How To Improve Yourself In The Next 3-5 Years

It is absolutely human of us to want instant success, instant gratification, instant happiness and instant wealth. But on the other hand, it becomes another torment just thinking about what we are facing right now in comparison to our expectation of instant goodness of life. We feel that this deal is too good to be true after trying some things that are out of our comfort zone and expecting some good reward out of it.

When building your 20 one bedroomed apartment, it will take you 6-9 months depending on the factors of architecture and financing for its completion and maybe on the 9^th month with favorability swinging your side, you may get tenants filling all your 20 units. But wait, for you to enjoy rent, you have a loan to pay and remember the bank granting you a loan gave you a grace-period which is interest accrued and you must pay as an additional cost to your loan. It may take you, let say 3-5 years to complete paying the loan but is worth it? Yes, it is.

As patient as a certain landlord paying his loan for 20 units apartments so we ought to be patient to build ourselves in which your rewards will be experienced in 3 to 5 years to come according to your life purpose.  Let’s glide into the 7 take home points that you can bank on.

1.   Go the extra mile- Don’t ask permission to give more and better service to your family, your employer, your friends, your neighbors or even your enemies, just do it. Get into the habit of doing extra and in a special way and mark excellence. We should expect excellent things so we must contribute to excellence by going the extra mile.

2.   See value in people- Treat people with value, which instinctively means value yourself, then you will be able to value others and the value will return to you. In short, be human to all regardless of race, tribe and creed.

3.   Invest in yourself – You can never be better than who you are today without reading, studying and learning. It doesn’t mean you need a Ph.D. in what you do but to identify what is your purpose, then with the curiosity of a child start to ask the right questions to what you can do to achieve your purpose. You can enroll courses related to your purpose, attending seminars or just buy books which is the most inexpensive form of education- Someone spends the time to write them in order to add value to our lives (an investment made to you if you only choose to read these books)

4.   See value in what you do- with a purpose in hand, you will understand what you are doing is important. It may be your job, your salary, your loans/debts and your assets. Your job may be employment or your own business. You value it so that you can concentrate on bringing the value of excellence and we know that excellent things are surely rewardable. Your salary for the employed is the main source to build up your own financial dynasty for your family. Your loans and debts play a big role in bringing your vision of success much faster than your savings can do within the reason of investment not spending.  Your assets are the fruits originating from your job, your salary, your savings, your investment loans and your sole efforts of going the extra mile.

5.   See value in failure- There are many things we understand outside the arena of failure but we get something new something profound in our failure if we choose to look at it that way. Failure is not in a real sense permanent but a temporary defeat. It has a time limit in that it has a beginning and an ending. Like Robert Kiyosaki puts it Being broke is temporary, but poverty is eternal. Poverty is looking at failure like it is permanent – we are not learning, we are hopeless, we are resentful of other people’s progress and we loathe ourselves. That is poverty – burying your one talent in the earth and blaming everybody for your fear of failure. Failure being temporary is a guide with a universal language showing you the wrong way so that you can look further to the right road to your purpose.

6.   Try something new – It’s insane to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results as well stated by Albert Einstein. Deliberately, go the extra mile to do something new but we must be clear about this. We must first learn about it, study it and practice it to achieve mastery and produce excellent quality from our service.

7.   Retire early – “I never resign until I die” (our African Politician mindset) should not be existing in our minds, our hearts or our purpose. Retire early means working hard with the purpose of being financially independent. It is earning from our inner resources without necessarily working because you have but because you want to.

8.   Bonus- Carry heavy- We should seek not to meet our daily needs, our monthly needs but our semi-annual needs and annual needs. We ought to focus on how to afford to live our lives unchanged at the face of unemployment or financial disaster that may occur in our lives. It is not about you and your family. Seek to be more productive, financially free, more generous, more supportive, more intelligent, more creative and more and more. Carry heavy means to build yourself to more dependable, reliable, loyal, positive and more faithful to meet your family, your friends, your neighbor and your enemies. Have something you in your pocket at all times- financial threshold in your wallet that can assist you or your fellow man’s needs.

Money attitude

Do you know what I saw today? Someone wrote in red on a two hundred shillings note ''pesa ni mapepo'' translation from Swahili - money is demonic. What do you make of that statement? Is money filled with evil spirits or is that person really dumb and thick in the head? Where, in any holy book, money is evil? For the love of money is the root of all evil, not money.

What comes from outside is not evil it is what comes from the inside that is evil. Mark 7: 15. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them." 'Money is evil' is an attitude that is a money repellent - it is a self destruct attitude. Lack of money is the root of all evil and money is the root of all philanthropy. Money is not to be worshiped but it can be used to serve the owner who is you, your family, your friends and the world.

The reason why you are crying Njanuary is that you have such an attitude towards money. You hate money, you dislike money and you are disgusted by money and that is why money seems to slip away from your grip. The trivial many have the least of confidence when it comes to money or worse off where does it all go? They have little faith or none faith in themselves. They are really pessimistic about themselves and money. These are very reasons why money has killed many people, money has robbed people their joy and money has destroyed their own lives. To rephrase this better, people would kill to have money, steal other people's money and destroy people's lives with the same money. 

They attract thoughts of poverty and poverty itself in their lives. They have sown the seed of poverty and reap the fruits of sweet poverty. They get money and very little of it. And when money comes in a lucky break, they find a way to lose it all.

"Lazy hands make for poverty but diligent hands bring wealth:" King Solomon.

From this bible quote, we get that we reap what we sow or in other words, if you don’t like getting tired, poverty will never tire to knock on your door or bash into your home and make it stay with its unpleasantries of life. However, on the upside challenge, you must work hard on yourself be it mental or physical work. Work must be done in all diligence on yourself and your job.

I have found in my experience that income does not far exceed personal development. Now sometimes income takes a lucky jump but sure enough, unless you grow out where it is, it will usually come back –Jim Rohn. Personal development means working on your emotional intelligence, your optimism, your habits, your goals, your skills and knowledge, and your spirituality, as you are a spirit. Personal development is a life- learning course that requires constant self-evaluation and constant improvement in all aspects of life and one being finances. Money is the servant and you are the master. It must, in many cases, work for you not against you.

With money, it calls for our hard work, honesty and wisdom. Your employment, even though underrated in all respects of other people's perceptions, holds the key to greatness as long as you look for it until you find it. Diligent hands produce quality and quantity which translates to reaping more or more rewards. Your employed work is not the company’s job but it is your own. You are self-employed not employed whether you are working for a company or yourself.

Inferiority complexities and pessimism are the money repellents we must fight against. Poverty magnets, we don't want.

Finally, money is a good gift from God that must be mastered. Money is a reward for the work we do and two, it is a means of sustaining our lives and others. Yet again, it is a wonder that the same money also carries temptation. And I will repeat again for the multitude. Nothing outside man that enter him can defile but it is what that comes out of the man that defiles him. Do you blame your salary for your lack? Is money the cause of all your financial insecurity? Or is it definitely these loans, these taxes, these rent denying us the right to enjoy this good life?

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