What if I told you I have found a tried-and-tested get rich quick scheme that will instantly make you the richest person in the world? I’m not going to ask you to whip out your credit card or provide you with a link to some dodgy corner of the internet. In fact, all that needs to be done here is a few quick tweaks to your everyday vocabulary. Follow these three tricks and watch your whole world change from “poor me” to “i’m the richest person in the world.”

Trick #1

 Turning your “I have to’s” into “I get to”.

I have to wake up. I have to go to work. If your everyday lingo is dense with the “I have to’s” you quickly find everything starts to feel like a chore. I have to go to the gym. I have to go do yoga.

Recent scientific study shows an individual human appearing on this earth is a 1 in 3.4 billion chance. There’s much worse odds than winning lotto. So forget winning the lottery, you already did the second you came into the world. So the fact we get to wake up and participate in this world another day is pretty special. Some people won’t today. We get to go to work.

We get to go to work because we’re alive today. We have a fresh new day in front of us. Fresh new possibilities to connect, create or build. Even if we are waking up to a full day at the job we’ve decided we hate, or we’re waking up to bad news or we’re waking up to a life that might not be quite what we wanted it to be, we woke up. And what’s more with this fresh new day we have a fresh new opportunity to start constructing the life we do want.

For a time last year i’d feel my deadlines weighing on my shoulders thinking “I have to write”. Writing has always been my first great love and here I was treating it like a chore. It was only until I jolted myself awake and I realized I was so lucky that I got to write. To sit down for a few hours a day in that small infinite place where there’s no judgement and no shame.  It’s just me and my music and my laptop and i’m my truest self, truly at home. And I get to then put it out in the world and find people sometimes even connect with it. Just a simple word substitution and I’d lost a burden and gained something I now consider my most valuable possession.

Try it! Why don’t you see how quickly things change when “I have to go to work” changes to “I get to go to work.” You can try it with anything, sprinkle the “I get to’s” like confetti. Hell, you can even say “I get to clean the toilet!” Because even in that action means you have two functioning arms and a toilet to clean. Hell yes to cleaning toilets!

Get Rich Quick Trick #2

Turn your “I want’s” into “I have.”

Goals are awesome. Goals are great. But reaching goals aren’t to be confused with reaching true contentment.

I want to finish uni and work towards getting a job that will let me write all day. Setting goals is important, but too often i’ve fallen victim to mistaking “I want” with “I’ll be happy when…”. Just because I have a goal in mind doesn’t mean I can’t be happy until I have reached that goal. Because why the hell not be happy right now? If I put the “I want” in the back of my mind and focus a little bit on what I already have, it’s easy to quickly see the my riches piled up around me.

Like just now, let’s look down at our hands. Let’s pull them into fists. No let’s unfurl them, finger by finger. When was the last time we appreciated these little robots? These things live to serve us, a thousand times a day. They help us get ready in the morning. They help us make music, make art, make gestures, make signals. They protect us as well. Splayed, they’ll break our fall. The nerve endings in our fingertips will stop us touching something too hot or cold. If we put a single fist in the air when we’re drowning, it signals to a lifeguard to save our life.

A hand can seal a deal with a single shake, or help us feel the warm soft surface of a newborn baby’s cheek. And the universe didn’t just give us one, it threw in another for free, no strings attached. We shouldn’t feel bad for taking them for granted. But let’s just plant a big, fat, juicy kiss on each one and thank them for all they do. And you can do this with anything. Ears! how great are ears.

Have you ever been there when someones laugh is funnier than the joke? Or heard a song that feels like it was made specifically for you? Ever heard the wheels drop out of a plane after a long flight when your butt is numb, signalling the fact you’re about to land? Yeah, you can thank those funny shaped things on the side of your head for those otherwordly sounds.

But wait, there’s more. Our eyes, our sense of taste, our ability to read and write. Our family. Our friends. See the list piling up? Keep going.

Get Rich Quick Trick #3

 Turn your “why is this happening to me” to “why is this happening for me?”

“Sometimes when things are falling apart, they are actually falling into place, but we are so quick to look at it and judge it as a negative and say “this is happening to me” rather than “this is happening for me. Nothing happens to me. I’m not a victim.”- Timber Hawkeye.

It is an inevitable truth that sometimes people you care about exit stage-left out of your life without so much as a ‘see ya’. When this sucker-punch to your sense of self worth comes around it’s so easy to ask the universe why such an awful thing happened to you. It’s when you instead ask the universe why this thing happened for you that you start to see things a bit more clearly. Looking back, i’ve realised each time someone punched their ticket out of my life it inevitably ended up clearing space for something or someone exponentially better for me, and more closely aligned to my values, goals and general life purpose. Each time someone has done something hurtful towards me, it has furthered my faith in compassion and empathy.

For this reason I am not a victim.

Though sometimes it might not seem that way and might hurt at the time, know the universe is only giving away real estate in your village to the best possible tenants, and evicting those who aren’t necessarily the right fit for your tribe. In turn the universe is doing the evictees a favour by guiding them to another camp that suits them best. It’s a win-win. What a nice landlord we have! And he does it all for free!

So as you can see a quick perception shake-up goes a long way. What changes to your vocab have you made before that has changed your entire outlook on something? We want to hear from you, Salty’s! Comments section below.