The #1 Thing Keeping You Poor
Do you know the single biggest reason the poor remain poor? Of course there are many reasons why somebody is poor, there are many factors that contribute to and create poverty, but there is one single thing that is the biggest cause.
It is necessary to make a small distinction. There is a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is just a temporary situation in life. Sometimes life happens, even to the most successful people in the world, and over night, vast amounts of wealth can evaporate into nothingness. Everybody can go broke at some point, it only takes one mistake, one wrong decision, one catastrophic event and in the blink of an eye, you will find yourself broke. To be broke is temporary. To be poor is something that is more long-term. If that were not the case, "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer" would not be something people say.
The number one thing keeping the poor in poverty, is the same thing keeping the rich wealthy, and that one thing is BELIEF. What you believe about yourself, other people and how the world is affects the thoughts that you have and the meaning that you attach to those thoughts and to other things in general. It is the meanings you arrive at that dictate what emotions you will feel, and therefore what things you will do (or not do) as a result. The things that rich people believe result in them creating wealth for themselves, meaning they get richer. The things the poor believe on the other hand, results in them building no appreciable wealth for themselves keeping them in poverty.
If you do not understand or believe just how powerful your beliefs are consider this: how many lottery winners have won millions, only to end up as poor as they were prior to winning and sometimes worse off? How many millionaires and billionaires have you seen lose everything, go completely broke, and within a short period of time they find a way to make yet more money, the kind of money that it would take the average person several lifetimes to make? When a poor lottery winner wins millions, they still have the beliefs that kept them poor, and it is these beliefs that lead them back to poverty. If they were to win the millions and grow into the beliefs of the wealthy, they would, more often than not, grow their winnings further keeping them out of poverty. When a wealth person goes broke, they still have the beliefs that created the wealth that they had, and because of these beliefs, they are able to continue creating wealth for themselves despite their shaky financial situation.
If you want to change the situations you find your self in right now, you need to take the actions that will get you out of it, and for you to do that, and to maintain that change over the long term, you need to challenge the beliefs that created the situation that you find yourself in, and to replace them with healthier beliefs that will help you grow into the situations that you want to find yourself in.