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Rich On Paper Poor On Life
We live in a world that works tirelessly to assimilate us to be "normal". This collective pressure has the ability to dampen our spirit and give up the dreams we have in our souls in search of what we are told is success and happiness. We often find ourselves chasing the things we think will make us happy and when we get there, feeling an eery emptiness.
The real life stories in this book will inspire you to find the courage and clarity within to take back your life and challenge the very essence of the things you think will make you happy. Stop living the life others want for you and begin the quest for meaning in every area of your life. If you feel you are settling in life and wonder if there is more, then this book is for you.
The real life stories in this book will inspire you to find the courage and clarity within to take back your life and challenge the very essence of the things you think will make you happy. Stop living the life others want for you and begin the quest for meaning in every area of your life. If you feel you are settling in life and wonder if there is more, then this book is for you.
- GenresSelf Help
236 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 9, 2014
36 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 17, 2016
I was introduced to Philip McKernan on the Unmistakable Creative podcast in 2015. He appeared on two different episodes that were among my favorites of the year. He's a charismatic speaker, and when I bought his book, I didn't expect reading it to be as powerful as listening to him speak. I was wrong! This is a great book that I'd recommend to anyone who wants or thinks they need to make more money, or who is saving up money now for something they want to purchase or do in the future.
I'm glad I was introduced to McKernan as a speaker first, though, as I could hear the rising and falling tones of his voice, and its rhythm, in my head as I read. I also appreciated how the powerful themes he introduced in his interviews were treated in more depth in the book. Perhaps most significantly, knowing McKernan's story and voice made me more open and forgiving of the book's lack of professional polish. Rich on Paper, Poor on Life has a significant number of textual errors, both overt (misspelled or incorrect words) and subtle (repetition, flow), which likely would not have made it through a major publisher's edits. The content and voice of the book shine through so powerfully, though, that these errors are only a minor distraction.
Philip McKernan is an inspirational speaker and coach who works with people who want to make changes in their lives and businesses. Usually, people come to him with a goal to make more money. Unlike most people in McKernan's position, he doesn't immediately accept this as reasonable and get to work developing a business plan based on that goal. Instead, he digs into why they want to make more money. By taking this counterintuitive approach, McKernan dismantles rarely questioned beliefs about money and reveals how people trick themselves into doing things the really don't want or need to do, wasting years of their lives on "prerequisites" they thought were necessary, but actually aren't.
Rich on Paper, Poor on Life is structured around the stories of clients McKernan has worked with. In the first story, we meet a woman who thought she wanted to expand her business and her income, but through her work with McKernan, realized she didn't need, or even want, to do that. She was already happy, and had only thought about expanding her business because she assumed that this is what successful entrepreneurs do, and that more money is always better. When she examined her definition of success, and how expanding her business would change her lifestyle, she realized that these assumptions were false; by expanding her business, she would have to take on unwanted responsibilities and lose a lot of what brought her the most happiness in her work and daily routine. The simple solution was to keep things as they were.
Most of the stories McKernan tells aren't so simple, nor the solutions so easy to achieve. Most of his clients come to him long after their lives have been complicated by the pursuit of money and have to work for months, even years, to get back on track. McKernan's role is usually to help them rediscover the sources of happiness they've long forgotten, or never found, and reorient their lives toward those things. The key themes in these stories are the following:
* People mistake excitement for passion. Many people claim to be pursuing their "passion," but when pressed, admit that their ultimate goal is to save up enough money to quit and be able to do what they really want to do. The career or business they claim as their "passion" is exciting because it makes money and yields rewards of status, approval, and luxury, but the actual daily work involved is not what they'd actually choose to do with their time, so it's not their passion. McKernan defines your passion as what you would do for free, simply for the love of doing it, because it enlivens and fulfills your soul, regardless of whether it brings wealth, security, or status.
* Most of the things we think we need to do before we can pursue our passions aren't things we actually need to do. Not only are these things not necessary, and not only are they often destructive to our souls and our relationships, they also frequently create more financial problems than they solve. For example, McKernan tells the story of a man who pursued real estate so he could save up enough money to do what he really wanted to do--play music. This man ended up in worse financial shape than he would have been in if he'd pursued the life of a musician to begin with. Other clients whose business ventures were more successful found that this still didn't yield them the expected financial advantage, as over the course of developing those businesses, they became chained to a never-ending cycle of spending and debt.
