How money can make you poor
When we were in school, making money was the aim of everyone,
we all want to finish school with good grades and get a good job.
Making money was the reason behind most people choose the course they study in school.
Because we all believed that’s the meal ticket to the good life and
making money with our certificate, not with the skills or gifts that we‘ve got.
But, most get disappointed immediately they came out of school
and there is no job to provide them the life they wanted and money they intended to make with the certificate.
But if we look back to those teenage years when are yet to be enslaved by the desires to be rich with our certificate.
We all have the gift or skills that we are using to catch fun and play with.
These skills are what we are planning to make use of when we are
grown-up before we got caught up in the rate race of making
money with our certificate thereby forgetting our original plan.
If you take a careful look at our society, you will notice that those
who are making millions by making life easy for people with their
products or services are those who follow their childhood dreams to the latter.
Those that didn’t trade their childhood skills for certificates, and
relied on them for their survival in life. Those who held onto their aspiration of changing lives with their skills and talents.
These sets of people are the people that focused on their skills
rather than a certificate to earn a living and make the world a better place for the people.
I look back and see how we all had forgotten our childhood passion, gifts, and skills in our rat race to get money.
We all want to do those things that we give us money immediately rather than do those that we give us money in long-term.
We have all forgotten that those that made money, make it by
exploring their childhood skills and talent. They got rich by catching fun with their passions.
Those inventors, like Thomas Edison, made the discovery not
because of money, though they want to make money their passion
is to make life easier for people, thereby they having their name
written in the history for life was their main target.
Tomas Edison wasn’t thinking of money when he was trying to
invent the first electric lamp, which he succeeded in after 1000s times. If it was for money he did had quit after 50 or max 100 attempts.
But as a result of his discovery, he was one of the richest men in his
own time and also had his name written with the indelible ink of gold in the book of history.
When Dangote set out, he wasn’t thinking of becoming the richest
man in Africa, he was fantasizing about his dream.
Now he is achieving his dream and get rewarded with massive
wealth as a result of his contribution to the economy
If he had gone for the money, he wouldn’t have become
the richest man in Africa, given the level of his intelligence, the best
he could have achieved is to be a CEO of a company or permanent secretary in one government parastatal.
Money kills dreams and chance to make it big in life
Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have invented Facebook if what he was looking for was money at that time. He was having fun with his
creativity and discovered multi-billion dollar business ideas in the process.
Although we all want money, the love of money is not only the root of evil but also the killer of creativity and vision. Putting money first at the
beginning of one’s career is dangerous and may lead to the non-achieving of dreams.
Former chairman UBA group, Dr. Hakeem Bello-Osagie once said
that nobody starts by wanting to be richest, but it by doing what you know how to do best and get rich along the line.
We all know how we had missed our calling by following the
money rather than learning and working on the skills that are
capable of making us rich in the long-term and follow our passions.
Don’t get me wrong am not saying money is not important,
that we should not go into a career.
But what am saying is that in our quest to make money sometimes
we neglect those skills and talent that we already have that are
capable of making us rich and follow the wrong lane.
If you ask some people to learn a skill that can make them rich say
in 5 years, they will refuse and follow the career path that can’t
make them rich in 15 years, because they want to conform to society.
This the major reason why people choose the wrong career path and get stuck in life and become unhappy.
They are cant fulfilled their dreams and aspirations. They choose the wrong way to the wealth.
Because what they are looking for is money,
they can’t play in the long-term, they would want something that can give them money now. While major of those who made it big is a long-term player.
During the years of the boom of agriculture in Nigeria, that that
that made it big then, are those that engage in biennial crops like Cocoa, Colanut, Fruits, and Palm tree. These are crops that have a gestation period of more than five years.
But, as these crops take a longer period to yield money, they yield
more money than those annual crops like maize, tubers, and vegetables. Those that engaged in the long-term are rewarded than those that didn’t.
CONCLUSION
The moral lesson of the article is not to say money is not
important, but to examine whether we have the right approach to
our money-making aspiration,
those so keen and eager to make money are those that couldn’t play
long-term and stake it all for them to achieve their goals.
Those are the people that change from one career to another,
from one business to another all in the quest to make money .
Those are those who engage in various kinds of fraud and
manipulation to make it big in short term, rather than being ethical and wait for the result.
There is an adage saying that there are many ways to the market, meaning there are many ways to become wealthy. If your chosen career path couldn’t make you rich, reverse back to your first love (childhood dream).
Ask yourself now, are you doing the right thing today, are you
achieving your goal or running after the money.
Are you happy with your progress so far in life, if all you answer is
no, then all you have to do is rethink and retrace your steps back to where you get it wrong?
Remember you can always start again.