In a recent email message, one of my respected mentors shared his mind as I am quoting unedited below. He then ended his reminiscence with the above quote from Epictetus.
“Growing up I often wished that my family had more money. In truth, we had more than enough to get by, but never enough to have a brand new car or a pool in the backyard. In hindsight however, it was almost certainly for the better. Otherwise, how would it have turned out for me if I didn't have to scratch and claw for everything I've achieved? Would I have squandered the family fortune had there been one? I hope not, even the world's richest family can go broke.”
As I said, he is someone I quite respect; but I need to shift slightly from his views as expressed above. How do I mean? I definitely do not believe that you have to come from poor background where you have to ‘scratch and claw’ before you can achieve everything. Also, it is not automatic that you will squander the family fortune if you had one.
It is not the family background that determines how successful or unsuccessful one becomes in life but rather what you make of your life. How you react to opportunities and challenges. It is the kind of values or negativities your parents feed you with. It is the ‘can do’ or ‘failure’ that parents speak into the lives of their children/offspring.
One is familiar with the story of the Rockefeller family – how the founder John D. Rockefeller taught his children the dignity of labour; taught them how to earn, spend and give money. The Rockefeller wealth has been passed down from generation to generation and their lineage still remains wealthy.
The Rockefellers are not isolated. We have the Du Ponts, Rotschilds and Astors of this world. On the home front, we have the Dantatas, the Alabis (Lord Rumens), theBakares and other silent generational wealth-retaining families. If you read the histories of these wealthy families, one trait has been common – that the wealth founders and ancestors have taken their offspring through the processes which they themselves used in creating the wealth originally.
The same holds true for families that have retained poverty in their generations. They have carefully taken their time to tutor their offspring in the belief of impossibilities; entitlement mentality, and negative mind-set.
A good example is the Vanderbilt family patriarch, Cornelius, who “felt that his sons were not up to his standards. He didn't think they had what it took to grow the family wealth”. He was reputed to have been “bad-tempered and foulmouthed”. One can safely conclude that he repeatedly spoke failure into the lives of his children and, by default, his offspring. However, very few of the offspring of such families who had opened themselves to positive mentoring are changing their family historic calamities to fortunes.
What are we saying here, it is not the backgrounds but the people that determine the lifespan of family wealth – because the people are the common denominator. What do you think? Please leave your comments. 🙂
I am a Social Media Marketing Strategist and Facebook Marketing Expert, a business coach, seminar resource person, published and serial entrepreneur. I help businesses to get extraordinary results from their marketing campaign thus ensuring steady increase in their incomes.
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