What do you do if like so many millions of South Africans,
you are facing grinding levels of poverty?
You don't even have a basic entry level job.
How can you practically go about escaping poverty?
Let's talk about what it feels like to find yourself in a situation
like that.
When you are facing grinding poverty It feels like
the walls are closing in around you, that there's just nothing you can do,
nothing that you can act upon to start lifting yourself out of your situation.
Well, folks, no matter how dark it may seem at the time,
and no matter how you may feel like you have no options,
there are always two things
that you can and should do,
and these two things can and will
lift you out of poverty if you do them faithfully and long enough.
So let's talk about what they are.
Principle number one is this: raise your personal value,
raise your personal value.
Now, when we think of that idea, the first thing we tend to think of is
we think university degree, and again,
tens of millions of South Africans simply don't have that option.
I didn't have the option of studying full time for a bachelor degree,
what I did personally was I worked a full time day job
and then I paid my own way
to study through UniSA in the evenings.
But now here's the interesting thing folks, having a university degree
does not necessarily guarantee wealth.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good step and it's a good idea,
but it is not a barrier to your wealth,
if you can't afford a formal education.
Instead, we need to find other ways to raise our value.
Now let's start at the very simplest levels, I mean say for example,
that you can read, but not very well,
to raise your personal value, how about getting hold of some very basic
books and teaching yourself to read
a little bit better?
How about, for example, joining a Toastmasters club, a public speaking
organization?
Yes, they do charge a fee for what they do, it's a very small fee,
but in many cases when people come to them from
poorer communities and so forth, they find ways
to teach you skills like public speaking and leadership.
And it's those skills, the soft skills, the human skills,
things like your ability to read, to speak to a group of people,
to put forward an idea, and especially to lead others,
when you add those things to your own abilities, you are raising
your personal value, I promise you,
people will notice.
So that's principle number one, principle number two is this:
repay trust with excellence, repay trust with excellence.
I like to think of this as what I call the Joseph principle,
you've heard the story of Joseph, who had a bit of a rough start to life,
he was sold into slavery by his brothers, and imagine a scenario like that,
you are powerless, you are forced to work and so forth.
Now, in Joseph's case, in two different scenarios,
first, as a slave in a household, and second in a prison,
and then moving on to Faroes kingdom.
What he did every time was he repaid
any small amount of trust that was shown in him
with excellence.
So let's take a very small example of this, say that you managed to get a job as a cashier,
or say, for example, that you're flipping burgers at McDonald's,
or say that someone has allowed you to dig a hole in their backyard,
basic things.
Our temptation at that level is to say, “well, this doesn't matter that
much”, and to repay trust
with a cavalier attitude, with arrogance, with sarcasm,
you steal something while you're there, it's the worst thing you can possibly do.
If you take the small amount of trust that is shown in you
and you repay it with excellence, what happens is,
you're given a little bit more trust, now I can allow you to do that work while
I'm not watching you, and if I learn that in my absence,
you have once again repaid my small amount of trust
with excellence, you've been an excellent steward
of the small thing that I've given you to do,
I can give you more, and people start to notice and people start
to talk about you, you grow a reputation for being a trustworthy
individual, you will start to find as you raise your personal
value and as you repay trust with excellence,
that it starts feeling like the world has handed you a few more levers,
it's like suddenly you can act upon things and your world is
getting a little bit bigger
and it will start slowly, very slowly, but eventually you will see that it gets bigger
and bigger and bigger, and it happens faster and faster,
there is an exponentially multiplying effect when you raise your value
and repay trust with excellence.
Now, folks, these things, these principles don't rely on you having money,
they rely on the type of person that you are,
and that's something that you can act upon at any level of poverty or prosperity.