2020-12-15_How_to_End_a_Year_and_Plan_a_Better_One_Part_3-Plan
00:00:00.000 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas,
00:00:05.000 | and amphitheaters nationwide. With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees, and
00:00:10.500 | the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing
00:00:15.000 | you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit SweetHop.com today to book your premium
00:00:20.340 | tickets to your favorite teams, artists, and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop
00:00:25.000 | around LA. It's more than just a ticket.
00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:00:33.600 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while
00:00:37.840 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I'm your
00:00:41.800 | host. Today, we're going to talk about part three of how to wrap up one year and start
00:00:45.840 | a better one as we come to the end of 2020 and plan for a better year in 2021. And step
00:00:53.080 | three is simply plan. That's what we're going to be talking about in today's show. Step
00:00:56.680 | one was reflect. I talked to you about the value of simply reflecting on the year that
00:01:01.000 | was, gaining and harvesting some lessons. Then in step two, I talked about dreaming,
00:01:06.800 | tried to encourage you to never stop dreaming, to always maintain your ability to simply
00:01:13.800 | dream. Dream about a better future in any area that you would like to, any area that
00:01:19.160 | matters to you. Just simply dream. But we know, and I tried to defend this thesis, dreaming
00:01:25.040 | is important. But at the end of the day, there's a reason why we differentiate dreaming from
00:01:32.200 | things like goal setting or dreaming from things like planning. I encourage you to dream
00:01:37.240 | with no absolute commitment to achieving your dreams. I encourage you to simply to enjoy
00:01:43.240 | the practice of dreaming and to let yourself off the hook. Recognize that you don't have
00:01:47.840 | to do everything that you think would be fun. But then there comes a time at which you want
00:01:52.800 | to start to transform those dreams into reality. I'm not personally convinced that this has
00:02:00.120 | to be a structured program. I think a lot of people succeed to an astonishingly high
00:02:05.800 | degree even without clear structured programs in their life. I've known many people who
00:02:12.080 | became wealthy somewhat haphazardly because they simply did the things that you do to
00:02:18.080 | become wealthy even though they didn't know that that's exactly what they were doing.
00:02:22.360 | They didn't specifically have a plan. I've seen this when people have built large businesses.
00:02:27.080 | I've seen this when people have simply saved money out of even modest incomes and they
00:02:31.440 | did the things that lead to wealth even though they didn't have a clear wealth plan. Is that
00:02:36.040 | nice? Yeah, I'm glad that that happens, right? I'm glad that that works that way. It's really
00:02:41.400 | nice. But I do think you can get far better results with planning or with an informed
00:02:46.760 | position, with an informed plan that actually you're much more likely to achieve it.
00:02:53.080 | So if you're put off by the idea of planning and you want to stop with part two, dreaming,
00:02:57.560 | I think you're probably going to get some results from that. I really think you do.
00:03:01.200 | I think that when you dream, you kind of naturally start to notice things. Perhaps that's the
00:03:06.560 | most powerful thing of dreaming, the old red car syndrome where you think about buying
00:03:12.440 | a red sports car and all of a sudden you see a red sports car everywhere. You go out with
00:03:17.840 | your buddy on, I don't know, you find out your buddy has bought a snow bike, right?
00:03:21.240 | A new sport. You're like, "Hey, my buddy's bought a snow bike." And all of a sudden,
00:03:24.640 | next thing you know, you're seeing snow biking stuff everywhere simply because you're tuned
00:03:28.400 | into it. And so by dreaming, I think you'll often be tuned into the things that are around
00:03:32.840 | you. But give me two people, one person that simply dreams and the other person that dreams
00:03:39.400 | and plans, and I'll put my money on the person that dreams and plans every day.
00:03:46.840 | Now notice we're not yet to doing. I'm just talking about planning. And again, I want
00:03:53.460 | to make this simple for you. I want to let you off the hook. I want to recognize that
00:03:56.880 | you don't have to do everything. Realistically, if you're like me, you'll probably be
00:04:02.680 | much better at planning than at doing. I'm very good at planning. Large, grandiose plans,
00:04:10.880 | all kinds of things that I can do. And I say, "Oh, I'm going to do this." And I commit
00:04:14.280 | myself to this massive to-do list. I'm not so good at actually following through. But
00:04:21.160 | what I've learned over the years is that's okay. The act of planning and the act of taking
00:04:27.440 | a dream and transforming it into specific concrete steps, specific things I could do,
00:04:33.120 | things I could put on a to-do list, that moves me far down the road of success.
00:04:43.040 | And even if I only get 50% of the way there, I'm usually a lot better off than I would
00:04:49.320 | have been otherwise. Let's use an example. I've been thinking a lot about my health.
