MULLINGS
Easterine Kire
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he first time I heard that phrase was at a wedding. The hostess was warned by a friend that some of the workers were making off with a lot of meat. The two of them hurried to the kitchen where they surprised the four female workers who promptly left their haul of meat behind and beat a hasty retreat. Is that a scene that sounds familiar?
The poverty mentality manifests itself on many other occasions. Stealing electricity is one of the best examples at hand. There are others too. Can you recall people who help themselves to stationery from the office? It could be anything from seemingly innocuous paper clips to larger and more expensive items. It could be using what is meant for office purposes for private purposes. There are too many examples to go into. Poverty mentality is an attitude. It is when people concentrate on what they do not have instead of being content with what they do have.
According to Wisegeek, the poverty mentality is best explained by Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker who summarises it thus:
“Zig Ziglar noted that focusing on the concern about what is missing in one’s life rather than focusing on what is there can lead to further poverty. Ziglar and others believe the ones who break out of poverty and really succeed are those who use what they do have, are grateful for what they do have and most of all, aren’t jealous of what others have. Basically, it’s an attitude of self-belief and empowerment rather than one of self pity and jealousy that is thought to combat the destructive poverty mentality.”
Another speaker, Randy Gage says that poverty is not an absence of money and things – it is a mindset, just as prosperity is not about having an abundance of money and material things. Those who constantly repeat phrases like, “I can’t afford it,” or “I’ll never have enough money for that,”could be pronouncing self-fulfilling prophecies. Gage says that the symptoms that you have a poverty mentality are: a) a constant money fixation, b) hating rich people or being jealous of rich people and c) fear-based decision making or making decisions based on fear of loss and fear of failure. Such decisions are always doomed to failure.
Coming back to the workers at the wedding, their actions are symptomatic of people who live in the poverty trap. They work but are never able to get out of being poor. They are deeply envious of others and use every opportunity, (like the wedding) to get free food. They may not see it as stealing. They may reason that the owners are rich enough to part with some meat, or electricity or paper clips as the case may be. Very sadly, they are the ones trapping themselves in this cycle of poverty. So long as their minds remain unrenewed, they will never be able to break free of the poverty mentality, and that means as long as they see themselves as poor and deprived, they will remain poor and deprived. Isn’t that very sad?
Because the poverty mentality is a mind-set, those who have it will embrace it as their comfort zone. There are real cases of people so dependent on Government hand outs that even when they get a means of living independently, they go back to their former way of living.
The poverty mentality is, in a weird way, linked to the teaching that it is virtuous to suffer poverty. Some Christians even ascribe to the idea that it is pious to be poor. The poverty mentality can lead people into all other kinds of wrong thinking. They shut themselves out from the blessings that a regenerated mind can receive. We were not created poor. We are not born that way. The poverty mentality is a cleverly instituted mental invasion. Some say that poverty is a sin, others call it a spirit. What it effectively does is act as a barrier to prevent us living the abundant life that is our heritage, and from possessing a prosperous soul. And that is all the more reason why we should get rid of it.