* Life is uncertain, and pursuing certainty before taking action rarely shields us in the ways we hope and expect. Because we can rarely anticipate all of the downstream effects of an action we take, and because we can rarely achieve true clarity until after we've taken an action and seen its actual effects, McKernan advises, "In the absence of clarity, take action!" If we take action in pursuit of our passions, we will much more quickly figure out how to sustain those passions than if we try to pile up wealth first. McKernan writes, "Please don't make your passion conditional. Partake of whatever makes your soul burn. Kindle that little flame until it's a roaring fire. Don't let a lack of income stop you, especially when getting real with your own inner authenticity may well be the greatest business strategy you'll ever encounter."
* Intuition is wiser than intellect. When we focus on clever schemes, "mindset," "life goals," and step-by-step plans, we are rarely doing what we think we're doing--taking a clear assessment of our situation and proceeding on a practical course based on that clear assessment. Usually, we're hindered by hidden beliefs, unexamined emotional and psychological blocks that distort our perception, and cultural and social pressures that cause us to think we want and need things we don't really want or need. Sometimes, even when we know we're putting on a mask to advance a relationship or career, we forget to take it off and eventually come to mistake the mask for our actual face. When we do this, it can take years, even an entire lifetime, to find our way back to ourselves.
The conclusion is not that we should forgo budgeting, or refuse to do anything that isn't our passion in order to pay the rent; it's that we should put the amount of attention and effort we usually put into figuring out how to make money into figuring out how to be happy and live authentically. We might find that what we most deeply want is easier to achieve than what we think we must do first to get it.
Pursuing something you don't like to do, that requires you to put on a mask and play a role, isn't savvy; it's self-deception. It's a lot easier to be a "starving artist" waiting tables on the side while you work on building a business based on your art than it is to spend years building up a real estate portfolio or consulting business and thinking you can get back to your art when you've hit a certain financial benchmark. As your life and finances complicate around you, and the mask becomes etched into your face, and you forget who you are, and you build up relationships with people who would shame you for doing what you really want to do, you're not building the life of your dreams; you're moving further and further away from it. McKernan makes it clear that following the maxims, "Pursue your passion," and "Do what you love," aren't unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky hippie nonsense, but the only solid foundation from which we can build any life plan in which we achieve what we actually want--happiness, intimacy, and authenticity.
I'm glad I was introduced to McKernan as a speaker first, though, as I could hear the rising and falling tones of his voice, and its rhythm, in my head as I read. I also appreciated how the powerful themes he introduced in his interviews were treated in more depth in the book. Perhaps most significantly, knowing McKernan's story and voice made me more open and forgiving of the book's lack of professional polish. Rich on Paper, Poor on Life has a significant number of textual errors, both overt (misspelled or incorrect words) and subtle (repetition, flow), which likely would not have made it through a major publisher's edits. The content and voice of the book shine through so powerfully, though, that these errors are only a minor distraction.
Philip McKernan is an inspirational speaker and coach who works with people who want to make changes in their lives and businesses. Usually, people come to him with a goal to make more money. Unlike most people in McKernan's position, he doesn't immediately accept this as reasonable and get to work developing a business plan based on that goal. Instead, he digs into why they want to make more money. By taking this counterintuitive approach, McKernan dismantles rarely questioned beliefs about money and reveals how people trick themselves into doing things the really don't want or need to do, wasting years of their lives on "prerequisites" they thought were necessary, but actually aren't.
Rich on Paper, Poor on Life is structured around the stories of clients McKernan has worked with. In the first story, we meet a woman who thought she wanted to expand her business and her income, but through her work with McKernan, realized she didn't need, or even want, to do that. She was already happy, and had only thought about expanding her business because she assumed that this is what successful entrepreneurs do, and that more money is always better. When she examined her definition of success, and how expanding her business would change her lifestyle, she realized that these assumptions were false; by expanding her business, she would have to take on unwanted responsibilities and lose a lot of what brought her the most happiness in her work and daily routine. The simple solution was to keep things as they were.
