@bnt on Money #5: Poverty Is A Mental Disease
Hello there! This is my fifth essay on Money and I'm quite excited to share it with all of my fellow steemians. All feedback is welcomed, appreciated and WILL be upvoted!
Poverty. The big P. A disease so nasty and vicious that I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy. I have talked (and will continue to talk) long and hard about the many facets of material abundance, wealth and general prosperity, but we have to also explore the ying to our yang. Let's talk about poverty.
As you might imagine, I didn't start off rich. I was not ever poor, but the socioeconomic status that I had in my early years really never went above middle class. Even so, it was far easier to relate to people who had less money than we did than it was to relate to those who had more. I consider this to be a dangerous start. Why? Because I was already identifying with poverty-ridden individuals when I should have been identifying with rich people and aspire to become one of them on my own terms.
Even though that was a rough start --which I didn't even realize at the time-- the cure to the poisonous mindset that I had developed during the first few years of my life came about not many decades later. In fact, as I recall I was about 17 when I read my first copy of Think and Grow Rich, by Napolleon Hill. A book that despite being over 70 years old at the time is still as relevant as ever and the foundation for many known and unknown fortunes of today's world. Unfortunately, I had the misguidance to dismiss it after reading it. It was an intriguing text, sure, but I thought it was a once and done kind of book.
Indeed, youth is wasted on the young.
Nevertheless, a lot of the principles in it stuck with me over the years. Self-help texts kept peaking my interest, so I continued to read them and I began to notice how a lot of them said the same principles worded in a different way. And of those principles were included in Think and Grow Rich. This made me think that self-help literature was either a big echo chamber or onto something that was actually real. But it's remarkable how one individual and one book could inspire so many authors to conjure their own imaginings of the Think and Grow Rich principles.
Don't think I'm excluding myself from that category either. I'm sure a lot of the essays you’ve read from me are inspired by Think and Grow Rich. In the same way, I want my blog to be the cure to a poverty-based mindset, which is the first definite step in any successful wealth journey. Sure, you have an edge if you're young, but even if physical youth is not on your side anymore, you can make it work if you truly want to.
You might have been a bit weirded out at the beginning of this essay when I classified poverty as a disease. Let me elaborate on that for a moment. I consider poverty a disease because it has all the characteristics of a disease. It's malicious, spreadable but most importantly for you and I, it is curable. Poverty is also a disease in the sense that it is the result of a series of processes going on internally for a long time, sometimes unbeknownst to the carrier.
What I'm saying could be controversial for some people to think about, let alone accept as reality, but I think that 99% of people who currently live in poverty conditions have the tools necessary to pull themselves out of said situation.
Here's an interesting thing that happened to me: I got robbed at gun point for the first time in my life. It's been around three years since I went through that experience. And even if I drew lessons from that experience, my points on poverty remain exactly the same. No more vicious or merciful than they were written before. I also didn't choose to write a chapter on poverty because of them, it’s just something that happened to me that still brings back not-so-great memories in me.
I'm pretty sure that I was not the only person these marauders will ever rob, either. These two men have undoubtedly spent my money (probably on drugs) and placed my phone in the black market for a tidy profit. No matter how many people they rob, this cycle will continue to go on in their lives. It will never be enough, because money doesn't solve mental poverty problems. They will wake up poor tomorrow and I already got back on my feet.
My point is that there's a primordial mental shift that has to take place within us to take our thoughts (and actions) from those of a poor person to those of a wealthy one. People make a mistake when they think that it's one major event that decides whether they become poor or wealthy. That is almost never the case. Poverty and wealth can both sneak up behind you, but they almost always come invited into your life through all (seemingly and deceitfully) insignificant actions and money decisions that you make every day. Choices are also generally duplicitous, so your own consistency can be a weapon that you use in your favor or against yourself.
We can then conclude that poverty is a primordial choice which is itself the compound of all other choices that we make.
Poor people have a tendency to be impatient, unthoughtful, not detail-oriented and too focused on immediate rewards. The good news is, of course, that every single one of these character traits has a veritable opposite. If you choose to be patient, thoughtful, detail-oriented and focused on long-term gains, you're actively choosing wealth. If you do those things consistently over a considerable amount of time, wealth will inevitably invite itself into your life.
Choosing well is choosing wealth and it's as simple as that.
TL;DR:
- Poverty can and will be cured by society.
- Poverty starts at the mind and it will spread if you let it.
- Plan for the long-term, not the short-term.
Previous Essays On Money:
- The Essence of Abundance: https://steemit.com/life/@bnt/bnt-report-1-the-essence-of-abundance
- Frugality Is Overrated: https://steemit.com/life/@bnt/bnt-on-money-2-frugality-is-overrated
- Experimenting Your Way To Riches: https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-3-experimenting-your-way-to-riches
- Greed Is Moronic https://steemit.com/money/@bnt/bnt-on-money-4-greed-is-moronic