Do You Need Money?

So, you need money right? You need money fast?

I get it. Really. I know what it’s like to need $10 for my families next meal, $500 for a hospital bill or thousands for an investment. No matter the amount, the feeling is the same, whether you’re Phillip Chiyangwa needing money for a new monster Mansion, or a street kid needing money for a Bakers Inn pork pie.

Nothing wrong with needing something, but if you ever get into the HABIT of feeling needy… That’s where your real problems begin. Problems that are much worse than not having money on you, at the moment.

Like all mental habits, ‘neediness’ is subconscious. It’s invisible to you – yet it dictates your beliefs, behavior and your values. It determines the emotions you experience and the perceptions you have. When you constantly see yourself as being in need;

1)      You develop a language and vocabulary to match your lack mentality. You start to use words like “Zvakapressa”, “I’m broke”. “It’s too expensive”, “I can’t”. The people who hear you say these things start to see you in this light, and respond accordingly (it’s called personal branding).

2)      You start to visualize lack in the future…you expect to be broke this weekend, and end of the month – so you fear in advance. Many people, as soon as they pay rent, commence immediately to fear how they’re going to pay next months.  When you leave home in the morning, subconsciously expecting to come home without cash, you get what you expect. It’s impossible to achieve big, whilst visualizing small – but that’s what needy people try to do.

3)      You become selfish. Self centric. You can’t focus on anything except your own needs. Which is a problem, because money is made by solving OTHER people’s problems – not your own. Generosity is one of the most powerful signals of a prosperous individual. Selfishness is a common trait of the poor. Greed is just another variation.

4)      You become a victim. You blame Robert Mugabe for being broke and visionless. You blame the ‘evil white man’ your failure in life. You blame your boss for not paying you more. You blame the landlord for being too expensive. Once you become a victim in your mind, you are guaranteed to be victimized. The great thing about being a victim is that you’ll always have someone else to blame…and you’ll never need to worry about taking responsibility for your own life, or finances.

5)      You become VERY attractive to losers. They invite you to pity parties. They want to talk ‘poverty politics’ with you. That’s when people gather for blaming sessions on how (PM) Morgan Tsvangirai, President Mugabe, Gordon Brown & Tony Blair have ruined their lives. In these meetings they brainstorm about how to make just enough to survive. Big talk is unrealistic and strongly discouraged. Positive attitudes are considered arrogant a strictly forbidden.

6)      You become lazy. Some of the hardest working people are lazy. Laziness is not about the ‘amount’ of work you do. It’s about the amount of resistance you can push up against, and win – everyday.  Some people who are physically strong are mentally lazy. They’d rather lift heavy boxes all day long than do the work of reading a good book. Some can read a 300 page romance novel but can’t read a 50 book that teaches them something. Laziness can mean doing lots of easy work, but not the hard work that really counts. It could be that sitting in the office and being told what to do by someone else is a lot easier than being the one to make hard decisions. It takes more work to develop your own vision, than to simply blindly follow someone else’s. It takes more work to develop a new skill than to working hard in a low skill, low reward situation.

It doesn’t end there – but here’s the point

Don’t let a temporal financial need (or even a series of them), create a more permanent mental problem for you.

If you do, you’ll miss out on all the money making opportunities around you. No one will trust to direct opportunity your way (even close friends). Even on the rare occasion that they do, you won’t be able to see it. Even the few that you can see, you’ll talk yourself out of them. And if there are actually any left after all that – you may be too entrenched in the habit of being needy to make it happen.

Ever wondered why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? It’s because of the different mental games they play.

True – circumstances can affect us…but they don’t dictate our lives. Africa’s 2 biggest problems are the poverty mentality of it’s own leaders and the poverty mentality of the people. Not the West. Not droughts. Not even colonialism. These things simply created negative circumstances. Circumstance don’t have create your mentality.

Same goes for Zimbabwe. We have enough physical wealth to roll in money, the problem is we’d much rather be lazy, blame others and think selfishly, whilst expecting to end poverty. Works the same for nations as it does for individuals.

And you? Do you have a temporary need, or is that just a reflection of the real problem…your needy mindset?