Letters: Hardworking People Seem To Be The Least Successful.

Dear friend,

Some time ago, I was having a discussion with a classmate in secondary school. I was in SS3 then, and we were just outside school about to buy food before assembly. While we were conversing and walking to the Buka, we saw a man engaged in some form of hard work...

My classmate then said, “If being rich is by hard work, certain types of people would not be poor.” He was making reference to the man.

We spoke about it for a while, and in my analogy, my classmate was right; the man was hardworking, but he isn’t rich.

Was my classmate really right to have felt that riches ought to come from one's sweat and toils? Was I right to have supported him?

……. (The space is for you to think about this before proceeding)

My friend and I were partly right; hard work ought to be the leveler for making money, but in the pragmatic sense of it, is it so? Hell no! What then could be the reason why:

People work hard and don’t make so much.

People hustle like elephants but eat like rats.

People serve and serve, but seem to make little impact.

People rise by 4 AM daily, leave home by 6 AM, get back home by 7 PM, yet they receive peanuts.

In our perception, they work their asses off, yet receive so little for it. For a legal occupation.

Why?

The answer is one word: laziness!

Hey, don’t crucify me; this is December, and Christmas is fast approaching. Hear me out, but before then, read this from one of the richest men in the world: he said, “I choose to give a lazy man my work, rather than to one who is hard working, because a lazy man will find a way to get it done faster without stressing himself” --- add the name…

Now, it is scientifically proven that laziness can be a sign of higher intelligence. But why am I seemingly attributing laziness as a cause of poverty, even when it is crystal clear that some of the poorest people today are the most hardworking; some of them work more than two jobs, yet they get nothing compared to what some people earn in a matter of minutes.

Let's go back to history a little. In the olden days, the rich man, the one whose mothers wanted to come take their daughters, were those who had something doing; farming, blacksmithing, hunting, factory work, mining, etc. They got blessed and prospered. Those who refused to do anything were considered nonentities. If you had no manly vigor, no strength for hard jobs, you would simply be poor unless you were royalty or born into a noble household; even at that, you still needed to be enrolled into the army.

Is it the same today? Apparently no. Why? Laziness.

Now hear me.

There are two types of laziness. Mental laziness and physical laziness.

Everything is now making sense to you all of a sudden now, right?

What then is this mental laziness? What then is this physical laziness?

This is the common denominator between the rich and the poor; it determines, to a substantial degree, whether one will succeed in the current world.

Someone once said that it is easier to become financially successful in this age than in all the ages that Nab has spent on Earth combined.

It takes physical strength to till the ground for agriculture; it takes mental strength to invent the tractor. Get the difference?

It takes physical strength to open a shop and show up every day to sell stuff; it takes mental strength to build software that automates those tasks while you do other, less physically demanding ones.

In this current world, you can be physically lazy; it is very much acceptable, but what’s not acceptable is mental laziness.

The end of the industrial era marked the end of the age where physical strength determined how successful a man is. From the time of Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, Henry Ford, and co, the world transitioned from using your muscles to using your brain to make wealth. From that era, those who relied on their muscles became the disadvantaged, and much of the world’s power rested in the hands of the brainy creative.

You might argue that those with brains were the bedrock of civilization; yes, they are, but much power rested on those with more physical strength.

In the old days, a cripple with brains was just a sword away from death; in today’s world, such a person can wield tremendous power...

Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Femi Otedola, Oprah Winfrey, etc. These people have one thing in common: Mental strength.

The ability to think creatively, find solutions to problems, and monetize them is an advantage the modern world offers us, yet many take it for granted. Little wonder Napoleon Hill titled his bestselling classic book, Think and Grow Rich.

The innovators of the world from when the world began were people with mental strength; many of them can’t lift a hoe, many of them can’t push a wheelbarrow, but from the powers of their brains, they rule their worlds and lord over those with physical strength as laborers, bodyguards…

Name them…

Programmers, musicians, authors, entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, researchers, poets, painters… they don’t carry heavy loads, but they earn more than those who do. From the comfort of their homes, programmers create tools that automate complex tasks. That’s mental strength; the exact opposite of mental laziness.

Am I telling you to trash your physical strength, nah.

But develop MENTAL STRENGTH. THINK! THINK CREATIVELY. You are a Homo Sapiens.

Aside from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, read;

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.

Those are books that will help you develop mental strength.

I leave you with this quote: “The closer a man is to the soil, the less he earns.” It’s an agricultural statement, but it holds considerable value in other areas of life.

Love and light!

Rooting for you, and I trust you too are rooting for me.

Best Regards,

Joseph Chisom Ofonagoro.

Till I write next, Goodbye!