Watch out the migrants are coming…
Economic migrants are big news these days; whether it’s Eastern European’s coming into the UK, Mexicans in the US or a whole host of other examples across the world.
Arguments abound about the pros and cons and many people seem to resent this influx of people and are worried about how it could affect their lives, the “fabric” of our society or even undermine the “national identity” whatever that means.
Have you ever considered how they might affect your life?
It’s my guess that the single biggest lesson they can teach you is the “secret” of motivation.
If you are someone who has struggled to get motivated then you can learn a lot from these people. Think about it for a moment; these people are prepared to risk everything including their lives and the lives of their families for the promise of a better life – This is motivation on a scale most of us can’t begin to imagine!
You’ve got to ask what drives them to do this. It’s fairly obvious that most of them seem to come from places where life is very tough. But coming from a tough environment isn’t enough; there are a lot of people in the developed world who live in poverty and social deprivation – yet they seem resigned to their lot!
These people have a dream of a better life and they are prepared to risk a lot to get here and then work their butts of to build a better life for themselves and their family.
I was recently discussing this in London with a German friend of mine who knew a bit more about this than me; he put it like this.
“Imagine you grew up in a world where everything was controlled, where you worked, where you could travel to, with no food in the shops and you couldn’t trust anyone friends, family, colleagues could all potentially report any minor “wrong” word or deed to the authorities. Then one day the world changes and suddenly you are free to travel, you want to be a doctor and you’re prepared to work fantastic of you go! How motivated do you think you would be to work to create your dream?”
This switched my thinking a little about this whole issue, but there was more to come.
To illustrate his point he began a conversation with the waitress asking her where she was from and what she was doing in London? She said she was from Romania and she was in London studying to be lawyer, she went on to explain that she worked evenings in the bar and had a cleaning job at 5 – 8 each morning and fitted her studies around that! Wow!
There are millions of other examples of people doing similar things.
My point here is that many of us in the developed world have gotten too comfortable with our excuses. We’ve had them so long that we’ve begun to believe them!
I’m not saying it is easy; what I am saying is it doesn’t matter if it’s easy or not, what matters is how you choose to respond!
If you’ve been putting off getting started on your dream, maybe you could consider how much people are willing to risk to get the opportunities that you are letting slip by day by day!
Maybe these waves of immigration will affect the fabric of our society, and maybe that’s a good thing! Maybe we all need a wake up call to get busy in our lives and these people can remind us of what it’s like to be willing to work on your dream.
In the end these people may be the clearest demonstration of motivation you will ever see, or hear about. How would you feel if you too were this motivated and consistently taking action on your goals and dreams?
I know that social change has always brought challenges, but personally I think these people can inspire us all to ditch our habitual excuses and take action to better our lives.
That’s only my opinion; maybe you have different perspective? What are you saying to yourself about this do you feel about this is it an opportunity or threat?
All the best,
Anth.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
In my experience, when someone makes the decision to make a change - be that a major job change, career change or lifestyle change - their level of success is determined as much about what they are willing to ‘give up’ as it is about what they do in pursuit of the goal.
To make a significant change, you need to become a different person -with a new mindset, new habits, new outlook, new friends and quite often a new ‘look’. And that requires some b*alls!
That’s the one of the thing I notice about the Eastern europeans in the UK they have made big sacrifices in pursuit of a better life - given up homes, jobs, families, friends and their way of life in pursuit of a bigger future.
I know there are various social and political implications around immigration - but at an individual level, I have nothing but admiration for these people. Their courage, hard work and tanacity is something we can all learn from.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Your are incredibly out of touch with this issue. These people are a source of motivation?
I work in construction in Florida. The Mexicans and South and Central Americans, mainly Guatemalans, Ecuadorians and the Hondurans, come here illegally. They live in homes that violate code, with 10 or 15 people to a house. Then they work for cash, never paying taxes and at below market rates. They drive on roads without drivers licenses and insurance, in cars with invalid registrations, send their children to schools while paying no taxes, and use the emergency rooms as their medical care. Did you know the average wait for an emergency room visit here in Orlando is 8 hours?
I work for a legitimate construction company. All of our employees are legal. We must pay them at least minimum wage. We also have to cover workers compensation insurance, provide matching payroll taxes and the overhead that entails. We are subject to OSHA safety inspections because we are a legitimate and licensed roofing and construction company, registered with the State of Florida. We have required education to maintain our license and insurance. We have quarterly audits to stay in compliance with our liability insurance.
We compete against these illegals with required costs of about 42% more because we follow the law.
Motivated? I am not motivated by people who break the law or don’t follow the rules.
Lets say Empirical Coaching woke up one morning and found five coaching firms in your building next Monday. All five were manned by illegals. Now you didn’t wake up one morning and hang a shingle to be a coach. You went to school, read hundreds of books, studied thousand of hours, joined and volunteered at professional organizations. You are a professional coach charging professional rates for your services.
But the illegals say they are professionals too. I mean they’re in the same professional building you are. (In a few months you’ll discover they aren’t really tenants in the building, but are squatters and don’t pay rent.) They have similar literature as you do. (Actually they just took your brochure to the printer and asked the printer to print their name rather than yours on it.) They say they offer the same services you do. BUT, they charge $150 a month rather than the $500 a month you charge. They also don’t belong to the Professional Coaching Association, don’t maintain any professional affiliations, and you discover that website and blog you work so hard at updating everyday is being mirrored by these same five illegals on another site they set up. Or even worse, but they have framed your blog and site and claim all the information is theirs and all your contact information is blocked. And you are paying for their bandwidth.
