WHY ARE YOU POOR?

All over the world we see poor people. In the Philippines, more than half of the population is poor. This has been the perennial problem since time immemorial, poverty. All our leaders from all times have often vowed to work and defeat poverty but all to no avail. People are still poor.

Asian neighbors are all progressing while the Philippines remain the same as she was more than 20 years ago. We may attribute this failure to the failure of our leaders, but I would say also that more often than not it is more on the people's mind set that more likely affects the direction of this country. The fate of this country is highly dependent on the people's state of mind.

From our leaders down to the lowest ranking individual, we need a total overhaul of paradigm. Paradigm shift, a change of mindset is what it is all about. Ask anybody from the Philippines on how they are, and you often will get an answer that they are alright. Nobody will even dare to tell you that they are great; they are progressing or have become richer. You will even see someone who used to commute in going to work and you meet him 10 years after already driving his own fancy car, and you ask him how he is, he might just even tell you that he is the same as before.

You will meet an acquaintance and greet him, then appreciate his shirt, instead of answering thank you for the appreciation, he will say that his shirt is cheap; he bought from a small bazaar which he got on sale.

Humility has its good side and bad side. It is always best to be humble all the time, as best practice. But the humility that you might have, referring to the preceding paragraph may just be falls humility. A false humility which is often said in response to an appreciation which honestly waits opposition so that what he really wants to say will instead be said by the one who appreciated him. It is like asking the person how he is and he responds I am the same then you say, no you look richer now! You tell him exactly the opposite of what he is humbling about and he grins at you with pride.

I am not going to speak about humility here anyway, so there is no problem if their humility was authentic or not. What I am saying is that when you do not stand to where you are suppose to stand then definitely you will never be able to proceed to where you are supposed to be heading. You have grown to be rich and yet you remain to be poor in your belief, then definitely you will always be acting as if you are poor. When you act like poor, you will be like poor and anybody who thinks they are poor though they are rich will always be poor forever.

Similarly, our leaders have the same shortcomings. Other nations are looking at inventions and high technology applications for energy and power, yet we are still left to bank on sending workers abroad, espousing on business process outsourcing to serve for the technology needs of another nation and never did they think of creating something of our own to at least raise the standard of living in this laid back nation.

Little does the government encourage entrepreneurship among its constituents. When you apply for a business license in the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), it is not only a long queue of disorganized applicants will you be facing but a set of impolite personnel whom I would also be thinking to have been tired of doing the same thing over and over again with little hope of a brighter tomorrow.

The government has always been ecstatic about its achievements to have created millions of jobs for the Philippines, only to find out that these jobs are for call centers where our skilled engineers fall to answer calls and help callers instead of them being assigned to create products for progress. Ask some of our graduate what they intend to do, they want to pursue business but there is no help from the government. We have a lot of inventors who could create solar powered cars, wind energy, high technology robots, but the government just ignores these potentials.

It is said that your mind dictates your destiny. The bible tells us to be careful about what we think because our life is being shaped by our thoughts, if this is true then it must be your mind who tells you what to say, and if you keep on saying that your circumstances are bad, terrible or miserable, then most likely it will come to pass as it is.

Now therefore, if you start saying to yourself that you are rich, although you are poor, coupled with hard work and enthusiasm then who knows you might just get everything you have been confessing about. Look at yourself, determine for yourself what you see on that image, which will also tell you the kind of outlook you have right now in you. If you see a beautiful image in your own picture, so is it...if it is not, then it probably is. Look at the glass image above, you are a positive person with a brighter tomorrow if you see a half full glass compared to those people who sees it as half empty.