They say if you want to grow to read successful authors and surround yourself with those who are more successful than yourself. I am just about finished with Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. The following are some parts of the book which have impacted me so far. I hope you are helped by these quotes as well.
Chapter 1: The Rich Don’t Work for Money: The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.
“If you can’t make up your mind decisively, then you’ll never learn to make money anyway. Opportunities come and go. Being able to know when to make quick decisions is an important skill.”
“Life pushes all of us around. Some people give up and others fight. A few learn the lesson and move on. They welcome life pushing them around. To these few people, it means they need and want to learn something. They learn and move on. Most quit, and a few…fight….If you learn this lesson, you will grow into a wise, wealthy, and happy young man. If you don’t, you will spend your life blaming a job, low pay, or your boss for your problems. You’ll live life always hoping for that big break that will solve your money problems.”
“Of if you’re the kind of person who has no guts, you just give up every time life pushes you. If you’re that kind of person, you’ll live all of your life playing it safe, doing the right things, saving yourself for some event that never happens. Then you die a boring old man. You’ll have lots of friends who really like you because you were such a nice hardworking guy. But the truth is that you let life push you into submission. Deep down you were terrified of taking risks. You really wanted to win, but the fear of losing was greater than the excitement of winning. Deep inside, you and only you will know you didn’t go for it. You chose to play it safe.”
“You’d best change your point of view. Stop blaming me (everyone and everything else) and thinking I’m (they) the problem. If you think I’m the problem, then you have to change me. If you realize that you’re the problem, then you can change yourself, learn something, and grow wiser. Most people want everyone else in the world to change but themselves. Let me tell you, it’s easier to change yourself than everyone else.”
“I’m glad you got angry about working for 10 cents an hour. If you hadn’t got angry and had simply accepted it, I would have to tell you that I could not teach you. You see, true learning takes energy, passion, and a burning desire. Anger is a big part of that formula, for passion is anger and love combined. When it comes to money, most people want to play it safe and feel secure. So passion does not direct them, Fear does.
“So is that why they’ll take jobs with low pay?’ I asked.
‘Yes’, said rich dad. ‘Some people say I exploit people because I don’t pay as much as the sugar plantation or the government. I say people exploit themselves. It’s their fear, not mine.”
-The above quote is very profound to someone like me who grew up in relative poverty and was never taught to believe I could achieve wealth. Many of the decisions I made in my 20’s and 30’s were because I was exploiting myself out of fear and a subconscious internal belief that I was never capable of making more than $40k or $50k. In fact when I encountered peers who were making more, I was jealous and angry with them for being so much more successful than me. This is something I have had to confess and work through. By God’s grace I now rejoice with my peers who are doing well. What the author is saying here is profound for people like me because he is trying to get us to stop working for money and instead raise our conception of what is possible.
“…it’s easier to learn to work for money, especially if fear is your primary emotion when the subject of money is discussed.”
“It’s fear that keeps most people working at a job: the fear of not paying their bills, the fear of being fired, the fear of not having enough money, and the fear of starting over. That’s the price of studying to learn a profession or trade, and then working for money. Most people become a slave to money–and then get angry at their boss.”
“Learning how to have money work for you is a lifetime study.”
“Most people…want to go to school, learn a profession, have fun at their work, and earn lots of money. One day they wake up with big money problems, and then they can’t stop working. That’s the price of only knowing how to work for money instead of studying how to have money work for you.”
“Be truthful about your emotions and use your mind and emotions in your favor, not against yourself.”
“A job is really a short-term solution to a long term problem.”
“You see, we’re all employees ultimately. We just work at different levels. I just want you boys to have a chance to avoid the trap caused by those two emotions, fear and desire. Use them in your favor, not against you.”
“The main cause of poverty or financial struggle is fear and ignorance, not the economy or the government, or the rich.”
“We will always have emotions of fear and greed. From here on in, it’s imperative for you to use those emotions to your advantage, and for the long term to not let your emotions control your thinking. Most people live their lives chasing paychecks, pay raises, and job security because of the emotions of desire and fear, not really questioning where those emotion-driven thoughts are leading them.”
“…a human’s life is a struggle between ignorance and illumination.”
“Never forget that fear and desire can lead you into life’s biggest trap if you’re not aware of them controlling your thinking. To spend your life living in fear, never exploring your dreams, is cruel. To work hard for money, thinking that it will buy you things that will make you happy is also cruel. To wake up in the middle of the night terrified about paying bills is a horrible way to live. To live a life dictated by the size of a paycheck is not really living a life. Thinking that a job makes you secure is lying to yourself.”
“We learned to make money work for us. By not getting paid for our work at the store, we were forced to use our imaginations to identify an opportunity to make money. By starting our own business, the comic-book library, we were in control of our own finances, not dependent on an employer. The best part was that our business generated money for us, even when we weren’t physically there. Our money worked for us.”
These quotes might make some of my readers bristle a little. The author is not decrying hard work. In the book, he honors hard work, but his main point is that we should work for the right reasons and not out of desperation and fear. His point is that the type of work we do should be dictated by being smart and creative and finding ways to make our money work for us, being free from the trap of living paycheck to paycheck just to barely get by. I pray that in some way, these quotes have been a help to you in your life as much as they are helping me to break free form the poverty mindset in my own.
Inspired Resolve 