The Blessings of Being a Member of the Working Class
And the golden trait that is often undervalued
A third of the U.S. population is working class, meaning their successes and failures are usually the result of their own doing. Regardless of where they come from, a person who knows the trials and tribulations of surviving the daily grind knows what it means to “have something” in this world. Everything they own is a direct result of working for it. Hard work is the thing that grounds them to the reality of being able to get what you put in. Poverty and riches, on the other hand, tend to distort one’s sense of reality.
Those in poverty have very little to tie their hard work to and those who were born with wealth can’t attribute their wealth to anything they’re personally responsible for. Despite what you may believe, being in the particular group of people that understands what it means to work hard is actually be one of the greatest blessings, because even though people express envy over those that didn’t have to break their back for the lavish life they get to enjoy, there a few reasons to be envious. Being able to work your way up to the top should be the most desired situation to be in. Starting from the bottom and then finally arriving is actually the only way to arrive. The person who had everything handed to him never arrived. He simply lives in a world that he could never truly appreciate for its worth.
The American dream is building something from nothing. That is what you really long for. We confuse this genuine longing for an artificial longing to have it all come easily to us, but there’s nothing meaningful about that. Whatever you can call that state of existence that is having everything handed to you, it’s not what you should waste time wishing you had. I don’t care what you fool yourself into believing, that’s not what you actually want.
Being a member of the working class can be a very gloomy. Because often times, you feel as though your connections to high levels of success are non-existent. Even if you don’t work a so-called “dead-end job”, you can still feel as though your state of existence is a dead-end. Money seems to disappear as soon as you accumulate it. Life is constantly eating at your earnings so that you never even get the chance to create a mountain out of them. Expenses called bills and responsibilities never give you a break. This opposing force seems like it will always be fighting against you for the simple fact that what you work so hard to earn isn’t there for you to acquire luxuries, it’s to simply keep you alive.
When this is what you are working so hard for, it’s hard not to contemplate all the things you don’t have. But as I’ll remind you, what you already have is more valuable than gold.
It’s easy to feel disconnected with success when this is the way things are for you. Life becomes a psychological trap. If you can’t see any way out of this lifestyle, you feel completely chained to it, but it’s possible to turn this around. If you can envision what you really want for yourself, you can begin to identify how to forge a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be. And when you’ve been working your entire life to get to where you are now, you are more likely to anchor yourself to you where you want to be when you get there. You will actually appreciate what you have when you finally get it.
When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak sat in Jobs’ garage and created the first Apple computer, they had zero customers. That wasn’t because their product sucked. That wasn’t because no one wanted to buy what they had to offer. It’s because no one knew what they had to offer yet. It’s because they hadn’t yet had the chance to build the connections required to turn their project into the superstructure it would become. The distance between Apple in its beginnings and Apple today is merely the connections that were made, the opportunities that were taken advantage of. The reason why you aren’t where you want to be isn’t because you are incapable, it’s because you haven’t taken advantage of the power you possess inside of you.
When you recognize that you are like Jobs and Wozniak, you also have to recognize that you could be like today’s Apple if you start building the bridges that will take you there. People get stuck in ruts because they aren’t building bridges to get out of them. It’s true that some people seem to have these bridges conveniently built for them or that the opportunities to build these bridges come to people unfairly. But just because things aren’t always fair doesn’t mean that should even matter to you. You can’t focus on what opportunities other people may have had that you haven’t. Doing this is the art of conspiracy theory. It’s is a dangerous habit to make, because in all honesty, you can never know how much hard work was required to get successful people to where they are today anyway.
Why would you focus on the possible advantages of others when you could be using that mental exertion seeking out what advantages you possess at your disposal right now? You will never see what these things are if you’re blinded by such irrelevancies as the fortunes of other people.
Working very hard day-to-day, but not climbing higher on the goal ladder will earn you exactly what you’ve always earned. Yes, you will earn money, which is better than not earning any money, but your brutal daily grind is what you are earning as a lifestyle. Your lifestyle earnings are what you need to consider when it comes to seeking a life that is truly meaningful to you. Even if you don’t live in serious poverty, the whole paycheck-to-paycheck thing is miserable. The barely-making-it-by thing is depressing. Not all people that make up the working class live this way, but if this is your lifestyle and it’s giving you a dead-end vibe, it’s time to make some changes.
One of the changes you need to make is learning how to see your current position as a member of the working class as a blessing. And I don’t mean a blessing that’s handed to you. That’s not a blessing — at least not the kind you should be concerned about. It is a blessing you’ve earned that can multiply itself in the form of future blessings — the greatest kind of blessing. Like I said, automatically having everything handed to you is not the American dream we all lust for. It’s not what you really want. It’s irrelevant to you, so stop concerning yourself with it.
Focus on the fact that maintaining the dedication to work for years on end has placed you in a position of great potential. Forget focusing on where you are now. Forget seeing it as a dead-end. Start seeing it as the starting point of the rainbow that will take you to a pot of gold at the end. Focus on that.
If you’ve made a habit of showing up to work on time and doing what had to be done, regardless of whether or not you wanted to be there, you have acquired that beautiful gift called work ethic. You have acquired a superpower. You don’t want things to come easy. You want things to come as a result of a rock solid work ethic. That is the golden trait you possess that is lust-worthy. And you already have it.
When you’re wasting all that time thinking about what you don’t have, don’t forget to acknowledge what you do have. A strong work ethic is no small matter. What someone has physically will never compare to what someone has characteristically. Screw what you have to offer in material value. Every future employer, every financial partner, every possible investor that has a functional brain isn’t going to care solely about what monetary assets you have. They’re going to care about what traits you have. Some people are willing to invest in a million-dollar business, but everyone is willing to invest in a million-dollar human being. The value of objects is fixed, but dedication has no fixed value. The value of hard work can be exponential. It is gold. It will be your superpower if you learn how to utilize it like one.
What you have built in your character is the structure of every bridge that has taken every successful person to their desired location. If you are a member of the working class, you do have the equipment necessary to build that bridge to extreme success. Believing anything else is believing in a lie. Get to that point to where you don’t have to keep reminding yourself of it. Get to where you believe it with all your heart and just watch the blueprint for the bridge to your dream lifestyle reveal itself to you.