00:04:55.320 | I've been analyzing this year. I had a lot of success with my health and my weight this
00:04:59.360 | year. I had a lot of failure with my health and my weight this year. So I've been thinking
00:05:03.040 | about, "Okay, reflect. What worked? What didn't work? Where did things go wrong? Was it bad
00:05:10.240 | methodology? Was it me? What happened? What went wrong?" And just reflecting on that
00:05:16.520 | and making my plans for the year ahead. So let's just pretend. I'm not saying this is
00:05:20.160 | just an example. Let's just pretend that you get to the end of the year and you say, "You
00:05:23.840 | know what? This next year, I want to improve my cardiovascular fitness. So right now, I'm
00:05:29.160 | not running, but this next year, I'm going to go out and I'm going to run a 5K every
00:05:33.600 | day. I'm just going to run, what, 3.1 miles every day. I'm going to go and run this 5K
00:05:38.040 | every day." And you lay this big plan and you map out the mileage and you say, "Okay,
00:05:42.560 | there's 365 days in this next year. Let's see. That would be 365 times 5. I'm going
00:05:46.680 | to run 1,825 kilometers in this next calendar year." And you buy some new running shoes
00:05:52.520 | and you get all ready to go. And then you start running. January 1, you're running.
00:05:55.360 | January 2, you're running. January 3, you're running. January 4. But all of a sudden, you
00:05:58.520 | start missing days. And lo and behold, running a 5K seven days a week was too much. But you
00:06:05.640 | kept on sort of doing it and you ran a 5K three days a week, sometimes four, every now
00:06:12.240 | and then five. And at the end of the year, you're tracking your total mileage for the
00:06:19.240 | year. And all of a sudden, you find out that at the end of the year, you failed. You didn't
00:06:24.720 | run 1,825 kilometers. You failed spectacularly badly. You only ran 996 kilometers for that
00:06:34.840 | year. Now, was that really a bad thing? Was that really the end of the world? See, now
00:06:44.840 | you have two choices. You can have a choice to say, "I failed. I didn't hit my goal."
00:06:49.640 | And that's absolutely true. Or you can look at it and say, "You know what? I ran 1,000
00:06:55.720 | kilometers this year. That's stinking great. That's really awesome. And I probably ran,
00:07:00.840 | I don't know, 600 kilometers more than I would have run if I had not made this plan or not
00:07:06.060 | set out this idea." And what I want to impress upon you from my hard-won years of beating
00:07:12.440 | myself up is that there's almost never a reason to beat yourself up. Goals that you miss,
00:07:19.040 | things that you fail on, the fact that you had the courage to dream and to set a plan
00:07:23.800 | and to set a goal probably means you're much closer to your goal than otherwise. And I've
00:07:28.400 | found so many times in my life that the failures of half-accomplished plans have moved me so
00:07:36.080 | far down the road of success that in the fullness of time, I can hardly recognize where I came
00:07:41.040 | from. And so if you're somebody who naturally, like me, makes big plans, big aggressive plans,
00:07:48.160 | and then often fails at those plans, no problem. It's okay. I think it is valuable to reflect
00:07:54.000 | on that. And I'm not saying we should just set that as a matter of course and always
00:07:58.360 | "I'm going to shoot for the moon, shoot for the moon, shoot for the moon," and you never
00:08:01.440 | get off the ground, right?
00:08:02.440 | There's a time in which you look down and say, "Why don't I try a more modest goal?"
00:08:05.840 | If you recognize that my actual problem is discipline and I committed myself to this
00:08:10.520 | big grandiose thing that was completely impossible, maybe it would have been more effective and
00:08:14.720 | next time I should just step back. Totally fine, right? I agree. I agree. But it's not
00:08:20.280 | a problem to make plans and then only finish half of them. And I'm convinced that what
00:08:28.400 | I see around me is not an epidemic of people who have massive goals and massive plans of
00:08:36.640 | action that are organized and then they only get half of them done. I see a lot of people
00:08:41.040 | who are timid, people who are shy, who pull back and they're scared to even dream, and
00:08:49.680 | then they're scared to even start planning. And they say things like, "I don't know where
00:08:52.520 | to start and I'm not sure that I could do that." Well, I'm not sure about anything.
00:08:58.660 | But I know that if you're working towards something that you care about, something that's
00:09:01.240 | a dream, any forward action is important. And I wish, maybe someday I can honestly turn
00:09:09.400 | on a microphone and say, "I am the paragon of human discipline." Maybe someday I can
00:09:15.680 | say, "I made this commitment to myself that I was going to do X, Y, and Z and every single
00:09:21.160 | day I did X, Y, and Z. Here's my perfect streak." Right? I filled all my activity circles on
00:09:27.480 | my Apple Watch for 365 days straight and look at me. But friends, I've never been able to
00:09:33.640 | say that. It just never worked for me. But I've still made massive progress because I've
00:09:45.500 | always kept pressing forward. I've never quit. And years ago when I was thinking about some
00:09:52.580 | of this stuff, for me, these ideas brought me a tremendous degree of personal comfort
00:09:57.200 | and personal confidence to say, "I'm probably not ever going to be the smartest. I'm probably
00:10:03.800 | not ever going to be the fastest. I'm probably not ever going to be the most accomplished
00:10:08.800 | or the person with the most connections and the most ability, but I can be somebody who
00:10:14.940 | simply doesn't quit. And I can always start a fresh new day and I can say, 'The past is
00:10:22.320 | gone. Today's a new day and I'm going to start again.'" And to me, that's a character quality
00:10:29.120 | that is worth developing, to be the person who doesn't quit.
