Why You Don’t Want To Win The Lottery

Hey, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com and I’ve got something interesting for you this week and it’s about winning the lottery.  It would be pretty cool to win the lottery, right?  Wouldn’t that be awesome?  If you won the lottery you wouldn’t have to work again.  You could just go on vacation for the rest of your life, buy whatever you want, not have to worry about money anymore.  Well, actually I don’t think so and I’m going to tell you why coming up next.

Most people want to win the lottery.  You might think I’m lying when I say I don’t want to win the lottery.  Hey, actually to be totally honest with you, part of me does want to win the lottery.  Yeah, it would be nice to get some extra cash and not have to ever worry about money and again and I have dreams of vacations, taking things that I would do.  But, in reality it might not be the best thing in the world.  The reason why I’m telling you about this is because I think it applies to your life in general, because once you understand this concept of why you don’t want to win the lottery I think it will help you to do better at the work that you’re trying to do.

Here’s the key thing, here’s the key thing about this is that we don’t enjoy anything that we haven’t earned.  Maybe you have experienced this.  In fact, maybe you’ve helped your children experience this and not even realize that you need this lesson yourself or maybe your parents have taught you this lesson.

I remember when I was a kid and my dad said, “I can just buy you the new bicycle but you’re not going to appreciate it unless you go out and work and make the money and earn it.”  That was so right.  So many of the things that I bought that I worked hard and made the money for and then bought myself I took better care of them, I appreciated them more.  The things that I was given I didn’t appreciate as much.  In fact, to some degree, at some level the things I was given I was actually robbed of an opportunity to enjoy it because I could not get the enjoyment that I would have gotten out of it if I had earned it.  That’s what happens if you win the lottery.

Now, I haven’t won the lottery myself so I can’t speak from experience, but you can look at the news stories of people that have won the lottery.  You can look at the news story of people that “won the lottery.”  What I mean by that is someone who sold their startup for millions of dollars suddenly became a millionaire, someone who became a famous rock star or actor overnight didn’t really work their way up.  I mean they worked their way up to some degree but they suddenly had riches dropped on them and then their life became ridiculous.  They became suicidal, depressed, and some of them even did kill themselves or completely ruined themselves as a person.  They were better off before they won that money.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because this applies to you and your career and you might not even realize it.  So many of us are daydreaming saying, “Oh, if I could just get that big break.  If I could just get that raise.  If I could just win the lottery.”  Might be even literally, maybe you’re going and buying lottery tickets and you’re thinking that that would make you happy.  Well, I’m telling you it’s not.  What’s going to make you happy is earning your way.

If you want to be rich, if you want to make money, if you want to be someone who doesn’t have to worry about their financial future, don’t count on winning the lottery.  Don’t wish that you’re going to win the lottery.  Instead think practically, what can you do, how can you earn your way because there is no way to enjoy that riches or any kind of accomplishment if you didn’t earn it.

That’s my thought for this week.  Hopefully you find this useful.  Maybe you think I’m a little bit crazy.  Maybe you’re like, “Ah, John, yeah I would rather win the lottery.”  Okay, I understand and hey, I could be wrong here, but I’m just telling you from my personal experience, like I said, I never won the lottery, but I have gotten things handed to me and I have earned things.  The things that I have earned I have truly been able to enjoy.  The things that have been handed to me I haven’t been able to, at least not nearly as much.

So if you liked this video, if you like these kinds of videos don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.  I just want to tell you real quick about something that I’m working on that’s going to help you to boost your career if you’re a software developer and you want to get out there and earn your way basically, not win the lottery which is how to market yourself as software developer.  I’m taking preorders, limited preorders right now.  I’ll give you more information when I totally launch this thing.

You can check out my website simpleprogrammer.com/howtomarketyourself or you can look for the banner ad or links on there.  I also have a book on Leanpub that you can search for.  Go ahead and check that out if you’re interested.  Like I said, I’m taking a limited amount of pre orders right now but I’m putting a huge package for this.  It’s going to be a whole lot of really good stuff that I’m working really hard to put together right now.  Thanks again for watching this video.  Thanks for all the encouragement and support and I will talk to you next week.  Take care and don’t buy any more lottery tickets, I’m telling you.  See you.