Don’t Fight to Make a Living, Instead Fight to Make a Life

Inaction breeds doubt and fear.  Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it.  Go out and get busy.

~Dale Carnegie

I have some Good news for you all today! There is no safe place in life, why? Because no one gets out of life alive. Isn’t that awesome! at least it takes the whole lot of load off your shoulders. So the question is why do you keep trying to play it safe in life? Is it for fear of loss or failure or fear of success? I know what you thinking it’s easy and safer to get a job and have a guaranteed pay check at the end of the month and probably the following year get a promotion with a raised salary, you can plan and buy a car blah, blah, blah. Typical middle class thinking. Yes this will make you comfortable for a while and help you experience the so called good things of life. Let’s put the record straight. The middle class means you are employed by a company in a relatively considered well-paying job, correct? I think you said yes! The next question is for how long? I think you said probably until you retire if your ego does not force you to go and start looking for another job in the so called greener pastures for more pay. This is the illusion we constantly live in or the so called ‘Rat Race’. Hear this! If a company you are working for makes a lot of profit and goes really up higher, the company will go up alone without you. If on the other hand the company begins to make losses and goes down into liquidation, you go down with it (I mean with you bleeding with it). Wow! Isn’t that wonderful and thoughtful. Am I saying stop working for others? No! I am saying use your employment to learn how to open your own doors. If the owner of the company was able to start it, that is evidence enough that you can also do it. I know you might be saying, if we all started companies who will work for who? I can tell you, the world will never run out of workers… 

Recently, in my country, the retirement age was raised from 55 to 65 years. There has been a lot of debate for and against the move. I can bet you on this no one (may be a few) will choose to retire at 55 which has been pegged as an option for early retirement (I may be wrong). If you want to know really why! Ask someone who is closer in age to 55 if they are really ready to be thrown into the world of ‘No Life Time Income’ considering the phases the Zambian economy has gone through with regards to the development of local entrepreneurship. its a developmental cycle

Remember that in Zambia may be Africa, the Mindset of ‘Being employed’ is still the DEFAULT VALUE of our thinking style (straight out of school). Immediately one gets out of college, the default value kicks in – ‘look for Job’. Entrepreneurship is still considered to be too risky. But this can be changed. The only ideal place where this default value of our thinking can be changed or reprogrammed into people’s minds especially of the next generation Africa should be the Schools right from Kindergarten to University. This requires a model of Education that not only teaches students what to think but how to think using the tools (subjects) they learn in schools and higher learning institutions.  Remember it is in schools where we are told to pay attention and stop any form of imagination and stick to the logic as it is being given. Anything outside that is considered being disobedient. Our next generation should graduate out of colleges with a strong option to create jobs for themselves and others….

To your success

LIFE LESSONS THAT MAKE MILLIONAIRES

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”

~Joshua J. Marine

There are 3 extremely important lessons that I’ve learned from successful people that I think should rekindle a new passion in me as I go through the rest of 2015 and they are truly and absolutely priceless…

And I’d love to share them with you today!

LIFE LESSON #1:

Success is never about your resources, it's about your resourcefulness.

Many people believe that they need to have a sizable chunk of money, the right connections or a college degree before they can even begin to THINK about making their dreams a reality…

But this couldn't be further from the truth.  Don’t let your lack of resources stop you from pursuing your dream, let the challenges help you to get resourceful. Decide to set your fears aside and instead open your minds to learning what you need to know to get to where you wanted to be. In my country Zambia and probably Africa as a whole I hear consistently the cry for more jobs. 

Graduates are being offloaded onto the Job market in numbers and the competition is really heating up for the few jobs available.  The strangest thing is that I only hear people saying I want to find a job and nobody says I want to create jobs. Why? Because I think we attribute the lack of capital or resources to inability to start businesses. There is one fundamental truth that we may be missing. Take a leaf from the Christian Bible story of Genesis 1: 1… God only left water, land, animals, air and forests. He never created not even a chair for Adam to sit on let alone the so called money that we are all crying so much about.

Think about it How did a chair get out of a tree? Or a car out of the stones. Take a good look at yourself, you are the biggest capital you will ever need. Believe me someone can drop $1 Million in your laps today and you can do nothing profitable with it because what you really need is not money but ‘YOU’ (the one reading) with a creative mindset.  Which leads us to…

LIFE LESSON #2:

Don't let "I don't know how" stop you from learning how.

There's a quote by a Vietnamese monk named Thich Nhat Hanh: 

"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."

What usually stops people from pursuing their goals and dreams is that stepping out and trying something new feels unfamiliar and scary. And so - even though they may not be totally happy with where they currently are in life - they subconsciously do what they can to stay there, because they find comfort in the predictability. Why are we so quick to say “what if it fails to take off” so what! At least you tried. Success is not the absence of failure, it’s the ability to rise from failure and soldier on. You don’t have to be a driver to own a transport company, period.

If you've ever felt this fear (or perhaps you're feeling it now), one of the best ways to overcome it so that you can spring into action is to surround yourself with the right support network, which leads me to…

LIFE LESSON #3:

Create a positive “Circle of Influence”.

Want to take your income, business, career or love life to the next level? You don't have to have all of the answers, or even a crystal clear plan…

But it IS downright crucial that you surround yourself with people who will mentor you and support you to stay in action and live your very best life. This could be called your "Circle of Influence”.

The people you choose to surround yourself with can either inspire you to create new exciting realities for yourself, or they can cripple your success by making you doubt who you are and what you're capable of. If you want to build a house, don't go and ask someone who has never owned a house if it is possible.

So be mindful of who you spend your time with! If you are hanging around nine (9) broke people, I can bet you are about to be the tenth one.

Just be careful of religion, being religious does not mean you are a believer in the promises of God  because religion has a tendency to embed fear in you and hence, make you judge everything around you as bad without thinking. You lose your ability to think and resign yourself to the comfort of a promissory heaven in which you will enjoy everything in peace. What about life on earth, how will you live it? 

Don’t replace thinking with prayer. That is simply laziness!!!!

To your success