Why Wealth is a Choice

I wrote an article about two months ago about why I think everybody can be rich. I ended it by saying everybody can be wealthy but we will not all choose the path to wealth.  Today I want to delve in a bit deeper into the choices. Why would you choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream?  Or choose to like the colour blue instead of purple or vice versa? Why choose your current washing detergent over a different brand?  Why do you choose the particular milk or bread you buy?  If you were to eat a fruit right now would it be a mango or a pineapple? For many of us, none of the answers to these questions have logical responses. Most people have not looked up the health benefits of various fruit before they make that choice.  Most of us do not research the manufacturing processes of the detergent we are buying. You just maybe like chocolate ice cream more or wanted to eat that on that particular day. I would like to suggest if we can make everyday choices like this without overthinking them, we should not rationalise the choice to create wealth.  There are so many logical reasons that we give ourselves as to why we can’t make it. I don’t have enough money, I don’t have the right qualifications or education, don’t know the right people, didn’t grow up in a certain way, I have too many responsibilities, I am too young or too old, I am not the right gender, I don’t have the right job, expenses are too high etc. How about we treat wealth just like the choices above and leave the reasoning out of it.  What if wealth is simply just a choice and is not all about the logical reasons that we hang on to. Here are a few simple everyday choices that can be made.

1. Choose to pay yourself. I don’t mean go buy something for yourself.  You may enjoy the item but you will have paid someone else for it.  Track your spending just for one week and see who you are paying.  You may pay for transport or fuel, buy a newspaper, buy some lunch, do some groceries, tip somebody, meet someone for a drink, do your hair, give someone money etc.  In all these everyday choices you are making, money is going to somebody else. We usually do the same thing day in day out for fifty two weeks and then wonder why we did not achieve anything that year. Everybody else apart from you got a bit more money in their pocket because of the choices you were making.  You can choose to be part of your own gravy train.  Just make some choices to ensure that a portion of the money you earn or have in your hands also goes to you. You can choose to carry lunch instead of buying lunch.  The money you would have bought lunch with can go towards savings or investments, i.e. money that will work for you.  You can choose to shop more efficiently.  You can choose to use your phone more economically. If you can shave of one hundred bob every day from your spending, it will end up being Kshs 36, 500 a year.  Just a choice.
2. You can choose to Know and Act rather than blame. My brother gave a sermon in Church last weekend. No, my brother is not a pastor by profession and this was the first time he has ever done this. His decision to put himself forward to do a sermon was motivated by the fact that people in his church were complaining about the quality of the sermons.  Rather than add his voice to the complaints, he decided to play a part in the solution and came up with a sermon, which was very well received. Are you choosing to be part and voice of the problem or the solution?  The fact that expenses will go up is not a surprise so let’s not complain. What is your solution? School fees are not a surprise unless your children disappeared into thin air.  To pay school fees on time, what do you have to do? To accommodate increases in expenditure what do you have to do?   To go on holiday, what do you have to do?  To get a job what do you have to do? What are you doing to do to solve some of the problems in your home, workplace, neighbourhood, and society?  Nobody owes you anything so blaming other people – family, employer, spouse, and politicians is not going to resolve anything. Nobody cares about your life and ambitions more than you so what are you going to do about it?
3. Choose to put yourself in a different frame of mind. Our environment greatly influences our thinking. If lack is all you think about, lack is what you will see and lack is what you will get. So choose to think about something different and expose yourself to the environment that will allow you to think differently. I know someone who used to drive matatus. He got a job as a driver in a particular company. Because of his attitude and how he would go out of his way to understand the business and its clients, he was moved to office administrative functions. We sponsored him into our program and he started farming pigs shortly after. He struck up conversations with people who worked in one of the other organisations (in the same office building) that happened to be involved in capacity building for farmers. He is currently on a farming tour in Germany that is fully sponsored. My guess is that in a couple of years he will be wealthier than many people who might have had so called advantages over him. Choose to continuously expose yourself to something different. Take a course, have a different conversation, read something.  If your current social circle is not providing the kind of stimuli you need to create wealth, choose to spend some time with other people. Wealth is a Choice.