Impulse Control: The Difference in Being Rich or Poor By Dr. Joachim de Posada

I recently went to Jamaica to conduct a seminar for the largest Travel Agency in that country. I had over 60 Jamaican travel agents eagerly listening to any idea I could offer to make them more competitive in their business and in their personal lives.

As in many of my seminars, I discussed a very important principle that is very much required for anyone to succeed: Impulse control.

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental for human beings than resisting impulse. It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature lead to one or another impulse to act.

What is the meaning of the root word, emotion? To move

The capacity to resist that impulse to act, to quash the initial movement is perhaps one of the most important factors involved in success.

A Stamford University psychologist, Walter Michel said “goal directed, self imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business ,solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the U.S.Open Tennis Championship”.

I was telling my Jamaican audience how important it was for them to understand this principle. I told them that I could be addressing tortilla salespeople in Mexico who are very poor, newspaper salespeople in Caracas who are also very poor or flower salespeople in Guayaquil who are definitely not known for their riches and the message would be the same I was giving them. You need to save at least 10% of everything you make.

If you sell 10 tortillas in a day, you save the proceeds of one tortilla. Same with newspapers, or flowers. In 30 years, you might very well be a millionaire.

They were stunned. In essence, what I said is that even the poorest person, saving 10% of what they make, can become rich sometime in their lives.

I told them there was no excuse whatsoever for anyone to reach retirement age, broke.

I recounted one of the stories in my book “How to Survive Among Piranhas” the story of Legson Kayira, a very, very poor man, who walked from his tribal village in Nyasaland, north across the wilderness of East Africa to Cairo, where he boarded a ship to America to get a college education. He left on foot with a five day supply of food and no money. Two years later he arrived at Skagit Valley College to start his college education.

He said “ I learned I was not, as most African believed, the victim of my circumstances but the master of them”.

I said I could tell who in the group had trouble with resisting impulse and who didn’t. How could I do that they asked? I said, “by looking at your assets”. Those of you that are right now out of money, don’t have any money saved up, are living day to day, are always struggling, have had a problem with impulse control for your whole lives.

Ninety percent accepted that they were in the wrong side of the equation.

There is hope, I said. Start saving 10% of everything you make right now and you will end your lives as rich people provided of course a truck doesn’t run you over.

This principle is so important that my next book which I have already written, is based on this principle. I am calling it “Don’t eat the marshmallow…Yet.”

When the President of the company was driving me to the airport, he mentioned that what I said about impulse control was one of the most important lessons I could have taught his people. He proceeded to explain that when he was a young man he started working for the Jamaican Electricity Company and he had a boss that he got along with very well.

The boss was an older fellow that had worked 35 years for the electric company. He had a company car and a good salary. When he reached 65, by law, he had to leave the company. This gentleman told me that he was the one that had to drive the boss to his house the last day of work. When they got to their home, he of course had to take the car back since it belonged to the company. With teary eyes, the man gave him the car keys and confessed to him that he had no money to buy a new car. He was broke.

Imagine, working 35 years for a company and reaching your retirement age with no money, not even enough to buy a car.

That made such an impression on this company president, at such a young age, that he swore that this would not happen to him when he reached 65. He started a savings program that day and has kept it to this day. This man is a rich man and he is in his middle fifties.

Yes, many of us, myself included, have had trouble with impulse control. It is our psychological make up and sometimes the environment or our upbringing that contributes to our inability to control our impulses. But it is never too late to start saving. I learned my lesson a few years ago and I now have a good savings program.

What about you?

Can you afford to continue expending all your resources so that when you get to 65 you are like 90% of all people in the world, flat broke?

Those of you that are lucky enough to work for companies that have high regard for their employees and can afford it and have 401 k’s and or a matching contribution program and financial advise and do not take advantage of this situation, can’t be forgiven. What a waste if you are not taking advantage of your good fortune. . Shame on you.

Those of you that work for companies that do not have those programs, take responsibility and start your own.

In our society, one of the richest in the world, there is no excuse for anyone to reach the golden age plain broke. Hey, if Legson made it, everyone can.