It’s not going to make your life awesome. We all know that. But money isn’t nothing either. Without money you live a life of poverty which sucks. It’s nothing to brag about, and it’s not a victim story you want to adopt.
The headline of this story is a direct quote from Alex Hormozi. It offers another way without all the hustle p*rn.
No one wants to be poor
Mental illness is one big health problem.
Poverty is an even worse mind virus. When you don’t have enough money to live, it’s literally all you can think about.
I’ve experienced pretty harsh poverty several times in my life. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It felt like crap.
You have money on the mind all the time.
There’s no time to care about others or do things for fun. You either work … or get further behind in the bills.
You might say we don’t choose poverty. But if you have access to the internet in a first-world country is that really true?
Being poor is being trapped by a story. A story that says it has to be this way. That not earning enough money is someone else’s fault.
Maybe that’s true.
But I’ve always found being the money victim gets you nowhere. There’s enough pity in the world. There are enough people that want to reach into our pockets and drain our wallets.
Once I got rid of the poverty story, nothing was left but hard work thrown at the right goal to help me bounce back.
Being poor means you have nothing to lose
It’s not something to hold you back at all.
It’s a bizarre type of freedom. When you have no money there’s nothing more to lose. It’s when you have lots of money that the feeling of financial loss really smacks you in the face.
With a nothing-to-lose-mindset you can take risks and the outcome doesn’t matter. There’s no reputation to uphold because it’s already been machine-gunned to death.
Poverty can lead to a new sense of freedom if used instead of ignored.
Working hard isn’t what you think (it’s the opposite)
So the solution to poverty is to work hard and fight back.
There’s more nuance to it than that. The idea of hard work is misunderstood. The “hard” part of “hard work” isn’t about the length of time. No, that’s corporate cubicle thinking.
Hard relates to the mental energy and focus required.
The point of hard work is to get into flow states and do deep work that produces ten times the results normal unfocused work produces.
It’s about the intent. The passion. The meaning behind why you do it.
When you give a crap about the hard work you do, it doesn’t feel like work. So then working hard isn’t something you complain about.
There’s no need to dread Monday mornings anymore or live for Saturdays and Sundays. Hard work just flows out of you.
The state in which the work is done helps the outcome be more valuable. And whether you are poor or wealthy is simply a matter of value.
You aren’t rewarded for hard work.
You’re rewarded for creating something of value — Justin Welsh
When the quality of the work goes up you get paid more money and, slowly, the poverty problem disappears.
There’s no way to avoid hard work (despite what the gurus say)
Some will have you believe hard work isn’t necessary.
Bulldust. There isn’t a successful person in the world who hasn’t worked bloody hard to get it. The challenge is you can’t see hard work.
It’s a mirage. All we see online is the outcome.
People look at my writing that way all the time. They think I’m some headline master who got lucky betting on the horses. If you could see behind the scenes, you’d see I’m a workhorse.
If you don’t want to work hard it’s got nothing to do with work ethic. You just haven’t found the right type of work that doesn’t feel like work — and that’s fine.
The solution isn’t to diss hard work and call it hustle p*rn.
It’s to experiment, explore, be curious, and use imagination and creativity to find work that feels like play.
It exists for us all. You just have to be patient and never give up.
Strangers respect hard work more than money
No one I’ve met online gives a crap how much money I’ve made.
It doesn’t open doors or get me invites to the Hamptons to hang out with Elon Musk in a bikini.
What people always tell me they admire is the hard work. You don’t publish almost 10,000 long-form articles online and not work hard.
I’ve found when you’re name is associated with hard work, it makes you a magnet for opportunities. People want to be around hard workers.
It’s a more honest way of working than bludging, complaining, and trying to blame your way to the top of Mount Stupid with other Captain Stupids.
Hard work is cool because it doesn’t require high IQ.
The big trap of hard work
Wait, what?
It’s not all sunshine and green smoothies. Hard work has a dark side and those of us who’ve been poor can relate to this.
Doctor Julie Gurner says “If you were ever truly poor, you will have a hard time turning off the workday once you start making money.”
I instantly could relate. That’s often how I feel.
It can be hard to know when to quit, have balance, or spend time doing anything else.
Yes, mam. That’s me too.
Then Julie punched me in the throat with this one:
Dollars are addictive when they’ve been scarce.
This is something to look out for. You can bounce back from poverty with hard work, but the newfound dollars you discover can become addictive. It can be hard to know when to stop and when it’s enough.
You can start stacking cash through hard work when there’s no point to it.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman expressed why wasting time doing hard work when you already have enough money is a bad idea.
He says time speeds up as we get older.
If you adjust your age by the amount your perception of time speeds up, 23–24 feels as if your life is half over. So you don’t want to be a dumbass and overwork once you’re out of poverty.
Instead, you want to use work to buy back your time.
