The Having: The Secret Art of Feeling and Growing Rich

212 Pages·2016·4.26 MB·English

by  Suh Yoon Lee

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1: The Guru
Chapter 2: Finding the Guru
Chapter 3: Reunion
Chapter 4: Having
Chapter 5: The Secret of Having
Chapter 6: Anyone Can Be Rich
Chapter 7: It Doesn’t Take That Long
Chapter 8: Waste and Showing Off
Part II
Chapter 9: Sunshine in Verona
Chapter 10: Real Rich
Chapter 11: Fake Rich
Chapter 12: The Life of the Real Rich
Chapter 13: Gui-In
Part III
Chapter 14: Beginning Having
Chapter 15: Buying Shoes with Having
Chapter 16: The Keyword
Chapter 17: Emotions
Chapter 18: Having Signals
Part IV
Chapter 19: A Red Light
Chapter 20: Feeling Comfortable
Chapter 21: Train Muscles in Your Mind
Chapter 22: When You Can’t Help Being Nervous
Chapter 23: If You Want Something Too Much, It Won’t Happen
Chapter 24: Having Notes
Part V
Chapter 25: Life Changes
Chapter 26: Good Fortune
Chapter 27: Bali
Chapter 28: What Is Good Fortune?
Chapter 29: The Flow of Fortune
Chapter 30: The Fork of Good Fortune
Chapter 31: The Power of the Unconscious Mind
Chapter 32: Coexistence
Part VI
Chapter 33: Bamboo Forest
Chapter 34: The End of Waiting
Chapter 35: Saturn Return
Chapter 36: Fixed Ideas
Chapter 37: Is It Hard to Become Wealthy in This World?
Chapter 38: Escape the Matrix
Chapter 39: What I Really Want
Chapter 40: Walking the Path
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Authors

