When I was around 17, I came across Brian Tracy and fell in love with his teaching.
I would go to the internet café at night because I couldn't afford the normal fee during the day.
I would spend hours in the night listening to Tracy and reading his quote.
One particular sentence stick with me from Tracy and that is; if you want to achieve
something different, you have to do something different.
If you want to achieve what you've never achieved, you have to do what you've never done before.
Growing up, I wrote the above sentence and pasted it in my room and each day when I saw
those words, I knew that I had to make sacrifices.
It's very simple; if your life is not what you want it to be right now, you have to be
willing to do something different and don't let me sugarcoat anything here; you won't
move from one easy world to another.
Doing something different means getting out of your comfort zone and this is never going
to be easy.
In today's article, I'm going to be sharing with you the 3 sacrifices you need to make
to escape poverty.
Just 17 years ago, I was just one of the young people whose life was a disaster.
I hated my life and wished I was never born because I was born into poverty, sickness,
and many other limitations.
So, how was I able to change my life, from being a guy who hated life to creating one
of the best life ever for myself? Books! Books!!Books!!!
My life changed the day I started reading books and I'll explain how it happens.
First, when I started reading books, I started reading the stories of ordinary people who
achieved extraordinary things.
These stories encouraged me and gave me hope that I could as well overcome every obstacle in my way and achieve greatness in my life.
I think this is very simple; if you know that some people have some disadvantages you think
you have yet, to go on to achieve greatness, you suddenly start to believe in yourself.
When you start to believe in yourself, you start to think big, and when you increase the
size of your dreams, you automatically increase what is possible with your life.
In my case, I started believing that I could become rich, even though I grew up in a poor
village.
I started believing that I could become a millionaire and this belief led me to something
very important; I started looking for how to achieve what I believe I could achieve
by reading books written by people who have made a lot of money before.
I started learning the mindset and the actions of these people and the more I modeled these people, the better my financial life.
Yes, it took me 8 long years before my financial life had a drastic change, without reading
books, I would never have made it.
One other thing you can do in addition to reading books is watch videos that tell
stories about successful people.
Yes, books are boring but so is every meaningful thing.
Fruits are boring and vegetables are boring but if you want to be healthy you'll eat more
of them.
Soda drinks are fun, sugar is sweet and fast foods are nice but if you like your health,
you'll run away from them.
The TV is fun and social media is interesting but if you want to escape poverty, you'll
spend more time with your books.
Sometimes ago, I got to know that Bill Gates reads one book every week.
I've also read about the fact that an average millionaire read one book every week.
If an average millionaire does something, it is probably a good thing to emulate so
I decided that I'm going to be reading one book every week.
This isn't easy and I'm not asking you to start reading a book per week.
But you have to make sacrifices to read books if you want to escape poverty.
Don't make excuses I told you earlier that sugar is sweet and you agree that hard drugs, fast foods, and most other harmful things are fun.
Another very sweet thing is excuses and that's why most people make it.
Listen, you can come up with a hundred reasons why you're where you are if you want and you can as well come up with a single reason why you need to be elsewhere.
The difference is in the way you use the powerful machine God gave you.
That machine is your brain.
If you program your brain to look for the reasons why you're poor, your reticular activating
the system will be busy looking for reasons and you'll start seeing how the economy, the government, and your parents make you poor.
Your brain will quickly show you how your lack of education, your health challenge,
your childhood or even the country in which you were born are the reasons why you're poor.
If however, you program your brain to look for why you must be rich, you'll start seeing
that even in a bad economy, some people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars in
legitimate businesses.
You'll start reading about people who went through similar difficulties like you and ended up successful.
You'll start seeing that you have more power over your life than you think and you'll start taking responsibility.
An excuse is the food of the fools and our world is filled with many of them because an excuse is sweet.
It's about pointing a finger. It's easy.
Everyone can do it but if you want to escape poverty, you'll not do it. Don't make an excuse.
Identify what you have to do to change your life and do it, no matter how difficult.
Trade a hundred failures for one success. I heard something very interesting from Mark Cuban a few days ago and it makes a lot of sense to me.
Cuban said, "It doesn't matter how many times you fail, remember you only have to succeed once."
This statement makes a lot of sense to me because whenever I looked back at my 8 years
of failures, I could see the meaning of this statement.
You see, my first 8 years in the business world was terrible. Everything I attempted failed and everyone thought I was stupid.
I was broke, rejected and frustrated but a day came when I had my first breakthrough.
From there, I had my second breakthrough and the third.
Today, it seems as if everything I touch becomes successful but that's the opposite of the
kind of life I had only a few years ago.
Here is the thing: It doesn't matter how many times you fail, remember you only have to succeed once and that once will quench all the pains of the failed years.
Why is it important you understand this?
Well, most people see failure as a bad thing and that's why they give up.
If you're in search of success, you should understand that the road that leads to success is called failure and failure is not final because a single success can make you forget the pains of ten years' of failures.
Make sacrifices to try things. Make sacrifices to get out of your comfort zone. Make sacrifices to do things that are risky and when you fail, be courageous to stand up and try again because it doesn't matter how many times you fail, all you need is a single success.
The most important point in this article is this; sacrifice.
If you want to escape poverty, you have to be disciplined enough to do things that are not comfortable. It's not comfortable to read but you have to do it.
It's not comfortable to take actions that may lead to failure but you have to do it.
Failure is painful, yet you have to endure failures and try again.
Remember how I started this article; You cannot get a new result by doing the old things and every new thing is uncomfortable.
So you have to be willing to make sacrifices if you want to escape poverty.