00:10:34.800 | We teach our children this when we read them the story of the rabbit and the turtle, right?
00:10:39.400 | The tortoise and the hare. We teach them these things and we try to help them to understand
00:10:44.400 | and see how they can, if they just keep pressing forward and then somehow we forget about it
00:10:50.120 | ourselves. We dream a dream and we say, "Well, I've always seen that so-and-so achieved that
00:10:55.240 | dream in one year and so I'm convinced I can do it too." And then three years in, we haven't
00:11:00.120 | dreamed it yet. And that's why I talk so much when I talk about adding in time because I've
00:11:07.920 | never had, personally, I've never had a spectacular success story in anything I've done, really,
00:11:14.600 | of just, "Wow, look at me. I did it overnight. I did it in one year." I've never done it.
00:11:20.040 | But yet I live a dream life. I'm so thankful for the blessings that I have every day. And
00:11:26.400 | a lot of them have just come from day by day, pressing forward, step by step and not quitting,
00:11:32.440 | not quitting on my dreams. I want you to not quit on your dreams.
00:11:39.640 | So let's talk about how do you actually plan. I want to give you some simple things that
00:11:42.760 | will stick in your head. You're driving down the road, you're running down the road, you
00:11:46.640 | don't have a pen and paper. I'm going to give you these things and they're going to stick
00:11:49.000 | in your head so that you can do this without physically riding down some complex exercise.
00:11:55.920 | And these are things, none of these are original to me. I've learned them from other people,
00:11:59.960 | stolen them without credit, but they've all been helpful to me. So let me explain.
00:12:04.960 | Number one, the most powerful thing that I do to plan is simply this. If I can get a
00:12:13.320 | dream clear enough in my head, this is my dream. I want to buy a sailboat and sail the
00:12:20.760 | world for five years straight. Or this is my dream. I want to start my own internet
00:12:28.860 | business where my money is not tied to my time. Or this is my dream. I want to have
00:12:36.320 | you know, 10 children. Or this is my dream. Whatever your dream is, this is my dream.
00:12:41.320 | I want to speak 10 languages. This is my dream. I want to have 10 million dollars. Doesn't
00:12:47.320 | really matter. If you can get a dream in your head, then as I said in the show on dreaming,
00:12:52.520 | I'm convinced that you have the ability to achieve it. And I'm convinced that you already
00:12:57.540 | know enough to get started on that dream. So here's my first piece of advice. Number
00:13:04.400 | one, pretend to yourself that you have already achieved the dream. If it's something that
00:13:11.240 | you can close your eyes and see, awesome. If it's something you can write down on a
00:13:14.320 | paper, great. But just pretend to yourself and put yourself into a mental state where
00:13:20.280 | you think, I've already achieved this. Imagine it with as much texture and vivid imagery
00:13:27.680 | as you can. I've already achieved this. And then once you're in that mental space, ask
00:13:35.480 | yourself this question. How did I do it? What did I do to get here? If you'll do that exercise,
00:13:50.160 | imagine a dream is achieved and then close your eyes and say, what did I do to get here?
00:13:54.280 | And imagine how you got here. Your brain will fill in the steps. Maybe your dream is, I
00:14:02.800 | imagined myself with a six pack, right? It's been a dream of mine for years, never achieved
00:14:05.960 | it. Okay. Imagine myself with a six pack. Okay. Imagine it. Okay. That's what I look
00:14:09.920 | like now. How did I get here? If you ask yourself that question, your brain will quickly point
00:14:16.400 | out all of the stuff that's personal to you. Your brain will tell you, well, you didn't
00:14:23.920 | eat these foods. You did eat those foods. You didn't live this kind of lifestyle. You
00:14:30.000 | did live that kind of lifestyle. And what's amazing about this exercise is your brain
00:14:34.520 | will fill in all of that stuff in a customized way. So for example, for me personally, if
00:14:40.600 | I imagine that, I don't ever imagine that I got there by doing boring exercises every
00:14:49.600 | day in the gym. I find a lot of just the gym rat stuff really boring. And so my brain quickly
00:14:56.040 | points, shuts that down. But what I see is I see I did more sports, right? Maybe I, my
00:15:02.840 | plan as soon as I can find one open, I joined a boxing gym, right? Or I went stand up paddle
00:15:07.300 | boarding three times a week. Or I found the, you know, this, I joined a local soccer league
00:15:11.760 | or whatever the thing is, the thing that your brain puts in. Your brain automatically customizes
00:15:17.000 | it for yourself. And if you say, Joshua, did you, you know, did you get ripped abs because
00:15:22.520 | of this other thing? I say, no, because look, I failed at this, this, this, this, this,
00:15:27.000 | this didn't work. That didn't work. This didn't work. That didn't work. So let me tell you
00:15:29.840 | all the things that didn't work. So none of those worked, but here are some things that
00:15:33.680 | might work. Or let's say it's about your money and you imagine, how did I get here? Well,
00:15:40.120 | people's brains will fill in dramatically different plans. One person's brain will fill
00:15:46.100 | in a job, right? I got a good job. I saved money and I got here because that was what
00:15:51.460 | spoke to me. Maybe I did extreme savings and that spoke to me and I achieved my five at
00:15:56.480 | 45 because that was, that was the plan. And I liked the job and I didn't want to go out
