Breaking Poverty Addiction - The Journal

Have you ever wondered how some people workelectrical wires, moved furniture, taught fitness,
and study hard, but still end up having little to showgrabbed shop lifters, cut concrete, painted houses,
for it? Health guru, Paul Bragg once mentioned thatdug trenches, changed diapers on a mentally
poverty was an illness. His concept was that fiscalhandicapped patient, etc. All for ridiculously low
health and physical health were both a result ofwages. There was also long commutes to poor
habits.working conditions "until something better came
As a kid, teen and adult, I could stretch a dollar fromalong." The fact of the matter was, I made more
here until next week. I had no addictions to gambling,money doing things that I enjoyed.
booze, drugs or expensive items. I had finished highSo, I set up a behavior-changing plan. I set up a
school, joined the army, later attended college andjournal with dates and three headings, so it looked
finally university. Yet, I would make the wronglike this:
business and investment choices and I would findACCEPT MONEY. AVOID GIVING MONEY AWAY.
myself scraping by time and again. It just did notDO NOT ACCEPT LOW PAY.
make sense.Date: ______ _________ ___________
One of my turning points was reading the book, Earn______________
What You Deserve by Jerry Mundis. He considered______ _________ ___________
poverty a negative behavior like any other addiction.______________
He even drew a parallel to the AA's 12 steps ofEvery day I put a check mark under each heading.
recovery. While I rejected the whole "we are(Or rather I attempted to put a check under each
powerless" approach, I did pick up on threecolumn.) When I did, I mentioned how and why. For
destructive behaviors that many impoverished peopleexample, if I had some old books, I would try to
have:exchange them or get some money for them before
1. Refusing to accept money.trying to give them away. If I was offered money
2. Giving money away.for a favor, I would force myself to at least take
3. Accepting low pay.some of it. When I was approached to do a job that
The mere thought of accepting money fortook up my time and training, I waited for a good
something that I put little value on just did not jive. Itoffer.
always felt that it was stealing or an unworthy act.This is not to say that the process was easy. It
For some reason I always saw it as kind ofrequires staying constantly vigilance on where my
panhandling or it was just one of those impolitetime, effort and money goes. Now, having said all of
things to do. One of the toughest things that I everthat, there is an up-side to all of this. I found that I
allowed myself to do was to ask for more money.started getting better ideas and taking more
The second idea of giving money away was also aopportunities regarding my money situation. Without
problem. There is this strange obligation in somesounding too mysterious, sometimes coincidences
people to always give away their time and money.pop up and luck seemed to come my way.
While charity is noble, some of us are too quick toLike a consistent dieter, I sometimes went astray.
hand out our hard-earned dollars or precious time toSometimes, I refused to accept money for my
unimportant materials or events. This might be doingknowledge or time or I needlessly spent money by
too many favours for other people or wastingtaking unnecessary trips. Rather than wallow in
money on non-productive items, such as expensiveself-disgust, I found it better just to keep pushing
magazine ads for low priced products.forward. Progress was the key, not perfection.
The last concept that haunted me was the bad habitGood luck with your progress. I welcome your
of accepting low pay. I have fixed pipes, installedcomments.