7 Lessons Poverty Taught Us | Breaking the Poverty Mindset | EP 38

Poverty doesn't just affect your finances. It can shape your mindset, your decisions, your relationships, and the way you see yourself.

In Episode 38 of the Designers of Change Podcast, we explore seven powerful lessons that poverty can teach us. Some lessons build resilience and gratitude, while others create fear, scarcity, and limiting beliefs that can follow us long after our circumstances change.

This conversation isn't about defining people by where they started. It's about understanding how our experiences shape us and how we can intentionally rewrite the stories that no longer serve us.

In this episode, we discuss:
✨ The difference between poverty and a poverty mindset
✨ How scarcity influences decision making
✨ Breaking generational cycles
✨ Building an abundance mindset
✨ Lessons that strengthen resilience and character
✨ Choosing growth over survival

Your past may explain you, but it doesn't have to define you.

🎙️ Episode 38: 7 Lessons We Learn From Poverty

🎧 Watch the full episode now. Link in bio.

#DesignersOfChange #PovertyMindset #AbundanceMindset #PersonalGrowth #MindsetShift #FinancialFreedom #Leadership #Resilience #SelfDevelopment #JamaicaPodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Coming up on this episode of the Designers of Change podcast.

SPEAKER_04 0:04

So if you grow up, if you if you were born in poverty, but you spend the the entire your entire life as an adult in it, then that is your choice because you have the free will to change your mind and to get in another environment. Because human beings, human beings, we are the only animal or species who can improve our life.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Yes, that's it.

SPEAKER_04 0:34

A dog can't improve. A dog can't get up tomorrow and say, you know what? I'm tired being a dog. I want to be a doctor. A dog cannot go to university study to be a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 0:47

You have the power to transform me life.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Welcome to episode 38. We are so happy to have you here at the Designers of Change podcast. If you've missed our very first episode, episode one, then you probably wouldn't have heard that I was a girl born and raised in poverty. Yes. Born and raised from the gutter, you would call it. Grew up in the ghetto.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Came from Almontown, a community that everyone would know as the Garrisons.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Mr. Wright, he grew up in Bogwalk St. Catherine.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

And also poor. And so we said, you know what? We've been talking a lot about corporate and giving our leaderships uh tips and tidbits and gems and personal development and professional development. Today we want to share our roots with you. And so we want to share with you seven things we have learned from poverty. Seven principles, seven key things that have kept us till this day. But we want to say a huge thank you to our amazing sponsors. We have the best partners out there. Uh to Jace Myra Media, Mind Food International, Super Letive Auto, Caribbean Gospel TV. Also, a huge thank you to Regional Consulting Services out there in K-Man, the Self-Care Bar, Jesse's Home Decor, Amanda's Kitchen, Grace Creates, SK Catering. Also, another huge, huge shout out to Proactive Lifestyle. And we want to say thank you to you, the listeners, the viewers, the ones who make this possible. Because of course, what would the podcast be doing if we never had anybody listening to the podcast to begin with? Right? And so let's kick start this thing. And I want to start with the first one. Can I give my first lesson? Giving your first growing up in poverty. So for those who don't know, as I said, if you missed the first episode, then you've probably miss hearing that, you know, my I lost my father at the age of 10 years old. He was a police officer. He was shot and killed in the line of duty. Um, my, you know, my mother lost her at 16, my grandmother 17, and you know, had to literally be on my own fending for myself. Go, I went through tragedy after tragedy, and I was a lost soul. But you know, there's something that poverty has instilled in me that till this day I have not lost, and I I I appreciate that side of me, which is I know how to appreciate whatever life throws at me. So we could be doing well today and be doing not so great tomorrow. Mr. Wright can attest to it that I can still open our fridge and look in there, and whatever is in there gets cooked. Like I still can find and make a home cooked meal with whatever we have. It is just that level of creativeness, um, innovativeness, and I saw that from my mother. I have to give my inspiration to my mother. My mother was that mother that if it meant that she was coming home and she was going to cook one pot, which is rice mixed with sardine, and that was the meal, then that was the meal. But we weren't going to bed hungry. And I picked that up from my mother, and it's something that I have carried with me through till today. Learning how to be resilient, learning how to use what I got until better comes. That's something that I will hold on until I die. And I teach that to my daughter as well.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

Yeah, so yeah, so your first lesson is being creative.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

Being creative, use whatever you got. You know what we say, you tell your handmake fashion. Yeah. That's me.

