The willingness to learn & change

You’d think, with all the smart people out here, they should have been able to figure out solutions which help everybody or at least their closest relatives thrive and succeed to a certain extent. A puzzling fact is that a billionaire can still have relatives who are very much considered poor or struggling. Of course, I don’t expect them to go around sharing their wealth with everybody who is remotely close to them, but I at least expect them to figure out something which works for them. Maybe point them in the right direction.

We are surrounded by very wealthy and smart persons, I don’t expect everyone to be doing okay but at the very least the relatives of such persons shouldn’t be struggling. I am not worried about those relatives reaching to the same level of wealth, I am much more concerned about having struggling relatives to persons who are obviously millionaires and billionaires, that really doesn’t make sense, just by association you should have some perks too.

This is not the case because of the willingness to learn and change.

I’ll like to put a disclaimer here by saying that this isn’t a general rule which applies to everybody, as a matter of fact this is just a hypothesis I came up with from observation. Everybody has a set of unique circumstances which defines them and their relationships. From observing a couple of persons who were in these types of relationships with such a disparity in wealth between siblings, I came to understand that the problem was in the willingness to learn and change.

Most people at a certain age are set in their ways, when you are a grown up adult and have passed the stage of learning as a necessity, you settle down in your ways, whether good or bad and anyone who tries to change those ways becomes somewhat of an enemy to you. What’s astonishing is that even when we acknowledge that the other is better than us, we still find it difficult to follow what they say. Our current situation comes from our current ways which don’t produce the desired results, obviously we have to change our ways in order to change our outcomes but this is easier said than done. We would rather go through the same pain we’ve known for countless years before we get to change our ways, and that’s just human nature.

I’ll take a simple example, any productive person will tell you that one way of increasing your productivity is to wake up a little earlier and sleep a little late. Some people work 100 hour weeks which require them to wake up at 6am and sleep as late as 11pm but just the thought of this to the average person seems like torture. This makes it in such a way that its difficult for that person to turn their life around because they are not willing to change despite wanting that change.

This isn’t limited to the wealth perspective, look at health & fitness for example, imagine how difficult it is for an obese person to switch their habits and start eating healthy. Despite their current habits being detrimental to their health, their willingness to change and learn still remains the same. We can make an argument for many things not being the fault of our own, but willingness isn’t one of those things. At every point in time, we are responsible for what we choose to focus our minds on. Its not 100% in our control certainly and there are factors which are beyond our control, but I think when you decide to shape your life in a certain way, its hard for you to absolve yourself of all responsibility.

Being in a better position

Success can be replicated and the best way to do so is by learning from someone who already did, having a mentor is the easiest way to breakthrough into any field. It saves you lots of time and effort and you can easily avoid all the obstacles through the experience of someone else. This means that your best bet at success is learning from that sibling who is already wealthy so the fact that we have so many smart people and yet they have siblings who are struggling, it tells you basically two things; either a complex set of circumstances prevents them from excelling in the same way, or an unwillingness to learn & change.

Conclusion

Aside from winning the lottery, its very difficult to reach and maintain a certain level of wealth without a specific set of rules and principles which can be replicated. Every company out there has learned through the challenges to build these rules which ensure that they are able to survive and thrive. The average person who is getting started will have to figure things out all by themselves, meanwhile you who does have a person by your side who already figured things out is in a better position to succeed. It's like having a cheat sheet and not using it.

This is the reason those who are willing to learn are those who get to change, and why you should wait on a person to approach you with the openness to change. Trying to impose your world view on another person is only going to breed resentment and discontent.

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