00:16:01.880 | and start a business. That's just not me, but I have this good job. And if I just control
00:16:05.960 | my expenses and find great pleasure and frugal things, I'll hit that financial independence
00:16:10.760 | number. That's probably a really good plan for you. On the other hand, there's a guy
00:16:17.520 | out there who says he imagines his dreams, he imagines all his plans, and he can't even
00:16:23.380 | conceive of a job that he would do, but he conceives of a business or a brand or intellectual
00:16:29.580 | property or real estate or some other path. So what I've always found is my brain always
00:16:35.620 | fills in the path for me. And if I could just simply imagine that dream and ask myself,
00:16:42.700 | how did I get here? I can start to fill in some of the steps. And as human beings, we're
00:16:50.780 | good at rational thinking like this, most of us, because you can quickly see what did
00:16:56.040 | and didn't work. Imagine you're doing this exercise and you say, you know, my dream is
00:17:00.780 | to have a $10 million mansion on Palm Beach, a $3 million villa in Italy and, you know,
00:17:08.020 | $50 million in the bank. Well, if I say, how did you get there? And you say, I got a good
00:17:13.020 | job. We quickly know that that's not going to work. And I say, no, really, no, really,
00:17:17.420 | how'd you get there? And you have the ability, even if you don't know anything technical,
00:17:21.900 | even if you don't know anything with planning, you have the ability just to fill it in. Now,
00:17:26.140 | back to what I talked about last time with dreams. In my experience, a lot of times I
00:17:32.260 | always fill this in by watching an example of someone else. And that leads me to suggestion
00:17:39.580 | number two. If you can pretend that you had the dream achieved, and if there's often somebody
00:17:46.220 | that you've seen who's done that dream, then you can go and ask them, how did you get there?
00:17:52.300 | And that'll often fill in a lot of stories. There's this funny thing that people do on
00:17:57.220 | social media. They go to people who drive supercars and they go up in a gas station
00:18:02.900 | and they say, you know, what do you do, excuse me, what do you do for a living? And one guy
00:18:07.060 | gets out of his big Mercedes and says, you know, I invest in real estate or I trade stocks
00:18:15.740 | or I started a business. It was a great one. A couple of days ago, I saw one, there was
00:18:20.740 | a lady and I think it was one of the Arab Emirates states and he's a Muslim lady and
00:18:24.800 | she gets out of her Lamborghini and the guy says, excuse me, what do you do for a living?
00:18:27.940 | And she said, I'm my husband's second wife. Worked for her, right? She got herself a Lamborghini
00:18:33.100 | out of the deal. And so like, these are all paths that people have used. And so you can
00:18:37.900 | find this if you go looking for it. It's ideal if it's someone that you know that you can
00:18:41.540 | ask and say, hey, you did this. How can I get there? What can I do? How did you do it?
00:18:47.420 | But in today's world, you don't even have to know anybody. In today's world, you can
00:18:52.260 | find those people virtually. You find a guy like Tai Lopez, right? You find a guy like
00:18:58.780 | Tai Lopez. Tai has helped thousands and thousands and thousands of clueless boys become wealthy
00:19:07.820 | because he's laid out all of the stuff and says, here's how you do it. And these are
00:19:12.000 | boys who never would have had contact with somebody who was wealthy. They never would
00:19:15.460 | have had the guts to go up and ask somebody, but Tai laid it out for them in a YouTube
00:19:19.380 | video and courses and products, etc. And boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, what do you know?
00:19:23.700 | All of a sudden, now they're in that club and they never met him personally. That's
00:19:28.980 | the power of the world that we live in. You can go and you can find any community, any
00:19:33.220 | dream, you can go and find people working towards it. And you can say, how do you do
00:19:36.860 | it?
00:19:37.860 | Now, you do want to be careful that you find the right community because what I have observed
00:19:42.980 | from a lot of time online is that almost any different community develops its doctrine.
00:19:52.140 | And that doctrine is generally inclusive of a certain set of ideas and exclusive of another
00:19:57.940 | set. I see this again and again in the personal finance space and all the Facebook groups
00:20:04.500 | and whatnot that I watch and watch the conversations. And you'll see somebody ask a question and
00:20:09.340 | I can predict. If I see the question without any comments, I can predict. Okay, this community,
00:20:14.220 | here are the five responses that you're going to get. And sure enough, they're all variations
00:20:17.740 | of those five things or those 10 things. And so one of the things that you should do is
00:20:22.180 | ask questions because when you have a community that develops a certain set of answers, that
00:20:28.300 | means that those are probably pretty good answers, pretty tried and true. A lot of evidence,
00:20:32.380 | a lot of weight, you should take those very seriously. But you should also go and look
00:20:38.240 | in other places and find other ideas. And then at the end of the day, make your own
00:20:43.340 | decision. But if you can find someone, either personally or virtually, who's achieved something
00:20:51.420 | that's something like your dream, then you have the ability to move closer to it by getting
00:21:02.220 | their input on how they did it. I've always found that it's helpful for me to do this
00:21:07.980 | even across the space of time. And that's where I personally try to spend a lot of time.