Most of the stories McKernan tells aren't so simple, nor the solutions so easy to achieve. Most of his clients come to him long after their lives have been complicated by the pursuit of money and have to work for months, even years, to get back on track. McKernan's role is usually to help them rediscover the sources of happiness they've long forgotten, or never found, and reorient their lives toward those things. The key themes in these stories are the following:
* People mistake excitement for passion. Many people claim to be pursuing their "passion," but when pressed, admit that their ultimate goal is to save up enough money to quit and be able to do what they really want to do. The career or business they claim as their "passion" is exciting because it makes money and yields rewards of status, approval, and luxury, but the actual daily work involved is not what they'd actually choose to do with their time, so it's not their passion. McKernan defines your passion as what you would do for free, simply for the love of doing it, because it enlivens and fulfills your soul, regardless of whether it brings wealth, security, or status.
* Most of the things we think we need to do before we can pursue our passions aren't things we actually need to do. Not only are these things not necessary, and not only are they often destructive to our souls and our relationships, they also frequently create more financial problems than they solve. For example, McKernan tells the story of a man who pursued real estate so he could save up enough money to do what he really wanted to do--play music. This man ended up in worse financial shape than he would have been in if he'd pursued the life of a musician to begin with. Other clients whose business ventures were more successful found that this still didn't yield them the expected financial advantage, as over the course of developing those businesses, they became chained to a never-ending cycle of spending and debt.
* Life is uncertain, and pursuing certainty before taking action rarely shields us in the ways we hope and expect. Because we can rarely anticipate all of the downstream effects of an action we take, and because we can rarely achieve true clarity until after we've taken an action and seen its actual effects, McKernan advises, "In the absence of clarity, take action!" If we take action in pursuit of our passions, we will much more quickly figure out how to sustain those passions than if we try to pile up wealth first. McKernan writes, "Please don't make your passion conditional. Partake of whatever makes your soul burn. Kindle that little flame until it's a roaring fire. Don't let a lack of income stop you, especially when getting real with your own inner authenticity may well be the greatest business strategy you'll ever encounter."
* Intuition is wiser than intellect. When we focus on clever schemes, "mindset," "life goals," and step-by-step plans, we are rarely doing what we think we're doing--taking a clear assessment of our situation and proceeding on a practical course based on that clear assessment. Usually, we're hindered by hidden beliefs, unexamined emotional and psychological blocks that distort our perception, and cultural and social pressures that cause us to think we want and need things we don't really want or need. Sometimes, even when we know we're putting on a mask to advance a relationship or career, we forget to take it off and eventually come to mistake the mask for our actual face. When we do this, it can take years, even an entire lifetime, to find our way back to ourselves.
The conclusion is not that we should forgo budgeting, or refuse to do anything that isn't our passion in order to pay the rent; it's that we should put the amount of attention and effort we usually put into figuring out how to make money into figuring out how to be happy and live authentically. We might find that what we most deeply want is easier to achieve than what we think we must do first to get it.
Pursuing something you don't like to do, that requires you to put on a mask and play a role, isn't savvy; it's self-deception. It's a lot easier to be a "starving artist" waiting tables on the side while you work on building a business based on your art than it is to spend years building up a real estate portfolio or consulting business and thinking you can get back to your art when you've hit a certain financial benchmark. As your life and finances complicate around you, and the mask becomes etched into your face, and you forget who you are, and you build up relationships with people who would shame you for doing what you really want to do, you're not building the life of your dreams; you're moving further and further away from it. McKernan makes it clear that following the maxims, "Pursue your passion," and "Do what you love," aren't unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky hippie nonsense, but the only solid foundation from which we can build any life plan in which we achieve what we actually want--happiness, intimacy, and authenticity.
June 25, 2025
Philip McKernan is a genuine dude that gets to the heart of the matter respectfully and with care. Hop on his Braveheart calls, you’ll see. The Book One Last Talk and old podcast by the same name will get us to thinking. Once you check out those perhaps you’ll want to read this one too. Dude gets it and I appreciate him.
February 13, 2020
I don't remember much of this book at all. The foreword was fantastic and that I do remember and it got me incredibly excited for the rest of the book having seen an interview with the author on London Real but it miserably failed to deliver on its promises.
February 16, 2015
This book is a deep breath of fresh air, straight to your soul. Basically a bridge between psychology, personal development, and career satisfaction, McKernan shares a refreshing philosophy of his most-commonly seen issues with people he coaches. While there were chapters that I read without much thought, other chapters burned a little, and others still had a quiet pulsing to them that made me go back and review them again. Obviously I have much to learn from re-reading this book. While not everything is applicable, it has a lot of power behind what he suggests and can potentially change a lot of lives that are struggling under weights of false-standards and misplaced expectations. I suggest you read try it for yourself.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews