GeneSpeaking

Hi. I’m Gene Shambaugh. Once again, the issue is…  financial independence!

Where did it go?

We first need to understand how we became dependent.

We became dependent by taking the easy way. “If I just get a job, at least I’ll know that my bills are going to get paid. I’ll know where my next paycheck is coming from.”

We took the path of least resistance!

We have more faith in the system than we have in ourselves!

But, do you know what? The system always lets us down, doesn’t it? Not only because the system is imperfect, but because people are imperfect. And people run the system.

The people who run the system have their interest at heart first and foremost! These people put on a sheep’s skin of magnanimosity, making us think they’re acting in our interest, so the rest of us fight to keep them in power, as they knew we would.

Back in the 1800s, most people on the “frontier” didn’t have a job or a government program to prop them up. If they didn’t have a home, they’d find an empty spot on the prairie and build one. Or they slept under the stars.

If they didn’t have food, they went hunting and foraging until the gardens and crops they planted could grow and they could harvest them. Or they didn’t eat.

Then came the industrial age. Industry barons offered people jobs. Workers thought they had financial  security. People traded their own dreams for “security.”

In part, this industrial movement started the “gotta have a job” mentality. People became slaves to it.

In those days, people in the labor market thought “now we no longer have to depend on fickle weather patterns and fluctuating markets to sell our goods.

In reality, they just relegated that worry to someone else. In effect, they said, now it’s your responsibility to take care  of me.

That lasted as long as it lasted. Then in the past several decades, people in other countries have convinced the developed world that “it’s just not fair for a few nations to have all the good things and for the rest of the world to live in poverty and misery.” Comfortable people in the developed world thought, “That’s right!”

So Third World leaders negotiated with U.S. leaders until U.S. leaders started sending U.S. jobs to the “developing countries.” Now their economies are on the rise and the U.S. economy is declining.

The Middle-Eastern countries “nationalized” the petroleum industry. The steel industry was taken over by Japan.

Other manufacturing jobs were sent to Singapore and Hong Kong, then Mexico and China, and our high tech jobs are being sent to India and the Philippines (by companies who think they are patriotic).  With the U.S. subsidizing their “developing economies” beyond their comparative necessity and U.S. comparative capability.

The best paying jobs have fled to other countries, leaving behind the privileged “working class” of union workers, wanting the pensions they were promised, but there remains insufficient industry in the so-called developed world to pay for them.

West Germany successfully integrated East Germany into its economy. The U.S. and the rest of the developed world will survive, too, although the process may not be comfortable.

Meantime, the job market just doesn’t provide the security it once did.

We’re still addicted to the path of least resistance.

Some of us demonstrate loudly that it’s the government’s job to take care of us.

We’re all blaming each other instead of each of us taking responsibility for our own welfare.

Technically, especially in a high-tech world, we’re all interdependent.

In a way, that’s good.

Fortunately we still have one of the most free countries in the world. Of course that’s changing, too. Other countries are becoming more free and the U. S. less. But for the moment…

For the person (the individual) who can overcome the mass addiction to dependency on an employer or the government, we can still break out of the mold. We can still do  it “our own way.”

Let me put it another way.

If you can overcome the mass addiction to dependency, on an employer or the government, you can still break out of the mold. You can still do  it “your own way.”

One of the best working definitions I have heard was by Earl Nightengale. He said the definition of success was “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal.”

I have since discovered another working definition of success. A person is a success when he knows and is confident that if he has a desire or need, he has within  himself everything it will take to make his own opportunity to fulfill that desire or need.

What does it take?

It takes a personal decision.

It takes a vision or a dream.

It takes a plan… with goals and deadlines.

It takes action! It takes that all important first step. That”s the hardest part.

Determine to follow through with ear plugs to the nay-sayers and with courage to persist over the hurdles and around the blind corners. It takes the vision to see the possibilities over the horizon.

It might even take the courage to see momentary failures as stepping stones and lessons learned.

Do you know, sometimes your greatest reward isn’t the money you earn. Sometimes it’s that great feeling you get when you take the challenge, face it down, and beat the obstacles!

The real currency we’re talking about now isn’t money. It’s character.

When you have the kind of character to dream, to envision, to make decisions based on that vision, to set goals and deadlines, to take action, and to persist to completion, then the financial increase is bound to follow.

If each of us could only learn to get out of his own way and quit living within all those self-imposed limitations, we could have independence.

We could have financial independence. We could become confident of our ability to create opportunities when we need them. We would be successful whatever circumstances came our way!

Www.genespeaking.com is all about helping people to be successful and find financial independence.

Thanks for your attention. Now onward and upward!