00:21:13.300 | I don't think you need to. But let's say you're talking to some world-class person, right,
00:21:21.540 | who's extraordinarily healthy. Extraordinarily healthy personally, tremendous physical health,
00:21:27.060 | they're in great shape. I'm convinced that somebody like that, who wasn't just genetics,
00:21:32.420 | where, you know, I've known people who they just had dream genetics, but I'm talking about
00:21:36.380 | normal people who have to work for that. I'm convinced that you could pick those people
00:21:40.140 | up from almost any corner of the planet, and you could drop them out into another corner
00:21:44.140 | of the planet, and they would, because they understand the principles of their life, they
00:21:48.460 | understand the principles of what they're doing, they would quickly figure out a way
00:21:54.300 | to maintain their physical health, their physical, their good shape, etc., and improve it, even
00:22:00.820 | if they were dropped in dramatically different circumstances. If you think about money, you
00:22:05.220 | could take a successful, experienced business person, pick them up from one corner of the
00:22:09.820 | planet, drop them into a totally different corner of the planet. They may not even speak
00:22:14.060 | the language, but give them a little bit of time, and the vast majority of time, they
00:22:19.380 | would be able to replicate their success. Why? Because you start to absorb the principles
00:22:25.580 | over time. But in the beginning stage, you don't need that. You just need some basic
00:22:30.300 | ideas of how you could move yourself closer. So, pretend that you've achieved the dream.
00:22:36.780 | Get yourself in that mental space, then ask yourself, "How did I get here?" And then
00:22:40.540 | write down all the things that you did to get there. Make a comprehensive list. Then,
00:22:50.260 | put that list in order. I did this first, then I did that, then I did this, then I did
00:22:56.740 | that. And when you do that, you have the outline of a plan. And that's what you need, because
00:23:10.100 | now you could start doing things. You may still decide, "You know what? I don't want
00:23:14.180 | to do that." Totally fine. I think it's still worth planning. I've done this many times.
00:23:18.420 | I'll have a dream, and I'll sit down and make a plan, and the act of making the plan satisfies
00:23:23.260 | that little itch. Helps me to say, "You know what? I don't think I really want to
00:23:28.540 | do that." Or, "I'm not sure that I really want to do that right now."
00:23:34.580 | This is last year, I was thinking about doing a cargo trailer conversion. I've become
00:23:42.020 | really interested in this. I'd like to get another RV, but I don't want to own a traditional
00:23:46.060 | RV. I just can't stand the cheapness and the junk, the way that they're built, etc.
00:23:50.780 | After having owned two of them now, I thought, "You know what? Maybe I'll do a cargo trailer
00:23:53.460 | conversion." I sat down, I sketched it all out, I started putting together the plan,
00:23:59.060 | and I was super into it for a couple of weeks. Then I decided, "You know what? I don't
00:24:03.580 | love this all that much right now." I just laid it aside.
00:24:06.580 | Now, that's obviously a simple thing. It's not a big dream. It's just a simple thing.
00:24:10.820 | But I find that happens a lot. Scratch the itch, and then sometimes that's enough.
00:24:16.860 | You can move on to something else, and you don't have to have that thing cluttering
00:24:19.740 | up your life. But if I had never sat down and sketched it out, if I'd never sat down
00:24:23.660 | and priced it out, if I'd never sat down and imagined it very clearly, it would probably
00:24:28.260 | still be there as something I really thought I wanted to do. I really thought I wanted
00:24:31.540 | to do right now. I would continue to obsess about it. It works. Take that and apply it
00:24:37.780 | to any big or small thing that you want to do.
00:24:40.420 | Now, let's say that you're having trouble with this. Perhaps you say, "Joshua, it
00:24:44.340 | just doesn't work for me." Then let me make it a little bit simpler. Here's the
00:24:48.700 | next question. If I have a dream in mind, and I don't know how to achieve it, then
00:24:57.740 | let me just simply ask this. What could I do that might move me a little bit closer
00:25:06.900 | to that dream? What could I do today that might move me a bit closer? Hopefully, you
00:25:16.380 | hear I'm just pulling certainty back. For me, this is helpful. I don't have to be
00:25:21.340 | confident that this will work. I don't have to be confident that this did work. I just
00:25:28.020 | need something that could work. In my experience, answering that question of what could I do
00:25:36.380 | that might have some small possibility of moving me a little bit further ahead, then
00:25:42.620 | now I get some simple things that I'm probably overlooking. What could I do that might move
00:25:51.620 | me a bit closer to a robust physical health and a stronger body this year, make me harder
00:25:58.540 | to kill? I could go out my front door, turn left, and walk around the block. Seems really
00:26:05.020 | simple, but I tell you what, if I did that today, that would probably be a good thing.
