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Two ways to live a life – Be broke or hustle
Today I want to remind you of a well-told story about a fisherman and a businessman.
There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite a few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and the evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a Ph.D. in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
Now imagine what the businessman might have thought and what his reaction was.
If you were that businessman what would you think? What would be your reaction?
Let me share with you what I think about this story.
A fisherman is a self-employed person. For a self-employed person, the definition of money and success is different.
They know how is much enough and at what expense.
Or let’s go one step further and think from a perspective of a broke person. A broke person does nothing. And you don’t need a hundred thousand dollars to do nothing. You can simply do nothing and enjoy your life.
Remember that most needed things in life are free. The grain of the maze, the beans, the fresh air, and the water. The abundant nature. You just need an eye for it. You just need to free yourself from society’s melodrama and be able to see through what’s required to sustain life.
You’d be surprised to find that you don’t need that much.
A little bit of humility might be all that you need.
But for some reason, this doesn’t sound like practical advice on today’s date and time.
Living in a ramshackle Kathmandu and thinking about living a life doing the bare minimum isn’t a piece of wisdom that I want you to take from this blog post.
I want you to see the world through the lens of a self-employed person.
And try to find a minimalistic lifestyle that you can live by.
That gives you a lot of room for experimentation in life.
And you can hustle your way up to the abundance.
Define what success means to you, how much money you need, what lifestyle you want to sustain, and get hustling.
So you have two options if you want to live life with a purpose:
Option A: Be broke. You don’t need a million dollars to do nothing!
Option B: Create the life you want to live step by step. Hustle!
The key is to be intentional about the choice!
And if you ask me, I chose the latter.
Hope this rambling gave you some new perspective.
That’s all I got for you today.
Enjoy your weekend!
-Bhupal
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Two ways to live a life – Be broke or hustle
https://bhupalsapkota.com/hustle/
My take: Everything comes with a price. You choose your poison and own it coz you chose to take that poison.
Yes true. But being intentional about your choice sets you apart.