By Ernesto O. Cecilia, FPM, PMAP President, 1999
“Dear God, you make many poor people. It’s not a shame to be poor, but it’s not a great honor either,” lamented Tevye in the movie “Fiddler on the Roof.”
God usually gets blamed for people’s shortcomings and misgivings. But God seems to have an across-the-board mentality. As paragon of justice and fairness, God makes it rain and shine on both the good and the bad. He showers blessings to both good and bad people. But, he must have been biased in favor of the Philippines, for he showered our country with great natural resources. However, so that other countries with barren or snow-filled lands won’t have to cry foul, he put in politicians in our land as well – in fact lots of them.
Perhaps, God does not make people poor. People make people rich or poor. In capitalist economies, man exploits man. In communist regimes, the reverse is true. In his book, Gunnar Myrdal theorizes, “The rich make more money, while the poor make more babies.”
Men are created equal
God tries to level the playing field. He creates people almost equal – all naked, helpless, and dependent at birth. Man sees it another way – some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, others have no spoon at all. Man, like all beings, things, and processes, follow a natural cycle – birth, growth, deterioration and demise. Some people never seem to move to the growth stage or they move quickly to deterioration and demise. A few have mastered the art of living in abundance, accelerating the growth process and decelerating the deterioration and demise. The “sour-graping” many believe and live like they are children of a lesser God.
John 10:10 reminds us that God came “to give life, and life abundant.” More than two-thirds of the world’s population today wallows in hunger, while a third suffer obesity from sheer overeating and affluence. Did God err somewhere and fail in his mission?
After the Creation and the Passion of the Christ, God must have left man to determine his fate. God has a perfect will – abundance for all. Man has his own free will – he can choose life or death, abundance or poverty. It is sad to note that many of us do not learn how to manage our fate and our choices.
Here are a few suggestions on how to work towards having great abundance in life and career:
Have a positive mental attitude. Everything starts with a positive mental attitude. If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you can do it, you can. If you want to succeed in whatever undertaking, always start with a positive attitude. Learn to psyche yourself up. There is no limit to your mind’s capabilities – an average person uses only 3% of his mental capacity.
Remember that in this life, if you think you can make it or if you think you will fail, you are right. As for me, I want to be right about being successful and living in abundance.
Have a dream. The fat lady in South Pacific, a movie in the 1950’s (I’m sure Tito Imperial, Jim Castro and Dodie Rondain have seen it a thousand times) said to the young lovers, “You can’t have a dream come true unless you first have a dream.” How true! As a career counselor, thousands of people come to me complaining that they are not happy with their career. When I ask them what their career goal is, many give me a blank stare.
In career, as in life, if you don’t know where you want to go, no road will take you there. Yogi Berra suggests that “if you don’t know where you are going, you could end up somewhere else.”
If you want success and abundance, dream it. Don’t have nightmares of failure, poverty and desolation.
Know what you can do. Don’t just do something, sit there. (That’s right – that’s intended.) Some people just jump into it (job, career, business, or other undertakings) without knowing what they can do.
Take stock of your interests, inclinations, capabilities, skills, and competencies. This will help you get started towards what you can comfortably handle and where you can likely succeed. Blind rage and blind ambition won’t help you – knowledge and confidence will. Success and abundance come to those who know what they have to offer in this world.
Know your limitations and do something about them. Think more of what you can do, but also know your limitations. Knowing them is not enough – you have to do something to compensate for or correct and negate your limitations. You are great as God has created you – that’s God’s gift to you and there’s a good start. What you make of yourself is your gift to God and to yourself and others who will benefit from your success and abundance. You can be better and you can even become what you are not if only you do something about becoming what you want to be.
Know what stand in the way of the abundance that you want. Get a mentor who can help you realize what you have, what you don’t have and how you can become greater than what you are now. If you don’t see what’s wrong with you, get feedback from people you can trust. Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
Go for it. Nothing comes to you unless you go for it. In this world, we don’t get what we deserve – we get what we go after. This world was not made for your convenience – it’s made just the way it is. Sometimes, it will be difficult to get what you want or need. Just go for it. If you want a good job, look for it, because nobody will knock on your door to offer you a good job, unless you are a newly retired CEO with great accomplishments.
