Orphaned at 11 years old, in poverty, I have spent most of my 63 years hustling to get ahead, to survive. I have always worked a lot, constantly under financial pressure. The problem is that this lifestyle, getting by, spending whatever you can get, dodging bullets all the while, becomes a habit.
After many years of living this way, through one business cycle, one career change, one mishap after another, it takes real effort to change this pattern; indeed, for me, it took early retirement for fourteen months, to get a handle on it, and change.
But now that I am happily back to work, after a long rest and a great deal of introspection, I am doing things much differently: I am working, building, earning, relating with the people whom I serve, and work with, with a completely different mindset, because I WANT TO, and not because I must.
The difference is dramatic, and much more pleasurable.
Making the transition is easier said than done without resources, but I believe, as many successful people do, that it is more your mindset, than your poverty that holds you back from having the right attitude.
To survive poverty, and overcome it, you must be able to remove the obstacles from your mind, and focus on solutions, and I believe that this can be done earlier, before the poverty mindset becomes a self limiting habit. People who are not poor, cannot understand why this is such a challenge for some, but I do.
My point here is simply that it is a challenge that can be overcome, if you are healthy, determined, and you live long enough. This fact has been proven over and over again throughout the ages by many who had it worse than myself, and accomplished more.
I honestly believe that regardless of circumstance, a strong and positive work ethic almost always leads to stunning success; that whatever your resources, it is more important why you do what you must do anyway, than what it is.
You see, people who resign themselves to survive, and succeed, rather than resisting the inevitable, are truly happy, and often, along the way, they learn to love what they have chosen to do, not only because they must, but because they can.
I have found that the humblest, poorest, least talented people, who “whistle while they work” are the happiest of all.
“Whatever your hands find to do, do it with diligence!”
Embrace what you must do, and you just may find that you like it.