Fast forward three months. You still get coaching clients, but you have to work three times as hard to get the same amount of clients, but because you have to complete with five other “coaching” firms in your building, you have to lower your prices to $300 a month just to land some clients. Some of your existing clients switch to these fake coaches, because after all, there is a $150 a month difference. You try to explain to these customers that the new coaches aren’t really coaches and could give them bad advice, but again, $150 is $150. You have to work harder to get new clients and keep your existing clients, but you have to charge less to each of these clients because these illegals are still charging $150. Granted they aren’t paying rent (stealing from the landlord), don’t belong to any professional organizations, and have taken credit for all you work on the website, but they are only charging $150 a month.
Sure, some of your clients will come back when they see the service the illegals give, but quite a few folks won’t be back. Instead you have to continue to compete against the illegals. You hear that numerous legitimate coaches are going out of business because they just can’t compete against the illegals charging $150 a month. You complain to the Professional Coaching Association, but because there are fewer and fewer coaches in the business, the PCA has less and less membership money to combat the illegals.
In a year you are exhausted. You have been competing against people who steal from you and think nothing of it (Mexicans have very different views on ownership than we do), don’t follow the code of the Professional Coaching Association, don’t pay rent, electricity nor phone service (all stolen from the mechanical room of the office building you are in) and your bandwidth bill has tripled from $80 a month to $250 because all five of the illegal coaches are using your website as their own.
Illegals are not something to be inspired by. If they are unhappy in their own country, they can change their own country. If they want to come to the US, apply for a visa, learn the language and stop breaking the laws. I am happy to compete against other legitimate business, but when I am forced to play by different and much, much tougher rules than illegals, the fun and motivation go right out the window.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Interesting post Anth; I’ve never really thought of it in that way, though now I am I think I have been telling myself changing wouldn’t be easy. mmmh!
Thank you for reminding me how lucky I am to have the opportunities I do and for the “wake up call” on my goals
Leighsah, I agree that illegals are not something to be inspired by and we need to defend our rights and liberties. If the difficulties you describe are the result of illegal activity then they should be stopped with the full force of the law! Not only to defend businesses like yours but also to show what is acceptable behavior in our country.
I can’t help thinking that this is a different issue to recognising the sacrifices and efforts of economic migrants, after all our United States was built on their sacrifices and the sweat of their brow! I’ve always found that inspirational!
Thanks,
Gabbie
May 9th, 2008 at 2:27 am
Dear Leighsah,
1. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of kitchen. i.e. if you want the rewards of self employment, you got to deal with the competition (in whatever size or shape) or get out.
2. Instead of spending time and energy writing an ‘essay’ about your problem in the comments box of a blog, invest that time and energy dreaming up ways to be so remarkable that clients will pay top dollar for your services rather than the mexicans.
3. As an Amrican you should never complain about other people going into your country and exploiting. You Americans have made a sport out of entering countries ilegally and making tax free wealth
The cream always floats to the top - that is as long as it doesn’t go sour whlst waiting to rise….
May 9th, 2008 at 2:37 am
Letting the eastern europeans into the uk was the best decision ever.
People like leighsah complain - but at least now we have construction people and decorators who want to work instead of having countless tea breaks. Competition is good for us the consumers becuase it makes all the locals stamd up and try to raise the bar
in addition to having more hard working plumbers and decorators we have doubled the number of really cute woman. (have you see these polish woman!)
And you americans have those cute mexican woman so no complaints Leighsah!
May 9th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I am a British expatriate living in Cyprus. I see the problem from the other side. Nine out of ten Cypriots speak English but my Greek has a lot of room for improvement. In UK I would expect everyone to try to speak the language properly, but here I expect Cypriots to speak to me in English.
My fellow expatriates often complain and whine because the Cypriots do things a bit differently. They forget they are living in a foreign country with a different culture and different rules. They forget they moved because they wanted a difference, but complain because it is different. The task for me is to be in harmony with Cyprus, my present home.
So many foreigners have a ghetto mentality when they emigrate. This may be the cause for upset among the indigenous population. Somewhere there is a line between maintaining your own culture and integrating into your new country.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I have been grateful to read your tips and have actually printed out all the chapters (7?…), except for #5….I’m not sure why I couldn’t retrieve it.
I am proud to be an American, a naturalized one but nevertheless one that is writing a book about precisely the spirit of this great country of ours. It is a big one and so it has big problems, but it still offers the liberty of choice and that is a gift that motivates foreigners to risk their lives in some cases.
There is truth in all that has been written above. The point is INTEGRITY must be inherent as a conscious choice. When that wavers, then the motivation ceases to be honorable.
Thank Anth for this perspective; it has merit and it is thought provoking.
Much Aloha.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I have never seen it like this before. I am an immigrant myself. I can see what has happened to me over the years. When I came to the country I was willing to do all that it took to make a success of my life but as I got comfortable, I lost the momentum. I began to make excuses and became less successful. I know what to do now. GET BACK TO THE TASK OF ACHIEVING MY GOALS.
The question is “What is the perscpective shift required to keep up the motivation to succeed?”
June 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
leighsah says it all….I live on the west coast by the Mexican border…..these illegals are hard core arrogant thinking the United States owes them and they come here and “take” and ruin neighborhoods with their illegal building, child abuse and animal abuse and noise disturbances..they are the lowest form of life on this planet….and have the nerve to not even learn English…press 1 for English press 2 for Spanish and our Govt., has allowed this?? and guess what…….the hispanics that were born and raised in the United States and their parents immigrated here “legally” do not want these illegals here either. They have “lowered” the salaries of just about every industry imaginable. They don’t want to come here for a better life…they “rape” this country and “get” everything they need and take every “cent” and take it back to Mexico….trust me I know first hand as my neighborhood is now ruined by this element.