00:26:09.980 | I could do that regularly. I could do that every day. Maybe I'm scared and maybe it's
00:26:16.060 | not smart for me to go and run a 5K every day, but I could walk around the block or
00:26:19.260 | walk around a couple of blocks every day and people have literally walked off hundreds
00:26:23.260 | of pounds. People have literally walked on tremendously strong, healthy hearts and bodies
00:26:28.980 | just through the simple act of walking. What could I do that might move me a bit closer
00:26:37.020 | to my wealth goals? I don't have to promise it. What could I do? I could go to local investors
00:26:44.460 | meetup group. I could, I don't know, I could go and save some money, put it into my freedom
00:26:52.340 | fund jar. I could go and trim one of my bills. I could go and look at job listings for a
00:26:58.900 | better job. These are all things I could do and they might move me a bit closer. So list
00:27:04.340 | those things out because if you're looking for a place to start, your plan might have
00:27:08.220 | some spectacularly big leaps on it. I want to have $10 million and you start a $10 million
00:27:13.020 | business that I can sell for $10 million. Great. But what could I do today? Well, I
00:27:17.500 | could go to the library or go to Amazon and I could search for stories of people who've
00:27:22.900 | done something like that and start checking out some books. It's not guaranteed to move
00:27:28.100 | me there, but it might move me a bit closer. Could make a difference. I don't think you
00:27:37.380 | need anything more than what I've said so far, but in the spirit of over delivering
00:27:41.940 | as a Christmas bonus, I want to just give you a few more questions that have always
00:27:44.460 | been helpful for me. And they all relate around improving your skills. So here's the first
00:27:52.660 | one. What could I learn this year that might move me a little bit closer to this dream?
00:28:02.180 | What could I learn about this year that might move me a little bit closer to this dream?
00:28:07.260 | I've tried to emphasize that you probably don't need to learn more, but I find learning
00:28:12.540 | to be useful. If learning keeps you from action, it's not useful. But I think most of the time
00:28:19.140 | learning naturally leads to action. Because if you're learning and advancing in your knowledge,
00:28:27.140 | it's probably impossible for you not to be applying at least something. The brain is
00:28:34.460 | a learning machine and when you learn things, learn a new way of thinking, learn that there
00:28:38.700 | are new options available, learn that other people have transformed their lives. When
00:28:42.900 | you learn that stuff and you learn how they've done it, you start to just naturally, I think,
00:28:48.140 | move yourself in the direction of what other people have done. So what could I learn this
00:28:53.420 | year that might move me a bit closer? And then how could I learn about it? What could
00:29:01.820 | I learn and how could I learn? If you can take a goal or a dream or a goal, dream a
00:29:08.380 | little bit fuzzier, goal clearer, more defined is kind of how I think about the difference
00:29:12.180 | between those things. If you could take that and you say, "What are the kinds of things
00:29:15.420 | that I could learn that would help me to achieve that?" Then just being aware of it and then
00:29:21.340 | starting to learn about it will give you the tools. I have a dream to be a multimillionaire.
00:29:28.180 | What could I learn? I could learn how to manage money. I could learn how to earn money. I
00:29:34.140 | could learn how to invest money. I could learn how to save money. All these are things that
00:29:37.460 | you could learn. Then you ask, "How could I learn about them?" And you know the answers.
00:29:44.100 | They're rather simple. I could start with a Google search. How to save money. Bunch
00:29:51.300 | of articles written about that. How to make more money. Bunch of articles written about
00:29:56.620 | that. A lot of people start there. I could start with a YouTube search. Lots of good
00:30:05.000 | stuff there. No cost for either of those resources. I could start with a podcast directory search.
00:30:12.220 | Tremendous wealth of information. I could start with an Amazon.com search. I could go
00:30:19.220 | to my library and start with a search on my library website. Whatever your local library
00:30:24.180 | is. Do a search there. Reserve 30 books on it. And if you just do some of those things
00:30:30.300 | with any of your personal topics, you'll probably be quickly flooded with ideas. Flooded with
00:30:36.660 | stories of what other people have done. Flooded with ways that you could progress forward
00:30:42.320 | if you wanted to. So what could I learn that would move me a bit closer? Who could I meet
00:30:53.420 | who would help me with this? Now in our current world, I like to use this word "meet" in a
00:30:59.860 | very broad sense. Meaning a physical relationship where we've met one another, we've sat down,
00:31:05.500 | we've broken bread together, we know each other. But you could also just simply adjust
00:31:10.980 | this and say, "Who could I surround myself with this year?" I've spoken in previous episodes
00:31:16.820 | of Radical Personal Finance about the value of social media. What I think you should do
00:31:21.020 | with social media is you should use your social media to surround yourself with people who
00:31:30.380 | are at least seeming to be like the kind of person that you want to be. We can never know,
00:31:36.540 | of course, who's behind it. But if you surround yourself with people who are seeming to be
00:31:39.900 | like the kind of person that you want to be, that's a powerful thing. It's a way of surrounding
00:31:45.520 | yourself with winners. If you fill up your Twitter feed with right-wing, left-wing commentators,
00:31:55.380 | people who are always angry about the state of politics, you're going to be angry about
00:32:00.900 | the state of politics. In my opinion, it's unavoidable because that's what you're feeding
00:32:05.220 | yourself with. That's what your brain will be thinking about. On the other hand, if you
00:32:08.900 | surround yourself with money Twitter, people who are making money and investing money and
00:32:15.140 | have nothing but positive outlooks on the future, you can't help but be filled with
00:32:19.300 | money-making ideas. The people that you follow on Twitter are going to literally lead you
00:32:29.100 | into the future. And you can insert any other social media. When you sit down and decide
00:32:35.100 | who to follow on social media, you're creating your future whether you know it or not. So
00:32:41.780 | I would suggest to you as you end up the year, one of the very useful things that you can
00:32:45.140 | do is do a social media purge. Get rid of all the people that you don't want to be like.
