Rich Dad Poor Dad is a starting point for anyone looking to gain control of their financial future

Overcoming Laziness
Busy people are often the most lazy. We have all heard stories of a
businessman who works hard to earn money. He works hard to be a 
good provider for his wife and children. He spends long hours at the 
office and brings work home on weekends. One day he comes home 
to an empty house. His wife has left with the kids. He knew he and 
his wife had problems, but rather than work to make the relationship 
strong, he stayed busy at work. Dismayed, his performance at work 
slips and he loses his job.
Today, I often meet people who are too busy to take care of their 
wealth. And there are people too busy to take care of their health. The 
cause is the same. They’re busy, and they stay busy as a way of avoiding 
something they do not want to face. Nobody has to tell them. Deep 
down they know. In fact, if you remind them, they often respond with 
anger or irritation.
If they aren’t busy at work or with the kids, they’re often busy 
watching TV, fishing, playing golf, or shopping. Yet deep down 
they know they are avoiding something important. That’s the most 
common form of laziness: laziness by staying busy.
So what is the cure for laziness? The answer is—a little greed.
For many of us, we were raised thinking of greed or desire as bad. 
“Greedy people are bad people,” my mom used to say. Yet we all have 
inside of us this yearning to have nice, new, or exciting things. 

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Chapter Seven: Overcoming Obstacles
140
So to keep that emotion of desire under control, often parents 
find ways of suppressing that desire with guilt. “You only think about 
yourself. Don’t you know you have brothers and sisters?” was one of 
my mom’s favorites. “You want me to buy you what?” was a favorite of 
my dad. “Do you think we’re made of money? Do you think money 
grows on trees? We’re not rich people, you know.”
It wasn’t so much the words, but the angry guilt trip that went 
with the words that got to me.
Or the reverse guilt trip was the “I’m sacrificing my life to buy
this for you. I’m buying this for you because I never had this advantage 
when I was a kid.” I have a neighbor who is stone-broke but can’t park 
his car in his garage. The garage is filled with toys for his kids. Those 
spoiled brats get everything they ask for.
“I don’t want them to know the 
feeling of want” are his everyday 
words. He has nothing set aside for 
their college or his retirement, but 
his kids have every toy ever made. 
He recently got a new credit card in 
the mail and took his kids to visit Las 
Vegas. “I’m doing it for the kids,” he 
said with great sacrifice.
Rich dad forbade the words, “I can’t afford it.” In my real home, 
that’s all I heard. Instead, rich dad required his children to say, “How 
can I afford it?” He believed that the words “I can’t afford it” shut 
down your brain. It didn’t have to think anymore. “How can I afford 
it?” opened up the brain and forced it to think and search for answers.
But most importantly, he felt the words, “I can’t afford it,” were 
a lie. And the human spirit knows it. “The human spirit is very, very 
powerful,” he would say. “It knows it can do anything.” By having a 
lazy mind that says, “I can’t afford it,” a war breaks out inside you. Your 
spirit is angry, and your lazy mind must defend its lie. The spirit is 
screaming, “Come on. Let’s go to the gym and work out.” And the lazy 
mind says, “But I’m tired. I worked really hard today.” Or the human