You are what you beleive

This is my first official post, and kind of represents my personal experience with money, whether it be current or previous. So, I'm not writing this from a "journalist or writer's" point of view with little abstracts collected from other people just to be more prolific and more pleasing to the ear. But I'm writing this as a fellow blogger, just expressing my views.

From my profile, I indicated briefly my personal background. I did indicate that I'm not from a middle class family, to say the least. I think categorising us as poor could have been a fitting word to the conditions which I grew in. To cut a long story short, there were days where we had to begg from neighbours for food. Money was so scarce that it was only limited to adults, and as a child you depended on what you were given as and when your parents had surplus cash.

I could go on with my life story, which is very touching to others, but because it is so a part of me which has even passed, it is simple for me to talk about it as if I was talking about someone else, without being any emotional or sensitive to the things that happened. My point here is that I have experienced life at its worst "financially" that is, and are now experiecing life full of hope and possibilities of financial freedom. And from these perceptions and realities which are a world apart, there are principles or if I may say behaviour patterns, similarities and beleives about money which will find in another group and not in the other.

They say what you do daily determines who you are, and if you are to change who you are, you will have to introspect yourself and figure what is it that you do everyday that you need to change to become a better person. Now much of what is done by these groups of people, lets call them the "have's and have not's" is inherent from the environment which they grew in, and therefore means that much of their behaviour patterns is not exactly done conciously. Most of them who are well off or worse off finacially, are not even aware that their beleive systems about money is a major factor into their state of financial success or failure.

You, got me right! Much of our social ills cannot only be limited to the culprits doing them but universal practices, beleives, behaviours, and paradigms are partially responsible for the misbehaviours. A perfect, relevant and recent example is the Western World's beleive in credit. The World Bank solves financial problems of world economies by borrowing money to them on exhobitant interest rates, getting them even more indepted and economically enslaving even more generations to come. And the Global crunch which eminated from loose credit regulations in the United States where credit was afforded freely and easily to anyone without any affordability checks, and this behaviour continued for decades until the financial system collapsed. This was just the universe responding back to such behaviour rooted to greediness, and self righteousness.

Now micro sizing this view, personal behaviours are much more influenced by examples mentioned above. A person born in a community cultured by giving, sharing and saving will more likely grow up to be a giving, sharing and saving adult, if ofcourse there is anything to give and save. We all know that there are millions of families living on hand to mouth in Africa, India and other countries, living under the breadline.

In closure, our beleives about money determine whether we are going to be successful or not in our quest to financial freedom. So, let us be concious about what our external environment is feeding us. And let us equip ourselves by reading and attending personal improvement workshops and when it gets really tough, let us not run to the bank for a loan but let us draw from within and consider things like downgrading our lifestyles, selling some of our luxurious goods and keep only the basics.

"If you buy what you don't need, you will end up selling what you need"

Siyabonga!