earnings.

Have we swallowed hook, line and sinker the belief that only by increasing your standard of living will you increase your quality of life, or, that you must put in more hours to be successful?

Money used to be viewed as a means to an end, but it is now pervasive. We are part of a society that has successfully developed a mechanism that persuades, convinces and even insists that we spend more. Money and acquiring more of it has become a major part of human existence in our country under the misguided belief that more brings security. Are the weary shoppers that emerge from the ‘boiling water’ of the shopping centre, weighed down with bags of stuff, feeling happier and more secure?

Perhaps for a short time the excitement of the purchase, made attainable by the credit-card, will bring this, but how high will the level of security be when the statement arrives? Are we in control of our lives or have the hundreds of thousands of adverts we are exposed to every year insidiously become our master? There is no doubt that we do live in a significant period of time. Perhaps now more than any other time in history people are becoming more aware of the influences they are being exposed to. Increasingly there is a conscious awareness of that which is now viewed as perhaps a mindless consumerism.

Financial Independence

Attaining the security of Financial Independence is sought by all. And why not? It is healthy to be in charge of your own life that the feeling of being financially independent brings. We live in one of the most prosperous countries in the world with enormous resources and opportunity yet incredibly the majority of people retire either totally dependent on sources external to themselves or continually watching the pennies.

Regardless of your income, debt or savings financial independence is actually achievable by all, when its fundamental principles are adhered to. Simplifying your life by uncluttering it and getting yourself in order, is a practice that simply encapsulates all the principles. It is not about dropping out or a back to the land movement. It is a ‘make the most of wherever you are’ movement. It’s about being yourself and employing yourself in a fashion that develops all areas of your life and the lives of those you touch, whether they are close to you or part of the community.

This is not a fad or revolution, it is a choice. The trend is certainly on the increase, but it has been in and out of vogue for centuries. It is about deliberately choosing quality living over quantity buying. It may be that this choice is thrust upon many through the hardship of redundancy. More often, though, it is an action that is deliberately taken and planned in advance. When it is, and the right steps are followed, both means and end provide for a truly fulfilling and meaningful life.

This book is about leaving the boiling waters for calmer ones, about improving the quality of your life, time and relationships without lowering your standard of living. Imagine getting up in the morning because you want to and not because you have to. Imagine being able to watch your children grow while doing what you want. Isn’t that what life is all about? That is the reality of life, not the illusion that commercialism insists is a happy life. Yet that is what we have allowed ourselves to be conditioned to believe, which is perhaps why, for many, consuming is a substitute for the void they feel in their lives.

Being able to live the way you live, do the work you do and spend time the way you want, because you have consciously and voluntarily chosen to do so, has got to be a positive ambition and way of life. Of course it doesn’t and will not suit everyone, but, for those who feel that this is a path worth investigating seriously, this book will provide the right steps to take. This is no wish book. It will show you whether a less consumer driven, uncluttered and simpler life is right for you. It will help you to focus on what ‘the good life' means to you, how you can prepare psychologically for the change, what you can expect and, importantly, how you can become financially independent in the process.

Prof Colin Turner is the author of 15 bestsellers published in 30 languages, including the Japan no 1: Born to Succeed; and the executive coaching series: The Teachings of Billionaire Yen Tzu. Described by Time as ‘a leading authority on business, lifestyle & management’; he advises FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 Companies and is a thought-provoking keynote speaker at conferences. He can be contacted through: turner@theseus.fr

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