Tomorrow Will Be Better Than Today

I have been thinking about this idea of prosperity. What does it mean to have prosperity?

When we think about this word? We often think about wealth, money and luxury. We think about earning a good income, spending on the finer things in life like a vacation and investing in the things that matter to us like a good education and better health. These are the cliche things that we come to mind and they are a representation of what prosperity is.

However, I have a different view of what prosperity is. My belief is that prosperity doesn't need any of these things to be considered prosperous, it only requires moving towards an ideal that one cares about. This can be anything as long as the people can see progress every day or at least frequently as they work towards it. This is success.

One can conceptualize prosperity as the belief that tomorrow will be better than today. When one has this mindset, they do and think about things very differently. They don't simply live for today, nor do they look for an easy way out when it comes to problems. They don't seek to steal from their colleagues or burn bridges so easily. They are know that tomorrow will be better and therefore, they take care of the things that they have today, because they will be there tomorrow and the day after.

Our society is not used to this idea because we have been stolen from so much that we cannot conceptualise or even fathom such an idea. Once you have something, people are willing to take it away from you because they have the same mindset that tomorrow will be worse than today. Therefore, they will take what they can from other people, even if it means that the other person loses out and cannot recover. It is survival and that's how the law of the jungle works. But there is a problem. If you live in a society where anything you make will be taken from you at anytime, how can you build anything or hope your dreams come to pass when they can crumble in front of your eyes. Just take what you can in the moment and live for now. That's how think are.

Prosperity is knowing that you can build something long-term and know that it will last. When you can build a business that you know will last 100 years, you will put a lot of thought into the foundations. You will take time to invest time, money and effort into the business, even if that means going at a net loss. This is because you believe that tomorrow will be better than today. You are assured that a decade from now, you will still have your business, the economic climate will be steady and you will have business coming in. Once you know that, you can plan your investments to build your foundations and build a business that lasts. This goes for all things like building a home, getting a good education, nurturing a relationship and so on. When you have the assurance that tomorrow will be better than today, you invest in the foundations, which are the things that truly matter.

But what are these foundations, when it comes to a business, you actually take time to build a product that you customers care about and enjoy using. This means getting great developers or product people, crafting your marketing message, experimenting to find that the right product and messaging and hiring the right people. Basically, you are positioning yourself to be successful in the long-run and not the short-run like getting quick deals to get quick cash, growth-hacking when you have poor retention and so on. For relationships, this is getting to know the people through conversations, crafting how your future will look like, knowing what they care about and developing the habits to cater to their needs. This is opposed to just having a great time like throwing parties, going on expensive trips and so on. You are actually focusing on your partner and now your wants and desires.

In short, when you are prosperous, you can focus on giving more value to other people, because you know that the value will come in the long-run. When you are not prosperous, meaning tomorrow is looking bleak, you extract more value from other people in the short-term but don't realise that the value doesn't come back in the long-run. One must invest in other people so that those people can invest in them later on.

The new definition of prosperity: The assurance and mindset that tomorrow will be better than today.