Did you know?
Rich people play the game of life to win
&
Poor people play the game of life to not lose
??
I bet you did or maybe you did not but whatever the case may be, you could be in any of those categories. I am not asking you to beat yourself up for being in the last because, by the end of this post, you'll probably have a reprogrammed mindset toward how to build wealth and not lose.
Source
Poor People Play It Safe
The truth is like every one of us who has been born in a home where we struggle to feed, cloth, and afford all the bare necessities of life, we tend to be fearful about investing. We programmed ourselves to believe that if we invest in the stock market, real estate, or even start a business, there is every tendency that we are going to fail. So in order not to become a failure, we stop ourselves from doing any of the three things I mentioned above. This is something I learned from Vincent Chan on one of his financial videos on YouTube and it made a lot of sense.
It made sense because I remembered at that instance that Robert Kiyosaki said the same thing, albeit differently. He told us in almost all of his books that poor people continue to live their lives playing it safe with money. They will prefer to save their money in a traditional bank and get eaten by inflation instead of investing them, in say, the housing market. They would prefer to hide them away in mattresses than to invest in the stock market or start a business.
In a bit to protect their money, the results are disastrous because, over a few years, their cash is worthless. After all, we see that money gets printed every day and the gold standard had lost its value a long time ago. So the poor stay poor under the umbrella of trying to dodge taking risks because they are afraid of failing. What happens is that they fail regardless because their generations continue to stay poor and they begin to blame the economy, the government, and sometimes their country for their misfortune.
My country's people are those I have seen do this frequently, they keep blaming the country and the corrupt government for how they ended up financially. Whereas, in every country, these corrupt practices are there. Life and direct! And they don't necessarily have to be similar to what we have in the African continent.
Rich People Play the game to win
If you look at the life of the rich, they don't play the game of life to not lose, instead, they do it to win. So instead of sitting back and looking for who to blame, they try to see the gaps and fill those with value, make money, and ultimately generate wealth.
They start businesses even though there's that element of failure hanging in the air. They don't care, they try as much as they can to figure out a way to win even though the element of failing stares at them in the face every day. They invest in the stock market, cryptocurrency, real estate, Gold, commodities, precious metals, anything and everything that's bound to give their money a leap. A leap that saves them from getting affected by inflation, the economy, government policy, corruption, and every other negative thing that the poor think is their problem.
The rich understand the essence of leveraging assets and working with the power of compounding interest to further their financial interests. They understand that investing in these asset classes doesn't mean they will make it overnight. They know that ultimately, there will be a guaranteed ROI in the next 30 - 40 years when the stock market will always correct itself. It doesn't matter how long but investing tends to be a much better way to get value for our money than storing them under our mattresses.
Position yourself in the market to win
Even though I have told tales of the market being manipulated by different individuals and drug money, the best thing you could take from those tales is to put yourself in the market regardless so that when those actors decide to make a turn that brings positivity to the market, you'll be one of the few persons who will benefit from them. Instead of staying still and whinning over what's wrong and what's not, be determined to change the way your mind is programmed to think of making money and building Wealth.
Do not lose any opportunity to build wealth.
Invest in your financial education as this is something you won't get in school because it's either your teachers do not know how money works well enough to teach it or they are simply struggling with all the negative energies that are associated with money based on their experiences and background.
You can save yourself from the web and the trap of remaining poor in a world where you can take a knife and cut a portion of the wealth pie for yourself.
If you stay in the poor thinking category for too long where you dread thoughts of taking risks, you will lose more because you will lose the opportunity to build wealth. Savings alone especially in a traditional bank will not cut it, no matter how much you earn. In fact, the media has programmed itself to make sure that you spend aggressively and at the end of the day, you'll have nothing to show for all your hard work.
The consumer economy is tailored and programmed in a way that you stay dependent on your jobs, be in debt, struggle to pay up, and continue to remain in the cycle of poverty. The consumer economy is tailored towards making sure that you buy, buy, and buy things you do not need just so you can impress people you hate, and before you know it, you are getting caught up and you think what you need is an extra shift or cutting down your expenses.
When in reality, what you needed was to stop buying things you don't need. Like Ramit Sethi said, you should spend without remorse on things you love, and cut back aggressively on the ones you don't.
When you do this, you'll always have extra money left to invest for the sake of your future. Do not play it safe anymore, by now, you've seen that it doesn't pay you in the long run. Take that risk, figure out a way to win, and do it regardless of how much failure is hanging in the air. And remember to give the concept of compounding interest a place in your plan to become wealthy and live the life you've always wanted.
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