SPEAKER_04 5:05

So for me, growing up in Bogwalk with 11 of us in that board house, sitting on four blocks with an outside toilet. We call it pit toilet. I don't know what they call it in America. I don't know what they call it in America. And so we had a bathroom, outside bathroom. We also had our kitchen outside as well. And so we used to use the wood fire to cook on. And so over a period of time, the smoke from those um wood, it caused my grandmother to have catara. At the same time, we were also on food stamp in Jamaica before they changed it out and rename it to the parts program. So we were on that, and there are many nights that we could many nights we'll go to bed without any food. But for me, one of the lessons I learned from poverty is resilience. The ability to not quit under pressure. And we had to learn that from early out. Because if there was no dinner tonight, we couldn't show attention, we couldn't scream, or we couldn't, you know what, just give up on life. And so that instilling us, apart from the creativity part, it instilling us the the the resilience. Because my grandmother she was a very resilient and resourceful person, and so from that it that that allows us the ability to To be tough but yet adaptable to life circumstance because we we understood that if we eat today we might not eat tomorrow, but life still goes on, and so from my lesson, one of those lessons is resilience, and you you have to have resilience in life if you're going to have good success, because life shows so many curveballs, as we say, life is difficult, and for the people out there, especially on shopping world, and any career in life, if you're not resilient, you're not going to make it.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

You're not going to make it.

SPEAKER_04 7:27

You are going to be too wishy-washy for life.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

You're going to successfully.

SPEAKER_04 7:30

And so poverty taught us resilience. Absolutely. One of those key ingredients for success is did taught us resilience.

SPEAKER_03 7:39

Absolutely. That's powerful. And same for me. I learned resilience quite early because again, I never had, I mean, I had relatives, but I think you realized from early that you're pretty much on your own and that you had to fend for yourself. And so you had to make things happen. I think the third thing would be for me is to just understand that if I wanted to get anywhere in life, that education had to be, uh had to play an important part in that. So even though my mother and father were gone, I still ensured that I enrolled into university. And I never had anybody behind me pushing me to do it. I just knew that it had to be done. I just knew that that's something that needed to be done. I needed to have my degree. And I went and I did that myself. I never waited on somebody to tell me. Um, and you know, even after that, I kept going because I knew that education may be that way out. You know, when you are facing extreme circumstances, especially in poverty, you only have a few means out. And for a young girl, I mean, sometimes you're brainwashed to say, oh, maybe a rich man will take you out. But we know for sure that education is one sure way to work yourself out of this situation. And I said, I wasn't going to wait on somebody to hand me something, I want it to work. So I understood the importance of education, I understood the importance of growth, and so I took that route.

SPEAKER_04 9:19

Yeah, I think that's yeah, that's that's that's a great one. Education. Education is one of the number one routes out of poverty because we usually perish from lack of knowledge. True. One of the key things that I learned from my poverty experience growing up in Bagua was the ability to adapt quick to life. Because there were times that our water got disconnected, and when you when your water gets disconnected, you don't have any water in your home. And that can lead to all kinds of disease. What we had to do, we had to adapt quickly. We had to grab our buckets and go sometime. We had a canal nearby. Or we have to go to the river. So you did not have that, you did not have that time or mental space to sit down and map over that which is not there that you are comfortable with. Your pipeline just gets disconnected. You don't have any water. You can't sit there for two, three weeks complaining that you did not have any money to pay for the water bill and to pay the water bill. You have to adapt quickly to grab a bucket and you have to walk to the canal. You have to walk to the river to get that water and probably have to boil it or whatever it is that you want until you can get that money to pay for that water bill to get it reconnected. And so that teaches me the ability to adjust quickly in life. And sometimes we you know we grow to a point where we are comfortable in life and something may get removed and and and people can't adjust, and we stuck in that stage forever. You know, we see it with organization, we see where there were changes coming, but because we are so comfortable with yesterday's success, changes disrupt, and we could have made the adjustment to become successful, and that and that is one of the things I learned in life that you have to be adaptable for you to continue growth, for you to be successful. If one stages of life in our one season of life, you can't stay in that in that season of life forever. It is going to destroy you. If summer ends and it's no winter, you can't wear your summer clothing.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

