Excuses
Welcome! The hardest part about my first post was coming up with a title. So in an ode to Dave Matthews Band, I decided to call it #1. If you’ve read the Home page and/or About page then you already know what this site is about, so I’m not going to bore you with that and I’ll get straight to the point.
The first response I always get when I start to tell people about my lifestyle is “ya but…” There is always some excuse as to why what I’m doing just simply won’t work for that person.
- “It’s too late in life to start investing, I’ll never get ahead”
- “I don’t make enough money and am already living paycheck to paycheck, I can’t afford to save anything more”
- “I’m too old to exercise and get in shape, my body can’t do those things anymore”
- “It’s way too expensive to eat healthy”
- “I don’t have enough time” – My personal favorite and the one I cringe at the most!
These are just a handful of the dozens of excuses I have heard on why someone can’t become wealthier, healthier, or happier. And I get it, at first glance they all seem valid. But let’s remember, excuses are just a way to take the easy way out. They allow us to justify something and place the blame on something or someone other than ourselves.
Let go of your fears
For just a moment, let’s put aside our fears and open our minds to the possibility that maybe getting ahead in life doesn’t have to be so hard! SERIOUSLY, I want you to stop and and think about this for a minute. Whatever you want in life has almost certainly been done before! You want to be debt free? Millions of people have done it! You want to lose weight or gain muscle? Millions of people have done those too! You want to buy a house or save for retirement? Yup, that’s been done before. O wait, I know, you want to get more sleep or not be so stressed all the time? Guess what, millions of people have done those things as well. My point is, that quite literally every single health and wealth goal you can imagine has already been done by millions of people before you! There are people right now in your EXACT situation that are accomplishing the same goals you dream of but say are impossible because of some lousy excuse!
Now sure, some goals may certainly be “harder” than others, but none of your goals are “impossible”. And that’s where we need to realize the difference. “HARD” DOES NOT EQUAL “IMPOSSIBLE”! If someone has done something in the past, then the only thing holding anyone back from repeating that same thing is their mindset. There are people with no arms or legs who have completed marathons. There are people who grew up in the poorest places on earth with zero education but went on to become millionaires. Again, hard does not equal impossible and if it’s been done before it can be done again! You just need to change your mindset!
Now let’s go back and revisit some of our excuses from earlier…
- “It’s too late to start investing, I’ll never get ahead” – You don’t have to start investing the day you turn 18 to make money and get ahead. Sure, the more time your money is invested the more money you will make. But remember what we talked bout earlier. It may certainly be “harder” to make a lot of money the older you start, but it’s by no means “impossible”. I myself didn’t start investing until the age of 31! That’s right, my very first $100 was deposited into a Betterment account a good 13 years after becoming an adult. I know what your thinking, and here comes yet another excuse from some of you! “Ok, so what, 31 is just a young buck, I’d kill to be 31 again. What about the rest of us who are damn near grandparents!? It’s definitely too late for us!” WRONG. Again, think back to what we talked about and realize that this is just an EXCUSE. Let’s do some simple investing math for a minute. Let’s pretend you are not 18, or 25, or even 31. Let’s pretend you are 40 with ZERO dollars invested so far! If you invest $500 a month until the “normal” retirement age of 65 assuming the historical stock market average of 10% per year. Then you will have a whopping $616,000 at the age of retirement! Again, that’s if you have ZERO dollars saved so far. If you have even $10,000 to start with, your investment would grow to almost 3/4 of a million dollars! But let’s now scale it down a notch for the super pessimists of the group! Let’s pretend you are 50 years old, with no savings, and can only afford to contribute an extra $300 per month until retirement. You would end up with $120,000 when you retire at 65! Now that may not seem like a fortune, but you can either CHOOSE to have an extra $120,000 at retirement or you can CHOOSE to let the excuses win and not bother to start investing! Let’s breakdown 1 more of our excuses.
- “It’s way too expensive to eat healthy” – When we start to talk about eating healthy one of the first things that comes to mind is “Organic”. It’s almost like a taboo word to some of you. One that might as well be spelled $$Organic$$. To someone that is not familiar with eating healthy, it may seem like if you are not buying organic then you might as well not even bother! But again, this is just another excuse! While there are some foods you should “try” to buy organic, the truth is that with most foods you are certainly fine buying the non-organic. You are only fooling yourself with another excuse if you think that buying the chicken sandwich from Chic-Fil-A is better than a homemade Burrito Bowl made with non-organic quinoa, beans, veggies and avocado!? If all you can afford is non-organic then PLEASE BUY THE NON-ORGANIC! This is me not only allowing it, but begging you to do so! Non-organic anything is worlds better than processed food! Another thing, when most people envision a “heathy meal” they tend to think of wild, extravagant dishes. Do a quick Google search and you will find recipes for prawn & pork rice paper rolls or pea and spinach carbonara (These really are 2 meals I found on the first page of Google). Maybe these are great if you have loads of cash to spend and a personal chef to prepare it for you. But in the real world, eating healthy doesn’t have to be that expensive or complicated! An easy way to start eating healthy on the cheap is to stick to 1 ingredient foods. Think fruit, vegetables, quinoa, oats, nuts, seeds, and beans. All of these things consist of literally just ONE ingredient! They just so happen to be extremely CHEAP as well! Everything I just mentioned are some of the cheapest things you can find in grocery stores. You then start to combine these foods to make full meals, and guess what happens when you combine a bunch of cheap foods to make a meal…you get a CHEAP MEAL! (Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to make plenty of these cheap meals in future posts!)
Changing your mindset
So in order to change your mindset you first need to realize that the only thing holding you back is YOU. This starts with self accountability. Start taking responsibility for your own actions and behaviors without blaming others. It may be hard at first, but if you get in the habit of rewording your excuses it can be done quite easily. From now on, every time you have an excuse for anything, I want you to blame yourself instead. Wait, I’m sure your saying this doesn’t sound like a healthy thing to do. But once you get in the habit of putting the blame on yourself then you start to realize that everything in YOUR life is in YOUR control and not someone else’s! Now I’m not saying to beat yourself up over it. But realize that everything you have or haven’t done is within your control.
It may not be your fault that you’re broke now, maybe your ex took you for everything. But it is your fault if you STAY broke! It may not be your fault that you’re unhealthy, maybe that’s the way you were raised. But it’s certainly your fault if you STAY unhealthy! We all have choices on what we are going to do today and tomorrow and each day going forward. You can either CHOOSE to stay unhappy, unhealthy and broke. Or you can CHOOSE to turn your life around! But making excuses is never going to help you do the latter. Making excuses will keep you in a perpetual state of denial and thinking you’re just unlucky all the time.
So the next time you start to make an excuse, just remember to tell yourself that the only reason it can’t be done is because YOU are not doing it!
