This article is an except from an inspirational book titled ‘The Independent Citizen‘, 2019 by Gicaniro I.
- Financial Investment
Investing in assets or businesses to attain profit after a specific period of time. Financial investment does not require you to have a lot of money in your bank account. You could buy a bicycle for 20 dollars, paint it a different color, keep it for some time and sell it later at 40 dollars which would give you 20 dollars in profit.
You could move upcountry and buy cheap land to sell later or lease it for an agricultural project. The goal of financial investment is to establish a financial system in which the wealth you have little or huge keeps on generating more wealth little or huge consistently.
Financial investing is like when a farmer plants a coffee tree, takes care of it for two years before it is fully grown, and then begins to harvest coffee seeds every season from the same tree without ever having to replant again.
In case you decide to start a business, make sure the business is able to run with or without your presence. When your business cannot function without your presence, it is yet to be a good business. The goal of financial freedom is to be free from the hustle of having to work for money on a daily basis.
2. Relationship Investment:
People can fall under assets or liabilities. Citizens must invest their time, generosity, attention, and support into asset-kind people. Liability-kind-people must be avoided. Liability-kind-people drain you of energy, time, and resources yet contribute nothing to your pool of blessings. Asset-kind people may as well take from you but certainly, contribute to your pool of blessings.
The God-kind people are doors to opportunities whereas their opposites are doors to troubles. The God-kind people capitalize on your strength whereas their opposites capitalize on your weakness. You must have the wisdom and courage to distinguish the two. They’re everywhere around you. But above all else make sure that you’re not a liability-kind person yourself.
Friendship is important in that we all need someone else to scratch for us the part we can’t reach and us to scratch for them the part they can’t reach. It is important to note that the opportunities we need come to us through other people. Therefore, citizens ought to keep and maintain good relationships.
3. Mind Investment:
Your mind is the key to your life. If anything is lacking in your life, it’s because it is nonexistent in your mind. Whatever you say and do, good or bad will flow right out of your mind. Hence, you must put in your mind that which you want to speak and do. Forget not, your behavior is dictated by the content stored in your mind.
A person can change their behavior simply by changing the content in their mind. The quality of your understanding, attitude, and thinking capacity is determined by the quality of the content in your mind. Thus, be careful what you feed your mind because it goes around and back to weave the fabric of your behavior.
In today’s age, wise men and women share their wisdom with us freely through accessible channels of the internet and books. The internet is full of enlightening and empowering information regarding any topic worth something in this life.
To be ignorant in this information age is to be uncivilized. You can literally attain professor-level knowledge on a given subject just by browsing the internet.
Great students need great teachers. Guess what, all great teachers have been uploaded and are still being uploaded as bits of information on the internet. All you have to do is to sit and browse or sit and read or sit and listen via the internet or the library.
4. Time Investment:
Citizens must perceive time as a distinct resource. Time is scarce in a way that given many underlying factors like the ever-changing environment; your life span is not infinite and therefore limited. If you well know that your life span is predicted to last 80 years, it should be enough to inspire you to live unreservedly.
Being uncertain of what may happen tomorrow should inspire you to seize today. If you think you should be great or generous or compassionate or wealthy or healthy or happy at some point in your life span, be so now.
Figure out what position you would want to be in when your life race hits the finishing line then choose and decide to begin now running at that pace.
The finishing line of life is invisible. It just happens that as you race through life you suddenly hit it and that becomes the end of you. You have all the time to live but all the time is in the ‘now’.
Citizens should adopt personal daily time timetables and budgets to support their action plan. Remember that the goal of living is not survival. Survival is only a basic requirement for living. Wake up every day to enjoy life, by all means, necessary despite the odds.
Spend every second feeling alive. Dare to take extraordinary actions, and accomplish amazing things. Whether you do something with your life or not, your clock is ticking.
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