I have a confession to make, several confessions in fact.
Sometimes I have been stupid enough to believe that work is not necessary to make money or achieve success.
A few years ago I joined a network marketing company that promised to create a downline of buyer customers for me without any work on my part. Of course, I would have to pay a monthly fee myself. I was happy to do this.
However, after more than a year, no downline had appeared and the company was not doing well. Nothing had happened as promised, although they seemed to be lovely people with good intentions.
Reluctantly, I terminated my membership. I was not the only one who lost all the money that I had spent on this company. I also paid for health products that ended up being poured through the plug hole.
In the last 5 years, I have wasted at least £ 30,000 ($ 50,000) on companies that promised they could easily double the money invested in them. One of the companies turned out to be fraudulent.
You could have figured this out if you had worked hard enough to check them out. They were already listed as suspicious by the financial authorities.
I later found out that over 800 people in the UK had been misled in the same way as me. I was not alone in my laziness and gullibility.
I also loaned £ 2,000 to a retired stockbroker in England who quickly lost the lot by investing in the websites of a Jerusalem-based internet entrepreneur. This man promised a lot but did not deliver.
The man who borrowed the money from me and several others did not feel an obligation to pay me back.
I did not continue with the matter because he was older and smoked a lot. Once again, he should have done the work necessary to see the Jerusalem businessman. So should the stockbroker and others who relied on the stockbroker’s judgment.
It’s easier to trust people without doing the work necessary to know the details. It’s easier to hear their big promises than to read the fine print.
How did they and I come to believe that we could make money without doing any work, not even the minimum amount of work necessary to verify the people we trusted with our money?
Many humans, including myself, are lazy by nature. We prefer to trust people rather than find out the facts for ourselves.
Being lazy, we like to believe that money can easily be made by following the advice of the experts. We don’t realize that it takes work to figure out who the experts are. We must also realize that experts can be wrong, especially when they are not personally involved.
How many expert doctors give an incorrect diagnosis. Once a doctor told me that I was making a fuss when I complained about pain in my foot. Later I found out that I had gangrene on my foot. I almost lost my leg and my life.
He was an expert but he was not the one who felt the pain.
How many financial experts lose money for us? It is not your money that is at risk.
We could do much better if we became experts. This could well save us time and money in the long run. We are the ones who are really concerned about our interests.
It has been said that one hour of work a day for six months can turn a person of average intelligence into an expert in most things. In other words, regular work or study can make us experts, or at least make us competent.
Many people give up before becoming competent because they cannot cope with incompetence in the early parts of their studies. But if you keep working and don’t give up, you will gradually become competent and eventually expert.
Sometimes, in our search for expertise, it can be helpful to travel to hear from an expert face-to-face. Traveling is work unless you like trains and airplanes and the lazy person will not make the effort to travel.
Surprisingly, I have made the effort to travel to various seminars to hear from motivational experts and entrepreneurs like Tony Robbins, Randy Gage, Stuart Goldsmith, Jonathan Mizel, Corey Rudl, Marlon Sanders, and Dave O’Connor.
I have also traveled to learn from various great martial artists such as Grandmaster Kwang Jo Choi, Danny Inosanto, and Gary Spiers.
But I haven’t done the follow-up work necessary to get the most out of the entrepreneurial seminars.
Once again, I am not alone in this. 95% of the seminar attendees do not follow up and do not apply what they learn in the seminars. They think that attending the seminar is enough. It is not.
I have boxes full of seminar material that I haven’t even opened, much less read. Once again, I am not alone in this. About 95% of people do the same as me.
A study has shown that only 14 out of every hundred people in a civilized western country buy books and of these 14, only 1 person reads beyond the first chapter!
Why is this? Why are people so reluctant to accept the fact that work is necessary if you want to be successful at something?
o The work is not glamorous. Being talented and smart is glamorous. However, even the talented have to work to make the most of their talents. But we don’t see them working behind the scenes. Rock stars eventually cease to be stars even though they love to appear on stage. They simply cannot bear the monotony of constant travel. I once played drums in a band. The actual performance was great, but bringing the drums and mounting it wasn’t.
o Speakers sometimes give the impression that making money is easy. It may be easy for them after years of experience, but it is not easy for beginners who soon run into what appear to be major obstacles and not all experts are willing to help after the seminar is over. They have their own lives and projects to carry on.
o Modern culture encourages belief in easy solutions. Do you want a meal? No problem. Five minutes in the microwave is enough. No need to peel potatoes and put joints in the oven. The hard work of cooking is still necessary to produce healthy and tasty food, but a quick alternative is easy to come by.
o People get used to quick fixes and shortcuts. The idea of constant and patient work becomes less fashionable.
o The teaching of abundance is partly to blame for people thinking that they can get rich without working. People are taught that if they visualize themselves in a mansion with their favorite cars, etc., these things will materialize.
o I believe that the thought of abundance helps to achieve dreams, but it can make people think that only a little work is needed. The universe will take care of it. But the universe usually works when you do. God helps those who help themselves.
Michael Angier teaches that you are a success the moment you act toward a worthy goal.
Action is the keyword here. Human beings can think and / or act. Some people only think and some people only act. We need both. Even the spiritual life demands real and realistic action. The Bible emphasizes the importance of what people think and believe, but it also teaches that ‘faith without works’ is dead.
Clint Eastwood as the armed preacher in the movie ‘Pale Rider’ offers to help break a rock for his host. You are invited to do something more “spiritual”. He comments:
“Spitting out the spirit is not worth it without a little exercise. There are few problems that cannot be solved with a little sweat and hard work.”
Work is one of those values that should be back in fashion. Work is necessary. Without work and action we will achieve nothing. Even when we are doing work that we enjoy, a bit of heavy lifting is necessary.
Right now, my “job” is to be an information writer and editor. I love some of this job, but I hate logging into websites. Logging in is a boring job. You must find your username and password. Sometimes I have forgotten both and then I have to wait for an email to tell me what my password is or I have to go into my password software to find out. This usually involves remembering or looking for another password!
Sometimes you find that the owner of the website you are trying to access has closed or turned the site into a membership site where you have to pay another monthly fee to access the things it contains. The owner may not even have proof that you joined their site and will then have to search for receipts, etc. for years.
You should also keep track of how many membership sites you belong to and which credit cards you used to pay your initial and recurring membership fees. If you decide to cancel your membership, you will have to spend time figuring out or rediscovering how you do it.
We just have to accept the fact that heavy and boring work is necessary in everything we do. Let’s not waste time regretting it. It is part of the reality of the universe just like brushing our teeth and visiting the dentist.
If we have this attitude of moving forward, we will achieve more and succeed much faster than we thought possible. Then we can sit down, at least for a while, and enjoy the sun or, in my case, the rain.
I don’t mean to say that all we have in the UK is rain. Right now, in my opinion, we are getting too much sun and humidity. I prefer the rain and the wind and the cold! It is much more motivating!
Of course, it is important to work on high priority tasks. We need to decide which tasks are most productive and then continue with them. If we don’t, we can spend hours working and not accomplishing much.
After hours of work on trivial tasks, we will feel little satisfaction. After hours of work on key tasks, we will begin to feel the excitement and excitement that accompany accomplishments.
Marketing is a key task that many business men and women find boring. They would rather spend time improving the products they sell. However, the excitement of making sales early can outweigh the boredom involved, and good marketing is often the natural expression of enthusiasm for a great product.
It is still necessary to work. It can be boring and frustrating, but it can also lead to the thrill and adventure of success.