Learn to Separate Facts From Opinion
3 min read“the greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions” goes a quote generally attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.If you are to change your financial status quo, you will have to learn to separate opinions from facts. News paper, TV, journals, friends and family will feed you day and night with information… some useful some not so useful to say the least. How you progress in life will be determined by your capacity to separate facts from opinion, truth from myth.I am sure the wise wo-men in 1903 rebuked the Wright brothers, “stop this nonsense, you will kill yourself, you can not fly anything heavier than air” believing this to be a fact. The geniuses of the pre-modern world believed that the earth was flat. Gandhi’s vision of fighting colonialism in India (winning by will power not fire power) was criticized that it won’t work, but he won against all odd.
Thomas Edison was told his electric bulb ‘adventure’ would never work, up until then lighting domestic houses was by candles and smelly smoky gases; but Edison moving steadily and full of belief investing $40k and 1,200 experiments, the filament bulb became a reality in 1879.Your progress will, to large extent, be determined by your capacity to filter through all this information to get facts from opinion, so that you can use them to build your own belief, which is a pre-requisite for success in any endeavour.Georg C. Lichtenberg tells us why, he says, “… accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest… ” so if you want to do away with opinion, you must plunge into increasing your knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.What opinion (belief?) do you have (or have received from people) about money, wealth and freedom:
– money is evil and corruptive in nature,
– money destroys people and community,
– it takes money to make money,
– you need to know somebody to make money,
– if you are born poor you’ll die poor,
– you need good education to make money,
– you have to take high risk to get high profits,
– one can’t be both wealthy and good person,
– you can only become rich by oppressing the poor,Are these facts or opinion, truth or myth? what is yours… whatever you opinion you accept, you will build your belief and hence your action upon it.
On the other hand, people’s opinion is the cheapest commodity you can find plentiful in the market today. You can’t do this… you can’t do that… you can’t have that job… you won’t succeed in that business… you are too young… too old, uneducated… blah blah blah!The next time you get discouraged by a belief or a so called “sound advice” when God gives you a vision, dream or mission ask yourself… is this an opinion or fact? truth or myth? Why, because all financial and life progress begins with a vision-then they either die or flourish depending on the recipient capacity (belief) to handle them.
