Why_bad_things_stay_bad_for_so_long_1
00:00:00.000 | Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about why bad things stay bad for so long.
00:00:06.680 | Well, the other night I had drinks with an old friend.
00:00:09.520 | She told me her husband had struck her to the ground during some petty argument about coming home late from work.
00:00:15.840 | She showed me a snapshot on her phone of the bruises she sustained on her arm during the altercation.
00:00:21.600 | The black and blue was obvious. There was no doubt about it.
00:00:25.040 | Instead of being shocked at what she told me, I started feeling angry.
00:00:29.640 | 90% of my anger was directed towards him.
00:00:32.120 | But then the remaining 10% was frustration towards her for not reporting him or just leaving him.
00:00:38.720 | You see, this was not the first time my friend said her husband was violent towards her.
00:00:43.200 | This was the third time in one year. And who knows how many other times they fought without her telling me.
00:00:49.920 | And when I asked her why not just get a divorce after seven years of marriage, this is what she told me.
00:00:56.840 | "Sam, I can't get a divorce because of the social stigma surrounding a divorce.
00:01:02.000 | I'm already 37 years old and we're trying to have a baby.
00:01:05.680 | Do you really expect me to start over? My family and friends wouldn't understand.
00:01:11.520 | Although we've got into many fights before, he's also been quite caring and a good man.
00:01:17.440 | He has a stable job, makes good money, and we live in an overall comfortable lifestyle.
00:01:24.000 | I'm also not willing to throw away this relationship. I think we can make things work."
00:01:28.840 | I was just sad. Sad to hear her response because I can never stick around in an abusive marriage.
00:01:35.240 | Just like I would never stick around in a bad job situation.
00:01:38.360 | After all, I'm the one who negotiated an exit within six months after I decided I had enough of work BS.
00:01:45.840 | My friend has a great job making over $160,000 a year and she would do just fine
00:01:51.920 | leaving her husband and living by herself in the Bay Area as she gathers her life up and starts over.
00:01:57.360 | She'd also receive some additional financial assets in a divorce.
00:02:01.040 | But I'm not in her shoes and I have a different type of personality.
00:02:05.120 | It's easy for me to tell her to get a divorce because I'm not the one getting it.
00:02:09.560 | I'm just afraid she'll be stuck with him for the rest of her life because she fears how society will judge her more than she
00:02:16.200 | cares about her happiness. I feel strongly she will look back on her life and regret
00:02:20.800 | not having made the decision to leave him.
00:02:23.760 | Sticking up for yourself can be scary. Change is extremely stressful.
00:02:28.560 | These are the risks we all must take to get out of bad situations.
00:02:33.720 | And it's so sad that the fear of society's disapproval has kept her in a bad situation for so long.
00:02:39.920 | I've encouraged her to at least go to a marriage counselor because spousal abuse is absolutely unacceptable.
00:02:47.720 | But she hasn't, they haven't, and I'm just gonna keep on pushing. Because at the end of the day I care about her
00:02:54.080 | and I care about her well-being and this has got to stop.
00:02:58.000 | And let me tell you a personal story. About eight months ago a new podcaster reached out to see if I wanted to be on his
00:03:04.640 | show focusing on financial independence.
00:03:06.880 | I politely declined because I didn't know him or the show well at the time.
00:03:12.120 | Just for reference, someone reaches out to me about twice every two weeks or three weeks to do a verbal or written interview.
00:03:18.840 | Many are new podcasters that haven't been around very long and to manage my inbound requests
00:03:24.080 | I have a general rule that the podcaster or blogger be at least one year old before I say yes.
00:03:29.040 | Over the past ten years since 2009 I've noticed many folks have good intentions,
00:03:35.320 | they start something but then they kind of disappear after six months to a year for whatever reason.
00:03:40.080 | So I'm just trying to be efficient and protect my time.
00:03:42.440 | Several months later the new podcaster again asked if I wanted to join his show
00:03:47.960 | to discuss retiring early in a high-cost area of the country.
00:03:51.800 | I declined again because I had other priorities and I've talked about this topic well enough.
00:03:57.080 | I like going on podcasts where finance isn't the main topic because I'm trying to get out of the echo chamber here.
00:04:04.360 | And then several months later he asked me again
00:04:08.440 | whether he can host me on his show, this time on the topic of racism,
00:04:12.800 | probably because he had seen my post on the importance of feeling consistently uncomfortable for personal and financial growth.
00:04:19.520 | The post was about my experience
00:04:21.880 | facing racism and bullying in Virginia as a high schooler and college student and I was wondering with my wife whether
00:04:29.440 | maybe we should go back to Virginia. Not only can we save like 30 to 40 percent on living expenses,
00:04:34.880 | but we can subject our son to a more harsher reality of life growing up as a minority in America.
00:04:41.800 | And the conclusion for that post is we're probably not going to go to Virginia because we're comfortable here in San Francisco
00:04:47.720 | and we're probably gonna go to Honolulu, but it was a thought process to think about how, you know, being uncomfortable and facing adversity
00:04:54.040 | helps grow you as a person.
00:04:56.480 | So given he wanted to talk about racism and I had a lot of experience about that and I feel passionate about
00:05:03.600 | fighting against racism and fighting for equality, I said sure,
00:05:07.640 | let's have a conversation and then maybe the conversation can foster more discussion, more understanding and more harmony in society.
