Being poor makes no sense. That’s how clearly many people see it once they decide to take control of their lives. For them, being poor is simply the result of wasting your time working on things that don’t meet your financial expectations. And sometimes they don’t meet your career, professional or personal expectations either.
But you were probably raised to believe that life is about working, working and working so you can pay, pay and pay. Maybe, with a bit of luck, we’ll spend less and save more. And who knows, we might even get lucky.
Whether you’re a company or an individual, your mission is to earn more money, and ideally to find ways of earning more without hurting your quality of life in the long run, even though we’ll have to make big sacrifices in the short term.
If we have a job we don’t like and the money still doesn’t stretch far enough, something is very wrong in our lives.
See also: This is the best way to make a million, according to millionaires
1. If you’re unemployed, make the change happen
If you’re out of work, you’ll finally find a silver lining to being unemployed: you won’t have to make big changes. You won’t have to quit your job or tell your boss where to go so you can start your own business. You won’t have to take big risks either, because you’re already living with the biggest one. Remember that today it’s easier than ever to chase your dreams.
You just have to do something, and sometimes that only means taking steps forward. In your case you have nothing to lose, not even time, because if you have no income of any kind, your time is effectively worth nothing in financial terms. Create and build something, anything. There are countless ways to start making money, and some of them can turn into a very profitable business. It’s all about getting started.
2. Drop the victim mindset
Stop blaming your parents, your past, your bosses, your company, the economy, the crisis, the president or that black cat that crossed your path. As Hal Elrod put it, “The moment you accept responsibility for everything in your life is the moment you gain the power to change anything in your life.“
What’s the difference between ordinary income and extraordinary income? According to Elrod, people who earn an ordinary income haven’t taken full responsibility for their lives, and they often depend on others who have. People who earn an extraordinary income, on the other hand, know that they alone bear total and absolute responsibility for their lives, for what they’ll earn and for their destiny.
3. But we know what’s holding you back: your self-esteem
“Me… with poor parents and poor grandparents, and I still haven’t built anything. I have no money and no assets, only debts. I’m a complete disaster.”
Don’t let the money you have define your self-esteem. Whether your bank account is in the red or holds 10 million, your self-esteem depends on you, because what matters is not so much where we are as where we’re heading. And believe me, anyone who lacks self-confidence with an overdrawn account will lack it with 10 million euros too.
That’s the difference between billionaires and the children of billionaires. The latter often end up in therapy.
Being rich is a state of mind, because it takes a particular state of mind to become rich, while being poor is a mental condition, and until that mental condition changes, you won’t escape poverty. Poverty has more to do with how you think than with money.
See also: Jack Ma’s short advice for every decade of your life
4. Plan your way out of poverty
Whatever you choose, try to plan your new week doing only the things that bring you a financial return. Playing video games is fun, but it doesn’t make money. Watching TV for three hours a day (or more) is entertaining, but it brings no financial benefit at all.
A business owner knows that 20% of everything they do during the week accounts for 80% of their income. Now ask yourself: “Of everything I do during the day, what share of my income does it generate?”
Focus on doing what you should, not what you feel like doing. Over time, you’ll feel like doing what you should. Remember that if your activities aren’t making you money, you’re not being profitable, and in the long run short-term entertainment (games, TV, too much partying…) will leave you with headaches and regrets for not changing your situation. And you knew you had to change it.
5. Make the most of your time: make it worth money
Time is more valuable than money, because you can always make more money, but you can never get more time. We all have 24 hours a day, but not all of us have time that’s worth the same.
Your mission should be to double the value of your time: to double your income by finding other ways to create that value. And if at first your time isn’t creating value but you’re preparing yourself, that counts as learning, and so it’s a loan we’re taking out against our time.
6. Learn to say no
Say “no” to the many activities that bring in neither income nor learning. Say “no” to certain habits that have been with you all your life, provided you want to change the way you live. When you say “no” to lots of low-return activities, you force yourself to say “yes” to many others that will end up being productive.
People fear stress, but when you’re busy you’ll feel productive, and you’ll notice your stress levels go down. What’s more, as soon as you start getting rewarded for your effort, your self-esteem will grow and you’ll enter that cycle where you want to do more.
7. Stop making excuses
Whether we’re talking about sales or business, as the excuses go up, income goes down. When an unemployed person tells you they don’t have time, they’re crippling their own ability to do something and get ahead. Use the time you spend making excuses on something productive, because the only people who believe excuses are others who are hooked on making them too.
As we said at the start, take control of your life. No excuses. And if none of this works for you, we promise you can always go back to being as poor as you were before.
Further reading
- 18 business ideas you can start with almost no money
- The 15 traits that made them millionaires
- 24 things to do in your 20s and 30s that will improve your life in your 40s and 50s
Featured image: John Morgan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
