You are Taught to be Poor

You are taught to be poor. “How is that possible, Ilias?”, you may ask. “I didn’t sign up for a course like this at school”.

The thing is, though, that our current system is structured in a messed up way that teaches people to stay poor.

It is structured in a way that poses huge obstacles to young people that wish to achieve financial success and freedom.

As I have mentioned multiple times in the past, the most important element for achieving financial success is your mindset.

Your mindset is manifested in every decision that you take in your daily life, small or big.

Whether your will save your paycheck or blow it for conspicuous consumption reasons, is dictated by your mindset.

Whether you are going to spend your weekend educating yourself or you are going to get wasted at the local bar, is a decision unconsciously based on your mindset.

Unfortunately, your mindset is adversely impacted by being exposed to various negative sources.

Let me elaborate on this by providing some specific examples.

Your authority figures and your peers are clueless

Most probably, your parents, teachers and peers have no idea how to build long-lasting wealth.

The vast majority of people belongs to the rapidly fading “middle class” or, even worse, the lower socio-economic levels.

These people, for better or for worse, never managed to rise at a higher level, financially wise.

By being exposed to them, you pick up mannerisms, thought processes and ideas, that are aligned towards that direction. We are social animals, we can’t avoid it.

Not only that, they often actively steer you towards the wrong direction.

For example, the most common recommendation by these people is for you to get a “safe” job instead of “taking the risk” of venturing out by launching your own business.

Lack of proper education

On top of the aforementioned bad influences, the schooling system does an embarrassingly atrocious job when it comes to financial education.

Children might learn a ton of stuff that will never use later in life, but no school teaches about Income/Expenses, Net Worth, Saving/Investing etc.

As the funny quote goes, “Another day that I did not use the Pythagorean theorem”!

Now, I am not arguing against Math, of course. Math is the language of the universe, period.

The thing is though that schools are, by design, created in a way that produces obedient non-thinkers.

That includes avoiding teaching valuable classes that would help a person reach financial freedom, or at least, competently manage his personal finances instead of getting trapped to the “rat race”.

Distortion by media

Another major pillar of keeping people on the “poor zone” and limiting their potential is mass media.

Look. The media is a business. Its business model is to sell advertising.

Once you realize this, everything will make sense.

You will understand that they are forced to:

1. Promote specific financial paradigms because their advertisers’ interests lie towards those.
2. Talk about the most ridiculous, exaggerated ways about money because that is what attracts eyeballs.

It is sad to see that mass media has become toxic these days. You are much better served by smaller, niche publications backed by people that have walked the walk.

Lack of examples of successful and rich people in your life (out of reality)

Now, this is perhaps the biggest problem of all for you.

I cannot overstate the importance of this, so pay attention.

At this moment, I would bet that your life lacks a solid, tangible example of a person that has achieved great financial success.

Now, I don’t mean someone that won the lottery or got a massive inheritance.

I mean someone that managed to do it the old-fashioned way of struggling for years and finally making it to the top.

As I have written in the past, seeing is believing.

There are four levels of understanding:

1. You have no clue about something
2. You read or hear somewhere about it
3. You see/meet an actual person that is doing it
4. You do it yourself

Number three is where the magic happens.

Unless you see it with “your own eyes”, it is basically out of your reality.

Your mind assumes that it is not possible and, by default, you don’t engage in thinking about how you could ever do something similar.

That is why you need to actively search out for people in your local community (or as a backup plan over the internet) that are successful.

You need to study their stories, interact with them, offer them some form of value in return, keep in touch with them and get inspired by them.

Reading biographies and autobiographies is also recommended, but their impact is quite smaller.

Countermeasures

So, how can you get out of this mess?

The only way out is through self-education. You need to read, read and read some more.

You need to understand how the world works, and how money works.

My blog here is a good start, but you really need to delve into books.

The other part is, as I said, actually meeting with successful people and “imitating” them.

Reversing the negative lesson of “staying poor” is hard, but it can be done with effort and determination.

Start now! Go!