Excerpt from Rich Dad's Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

For you, this book may be about looking at old ideas and possibly finding new ideas for wealth. It may also be about a paradigm shift in your life. It may be about a transition as radical as the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. It may be about you defining a new financial path for your life. It may be about thinking more like a businessperson and investor rather than an employee or a self-employed person.

It took me years to go through the phases, and in fact, I am still going through them. After reading this book, you may consider going through the same five phases or you may decide that this developmental path is not for you. If you decide to embark upon the same path, how fast you choose to go through these five phases of development is up to you. Remember that this book is not about getting rich quickly. The choice to undergo such a personal development and education program begins in phase one...the phase of mental preparation.

Are You Mentally Prepared to Be an Investor?

Rich dad often said, "Money will be anything you want it to be."

What he meant was that money comes from our minds, our thoughts. If a person says, "Money is hard to get," it will probably be hard to get. If a person says, "Oh I’ll never be rich," or "It’s really hard to get rich," it will probably be true for that person. If a person says, "The only way to get rich is to work hard," then that person will probably work hard. If the person says, "If I had a lot of money, I would put it in the bank because I wouldn’t know what to do with it," then it will probably happen just that way. You’d be surprised how many people think and do just that. And if a person says, "Investing is risky," then it is. As rich dad said, "Money will be anything you want it to be."

Rich dad warned me that the mental preparation needed to become a sophisticated investor was probably similar to the mental preparation it would take to climb Mt. Everest, or to prepare for the priesthood. He was kidding, yet he was putting me on notice that such an undertaking was not to be taken lightly. He said to me, "You start as I did. You start without any money. All you have is hope and a dream of attaining great wealth. While many people dream of it, only a few achieve it. Think hard and prepare mentally because you are about to learn to invest in a way that very few people are allowed to invest. You will see the investment world from the inside rather than from the outside. There are far easier paths in life and easier ways to invest. So think it over and be prepared if you decide this is the path for your life."

Copyright © 2000 by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter