Winning the L0ttery... or reading a book.

I read something alarming some days ago.

In Spain, people spend on average three times more money per year on lottery tickets than they do on books…

Yep.

I used to frequently play the lottery about 20 years ago. And I always chose the same numbers because I dreamt of them once.

I played every weekedn for a long time, perhaps for a couple of years. I even won prizes a couple of times, big enough to get my investment back but no more. I eventually stopped.

Four years ago I bought a lottery ticket again.

I was in Mallorca for a concert and I had some spare time before the performance, so I decided to stroll around the city. I passed by a lottery stand and by accident, I saw a number that attracted me, so I bought it.

It was an expensive ticket, 20€ (probably about 25 US dollars) because it was the Christmas lottery called El Niño. In Spain, it´s the biggest lot of the year.

It turns out that I had all the numbers right except for the very last one. If this number had been right, I would have won hundreds of thousands of euros... I did get a prize though, 100€.

I haven´t bought a lottery ticket since.

I remember now the words of a man named Brian Tracy, who did a series of video seminars (the Phoenix Seminars) many decades ago that are still being seen to this day.

In one of them, he said that if by chance you become an overnight millionaire, you better transform into one very quickly or otherwise you´ve got close to no chance of keeping your money.

What that means, in my interpretation, is that millionaires or people with any kind of success in any given thing or field, are not made by chance. Also not just by hard work. Anyone can do hard work.

You need plenty of other things. Discipline, energy, drive, emotional stability, physical endurance, education, culture, curiosity, excitement, passion, obsession… compromise. You need many of those, if not all, and many more.

Why do you think that over 80% of lottery winners statistically go back to their past economic state (or worse) within two years of having won?

Because they were not prepared for it. In more than one way.

My thoughts for today: perhaps you´ll be more prepared to become a millionaire if you spend more money on books rather than on lottery tickets.

Have a great day.

Claudio.