You're going to die.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

You're going to die. And so there are so many people who are rigid about life and the change sometimes takes them out. But for me, bogwalk lesson in poverty, it teaches me how to be adaptable and be few and be what you call it, liquid. I mean, I mean to become fluid. To become fluid in life. To say, when we were in bogwalk, whatever changes we have to make, we have to make it quickly to go to go with life.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

Absolutely. That's your number four. I think number five for me is humility. I think there is a level of humility that I have that it doesn't come from failure, it comes from where I'm coming from. I can sit with the common man on the street and he can tell me what's going on in his life, and I totally get it. Because I grew up seeing that, and I understand what that's like. That's the how my my mother lived. That's how you know I understand why the man goes to the shop and buys a pound of rice and two pounds of chicken. Yes. I get it because that's what they have for today. You can't go to the supermarket, that's what they can afford. And so for you to be blessed with that level of understanding, you know why the person can go to Price Mart, you can understand that, but you also understand why the man goes to the shop and buys the chicken back and the rice. Yes. And you you can see the duality of life and you can appreciate it for what it is, and you can make both individuals feel good.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

I think when you're able to see life from those two perspectives, it makes you so humble because you know that it takes one severe thing to happen to the man up there to get to the man down there, and it takes one good thing to happen to the man down there for him to possibly get to that level as well, and so that's just life, yeah. And so um, I think humility is one of those things that I've learned also. What about you?

SPEAKER_04 14:05

For me, uh poverty when I was a child, I used to daydream a lot, and I think it was a result of where I was because you get a sense of that, especially when you start to watch television, you realize that hey, there's more to there's more out there's more to life than where you have there's more, especially when we when we had sometime my grandmother used to have church conference, and I used to go come to Cons and Spring of a Tree. Or sometime we'd visit uh you know a church sister who lives in town and realize that hey there's more yeah, you know, there's university, there's more to where we were at uh a low place in Bogwalk, and that there is more to life, and so that gives me the ability to dream to aspire to something more, you know. So so even though in those in those trying times in those humble beginnings, I think I was such a daydreamer. I just walk on the road and I was just kicking the bottle and I was such a daydreamer. I don't know if that probably you know uh when I was younger, I sometimes lost myself in just daydreaming about life, and so even to this day, I think that instill in me. I like to talk to people who are dreamers, people who want to change things, people who haven't given up in a sense, they don't think that this is all.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

There is more, yeah, and they want to pursue more because sometimes we we allow life to bully us in our to think that there's nothing else is going to happen to us. Yeah, so we have to have that understanding that no man, there there are actually things that we can accomplish, there are places that we need to get to. Yeah, so that's a big one, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:11

And if we allow life to bully us, a lot of people they allow life to bully them. As I say, and when life bullies them, it life shrink with the individual, they never grow up, and so in Bagwa, Bagwak teach me how to dream, and it also in a good way, it never allows me to be comfortable where I was. Yes, so I was happy, I was happy, have peace, but I was not satisfied with where I was. So, yes, bagwalk, and I think the the the poverty if you look from it from a from a different perspective, poverty is not good. I'm not saying it is good, but if you allow it to stir the gift inside of you, then it can propel you. It is a catalyst, it is a catalyst for change.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

And you know, just as we are on, because that's that would be number six. I'll give the last one as we close. I think um poverty has taught me that poverty is a choice.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

I mean yeah, if you if when you're born in it, yes, yeah, but but when you get get to a certain period, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Yeah, well, yeah, poverty is a choice. I'm learning. Even even with being dealt a really terrible hand, poverty is a mindset. Yeah, if you're yeah, if poverty is a mindset, it it really is, and you can you can tell because you can move somebody out of poverty and put them in really nice settings, yeah, and they will still act like they're poverty stricken, yeah, yeah, and likewise you can take somebody out of wealth and put them in poverty and they won't act that way. So I've learned over time that as you mentioned, poverty can be a fuel, it can give you an unbelievable drive, it can give you an unbelievable push for more, but you don't have to settle in it.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Yeah, I think when you are born, wherever you're born, that is not your choice.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Right.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