00:32:54.060 | Mute them, block them, unfollow them, de-friend them, whatever you want to do, but get rid
00:32:58.220 | of the people that you don't want to be like and fill your phone with the people that you
00:33:02.700 | do want to be like. I've got some advanced strategies for these. Maybe I'll save them
00:33:08.620 | for a standalone show at some point in time. But it's one of the most powerful things you
00:33:13.580 | can do is use these platforms to surround yourself with what you want to be like. Maybe
00:33:21.180 | just start fresh. I've done this. I have multiple accounts across the board, but maybe your
00:33:27.220 | current Instagram is full of personal friends. Fine, just add another one and make this your
00:33:32.860 | dream life and just follow people that you admire. Start a new Twitter profile. Start
00:33:39.500 | a new YouTube profile so you can retrain the algorithm and train all your algorithms to
00:33:46.340 | simply feed you content that helps you to surround yourself with people who encourage
00:33:53.060 | you, inspire you, motivate you, etc. It doesn't have to be what other people would admire.
00:34:02.220 | It can be you personally and it should be you personally. That's one of the things that's
00:34:07.500 | I think most powerful. Just a personal example. I just found this guy recently. I wish I knew
00:34:15.460 | his name. I can't remember his handle, but I found him on Instagram. He's a teenager.
00:34:21.620 | He's got cerebral palsy and pretty severe case. Although he's not wheelchair bound,
00:34:26.180 | he walks awkwardly. But he posts a lot of pictures of him in the gym. He's in the gym
00:34:31.980 | weightlifting. I find him so inspiring. Here's a teenage boy. He's got cerebral palsy. He's
00:34:38.660 | got physical challenges that I've never in my life faced. As he puts his head on a swivel,
00:34:42.940 | he's got his head shaking back, shaking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
00:34:46.940 | I'm always scared he's going to fall down, but there he goes doing his squats, doing
00:34:50.100 | his deadlifts, doing his exercises. He can't stop moving. He can't stop the effects of
00:34:54.820 | cerebral palsy. But every time I see him, a tear comes to my eye and I'm like, "That's
00:34:58.540 | the kind of guy that I want to be, right? I want to be someone who when I'm faced with
00:35:02.100 | massive problems and massive obstacles and massive disadvantages, I want to be the guy
00:35:09.740 | that presses forward and says, 'Let me use what I've got and got stronger.'" What excuse
00:35:14.460 | do I have for not being in the gym if this guy can be there?
00:35:20.220 | Now you may find your own thing. I'm just trying to share a little bit of me, but I
00:35:23.220 | don't find bodybuilders and people who... I don't find perfect people particularly inspiring.
00:35:28.420 | I find flawed people. I find people who... failures of people who keep pressing forward.
00:35:36.260 | For me, I find those people inspiring. And so when I fill my social media feeds with
00:35:41.300 | those kinds of people, it keeps me motivated to press forward.
00:35:48.100 | So who could I meet this next year? And now let's move on to physical meeting. Literally,
00:35:55.320 | who could I meet this next year? Not just surround myself with, but who could I meet?
00:36:00.120 | If we know that our lives generally reflect the lives of the people that we spend the
00:36:05.900 | most... the people that we spend the most time with, then one of the ways that we can
00:36:11.400 | really automatically change our lives is by surrounding ourselves with different people.
00:36:17.720 | And step one is simply meeting somebody. So do you have a list of people that you would
00:36:22.640 | like to meet? People that encourage you, that inspire you, people that you look up to, people
00:36:26.480 | that you would like to be like? Cultivate that list and then start doing things to move
00:36:32.560 | yourself in that direction. Could be the neighbor two roads down that you find out about and
00:36:39.120 | you think you admire him. Could be some rich, famous, well-known person in your industry
00:36:44.480 | that if you just met them at a conference or something like that would make a big difference.