Prologue
“She’s a woman destined to make others rich.”
Those words echoed in my mind as I glanced out the airplane window at an
endless range of mountains. I guessed that we must be crossing Asia. I was on my
way to Europe to meet Suh Yoon Lee, called “the Guru to the rich.” My father
had spent his entire life saving money before he passed away a few months
earlier. Before he died, he had implored me to find a way to become rich without
sacrificing the present for the future. I, a former journalist, had asked around and
realized that only this Guru could give me the answer. As I looked out the
window, I asked myself, “When I meet her…can I, too, become rich?”
Master of Mindset (M.o.M.), Insight Queen, La Divina, Oasis of the Hopeless,
Visionary-in-Chief…It was a list of nicknames worthy of Daenerys Targaryen
(character from Game of Thrones), and the owner of all these names was Suh
Yoon, an attractive, fascinating woman in her thirties. At the age of six, she had
embarked on her life’s work: observing others’ lives and studying the secret to
wealth. She had counseled the wealthy in her teens and already made a name for
herself in her twenties as a Guru among well-known businesspeople, real estate
conglomerates, and investors. It was said that people had to wait more than a year
to hear her advice and that even presidential candidates and leaders of global
businesses consulted her. She had analyzed more than 100,000 cases of wealthy
people and integrated the results to discover the secret to wealth.
A newspaper article about her destiny was especially memorable. Chinese
merchants traditionally read each other’s fortune before trading. Suh Yoon’s
grandmother had learned the studies of fortune from the Chinese merchants she
worked with through her fabric business, and she went on to read the fortunes of
her several grandchildren. She was surprised at Suh Yoon’s. This six-year-old
granddaughter had the extraordinary gift of bringing wealth and luck to many
people. She is even quoted as saying “This child is destined to make others rich.
Suh Yoon will lead many people to wealth and heal their hearts.”
Having gotten this far, I suddenly began to worry. What if Suh Yoon told me it
was impossible to become rich in this new world and told me to stop dreaming
about it? What if she gave me advice that didn’t work at all—that left me worse
off than now? What if I’d misunderstood her words and she didn’t actually want
me to come all this way to see her?
To clear away my distracting thoughts, I turned on the overhead light and
pulled out a notebook. I wrote down the questions I wanted to ask when I met Suh
Yoon:
What can I do to become rich?
That is, if I can become rich. Can I become rich?
When will I be rich?
How much money will I be able to have?
Could I be rich without sacrificing today?
Meanwhile, the plane was descending. My hands and feet suddenly trembled
with the vibration.
“I’m not sure, but I think my whole life is about to change.”
My father loved yellow corvina. It’s a palm-sized, salty, dried fish sold in sets of
ten for about $300, mostly served on traditional Korean holidays. Whenever my
father was asked what his favorite food was, he’d always answer the same way:
yellow corvina. He’d speak of the salty taste he’d enjoyed at his relatives’ house as
a child. After a moment of wistful reminiscence, he’d then go on to tell the same
folk tale.
“A long time ago, there lived a miser who loved yellow corvina. Because he
was reluctant to eat this expensive delicacy even after becoming rich, he hung a
yellow corvina from the ceiling. He would take a bite of rice, look at the yellow
corvina, and say, ‘Ah…it’s salty.’ He kept this up day after day, eating rice while
staring at the increasingly spoiled fish. Finally, the fish rotted away entirely,
uneaten.”
You might think the moral of this story is that we should enjoy life’s pleasures
while we can. But no. My father told this story because he admired the miser. He
wanted to teach me that money must be conserved and preferences must be
restrained.
When I was a child, my family motto was “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
During every meal, my father preached that I mustn’t leave a single grain of rice
or drop of soup. I wasn’t allowed to buy penny candy as a child or to use more
than three squares of toilet paper, and I even had to limit how much water I used
to wash. My father modeled this frugal behavior; even after he could afford it, he
was reluctant to buy yellow corvina.
My father was born in Seoul, Korea, the year World War II ended and lived
through destitution after the Korean War broke out in 1950. My grandfather was
in hiding in order to avoid the draft, and so my six-year-old father and his older
brother were given the job of finding food. At night, the two brothers would
sneak out to collect rice grains and husks, and during the day they’d earn a few
pennies by selling ice cream on the street. Dad nearly starved, living on soup with
just a few rice crumbs. Skipping dinner was more terrifying to him than my
grandmother’s scolding when he failed to sell enough ice cream.
He’d been fearful and anxious about money ever since that time. In later years,
Dad often said, “I’d rather die than be poor again.” To my small father, lack of
money meant hunger, fear, and even potential death.
One night during his childhood, my father fell asleep crying, his stomach
empty for a few days. Then he was suddenly awakened by the noise of someone
crying.
“I’m sorry for leaving you hungry. I’m truly sorry.”
Grandfather held my father’s hand and sobbed like a child. My grandfather’s
face was thin from hunger and covered in tears and snot. Dad said it was the most
sorrowful memory of his entire life.
I remember my father’s wrinkled face weeping while he told that story, and it’s
distressed me ever since.
My father was a diligent worker even as a child. He was the only college graduate
among five brothers and worked as an engineer at one of the largest heavy
industry companies in Korea. The seventies and eighties were an era of rapid
economic growth in his line of work. Like many other men at the time, my father
worked hard, overnight and on weekends. No matter how tired he felt, he said
that caring for me and my brother recharged his energy. He did his best as head
of the household and never complained about exhaustion. He also didn’t once
leave us crying from hunger.
He also shared with us what he had figured out about money. He would tell me,
“People can lose their money and end up penniless at any time. Spending freely
will ruin your life. Money is meant to be saved, not used.”
By the time he retired, he had plenty to live on. He owned a house and had life
insurance and enough money to travel overseas any time he wanted. His children
were financially independent. But Dad was always deeply anxious that his money
could wither away, and he paid attention to stories of bankruptcy and failure to
keep himself vigilant about his spending.
In his later years, his daily routine was very simple. My father woke in the
morning, did a bit of light exercise, and played Go on a computer. He ate a free
lunch at the seniors’ welfare center and went out to walk beside the river in the
afternoons. He never did anything that cost money, and for that reason, he did not
join his friends when they went for golf or on overseas trips. Instead, his only
hobby was hiking. Twice a week, Dad put on a pair of hiking boots and left home
early in the morning. Each time he went hiking, he grinned and said, “There’s
nothing as free as hiking. All you need is sturdy legs and a water bottle.”
Dad also endured the cold and heat as much as possible. He wouldn’t turn on an
air conditioner even if it was hot enough to melt butter. He wore a sweater or a
winter coat on bitingly cold days. He didn’t waste the water he used to wash or
brush his teeth, but collected it in a large bucket and used it to flush the toilet to
save a penny on water fees.
Another of Dad’s hobbies was picking up things people had thrown away. He’d
collect clothes, shoes, furniture, or electronics from the trash or from houses
people had left. One room of Dad’s house was overflowing with stuff, and that
room, which looked like a junk shop, was like a treasure chest to him. Every time
he opened the door to that room, my seventy-year-old father was as delighted as a
child.
But one day, his life suddenly changed.
When my father visited a hospital to see a doctor about his weight loss, the
doctor said, expressionless, “It’s pancreatic cancer, and it’s already quite
advanced. We can’t operate.”
My father’s mind went blank from shock. He could barely open his mouth and
stuttered, “Then, how…long do I have until I…?”
My father couldn’t say the last word.
The doctor, avoiding Dad’s desperate eyes, mumbled the end of his sentence.
“Well, it’s a bit hard to say. It all depends on the patient. We usually say three to