Watching an ant can teach you a lot about money and life in general. Before we look at the tips that this small creatures can teach us let us consider what scientists have documented about these creatures. Despite not having leaders they accomplish fairly complex tasks such as food storage, garbage collection, nest preparation, security and even going to war. As compared to their size, ants can build huge anthills and nests. When they are involved in a task they work tirelessly going to and fro without any distraction and they do it repeatedly. What does this have to do with money and in particular savings? Lets take it one lesson at a time.
1) Embrace Delayed Gratification. You will never see an ant carrying a crumb and then stopping by the roadside to take a bite of the crumb or try to eat it all. They have a purpose for that crumb and they are going to carry it until they get to their destination. In other words ants have embraced the concept of delayed gratification. They have a plan with their crumb and they are not going to start consuming it midway. Many of us have become slaves to instant gratification. Our lives are a mess and we are in horrible debt because of the ability to not wait and achieve the bigger picture because we have convinced ourselves that we must have that item today. Stop recklessly eating into your crumb if you want it to ever be more than just a crumb. If you cannot put away Kes 5,000 today it will never become Kes 1 mn and you will not create wealth. When an ant finds a crumb it picks it up and starts the journey. It does not wait around hoping a bigger crumb will fall off a table. Lesson to us is also work with what you have instead of procrastinating on what you don’t. I cannot count the number of people I meet who are waiting for the magical number of Kes 100,000 or Kes 500,000 or Kes 1 mn to start. They also have an unspecified plan to get this money. You will not get anywhere by waiting. The effect of putting the small amounts away regularly adds up. Because they work with the principle of delayed gratification, ants also never go hungry in winter. In the summer they stock up on food that can carry them through the cold season. Do you have enough money for a cold season? How long would you survive for on your current lifestyle if you lost your income today? Not putting money aside for a rainy day is simply reckless behavior.
2) You are the CEO of your money. Despite not having a general, ants do their work diligently. You will not find ants wandering around aimlessly or just taking a nap on top of the anthill. Wealth Creation assumes you are going to be responsible enough to be the CEO. At work you may have conditioned yourself to be reliant on someone else giving you instructions but you will not get away with it when trying to create your own wealth. Your employer is not going to create wealth for you. As I’ve said many times before in this column, even that pension fund is not going to fund your retirement. To create wealth you have take responsibility for your decisions, the timing of your actions and the result. It is not the responsibility of your employer, client, spouse, and children etc. to achieve your goals for you. Many people like to say statements such as “The stockbroker lost my money”. That is incorrect and you are trying to pass off your CEO responsibility to someone else. You are the one who did not take time to understand what you were buying into so it is your fault. When you take responsibility it empowers you because you then know what to correct next time. Don’t wait for someone or something (in terms of a circumstance such as job loss) to force you to start dealing with your money.
3) Working for survival only keeps you surviving. An ant carries a load three times it size and builds anthills much bigger than itself. If your whole life is spent focusing on getting by, all you will do is get by. To stop just surviving something has to change in your actions (not anybody else). People who have accomplished great things never knew how they were going to happen, they just had a vision and worked towards that one day at a time. Setting a goal you know you can achieve is actually beneath your potential as a human being. Yes you will not know how it is going to happen but like the crumb, start with the small step you can take today. It could just be that Kes 5,000 saving or it could even be research on a business idea you have. Keep the vision in mind and start with actions that align to that vision even if you have no idea how it will add up to what you want. As you stay focused your mind will open up to new ideas and you will see things you would not even have noticed had you not started with the small steps.
Go to the ant, consider her ways and be wise. Without any chief, officer or ruler she prepares her food in the summer and gathers her sustenance in the harvest. Proverbs 6:6-8.
Waceke Nduati
Waceke runs a program on personal financial management. Find her at waceke@centonomy.com|
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with a delayed gratification one is able to have a vision. A plan which can be transmuted eventually to the physical equivalent through persistence
Borrowing examples from the surrounding, Its funny and yet on point. Thank you Waceke