Financial Motivation

Let's face it, some of you became writers at least in part due to financial motivation. After all, you hear stories about writers like Amanda Hocking who not only sell millions of books independently but get million dollars publishing contracts on top of them. I experienced this type of motivation in the world of theatre as well, with producers usually hoping for high art but in the back of their minds hoping for a huge financial gain that will help them to be comfortable. I partly entered into both of these worlds with finances in mind, but if financial motivation is your reasoning behind any endeavor, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First of all, in most professions or businesses of the world, you are less than 50 percent likely to become a financial success at it. If everybody could succeed at one profession or line of work, everybody would do it. People flock to high-paying jobs like those in the legal and doctoral field and others create Internet businesses because they hear there is a gold mine in that type of work. There is no gold mine, people. There are three components to becoming financially well off. These three components are self work, hard work and smart work.

Self work is a matter of your attitudes, beliefs and habits of financial motivation. Books like The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko have taught us that most millionaires (not the ones you read about in the news) have learned to live well below their means, giving them the ability to save and invest their money. If you think that money is a hot potato that must be spent immediately, you are unlikely to become well off. Keep your debt low, think of money as something precious and save as much as you can and you will be a third of the way there.

Hard work means that you are one of the hardest working people in your particular profession. You put in more than the amount of time necessary and you go above and beyond the work of your peers. If you do the exact same things as people you know are doing, you are likely to make the same amount of money as them. If you have the financial motivation to work harder, however, you are likely to make more than them. It's as simple as that.

Smart work is a matter of being in the right profession. You can be the hardest working barista at a coffee shop there has ever been, but it's a job unlikely to give you a great financial boost. It'd be different if you moved up to the manager track of the job and yet, there is still only a limited ceiling in such a profession. Ideally, you'd like to work hard and smart in a job or career that has an unlimited ceiling like selling your own products.

Those who concentrate on these three areas of work, self work, hard work and smart work are bound to be financially well-off. Of course, none of these function as a "get rich quick" scheme. Most people who are wealthy became so after decades of these three types of work, while others give up and go chasing after the latest trend or fasted growing job. Have some patience that this formula works and you'll be in great shape at the middle and end of the game. 

Done with Financial Motivation? Go back to Motivation Techniques.