00:36:50.400 | Who could you meet this next year? These kinds of questions could go on and on and I'm going
00:36:56.280 | to wrap up. I simply want you to think about what could I do? And those are the two thought
00:37:05.960 | experiments for you to keep in your mind. If you have a dream, picture that dream and
00:37:10.360 | ask yourself, what did I do? And write down everything that comes to your mind. What did
00:37:15.920 | I do to accomplish this? Put yourself, imagine yourself in that future state and say, what
00:37:21.080 | did I do that led me to this path? How did I meet this woman of my dreams? How did I
00:37:30.840 | build this $10 million company? How did I do it? And if that's a productive thinking
00:37:37.720 | exercise for you, use it. If you're intimidated by even that, then ask yourself this, what
00:37:47.000 | could I do that might, just might, move me a bit closer in the direction of where I want
00:37:56.280 | to go? Now, I'm not going to do the show right now on step four, which is simply start doing.
00:38:06.720 | And I'm not going to do it primarily because in one hour and 45 minutes, I'm going to go
00:38:11.360 | get on an airplane with my family and fly home for the holidays. We're looking forward
00:38:15.640 | to that. I don't have the time to finish it right now. But honestly, I don't know if it's
00:38:23.400 | really all that important that I even finish it by talking about doing it. Because at the
00:38:28.760 | end of the day, we all know that we've got to do it. It's not enough to just write stuff
00:38:34.120 | down unless it leads to action. But I think that process is pretty well automatic, at
00:38:39.160 | least in my experience. I've experienced that just the process of dreaming about something
00:38:45.080 | and then planning how I could do it pretty well automatically leads me to some action.
00:38:53.800 | Is it better if you make a plan and put all the actions down and then start systematically
00:38:59.040 | creating a feedback system and a system of accountability where you start doing all of
00:39:02.680 | the things? Probably so. But I don't want to scare you with that right now, because
00:39:09.280 | I never seem to follow through on all of the things. But you do need to start doing, start
00:39:15.120 | taking action, start taking action. And so resolve that if you've got some stuff that
00:39:22.040 | you could do that might help you to move in the direction of your dreams, just resolve
00:39:28.640 | that you're going to be the kind of person who does the things that might make a difference
00:39:33.520 | in your life. Looking for a good New Year's resolution, that would probably be a good
00:39:38.720 | one. I resolve that I will be the kind of person who does the things that might lead
00:39:47.180 | me in the direction of my dreams. Now, if you're ready for a more robust commitment
00:39:53.820 | than that, go for it. But at the very least, I think that would be a good place to start.
00:39:59.080 | I want to close out today with simply this. Thank you for listening to Radical Personal
00:40:04.360 | Finance during this year. In some ways, it has been a very, very difficult year for me
00:40:08.520 | personally and it has certainly been a memorable year for all of us. A lot of things happening
00:40:14.160 | in this year. And I continue to be filled with concern. In many ways, I have a heavy
00:40:21.600 | heart. There's so many businesses around the world really struggling right now. So
00:40:26.080 | many people being shut down by heavy-handed government decrees and things like that. That
00:40:31.640 | stuff is rather obvious. And so, it's been a - and in my life, we've faced some significant
00:40:38.560 | challenges this year and I'm sure that you have too. If all of us sat down and started
00:40:42.180 | telling our stories, we could probably put all of each other in tears. But on the other
00:40:46.800 | hand, it's also been a very beautiful year. It's been a great year. I'm very happy with
00:40:51.640 | this past year in my life personally, the lives of my family, etc. And I'm excited about
00:40:57.160 | the future. And I just want to say that let - as we go into Christmas season and New Year's
00:41:05.740 | and whatnot, let these things just enjoy. Enjoy the turning of the seasons. Enjoy the
00:41:13.100 | chance to - enjoy the chance to get a fresh start. We talk about New Year's resolutions
00:41:23.000 | because it's a time of year in which we understand more vigorously on an emotional level that
00:41:31.300 | the past is gone and that it can't be changed. We understand that, hey, the past is the past
00:41:36.280 | and I can't change it, but it's a brand new year and it's a fresh start. And you're
00:41:40.560 | going to see a wealth of articles talking about, oh, New Year's resolutions don't work.
00:41:45.520 | It's basically become very hip and expected to dump on New Year's resolutions now. I'm
00:41:53.640 | sure that trend will change soon enough. But I love New Year's resolutions. I love dreaming
00:41:59.220 | about the year ahead. And if you - if that works for you, go for it. If it doesn't work
00:42:03.240 | for you, you know, don't do it. But I love - I love the new year. It's always exciting.
00:42:08.880 | It gives me a chance to dream and say, what can I do? And I got thrown off on a lot of
00:42:12.680 | stuff. I got thrown off on a lot of my dreams this past year. But it's a brand new year
00:42:18.280 | and I'm going to keep on working and you are a major part of that and I'm so grateful for
00:42:22.240 | your being here. I wish you a peaceful and a joy-filled Christmas and a very, very happy
00:42:32.740 | new year. I'll be back with you on Monday, January 11, 2021. Monday, January 11, 2021.
00:42:41.940 | Have a great day.
00:42:43.640 | With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday
00:42:48.000 | season. Because Kroger brands proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.
00:42:53.500 | And with a money back quality guarantee, every dish is sure to be a favorite.
00:43:01.800 | Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store, Kroger brand has all your favorite things.
00:43:08.280 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.
00:43:10.340 | (upbeat music)