"In life, there is no trying. 

We only DO or NOT DO." 

--The Author

POOR people don’t have the right to become rich. Whenever I tell my audience this, they tend to react negatively. They tell me that I am being so discriminatory. But I tell I’m not. I am just being  true to myself based on my personal philosophy.

What happens next after the negative—and sometimes violent—reaction of my audience is this question: “Why do you think so?” I would answer simply: “Because they are not qualified to be rich. They think poor. They behave poor. They talk poor. They act poor. Those things obviously make them poor. Unless they do otherwise, they won’t become rich ever.”

I came from a marginal-income family earning just enough to survive daily. My mother is a public school teacher in Gumaca, Quezon, and my father is a tricycle driver. Believe me, until now I couldn’t imagine how they managed to raise us.

In 1999, when my sister Celeste was about to graduate BS Accountancy at PUP, I entered college. Sending two students to college while sending another to high school was extremely tough for my parents.

Thus, my expectations weren’t that high when I first came to Manila. In fact, I didn’t dream of studying in the big city at all. I hated its pollution and I hated its alarmingly big and growing population. Before deciding to enroll in PUP, in fact, my option was just to study in Lucban, Quezon, itself.

My college life was a struggle not only for academic survival but for financial survival as well. My allowance was only P500 a week. That was inclusive of food, transportation, and other expenses. Don’t ask me how I survived. I just did.

Yet, despite being financially challenged, I never thought about being poor. Because for me, thinking poor would only make anyone even poorer. I needed to be rich and I had to start thinking rich, so that eventually I could act rich and finally become really rich. 

Simply put, I needed to qualify myself.