Some time ago, I read it somewhere that 96% of the people born into poverty will be as poor as their parents or poorer than their parents. That’s as good as saying, everyone born into poverty tends to be poor. But that will not be correct because we still have this 4 % who do better than their parents or even become millionaires.
So, what makes the difference? Why do people face the same situation and get out of it differently? Charles Swindoll said, “I’m convinced that life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it”. More than what happens to us, the way we react to what happens to us, our habits and attitudes toward what happens to us will determine the results we get out of any situations.
In today’s video, I’ll be sharing with you three habits that will make you poor forever if you don’t let them go right now.
- Looking for whom to blame
Just yesterday, I was watching a video of a small business owner who just lost his business due to the economic crisis. Right in the comments are people with a different opinion. One particular commenter said, “It’s not the pandemic that took away your business, it’s the government”.
There could be a million version of such comment. Some people will blame their calamities at this time on China; some will blame their employers or Bill Gates while others will blame anybody else except themselves.
The problem with this is that you’ll always be right. If you set your mind to look for who to blame, whoever you blame will seem the right person to blame, then this will lead you to false righteousness. You’ll start thinking like a victim.
From the time I was 17, I had started taking responsibility for my life. Again, this is not a perfect way of looking at life, but it does bring a better result. For example, if you claim that your poverty is your fault, that’s not entirely true because you might have a very terrible background or may be born in a poor country, or even have some disabilities. While taking 100% responsibility for your life is not always a perfect idea, it does makes you stand up and fight for your life.
For example, I still have friends who think the reason they are poor is that the government is corrupt. I have stopped thinking like that for more than 16 years, and as I believe I’m responsible for my life, I take my life extremely serious, dare difficult things and live like an orphan who has nobody to depend on.
No matter what happens to you during this time, the worst thing you can do is to look for who to blame. While blaming someone else for your crisis may seem the right thing to do, it’s also the easiest strategy to avoid responsibility or make progress in life.
- Wasting time doing little things
One of the greatest blessings of my life is the fact that I understand the importance of time very early in life.
There was a time when I was in school and our lecturers went on what is known as an industrial strike in my country. This simply means that they closed school because the government didn’t increase their salaries and they did that for three months. During a time like this, the easiest thing to do for most of my mates was to watch TV all day.
For me, the opposite was the case, I read as much as 11 hours every day, you know, just like a mad man because I knew that regardless of what is going on around me, I have to make my time count since that’s the only thing no one can get if lost.
Most people in the world now spend an unbelievable amount of time daily on social media, TV and other little things. You can’t waste time and prosper in life.
So, how can you get the best out of your time?
Let me share with you a simple strategy I use to get things done; I give time for things, and this is what that means; every day I determine about 2-3 important things I must do and then give them a specific time.
For example, I don’t just jump to my laptop and write. I tell myself, “Write for only 3 hours”. This way, my mind sees writing as what I just have to do for a period and get back to any other pleasure I desire. I also tell myself, “Read for only an hour”. This way, I can concentrate on reading for the next hour knowing that after that hour, I can do anything else I want.
Never become addicted to anything except that thing matters to your life’s mission. You need entertainment, but you don’t need it for hours. You need social media, but you don’t need five social media platforms.
- Disrespecting money
2020 is painfully a funny year. The year shows how fragile and poor we are. I mean, in just two weeks of closing economy in most countries, everyone is already broke. Definitely, there’s something wrong with the way we think about or handle money, and that has to change if we’ll have a better financial future.
Some of us disrespect money by spending everything we earn. Nobody treats any valuable treasure that way. If I give you some precious stones and tell you that it was taken from Abraham Lincoln’s bedroom in 1865 after he was killed, would you throw away that stone tomorrow morning? You’ll probably keep the stone forever.
Why do we disrespect money so much that we don’t nurture it the way we nurture other valuables in the world?
Some other people disrespect money by thinking that every rich person is a cheat, a liar and a fraud. If you believe that every rich person is bad, what you’re saying is that you can’t be rich because nobody wants to be bad.
Some people disrespect money by not learning how it works. This is primarily the fault of our education system. Since people go to school and school teaches them a million things and nothing about how money works, they simply assume that money is such a simple subject which doesn’t need any special education.
No. money isn’t a simple subject. If it were, everyone would have enough of it. The reason why most people don’t have money is that it’s a complex subject that needs to be studied.
Another way some people disrespect money is by using it to buy stuff they can’t afford, simply to look rich. I never understood how that is even possible in the realm of man. How can people struggle so hard to look rich when they are not? Why can’t we figure out how to be rich before wanting to look rich?
For anyone to have a better financial future, we have to start respecting money by nurturing it, by keeping it, by learning how to make and grow it and by avoiding the temptation to waste it on things that don’t matter.
