Four Money Lessons from Nature
posted by Josiah Garber on September 13, 2009
in Uncategorized
by Jim Wang
When you get down to the core of money, it’s really just an abstraction of natural resources. You accept money for your labor because, ultimately, it can buy you the things you want. Food and shelter, at the core of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, are just two of the things you can buy when you have money.
That’s why it’s not so much a leap to look towards nature for lessons about money. Is an acorn to a squirrel any different than a dollar to you or me? Nope. Animals deal with natural resources every single day, in such a simple and easy to understand way, so certainly there is something we can learn from our flora and fauna?
Save in Prosperity
A lot of animals hibernate in the winter. They fatten up while the eating is still good, during the summer and fall months, and then live off that fat during the leaner periods of the winter. Squirrels hide their nuts in secret caches, tapping them when the nuts are less plentiful. Bears load up on fat, carve ditches into hills, and sleep the winter away. Almost every animal is aware of when food will be less plentiful so they save up so they can survive during those periods.
We should be doing the same! Our lean periods aren’t quite as predicable as the seasons but they’re there. We’re in a lean period right now! You can’t set your watch to the cycles but no one ever thinks the good times will roll on forever, so we should save up when the saving is easiest in order to survive when money is less plentiful.
Work In Teams
Many animals live in groups, everything from a school of fish to a flock of geese to a pride of lions; animals congregate for protection. They work in teams to achieve a common goal, whether it’s on a hunt or protecting the young. They do this because many realize that going it alone is much harder than working in a team with others.
This applies to people as well, we are most effective when we learn to work in teams towards a common goal. There is only so much one person can do and by working well with others you have the potential to increase the effectiveness of the group. The total is greater the sum of its parts.
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