Quote:
Originally Posted by gordner
Who has ever said it was a bad thing to be self motivated, or work to better yourself? No one here I am pretty sure.
It is easy to speak of your route to success, but the reality is that significant societal changes have occurred that makes this route much more tortuous than it has been in the past. Failing to acknowledge that doesn't help anyone.
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Well, it still boils down to personal choices and work ethic. I always looked up to the successful people around me and wanted to learn what their secrets to success were. In many ways, people today have it easier than we did, when we screw up, we paid for it, we had to earn wages instead of demanding more money while providing barely enough work to be worth what minimum wage was when I was a kid. As long as people keep making excuses for bad work ethics and rewarding poor work ethic, it will only get worse. We didn't have smart phones ( hell, we had one phone line in the home and you were limited to how long you had to talk because you couldn't tie up the line and long distance cost extra) which makes a lot of jobs easier, we didn't have computers at home, and our parents didn't fund our lives pass the basic necessities, we had to work to buy a car and then we pad to work to pay insurance and gas. Embracing failure and low performance instead of encouraging competition and self betterment, the everyone's a winner and trophies for all has put us where we are now, instead of looking up at the successful person, now they are looked down on and punished for being high achievers while losers, be it lazy or just stupid are rewarded.
I remember being told when I was a kid that to be poor in America you have to be stupid, because anyone, willing to work and make good choices in life can make a good life for themselves, be it a trade like a plumber or electrician, invent and market a better widget or even if you start as a burger flipper in McDonald's and work your way to owning your own franchise. All of these I have seen. Two different friends, started by sweeping the floors in different shops, now they not only own the businesses but the real estate too.