馃摑 How has your perspective on life changed over time?
While I was still much younger, I've always admired people who worked in offices. I saw them as people who have made it in life regardless of the nature of work they are doing, so long as they are corporately dressed on a seat in front of a desk. They seemed like the real deal to me and I aspired to be in that same position one day.
I had the mindset that one has to always work for someone to earn a means of survival. I remember finishing off my secondary school and all I could desire at that time when I was free as at that moment was any means I could be seeing money at the end of the month. All that was on my mind was how to acquire a job, and not knowledge.
The concept of learning before earning was not something that was registered in my head at that time. So when I see people getting under other people to learn something I saw it as a waste of time and money especially when they paid for it. I remember a friend of mine as that time that was learning a mechanic work. I was shocked when he told me that after all the time he spends on the engine of the car and even under the car and always ends up dirty he wasn't paid, instead he had to be the one to pay.
But currently, that friend of mine owns his own mechanic shop with a boy under him as well and he's making hundreds of what he paid his boss as at that time to learn the job. But to me, that time, I had this believe that being under someone without being paid is an unfair way to use someone. But as I began to get older, my point of view on a lot of things began to change. For one, I realized that the era we are in right now is the information era, and information is expensive. That's why we need to pay school fees in order to acquire knowledge that should be useful to our lives.
As my sense of reasoning began to broaden, I began to understand that we are meant to be more of employers than employees. This should be the end result that schools are supposed produce through us but a large percentage, especially in this side of the world, don't succeed in doing this. I remember reading Robert Koyasaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad and coming across this line that stuck in my head ever since, "Schools produce great employees instead of employers."
I began to see that salary work cannot provide you the satisfaction that you need. I began to see that working for someone is not a tangible dream instead it is a way of helping other people achieve their own dreams while you seat and wait till the end of the month to you receive an unfair share of your time spent on that month.
It began to come to me as an epiphany that no successful person ever made it as a salary earner. As I began to work under people, I began to see salary jobs as a means of actually caging people. This is not in a bid to demean people who earn by salary, but the way I see it, with the great potentials that are instilled in us, I think our reward should be far above a fixed amount we receive at the end of the month termed as "salary."
If a job you do is not in line with your purpose on earth and it doesn't give you time to invest in yourself then it should be considered as a harmless-looking threat to fulfilling destiny. I used to think securing a job put you on a safe spot; in the sense that at the end of the month you are certain of getting a certain amount to settle your needs. So if you are thinking of borrowing some money, you know how much to borrow and certain of settling the debt at the end of the month.
But doing a business or setting up something for yourself is kind of risky because you're uncertain of how much you can realize at the end of the month. So borrowing money from someone is too much of a risk to take. Unknown to me that anything good that is sought after comes by taking risks. It reminds me of a line in Robert Koyaski's book; Rich Dad Poor Dad, that says:
There is always risk, so learn to manage risk instead of avoiding it.
Moreover, I began realize that people who live in debts more are those who live off salary. Gradually, my point of view towards salary earning began to change and how I had envisioned myself being in that position began to die off. Given my experiences at the few places I had worked at, it wasn't exactly what I had thought it to be. So instead of thinking "No. 1 staff", I began to think "No. 1 entrepreneur!"
