5 Things That Pull Your Strings.

1. Social Heritage.
This is a mixture of things that include your parents, gender, culture, country of birth and religious beliefs.
These circumstances are the building blocks that control your outlook on life as they are the ones that are difficult to change.
Your background or upbringing will dictate what you eat, how you cook, what clothes you wear or what you believe.

An Indian likes spicy food whilst a European prefers bland.
A Brit enjoys warm beer whist South Africans like it cold.
Europeans prefer football, American baseball and South Africans rugby.
White people want a tan but to Asians it is the mark of a labourer.

The list is endless but who is to say which is right or wrong?

2. Wealth.
You are either born rich or poor.
Half of the world population lives on less than R15 a day which means that most of the world is in poverty.
Poverty results in poor health, education, malnutrition and disease.
If you were lucky enough to be born into an average family, then your life will be a daily grind as there is never enough.
You might have a roof over your head, clothes on your back and food in your stomach but something always needs to be fixed, bought or paid for.

We are told to save money but how is it possible if your month is longer than your salary?
Credit cards have boomed creating another trap with spending money that you do not have.
Banks have made huge profits selling dreams on credit.

3. Education
This condition stems directly from the previous point.
No money = poor education.
Poverty forces families to let their children work to provide instead of receiving an education.
Hunger is a strong motivator and education comes secondary to food.

The uneducated work for the educated who in turn take advantage of their lack of knowledge.
Unions jump into the gap to protect the uneducated and land up fleecing them as well.

I remember the days when I was told to get an education and a trade because then I would have something to fall back on in hard times.
A good education is a system requisite but it costs money that many do not have.
The degree often has to be paid back with interest which is a crippling way to start out your working career.

4. Health
Many people are born with some form of disability.
Some have poor eyesight; others inherit a disease whilst many are handicapped.
The wonders of the medical world have solved a number of these issues, but your health still dictates the way you approach life and the opportunities available to you.
My dad had diabetes which affected my life having to learn at an early age how to help him if he went into insulin shock.

The sad thing about health is that it is often taken for granted.
Our lifestyles and new technology open the door to sickness induced by lack of exercise and stress.
Preventable heart disease has become a major killer in the west.

5. Work
Your career, job or whatever it is that you do to earn money takes up a huge amount of your time.
The system is designed so that you work for money and spend it to survive.

The old barter system was a much better way of living but money became the preferred commodity of trade.
We work to earn money and that work expands to meet our available time.
You do not earn more if you work harder and your boss demands you put in your contracted hours.
The average adult spends a third of their life at work usually working at a job they do not like.
Mankind, being inherently lazy, tends to do as little as possible for the maximum amount of money.

I believe the above conditions are the basic blocks from which circumstances evolve.
They are interdependent on each other and are pretty complex to unravel.
The best solution is to go back to the root cause circumstances and work forwards from there.
Think about how these factors have influenced your life and one will stand out as the founding father.
Then think about whether you could have changed that circumstances with the knowledge you now have.