"You Owe Me !" The Danger of Entitlement

There was a man who was very tired of working. He didn’t make much money and didn’t see any chance of making more in the near future. He didn’t like his current living situation, but couldn’t see any way to change it. He had minimal skills and ambition and didn’t think he could make it through school. He was just tired of living this way. He deserved better. He worked hard. He decided to get some money quickly. He went to the ATM and put a blank piece of paper in a deposit envelop. He put the envelope into the machine and deposited a pretend $5,000 check. He then immediately withdrew the maximum that he could, $1,000. He did this over the next two days until he had $3,000. He thought he wouldn’t get caught. He then went and bought new clothes and put a deposit down on a condo and got ready to move in. Of course, this all came crashing down and he ended up getting arrested, having to back the money he took, and putting himself in a far worse position than he was before. This man who was so tired of life, who felt that he deserved better even though he wasn’t willing to work for it, and was willing to take a huge risk to get what he wanted is 19 years old. At 19 years old he felt that he had worked enough and that somehow it was okay to take what he wanted even though he hadn’t earned it.

The entitlement thinking can hit anyone at any time. The idea that you deserve something even though you have not worked to earn it becomes more common every day. Even more common is the idea that you work hard and so you are entitled to something more than you have or that you are somehow entitled to take it from someone else.

Multilevel marketing is particularly prone to this type of thinking. Sometimes this is from promises made by an overzealous distributor of wealth with little or no work. (Promising that the business will grow and the money will come automatically if you just buy the required amount of product every month.) Or promising automatic results from some kind of system they have developed. Or, maybe the worse promise of all, that they will build the business for you.

A business is a business and no business happens automatically. Someone somewhere has to do some work and usually has to do some pretty hard work on a consistent basis. Of course there are ways to work smarter and more effectively, but somewhere along the line, work has to happen. Money is exchanged for things of value period. You can’t get more money unless you have something of value (skills, product, whatever) and you can only exchange that thing of value for money if you work.

This all may seem obviously, but many people seem to never learn this principle, or, as they get older, forget it. Everyone is looking for the easy way. Multilevel marketing can offer you an opportunity to provide something that people will pay for, but it is up to you to make that happen.

"If any would not work, neither should the eat" GOD (The Bible) II Thessalonians 3:10