Broke, Not Broke: why you need to stop complaining.
You see, I come from a place where we’re okay with always making excuses and blaming somebody else for our failures. It’s always “I can’t do better work because I don’t have a good PC” or “I can’t grow my business because I don’t have a website”. Shitty excuses like that. And the biggest problem is that when we see others do better, we try to shame them and talk it down. For example, our friend just built something amazing and we say it’s because his father has money or we hear that Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook at 17 we say it’s because he’s from America where they have 24/7 power supply and free Wi-Fi. We tell ourselves that if we lived there too, we’d do better than him. We complain, we make excuses, we blame it on being broke.
See, uhm… I’m not saying our lives are not hard. I’m not saying that money and opportunities don’t give a competitive edge. What I’m saying is “to what end?”. Yeah, you’re broke, you don’t have money, you live in a shitty country and nobody wants to help you, but who cares! Nobody does! Nobody cares if you have money or not. Nobody cares if you have the right tools or opportunities. Nobody does. If you wanna play in the big league, you gotta find a way to behave like people in the big league. But if you can’t, then that’s your problem. Go ahead, keep making excuses, and stay right where you are.
If you really wanna make a change, despite being broke or not having resources, you need to start looking for alternatives. My Boss, Mr. Ikenna Ogbudimkpa has influenced me a great deal with regards to this. I used to whine and complain until my eyes opened and I realized that I never really needed those things I complained about. I don’t really need a website when I could use Instagram. I don’t really need a Wacom Pad and Mechanical Pencils when I could use normal pencils and my mouse to achieve the same results. I believe the same applies to you. You don’t need a laptop to become a writer with when you have a smartphone and Google Docs. You don’t need to pay a designer a shitload of money for design when you could use Canva for now. You don’t really need those things you believed you need. So instead of complaining, look for an alternative.
Don’t make excuses, just do the work!
