Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money

by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Step 2: Don’t Get Angry or Lose Control. Few of the stupid things you do are more stupid than allowing yourself to grow angry. When you’re angry, you’re out of control.

What causes anger? Arrogance. Show me someone who readily loses his temper and showers those around him with angry yells and insults, and I’ll show you a very arrogant man. Anger is the emotion you feel when you are not being treated with what you consider to be appropriate respect.

YOUR PATH TO PROSPERITY

Set aside a short period each day during which your sole purpose is to become your own harshest critic.

As difficult decisions are demanded of you during your working day, share the emotional conflict you are undergoing with your associates.

Seek out small battles to win in your private life.

Start drawing up an inventory of your skills.

Find out how you really spend your time.

Stay aware of perfection, but never allow it to sideline you to the spectator stands in the game of life and business.

Have you heard folks say things like, “Why not take the day off and spend it with the family?” or “Nobody ever dies regretting not having spent enough time at work”? Those are very pretty notions, but they can be said only by someone with no fear at all of having to put his children to bed that night, hungry and frightened.

Ethical Capitalism rest on a system of interlocking obligations rather than on one of rights. Whether you are my employer or my employee, it is not the right I have against you that is important, it is my obligation toward you.

I have created most of you with almost limitless yearnings and desires, but I have placed you in a world with apparently limited resources. It may seem that there is not enough for everyone. However, if you follow my rules of ongoing and constant cooperation, there will be more than enough for everyone.

You are going to have to be generous and giving to one another. You are going to have to cooperate with one another,

Never accept the label of “poor.” You may have less than you used to have, and you may have less than those around you, but you must view this as temporary. You have much more than many others; and what is more, you are on your way up to still more.

now that you know that you are not poor, look over your other shoulder and see all those unfortunate souls with far less than you. Now open your hands to them and give them some of what you have.

Let nobody consider himself to be poor. Forming that opinion of yourself erects an insurmountable obstacle to becoming rich.

but you are obliged to give something to those with less than you.

A quick glance at reality reveals that business creates wealth, it doesn’t redistribute it. By contrast, governments have no capacity to create wealth, but they can and do redistribute it. Just

you would greatly benefit from recognizing that in the real world it is only possible to evaluate people’s actions.

Your neighbors or your transaction partners are far more interested in how you treat them than they are in how you intended to treat them or in why you treated them the way you did.

Having money is not shameful; it is a certificate of good performance granted to you by your grateful fellow citizens.

I am obliged to first fill my cup and then continue pouring as it were, so that I will have sufficient to give away to others, thus helping to jump-start their own efforts.

Judaism views attending to your own vineyard not as shameful, but as a moral obligation.

People who resent the rules of the game seldom achieve distinction in that game.

YOUR PATH TO PROSPERITY

Accustom yourself to questioning the conventional wisdom in all areas that seem to blame business.

Rid yourself of all feelings of envy toward those who have much more than you do. Replace envy with feelings of empathy and compassion for those with less. View your own condition as nonstatic.

Focus on the good, the wonderful, and the miraculous. Think of how much you have to be grateful for.

In both your business and your personal life, try to become comfortable with the second best solution if the very best solution is unattainable.

One key to being a leader is to leap at the opportunity for leadership.

What are these character traits? • Learn to follow if you want to learn to lead. • Maintain a clear vision of your goal. • Confrontation is often necessary. • Leadership requires mastery of both faith and facts.

You stand more chance of making it to leadership if you never miss an opportunity to point out to those around you that your actions are not simply spur of-the-moment impulses but the consequences of accountability to some external entity.

You must have a vision of your goal. More important, you have to know when to focus on your goal and when to focus on the intermediate steps.

“Last in deed, first in thought.”

you must focus on your ultimate goal. You must then break down that goal into intermediate phases, ensuring that each phase links seamlessly with those around it.

Those destined to succeed in leadership when the circumstance presents itself are those who have mastered both faith and fact.

Ancient Jewish wisdom requires a father to do five things for his children: 1. He must first induct them into their socioreligious group so that they will never feel culturally disconnected. 2. He must then instruct them in what he expects from them. 3. He must also assist them to marry. 4. He must teach them an occupation by means of which they can become useful to humanity and thereby earn their living. 5. And finally, he must teach them to swim.

from the very start, Jews absorbed into their very beings the idea that you must act as if the desired outcome was already the reality.

It simply is not adequate to merely think positive thoughts; instead, you must also actually utter them.

describe you succeeding, while simultaneously shutting out any negative thoughts. Now write down your specific goals. This is important. By writing them down, you will not be distracted by concerns over what to say next.

The creation of the world was the original conversion of mind to matter. Things came into existence, apparently, not in a workshop but merely as the result of God thinking and speaking.

Light is the interface of data and matter. It is the one thing that God would have had to start with if His mind was to bring matter into being from nothingness. Light is the original bridge from mere thought into real matter, and nothing else could serve this role any better.

In ancient Israel, Jewish kings were prohibited from counting the people of Israel. Whenever a census was necessary, stratagems were contrived to avoid actual counting of the population.

The whole point of counting a lot of objects is that in so doing, you are implying that they are all identical.

many people fail at leadership because they fail to convince that they care. It is very difficult to find the balance between caring and effectiveness, but that is the challenge.

One must also act regally if one aspires to leadership.

If, however, you succeed in associating yourself with people of stature and true greatness, even if you start off as their tail, they will encourage you, elevate you, and give you every opportunity for growth.

not only must you act in accordance with the principles of leadership, but you must always be sure to be seen doing so.

If you don’t like the way you feel about something or about someone, start acting the way you would act if you already felt the way you wished you would feel, and you will soon come to feel that way.

YOUR PATH TO PROSPERITY