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Okay, back to thinking about what we learned in Tupelo on November 12th, digesting some truly inspirational material to brighten what appears to be a cold, gray day; in reality, there is plenty of sunshine outside, you just can't see it because of the clouds.
"Most jobs are designed to buy you at wholesale and to sell you at retail....you should use your job to finance your dream."
Think about that for a minute. If you could have an hour of your life back to do with as you pleased, how much would you pay for that? Would you spend $50 if you could have one more hour at age 18? Or 29? Or 39? Would it be worth $100, or $200? How much is your time worth? If you would buy back an hour of your life for, say, $100, then how much did you sell if for in the first place?
The only real answer, of course, is that time is priceless, yet most people are willing to sell their time, and thus their life, quite cheaply. They accept a given wage from their employer, who then turns around and uses their time to make money selling their services to a client. That's how this works, the employer takes the risk of paying someone to do a job while betting they can then sell that person's efforts to someone else for a profit. There's nothing wrong with this arrangement, per se.
But what if you want more than that? What if you want to be able to make more money than the employer is willing to pay, to make your own schedule, to work when you want to work, not when someone else says that you have to work? Assuming you haven't won the lottery, then is only one legal way to do that: open your own business. A lot of people have the desire to do this, but they are scared of the risk, even if the risk is small. Usually the fear kicks in when they realize they will have to use their own money to get their business started, they have to use their job to finance their dream, but it's not risking the money that scares them: heck, our business was started for virtually no money whatsoever, and the ongoing costs are almost nil. No, what scares them is that they will have to do something new, something they aren't used to doing, they will have to change, and despite all the platitudes and encouraging slogans they may pretend to like, the fact is that most people are afraid of change. Why?
The best answer I have read is that people are really scared of depending on themselves. Instead of wanting to make their own way, to craft their own result, they prefer the (often false) security of selling them time wholesale. That is their Plan A, and if they accept the need for a Plan B, then they are admitting that Plan A might not always work, that they may one day have to fend for themselves. In other words, while everybody needs a Plan B, the very idea that it might be necessary is too fearful to contemplate.
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