Let’s continue learning about how certain barriers can hold us back from breaking through towards the goals we have in mind, and today we will be focusing on laziness.
Laziness
Ironically, I am in a space where I am not really keen on writing. I am a little tired and I could quite comfortably just fall asleep on this train instead of thinking and writing. It will be a good test to see if this lesson is worthwhile, because if it can help me then I know it will be able to help you. So let’s start off by outlining what laziness is:
“the quality of being unwilling to work or use energy; idleness.”
Well the initial good news I see here is that laziness is a quality, meaning it is something we can develop or weaken if we want to. Obviously in this case we would want to avoid this quality, or another way to perceive it is to develop a quality of being willing instead of unwilling. It’s also worth noting that it’s not about simply ‘not working’ but rather the level of our drive towards doing anything. We could be unwilling to use energy in university or even daily things like dishes. It’s the same with idleness, we could be working very hard at work, yet become very idle in our church life for example. The list goes on.
In Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert says that busy people can be the laziest, and I think he is getting at this exact same point. These people are technically working hard at their job, but there are other important areas that they are lazy in. So rather than using the excuse of “I worked very hard in *insert any area of life*” to neglect another area, we need to build a willingness to do our best in every single portion of our life. In terms of money, this could be us working very hard at our jobs to earn as much as we can, yet still being lazy in the way we manage the money once we receive it. So using this lesson, we now realise that working hard is good but we need to develop a willingness to continually do better with the money management side.
So what do we do to overcome this lack of willingness? Robert’s cure for laziness is greed, which I find very interesting. From my perspective greed is still a bad driver, because to me it represents a desire for more than you need and focuses only on yourself. If I was to visualise it, greed to me looks like you have a hole inside of you that needs to be filled so you try and take and take. From this perspective, greed is not for me. Yes I may experience it every now and again, but it’s not something that I happily accept in my life. Why is this? Well to put it straight, I believe that I am completely satisfied and fulfilled because God told me so (Psalm 23:1, Phil 4:19, Matt 6:33, Matt 7:6, Romans 8:32, etc!). Does this mean I am complacent and lazy? Well no, because the reality is that God calls us to live epic lives. I genuinely believe that He has called me to do some epic stuff with money – so yes I do want to be a millionaire, to live off passive income, but the drive is a lot deeper.
I am getting slightly off track! My main thought was that Robert is trying to use determination from greed as an answer for correcting laziness, whereas I personally find determination without greed. Perhaps the key concept here is to use determination/drive/enthusiasm to supply the willingness in whatever you are doing, and then you will find that you are no longer lazy in that area.
My favourite tool that I have picked up from this section in the book is the mental switch from ‘I can’t afford it’ to ‘how can I afford it?’. Once again, this is all about a switch in mindset from shutting our brains down to opening them up for innovative thinking. I think most of us have had the thought ‘I can’t afford it’ at some point in time and it’s particularly relatable to me at the moment as a university student. It’s easy to stop thinking once something feels out of reach, and sometimes that is a good thing when it prevents us from wasting time. But if that thing we’re trying to get is very important and good for us then we should be doing our best to obtain it. Switching our mindset towards ‘how can I afford it?’ will bring us a step closer to obtaining it because it opens up more avenues to make it possible.
Bringing this back into the world of money, let’s say that I want to get a car so that I can get more jobs on student job search, but I was $1,000 short. I will get the initial thought of ‘I can’t afford it’ and if I chose to stop there then I won’t buy the car until I finally come across $1000 which will take a lot longer as I do small jobs for my neighbours. On the other hand, if I think about ‘how can I afford that car?’, instantly my mind is a lot more active and creative. I could borrow $1000 from a family member with the set up that I pay them back within 5 weeks. Then with that car, I can get all these jobs I couldn’t get before, work more, pay $200 back for the car each week, and then after 5 weeks I will have a car, a job, and be able to claim all the money I earn from there onwards. The reality at the 5 week mark will shift tremendously and it would all have started from a shift in my initial mindset.
Finally, how am I personally going to apply this lesson to my life? Well to start with I have reminded myself of the drive behind why I do what I do which I ranted on earlier. But also, I will start thinking differently when it comes to things I can’t afford. It can be the simplest things like ‘I can’t afford food for lunch”, which I will now respond with “how can I make sure I have enough money for food?’. It just shows that anyone in any phase of life can apply this lesson, so I hope you can be encouraged and equipped to overcome laziness, just as I have been.
Key points:
- We can work hard and be lazy at the same time.
I can’t afford itHow can I afford it?
