It was 1989 and I was a teenager.
My father had passed away about a year ago and I had left my first job, after working for few months in sales on commission basis.
One of my elder sister was working, she used to give me Rs.100 as pocket money.
I always felt ashamed taking money from my sister, but thought I had no choice – I was wrong, I did have a choice.
Even though Rs.100 was meager amount and never enough for a teenager even back then, yet I had learned some creative ways to live with that.
I guess, when you do not have much choices, your creativity kicks in and you create solutions, what you may not otherwise. Probably this is why, many creative people have humble beginnings.
Anyway, one of those days I was passing on a street, in central city area known as Saddar, when I saw a book vendor, sitting with some books on the footpath.
There was a book with yellow and black title cover around 250 pages thick in paperback edition that caught my attention.
Title of the book was “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie.
I just fell in love with it. It was love at first sight, indeed.
It appeared slightly old, probably because of being too long under the sun on a foot path.
I checked its price and it was Rs.30/-
One of the things I have noticed is many people naively think investing time and money on learning is a bad idea.
They make lame excuses about lack of time or money when it comes to learning.
They forget to realize that, it’s not that you can not learn because you do not have money BUT you do not have money because you did not learn.
You see it’s simple. You cannot pluck fruits from your garden unless you have planted seeds first.
Anyway, Rs.30 was HUGE amount for me … 30% of my total monthly pocket money. And I had already used most of it.
I wondered how I will live if I invest in ‘such an expensive’ book!
But when you fall in love with learning, you do not care about the consequences and my love for the book took over and I bought it.
Guess what … I was worried how I will live … I lived very happily and totally satisfied with my decision to invest in my own learning.
That was beginning for me.
Over last three decades, I have invested millions of rupees in my personal development.
I have spent thousands of hours in learning and practicing NLP, Hypnosis honing my skills as a trainer & a life coach.
Alhamdulillah I know that benefits are beyond I could have imagined.
I am not sharing this to impress you, I am sharing to impress upon you the wisdom in words,
‘Seek knowledge from cradle to grave’.
If you were my own brother or sister, I’d tell you this, “Learning is an addiction and a very useful one. Develop it. Seek company of learned people who live by what they speak & you will change your life!”
I hope you got the message
You don’t have money because you did not learn… wonderful and impressive idea sir… always creative and very much positive passionate professional.. MashaAllah
Thank you Saeed
I agree with message in the text. Money is an essential factor out of total bucket .For mind and heart satisfaction, two things works for me. First, learning and second relationship.
Learning is the most valuable thing in life and we can grab opportunities by learning the desired skill well in time. We see, most of the people do not prepare for the forthcoming opportunities by not adopting this necessary skill of learning. It’s our duty to visualize the future requirements and get equipped for through the valuable skill of learning.
Beautifulllllll sir.