If you’ve listened to motivational speakers long enough, you’d have heard them say, “You can be anything you want at any time, nobody is too old to achieve success”. Some use the story of Colonel Sanders, who became a millionaire at age 65 to tell us that you can be anything at any time, and I get it.
People need to believe in themselves and never give up, even if they are old, but let’s face it, nobody will enrol you to join a soccer team at age 40 and running a marathon at age 60 for someone who has never ran a race all his life is a big dream indeed!
While I believe that no matter how old people are, they can still impress the world, I also believe that some things in life are just essential to be done when you’re young.
In today’s article, I want to share with you the three liabilities you should avoid in your twenties. These liabilities don’t necessarily have to be monetary, but if you fall, a victim of them, you might end up being poor.
- Wasting your time on trivial things
As a young guy, wherever I went, I was always with a book, so if anybody wanted to waste my time, or if I find myself in a queue or a boring meeting, I’d simply look for a way to read. Nothing has changed till today. I hate meetings because it’s all about talking for two hours what we can send mails to everyone about. There are two or three books in my car that I could always read, should I find myself in a place where my time is being wasted.
Aside from this, I monitor everything I do on the internet to be sure I’m investing my time diligently. Let’s face it; most people who are poor are poor because they don’t cherish time or invest it on the right thing.
Your time can be your greatest asset or liability. According to Nielsen Total Audience Report, an average American spends 11 whooping hours consuming different forms of media every day. That’s like a whole day, you know! So what kinds of media are people consuming?
We can know that by checking the most popular websites in the world; the pornography websites, the social media, the news and entertainment blogs.
If I were to go back to my twenties, I would be determined not to waste a single minute of my life from age 19 to 30. This is because, in your twenties, you have the world on your palm. You can dream dreams and pursue them. You have everything you need, the health, zeal and a little naivety.
Wasting your time on gossip, useless arguments, excessive social media or TV, movies, and every entertainment you can catch is by far the biggest liability of your life.
- Expecting too much from others
I have a friend who is now 37 years old. When he was 35, I had a conversation with him which ended in me asking how many books he had ever read about money. I asked that question because he always complains about the government of our country and how the government is responsible for everything that’s wrong with his finances.
I was disappointed when my friend confessed to me that he has never read any book about money. So, a 35-year-old man is broke, and he thinks someone else is responsible for it even when he has never read a single book about financial literacy.
I don’t know maybe this is a global problem, but almost everyone I know usually blames other people for their problems.
Expecting too much from other people is a waste of your time and life, and its liability.
I’m yet to see anyone who became rich or successful because other people helped them. Don’t get me wrong, we all need someone to believe in us and even be our angel, but external help can only make you wealthy or successful after you’ve determined and put in effort to be successful whether they come or not.
For example, the government of my country came up with some policies a few years ago, which ended up helping my business to make more money. But we were not waiting or expecting that so even if it doesn’t come, I will still be out there trying to figure out how to make money anyways.
Now that you’re young, you’ll do yourself a great favour by expecting so much from yourself and little from others, including the government. Yes! You have to learn how to partner and collaborate with other people on how to raise capital and get people to support your dreams, but if you depend solely on any external help to make you succeed, you’re merely wasting your emotions.
- Working too hard for degree & money
Here are two great temptations for every young person- degree and money. Everyone tells you that your university degree is the most important investment of your life. They also said to you that making a lot of money in a job is very important.
The problem with a degree is that, if you go to school to get it and you get nothing else out of school, you’ve got nothing. Instead, if you’re in school, focus on building relationships, try leadership if your school permits, and get involved in many things that can make you understand human beings better.
As per job, if your job doesn’t give you anything except money, you’re probably in a wrong job. While working solely for money as a 5o-year-old man could be the only option you have, in your twenties, you should really work to learn and grow.
Example of this is if you have an opportunity to work with two companies; one is a multi-billion dollars company like Facebook, and one is a creative startup. Most people would go for the billon dollars company because they can get paid much more but here is the thing; big companies make you a machine which just runs the system while small companies allow you to see how things are built, how passion leads to success, how important decisions are made and even give you the opportunities to grow big with the company.
Think about people like Steve Ballmer and Tim Cook. They are millionaires today because they joined the companies they worked for when it was still young.
The point I’m making here is this; going to school for a degree or taking a job for pay are both liabilities when you’re still young. Instead, you should learn and acquire important skills that can make you rich in the long run.
Wasting your precious time on little things is a liability because it will hurt and destroy your life.
Expecting too much from others, government and external factors and little from yourself is a liability which will make you fail in life.
Going to school solely for a degree and getting a job only for money is a liability in the long run because you won’t learn what you ought to and won’t become successful in the long run.