There’s no substitute for action. Positive action leads to positive results. Don’t count on luck. I only get lucky when I prepare and go after what I want.
Understand “Value for Value.” Nothing comes from nothing. Everything worth having has a value. If you want something of value, you must part with something of value, too. People who live abundantly know this too well. They create value that others are willing to pay for.
Value comes from ideas. Just keep working with ideas and when you have developed a better mousetrap, insecticide, insurance plan, software, poem or novel, or recipe for fish ball, or better way of getting customers’ attention, the money will follow. If you want abundance, create value first.
Pay the price. This is difficult for many people to understand. In fact, the great majority of people want everything for free. In no time at all, we will become a country of mendicants if we don’t watch it. The best things in life are not free. You have to spend to go to Baguio if you want fresh air. What is free is polluted air in Manila and that’s not the best thing in life.
I’m writing my fifth and sixth books and some people have already asked me for free copies of “Life’s Big Lessons” and “Life’s Big Lies.” As author and publisher, I spend a fortune for these books, and I’m writing them for business, too. Can you imagine how much poorer I will be if I’ll just give all these books away for free. On the other hand, the more successful people have asked to reserve some copies that they will buy. They are even willing to sponsor or attend the book launching. There’s always a pattern I see – those who want things for free master the art of begging while those who know how to pay the price tend to succeed in life. By the way, the price we pay for success and abundance is not just money – it can be time, effort, attention, passion, etc.
Break your bondage. There are a thousand and one beliefs that push us deeper into our quagmire of failure. Some of these have been passed on to us from generations ago – opportunity knocks but once, only the good die young, money is the root of all evil, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and other lies that you’ll read in my book Life’s Big Lies.
In the past, if we were the son of a farmer, we would become a farmer. Let’s realize that there is no rule written anywhere that says so. If we can only break loose from our mental bondage, throw away unneeded mental baggage, we can unleash the inner strength we have for doing what we love to do and making a lot of money from it. Opportunities abound everywhere for people who are willing to let go and take a bold step towards the road of abundance which, by the way, is paved with hard work and sometimes failure. Hey, if you have nothing to lose but your poverty, let go!
Think Big. The mental effort spent in thinking of small and big projects is practically the same. There is no limit to what your mind can conceive and, as the vitamin commercial says, “What your mind can conceive, your body can achieve.” Only you can limit what you can conceive and achieve.
People who want to just get employed anywhere and earn a measly minimum wage get what they want. Those who dream big and want to work in a large company that can pay big bucks try to learn how to achieve that dream, prepare themselves, and achieve their dream. If you want big bucks as an employee, here’s the secret formula. You can only get big bucks if you work with a company that’s willing to pay big bucks and you do a job that pays big bucks. If you want big bucks, think big bucks – stop wallowing in that small company doing a small job because you’ll never get big bucks there.
Do what you love and love what you do. The most successful people I know simply do what they love to do. However, I noticed that as they do what they love, they never forget that they are in it for the money, too. There are people who love what they are doing and still remain poor. The reason is that they forget that they, too, must make money. Love for what you do must go together with love for making money.
I love writing, talking to an audience, helping others, and making money. I am able to do all that in my job as a human resource consultant, trainer, career counselor, writer and publisher. I don’t let my passion for doing these things make me forget that I have to make money, too. I love what I’m doing, I improve my products and services, I put in a lot of passion doing it for other people – great value that commands a great price.
Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is a song that has a simple yet powerful message. People who wallow in success and abundance don’t worry and are happy. They free themselves from self-inflicted worry, doubt, stress and imagined problems, perils, and fears. If you want success and abundance, don’t worry – be happy.
(Ernie is the 1999 PMAP President. He is now President and CEO of EC Business Solutions and Career Center, a human resource and business consulting firm specializing in competency-based HR systems, training, teambuilding and career counseling. For career advice and advancement, join his EC Career Club. He can be reached at ec4u@edsamail.com.ph or erniec@edsamail.com.ph)