But if you are born in poverty and you remain in it for the time. That's what I'm saying, then that is not your choice.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Now you got what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

So we choose, yes. If you grow up, if you if you were born in poverty, but you spend the the entire your entire life as an adult in it, then that is your choice because you have the free will to change your mind and to to get in another environment. Because human beings, we are the human beings, we are the only animal or species who can improve our life.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yes, that's it.

SPEAKER_04 19:06

A dog can't improve. A dog can't get up tomorrow and say, you know what? I'm tired being a dog. I want to be a doctor. A dog cannot go to university study to be a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 19:18

You have the power to transform your life. You can say, you know what, I don't like where I am, I'm going back to school, whether you have the resources or not, because you it required faith. And so you can stay where you are and improve and make the changes that you are. So here's the thing about life it's not about your external circumstance, it's about how you think and how you perceive life because the internal part of your life is more important than the outer circumstance. Because if you can't change your inner thought, then your life will definitely change. And I think too many people, because we automatically think we are getting wiser and smarter by by just getting older because we naturally grow outward by time passing by. But here's the thing: if you want to get better in life, you have to get better from the inside.

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Absolutely, absolutely, and you know, there are so many more lessons that we could share with you guys about what poverty has taught us. And I want you to understand this us sharing these tips does not mean that we don't go through struggles just the same. We're not saying that it doesn't negate challenges. What we are saying is that based on how we were raised or upbringing has instilled some principles, some principles in us till this day that has helped us to remain grounded. And so, what we're saying is, guys, you have to be resilient, you have to be humble, you have to keep going. Education is important, you have to be adaptable, right? You have to know how to be innovative and creative, but you have to choose to grow. Um, we're so grateful that you stick around to hear what we had to say about our lessons from poverty. Jamari, you wanted to say something?

SPEAKER_04 21:24

I think as you grow and you get better in life, growth and getting better in life is not by accident. It is intentional. And if you're going to succeed in any era of your life, whether it be business, whether it be in family, whether it be in your health, it has to be intentional. Success is uphill. Growth is uphill. I've never seen an Olympian athlete. Oh my god, I don't know. Oh my god, and just drop down in the air and say, I don't know how I become an Olympic champion. No. You don't become an Olympic champion by mistake. You don't wake up one day and say, you know what? I'm an Olympic champion without doing anything. To be an Olympic champion, it has to be intentional. You have to train, you have to dream about it, you have to prepare for it. And it's the same thing. We have learned those principles from From our darkest moment. Some of our darkest moments. And we have utilized it in our life. And it's the same thing to you. You are not going to succeed by accident. Success in life is intentional. Growth in life is intentional. Getting better in life is intentional. You have to be disciplined about it. And when you get better, your life automatically gets better. And the last word I'm going to say. If you as an individual and you keep on running into people who are not going anywhere, then you, my friend, you are flying too low. And once you change your mindset, you will see better people in your life. And you will have better opportunity. You can only have a better opportunity in life if you become better.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

Absolutely. And that's it, guys, for episode 38. Thank you for staying with us with our lessons that we've learned from our upbringing. We want to say a huge thank you to our sponsors, um, to Jasmine Media, Mind Food International, Super Lative Auto. Um, also Grace Creates, uh, Amanda's Kitchen, um, Regional Consulting Services, Proactive Lifestyle, also to Caribbean Gospel TV, the self-care bar, Jesse's home decor. And to you, our listeners, please feel free to subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Go follow us and also ensure that you are following us on all the um streaming platforms. Find us on Instagram as well, the Designers of Change Podcast. Find uh Mindfood International as well as Natasia Wright. You can see by name, you see how it's spelled. Find us on all social media platforms, give us a follow and let us know where you're streaming in from. It's a blessing to have you listening and participating every single week. Blessings, you know.