When I was younger, it was always inspiring to read the success story of how people went from having nothing to owning everything. I liked watching marketing pitches that were well scripted, the jingles on TV that sold some particular products with well-crafted stories, it was easier to live in the mirage that life wasn't so hard.
But I was wrong, I have come to believe that transitioning from one stage of life to another teaches us something different about money, the mind is flexible to cultivate money thoughts and ideologies when it hasn't experienced any life-changing financial occurrences.
Our Experiences Are Bendable
When people haven't experienced some mind-bending, or heart-wrenching phenomenon about money, it's easier to tailor their beliefs to what they know, what they've seen online, what they were taught in school, and the opinion they've formed through these theoretical experiences but when they begin to experience life, they'll start to adjust some of these rigid ideologies to create a sort of balance in what they know and they're learning daily.
For example, I know people whose billion-dollar dreams were to get the best grades in school because it automatically qualifies them to get the best job in the country. High-paying jobs, official cars, sweet holidays in the Bahamas, and fat compensations.
It's not all fallacy
.....and isn't to say jobs like this aren't available in Nigeria, but the people who have it keep it in their circle, hoarding it and playing dirty in other to prevent the general public from getting the same opportunity they're enjoying. However, because these people have not studied the terrains they're in, it keeps their goals closer to wishful thinking rather than to reality.
They feel like their plan A is infallible, hence they do not need a plan B. But what I use to tell people is that since no one has the power to see the future, there's still that slight possibility that even foolproof plans might fail.
This is a lesson you'll learn when you've experienced failure and disappointments
even though your plans and arrangements were 100% solid. Now, these people despite their grades found out that it (their grades) couldn't sell them enough, they've realized they ought to build better connections, and they realized they didn't study the system they were in.
They were playing in a field of their thinking that success on paper translates to success in reality. But when they went through the working experience of staying under a nagging boss, a demanding job, they realized that they should have worked to build a secondary life, because while their plans were good, they forget that it might become redundant with time.
Another example is that it's easier for a five-year-old to say they want to be an astronaut. The reason is that they adore being an astronaut, they've virtually lived the dreams in their mind, keying into the success stories without putting the difficulties into perspective.
When they get to let's say 15 years, they might say they want to go into real estate, now the difference in the sudden change is the time, they've attempted the realization of their dreams and found out that they might not even have the Mental fortitude to bring that dream into fruition, dreams are easier to accomplish when they're written on paper because it's hard to envisage the possibilities of failures, the challenges of obstacles and the reality of unforeseen circumstances.
It's easy to build castles from wishful thinking.
One ultimate thing I tell people is that it's easier to make money when they have money and it's harder for them to do so when they don't have. This isn't to say sudden rag-to-riches stories are not true.
Sometimes some of these stories are engineered and stimulated by society to keep people tethered to the idea that it's easy to make money. Sometimes, people forget who they are while trying to build or be successful in life. Some people think they'll suddenly hit the jackpot and become wealthy overnight
Gambling schemes sell these ideologies
we're in a generation where people are hardly conscious of improving themselves gradually, they're keyed into the well-edited videos and ads made by Fintech companies, forgetting that we now live in a world where the people who are already wealthy builds businesses that are meant to take away from people who have very little.
One thing I have come to understand is that while everyone is competing, for the mega accomplishment, there are people who are playing by different and favorable rules. Not everyone is playing by the same rule, hence our timing, experience, and accomplishment will be different, there's nothing as "easy money" in life, irrespective of how our minds might trick us to believe otherwise.
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