Change Your Mind and Reap Financial Benefits

There are two types of people in life. There are those who produce products and services and those who consume them; those who employ and those who are employed; those who sell and those who buy. Those with eyes wide opened, expecting to meet an opportunity to help them change their fortunes and those whose eyes are on the sky expecting a deliverer to come and rescue them.

Consuming throughout in life is costly because you have to pay for the ideas of those who produced products or services. We have to be ‘prosumers’ – producers and consumers. There is nothing wrong with consumption. We all consume at one point or another. The problem comes in when you do not have anything to offer for other people to consume throughout your life. Reading this article for example is another form of consumption. Ideas and information contained in this article is all that matters.

I believe that people have to work to acquire skills and knowledge and thereafter put the skills and knowledge acquired into practice for their own benefit. Bear in mind that not everyone is an entrepreneur. Organizations that care about their employees will always have retention strategies in place to keep their best talent. This is done in most cases by providing this talent pool with incentives which may include benefits such as stake in the organization, etc. Most entrepreneurs will exit the organization after a period of loyal, faithful, and meaningful contribution to the organization. Reasoned and seasoned entrepreneurs will not leave organizations because of the fallout with superiors. They will leave because the time has come for them to heed the call for creativity and independence in which they take control of their fate.

People make choices in life which are informed by many factors driven by the opportunity cost – choosing to forfeit one opportunity for the other. These choices are informed by among other things the fear of the unknown (risks), knowledge, security (assurance that the sun will rise tomorrow) and comfort – knowing what needs to be done and being used to it. The truth is that there are no guarantees in life. We have to learn to let go of some things so as to gain better and greater things. If entrepreneurship is not your call, do not force it, and be honest with yourself. If you are working, continue to perform exceptionally well, develop yourself, and prepare to climb the corporate ladder. Draw plans and strategies for personal wealth accumulation.

Financial literacy is not much about making money but more about keeping it after making it. It is sad that most education systems in the world are designed to produce employees for life rather than employers. It is easy to recognize such countries by looking at their levels of unemployment and poverty. Even those who are said to be educated among us cannot innovate or come up with ideas to produce products which may lead to job creation..

The ability to seek to understand why things happen and learn from them is a skill necessary to survive and overcome the economic difficulties. The mental readiness and determination to learn will ensure that you grow into a wise, wealthy and happy businessman, businesswoman or investor. This describes a group of people who if in full-time employment, understand that they work to learn not for the money. They understand the value of investing in knowledge and the return that such investment will bring. Once they have acquired enough knowledge they go on a lookout for opportunities to put the knowledge into practice.

Most people start the right things the wrong way. Armed with knowledge, the people in this category are able to mitigate the risk intertwined with the opportunity of starting their own businesses or taking quantum leaps in building or improving their investment portfolios. Most of the people in this category are optimistic, have a positive approach to life and they think positively. People in this category are ready to sacrifice a portion in order to gain more and are always on the lookout for business or investment opportunities.

We have all been created with a powerful tool called ‘will’. We use our will to accept or turn down any invitation to do something, and agree or disagree with the way things are done. The Creator Himself cannot veto our will. Life is throwing out invitations to learn to all of us on a daily basis. You see, life understands that we all have potential, ability and power to be great but greatness comes through learning. It is the kind of learning that cannot be acquired or found or provided for by any institution of learning. Life is the best teacher, if you allow him, he will teach you well – only if you are willing, determined to learn, and available.

People in this category understand that failure is temporary and is a window of opportunity to add to their credits in the learning curve. They firmly believe that failure only inspires winners as it defeats losers. Those in this group who have allowed life to teach them and have been patient enough to complete their course, come out wiser and matured. The eagerness to learn helps people in this category to come out having learned the art of possessing things and never allowing things to control them. They humbly acknowledge that God and the Universe have graciously honoured them. They understand the importance and value of emotional intelligence. They have developed their thoughts and eyes to comprehend, conceptualize and see what ordinary people cannot see and this enable them to create their living state and more importantly to spot opportunities for making money where everyone has given up hope. People in this group understand that to accomplish great things, they must not only dream, but also believe and not only plan, but also act on strategies to acquire knowledge. They understand that the best investment they can ever make is investing in knowledge regarding the principles relating to financial freedom and wealth creation. By creating action plans, they are providing a blueprint which will lead to the realization of their dream.

If you live hoping for the big break that will solve all your money challenges, you will spend the rest of your life miserable. This kind of attitude will result in you blaming everyone but yourself for your mishaps and financial troubles. You will blame the government, the economic system, other people and potential employers for your problems. Most people in this category are scared of taking initiatives or asking for information and implementing ideas. They have somehow accepted their situations and are helplessly trapped. If they are working they will spend most of their best years working hard for money and never really coming to the point of acquiring enough. If not working, they spend most of their time not thinking about what they can do to improve their situation but what their governments or other people can do to help them.

Many people in this category are pessimists, impatient with themselves and everything around them, and blame everybody and everything for what they are going through. Their mental framework is such that they see impossibilities everywhere in accomplishing anything good for themselves. They apportion blame for their current situation to history, have locked themselves to the past as a result cannot think past it to the present and move on to the future. The consequence of such mental framework is that those possessing and upholding it are disempowering themselves by continually painting a picture of their gloomy lives. They develop the tendency of always having something or someone to complain about while the optimist will be expecting challenges and the realist will be adjusting the sails ready to sail the stormy seas.

Failure is no failure until it is accepted as such by changing direction or giving up. Nothing and no one can keep you down forever unless you allow them to. It must be noted that not everything about failure is bad, there could be many lessons learned from it. We have to start by asking ourselves the following questions:

What is it that I want to do with my life?
Does it require any special skills? What am I going to do to acquire those skills?
Where do I go for help?

Definiteness of purpose drives people to want to do something with their lives. This must be the starting point. Some of the people in this category are honest hard-working people but without basic financial understanding – financial literacy, they may work for the rest of their active lives and come out with very little if anything at all.

The best way to start moving out of your current financial situation is to search for and find the purpose for your life. We all have potential and power to be great and accomplish whatever we wish to accomplish. Living a life of financial freedom is a challenge that requires the willingness to learn, unlearn and re-learn financial literacy skills to adopt and implement financial strategies that will lead to financial freedom.

You may have to do a soul search and critically scrutinize your believe systems more especially teachings that go against your desire for financial knowledge and wealth creation. Flush out any negative outlook towards wealth and finances from your system and start pursuing knowledge. Start with what you have (skills, experience and time) and use it to build a seed that you will plant in acquiring knowledge. Anything that is planted is expected to germinate, grow and produce fruit. That is how important it is to invest in your knowledge. People are unable to live their potential because of lack of knowledge. Knowledge is power and the lack of it causes people to perish.