I grew up in an environment of poverty.
The people that surrounded me, when I was young, were wise about life, but they were not educated on how to create a strong and solid financial foundation.
‘You’re never going to make big money’, ‘Money is the root of all evil’, ‘Money is nothing but trouble’, ‘Be thankful for what you have’, were the messages I heard all the time.
Something about these messages somehow felt uncomfortable to me.
As I got older, I knew there had to be something more to my life than getting up in the morning, going to work, punching a clock and going home at the end of the day, only to wake up the next day to do it all over again, day after day.
When I talked to my friends about what I was thinking, they would say things to me like, ‘stop chasing stupid dreams’, ‘be happy you have a job’ and ‘being rich is not meant for people like ‘us’ they would say.
I knew my friends meant well, but I refused to listen.
Then, one day, I met the cook at the restaurant where I was working as a busboy, and he exposed me to a new way of thinking.
Without realizing it at the time, I was learning.
Wayne was his name, and he was not intentionally teaching me anything.
I just listened to what he had to say, to me and to others, and the way he talked and the way he carried himself, well, this was an ‘education’ to me.
Wayne would say things like, ‘I don’t work hard for my money, I make my money work hard for me’, and ‘It’s not how much money you make, but what you do with the money you make’.
Something somewhere inside of me said, You gotta make friends with this guy.
At the time, Wayne was the smartest guy I knew and every time we talked he would expose me to a new idea.
Again, totally unintentional, I just listened to what he had to say.
My friends that I grew up with never talked about saving money, because there was never any money left over to save and forget about any discussion on investing money.
Most people I knew growing up worked very hard to earn a paycheck and it was a struggle to make ends meet for most.
Some people that I knew relied on food stamps or welfare and believed money was only for the greedy.
I could not wait to get back to my job at the restaurant where I could hear more about what Wayne had to say.
I was only seventeen and Wayne was closer to thirty.
He would tell me stories about the poor neighborhood where he grew up as a kid, about the drunks in the streets and the drug dealers at every corner.
(I definitely could relate)
He told me how he had to make a conscience effort to change his thinking and how he forced himself to believe that he would make it out of that cold and dark place.
He would get pumped up and motivated to tap into the power inside him and imagine and believe that he would achieve success and prosperity.
As a kid, he remembered someone telling him, if you believe – then you will achieve.
I listened intently as he spoke with such finesse, which gave power to his words, and as a consequence, I began to change my way of thinking and I started to believe that I too could achieve a high level of wealth and success.
At seventeen, I did not know what to do with all this information, but I knew I had to do something.
My message here is this… if you have a desire to achieve wealth, success and prosperity, it will be necessary that you purposely harness your thoughts and begin to believe that you will achieve.
Begin to LEARN the skills that attract wealth, develop a PLAN to earn wealth, and execute a STRATEGY to grow wealth.
Regardless of your status in your life at this moment, creating wealth is a choice, and it begins with how you THINK and what you BELIEVE.
