Putting Your Lottery Energy Into Actually Making Money!

I’m going to leave off where Jim got started speaking about the recent Mega Millions $640 Million Lottery. I wasn’t much involved in the Lottery Bonanza that recently occurred over the last week or so. However, I did sit back and watch what unveiled and it got me thinking.

First, I thought I’d share some interesting facts I learned over the last couple of days.

1. Americans spent more than $1.5 BILLION (Yes, with a “B”) on Lottery Tickets.

2. You had more chances of becoming the NEXT (yeah not just any but the next) President of the United States than winning.

3. Some people spent more than THREE HOURS standing in line to get a ticket.

I watched online as many of my friends and family asked, “What would you do with the money?”. Of course, I’ve asked myself this very question over the years. It’s fun to fantasize and think about what life could look like not having financial worries. It’s exciting to go out and play and to dream. I do not protest anyone thinking about winning a large amount of money or even playing the Lottery (within reason).

Where my thinking has turned is to the amount of energy many of us spend on “dreaming” and not on “living”. We’ll spend money we don’t have to play a game that’s nearly impossible to win and spend countless hours day dreaming about life as a millionaire. What happens when the lottery is over and we found out we didn’t win? Nothing, we go back to our lives until the next big Mega Millions comes around and we go at it again. Instead of putting our energy into playing the Lottery, what would happen if we put it into something else? What if instead of putting energy into “winning” money we put it into “making” money. I don’t have the statistics in front of me but I can only imagine your odds of starting a successful small business are much greater than winning the Mega Millions. I can also only imagine that if we spent 15 minutes a day thinking/planning how we could earn more money rather than the countless hours we spend dreaming of winning we’d actually have the money. Think about it…people that make good money whether they own their own business or work for someone else put time into making it happen. Dreaming is very important but dreaming without action is a vicious cycle of grief.

So here’s a little challenge…Take 10 minutes a day, 5 days a week to think about what you can do to live your passion and earn better money. You already know how you’d live your life because we’ve had the Lottery dream. Instead of placing our future in a raffle we’ll never win take those 10 minutes a day and make that dream come true. Sure, go out and buy a ticket every now and then but just do so knowing you’re already going to have that life you live regardless of whether you win or not. After all, no Lottery ticket will ever confirm what’s true. You’re a Winner!

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