“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett

Imagine planting a tiny seed today that, with time and care, grows into a towering tree providing shade, fruit, and shelter for decades to come.

Building lasting wealth works much the same way. Starting early as a teenager or in your early twenties and making saving and investing a consistent habit allows your money to grow steadily, harnessing the power of compound interest and smart financial choices.

The sooner you begin, the greater your financial forest can become, turning small, disciplined actions into a lifetime of security and opportunity.

This is a fact that is not taught in traditional K12 education in the United States

One important aspect of saving and investing is to understand that what you earn is less important than what money you save and invest. Robert Kitosaki said:

“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep (savings), how hard it works for you (investing), and how many generations you keep it for (legacy).”

Kiyosaki stresses that the value of saving and investing in building wealth, not just earning a paycheck.

Saving and investing are essential for building wealth and achieving financial security. Saving provides a safety net for emergencies and short-term goals, while investing allows your money to grow over time, often outpacing inflation and taking advantage of compound interest.

Key benefits include:

• Financial Security: Savings help you handle unexpected expenses and reduce financial stress.
• Wealth Growth: Investing regularly, even small amounts, can significantly increase your wealth over time thanks to compounding and potential higher returns compared to simple savings accounts or hiding your money under your mattress.

Consistent saving and investing can provide passive income and eventually allow you to live life on your own terms.

Starting early and making saving and investing a habit are the most effective ways to build lasting wealth.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Self-confidence is the belief in your ability to accomplish the task at hand. That doesn’t mean being deluded that you can do impossible things. Self-confidence is a belief that you can do something beyond your current level of experience and skill. It’s also having faith that you can handle adversity, and even if it doesn’t turn out exactly as you had hoped, you know you did your best.

Another advantage of believing in yourself is that it can lead to a better quality of life. Research shows that confidence is related to better mental and physical health, higher educational achievement, improved literacy, lower drop-out rates and better economic standing. If you have self-confidence, you are more likely to attend a better school, get a better job and lead a better life.

In fact, there is significant evidence that self-confidence is a more important factor in determining success than talent is. Although confident people aren’t any taller, smarter, better-looking or richer than you or me, they have is a belief in themselves, which anyone can develop.

Believing in yourself and self-confidence are more important factors in determining success than talent or ability alone.

Most people view self-confidence as an inborn quality that someone either has or doesn’t have. Nothing could be further from the truth. Self-confidence is a skill that anyone can learn.

Putting yourself in situations where you overcome challenges or obstacles—over and over again, even if they are relatively small—can develop the skill of self-confidence.

You don’t need to win a national championship or to be elected class president. You just need to do something that challenges you. Maybe it’s volunteering as an assistant so you can learn from the best, getting back into the job market after you have been fired, or sending your manuscript in again after ten rejections and having it be accepted.

Source: https://www.drivanjoseph.com/blog/if-you-don-t-believe-in-yourself-who-will

Our belief in our own ability to succeed plays a role in how we think, how we act, and how we feel about our place in the world.

Believing in yourself involves having faith in your abilities and trusting that you can achieve what you set out to do. Self-belief is about recognizing your inner strength, embracing life’s journey with its challenges, and understanding that each challenge brings new skills and strength.

Self-efficacy is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” Put simply, it is a person’s belief in their ability to succeed in a particular situation. Such beliefs play a role in determining how people think, behave, and feel.

High vs. Low Self-Efficacy

Having high self-efficacy is a good thing. People with a strong sense of self-efficacy:

• Develop a deeper interest in the activities in which they participate
• Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities
• Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments
• View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered

Poor self-efficacy, on the other hand, can have a number of detrimental effects. People with a weak sense of self-efficacy:

• Avoid challenging tasks
• Believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities
• Focus on personal failings and negative outcomes
• Quickly lose confidence in personal abilities

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-efficacy-2795954

Believing in yourself is a powerful mindset.

Believing in yourself significantly impacts your success by fueling confidence, motivation, and resilience. When you trust your abilities, you’re more likely to take action, persist through setbacks, and view challenges as opportunities rather than threats. This mindset not only increases your chances of achieving goals but also improves overall well-being and quality of life. Believing in yourself:

• Boosts Confidence: When you trust your abilities, you’re more likely to take on challenges and pursue your goals.
• Enhances Resilience: Self-belief helps you bounce back from setbacks and keep moving forward.
• Encourages Growth: It motivates you to learn, improve, and step outside your comfort zone.
• Attracts Opportunities: Confidence often draws positive people and opportunities into your life.
• Improves Mental Health: A strong belief in yourself can reduce anxiety and self-doubt, leading to greater overall well-being.

Research shows that self-belief-often called self-efficacy-predicts higher achievement, better mental health, and a greater willingness to pursue opportunities, making it a more important factor in success than talent alone.

Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their ability to complete a task or achieve a goal. It encompasses their confidence in themselves to control their behavior, exert an influence over their environment, and stay motivated in the pursuit of their goal. People can have self-efficacy in different situations and domains, such as school, work, relationships, and other important areas.

Self-efficacy is important because it plays a role in how you feel about yourself and whether or not you successfully achieve your goals in life.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-efficacy-2795954

What you focus on expands.

When you focus on what’s wrong with your life, you’ll miss what’s right with it.

You must focus on what is right instead of what’s wrong, on what you have not what you don’t have (gratitude), on where you are going not what you’ve been through.

You get in life more of what you focus on. When you stop focusing on the wrong or negative things, the right things start to happen.

Start focusing on the good things you have today, not on the things that were taken away.

Always believe in you and be grateful!

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” — Greek author Plutarch

J.K. Rowlings commented during a 2008 Harvard Commencement address that “you might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

“Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.”

“The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

Source:  https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/text-of-j-k-rowling-speech/