Financial success is like an irresistible charm with powers that are almost universal. Nearly everybody is driven to strive for financial success, sometimes stretched to the very limits of their abilities in their daily struggle for it. There are many different definitions of the concept. Some define financial success as the ability to afford the basic necessities of life whenever and wherever – food, cloth and shelter.
Others will consider themselves financially successful only when their resources are sufficient for them to eat and drink whatever they wish, wear their choice clothes, drive the cars of their dreams, and assist others in financially disadvantaged conditions. Still some measure financial success by a person’s ability to fully fufil his necessities and desires, those of his friends and relatives, and the envisaged needs of his grand children and great grandchildren.
Whatever your definition, you can hardly deny that the wish to be financially successful is one of the main motivators of your everyday aspirations. For this reason, thinkers and authors have come up with different secrets for achieving financial success.
Most of these thinkers and authors recommend hard work as the primary secret. Continual hard work. But some other authors argue that the most hardworking people are not always the most financially successful. Therefore they introduced something else: opportunity. Business opportunity, opportunity for rich education, opportunity to make something out of the nothing you have, etc.
But does this really contradict the fact that hard work is the most important step? Don’t you still need hard work to recognize and to make use of opportunity? If someone told you that your hair-barbing talent, which you hardly put to use, can open the way to financial success for you, you still need mental and physical work to take full advantage of the opportunity contained in my word. You need to think deeply about it, reach your conclusion about it and source for the finances to realize it.
However, not everyone finds people to draw their attention to such opportunities. Opportunity is not like the air you breathe; you don’t find it just anywhere, anytime. So, another thing came into the picture: good luck. You also need good luck. Good luck leads you to opportunities, whether it is the luck of your birth into favourable circumstances or the luck of the business-minded and intelligent friends or relatives you happen to have. Fortunately, every person has a measure of good luck.
But is hard work not again very relevant here? Of course it is, because to fully enjoy your good luck, you need serious work to discover and make full use of the opportunities your luck has brought your way.
Therefore authors have led us to arrange the steps to financial success into the following equation:
Hard work + (good luck + hard work) + (opportunity + hard work) = financial success.
Everything depends mainly on you, on your work. Hard work of course varies from person to person: what is hard work for you may be not be so for your friend owing to the differences in your abilities, natures and circumstances.
But do hard work, good luck and opportunity sum it all? A person once urged a friend to partake in a $250,000 money lottery because he believed the friend stood a great chance of succeeding owing to his age and educational background. The friend seriously thought about it; for days, he pondered over the advice. He researched and asked about for advice. However, as he did this, he never stopped thinking about all those who failed at a similar lottery in spite of their self-confidence and optimism. He remembered all these people and got confused. Then he decided he too would fail and refused to partake in the lottery. At the end of the day, the person who advised him turned out to be something of fortune-teller, because it was just people of his age and educational background who won the most in the lottery. Yes, he had the good luck and opportunity, and gave the advice serious thought (serious mental work), but he did not ultimately progress towards financial success with the opportunity.
What was to blame there?
It is something least expected that is to blame! Prejudice! A learned gentleman, Michael Williams, defines prejudice as “prejudgment not based on experience and not easily changed by experience.” (A good definition) The friend prejudged himself a failure before he had experienced that he was in fact a failure. And all the experience he got from listening to people and from his research did not change this prejudgment.
But those whom he remembered had failed in money lotteries were surely not of all his age and educational background. So, why the prejudiced conclusion? Why the prejudgment? Why the generalization? A very costly generalization!
Therefore a more correct equation for financial success is:
Hard work + (good luck + hard work) + (opportunity + hard work) – PREJUDICE =
financial success.