00:05:15.680 | Further, the podcaster was white, his co-host is white,
00:05:20.360 | his audience is mostly white and his guests are mostly white.
00:05:24.840 | So I thought hey as a minority living in a high-cost area of the country,
00:05:29.040 | this could be good so we can talk a little bit more and have more understanding.
00:05:33.680 | So we had a great conversation about an hour, talked about my experience growing up, how to deal with racism, how to go forward and
00:05:40.640 | the podcast was set to be published and then he, a week before publishing,
00:05:46.880 | contacted me and said hey, I need you to apologize to this person.
00:05:54.720 | And I was like which person and he said the person that was basically bullying you online and saying bad things.
00:06:01.160 | And I'm thinking to myself, you mean the
00:06:04.240 | internet troll that has been trolling my Facebook page and Financial Samurai for months and saying bad things?
00:06:11.240 | Absolutely not. I'm definitely not gonna apologize for standing up for myself and writing a post about
00:06:16.640 | dealing with internet trolls and so forth.
00:06:20.840 | Given the size of Financial Samurai, the site and its corresponding social media channels consistently get
00:06:26.960 | racial slurs hurled my way. It's pretty sad, but it's constant and it's consistent.
00:06:32.480 | I'm also often told how to think and what to do by other people who are
00:06:37.480 | mostly not like me and whether it's the internet retirement police or trolls in general,
00:06:42.760 | there has been a non-stop parade of haters since I started the site in 2009. If you're not a minority,
00:06:49.520 | it's hard to imagine what it's like going through constant racial badgering everywhere you go.
00:06:55.400 | I'm talking at work, on a bus, at a baseball game, at a pit stop, on vacation and online.
00:07:02.440 | Just believe me when I say that it is constant and
00:07:06.560 | we just learn how to deal with it by either paying it no heed or by eventually fighting back.
00:07:13.120 | And yeah, it is sad and annoying, but when my son was born in 2017, something changed in me.
00:07:19.680 | No longer was I willing to accept online bullying and racial slurs because I don't want my son growing up in this type of environment.
00:07:26.200 | The papa bear in me came out and I needed to stand up to the stuff like I did in school.
00:07:31.880 | So the end result was that the podcaster who repeatedly asked me to come on to his show
00:07:37.600 | decided not to run the podcast on my experience dealing with racism
00:07:41.760 | because he disapproved of me standing up against an internet troll who was hurling insults my way.
00:07:48.720 | As he was a relatively new podcaster,
00:07:50.840 | he was too afraid of getting bullied himself and judged by others in the community
00:07:55.360 | who disapproved of me standing up for myself and for my family.
00:07:59.520 | He felt that if he published our interview, he would lose some of his audience and therefore lose potential revenue and
00:08:05.680 | growth. And I totally get it. As a creator, growth of an audience and the money that goes with it are the two things you
00:08:12.760 | want the most, especially as a podcaster and a blogger and so forth.
00:08:16.120 | A lot of people also have the need to feel universally loved, which is something I don't have.
00:08:22.680 | But this is when I realized why bad things stay bad for so long.
00:08:27.360 | Too many people are too afraid to stand up for themselves and to stand up for others who stand up for themselves
00:08:33.280 | out of fear of being persecuted by the very people who bully others.
00:08:38.000 | The end result is a show that turns into an echo chamber of ideas and opinions because everybody looks and thinks alike.
00:08:45.880 | And I hope to goodness that Financial Samurai
00:08:48.240 | never becomes an echo chamber where I'm not accepting of different perspectives and opinions.
00:08:54.440 | If you can speak your mind in a civil way and explain your background on why you think the way you do,
00:09:01.240 | I'm all for it. I want you to write a guest post.
00:09:04.600 | I want you to comment and tell me why your way of thinking is probably better. This is the only way we're going to learn.
00:09:12.400 | Look at what's going on in the NBA right now. As soon as Houston Rockets general manager Darryl Morey tweeted,
00:09:18.360 | "Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong," the lucrative relationship between the NBA and China began to disintegrate.
00:09:24.640 | Given the China market is worth roughly 4 billion to the NBA or about 1 billion a year,
00:09:30.760 | it was fascinating to see how some owners, coaches, players, and the commissioner either said nothing or
00:09:36.760 | threw Darryl under the bus or groveled for forgiveness.
00:09:40.240 | If you care about your reputation and want money, sending one-liners on social media about a
00:09:45.600 | controversial topic is probably not the best idea.
00:09:49.040 | Wait until you are truly free.
00:09:51.880 | But are we ever? There's always two sides to every conflict. Of course, everybody is going to be pro-freedom.
00:09:58.960 | But to think the Chinese people are tyrants and don't want freedom and prosperity themselves would be naive.
00:10:04.920 | Please differentiate between a country's citizens and its government.
00:10:09.840 | Just like, look, President Trump is our president and I would say half the nation disagrees with him.
00:10:16.400 | So you're not going to paint all Americans as Trump supporters, right? You've got to look at people individually,
00:10:21.680 | understand their story, their backgrounds, their beliefs, talk to people individually and hear them out before
00:10:28.560 | generalizing and stereotyping people and countries for that matter.
00:10:32.880 | It is sad that we cannot all get along.
00:10:36.720 | But it's also naive to think that complete harmony is possible in our messy, messy world. We are imperfect beings.
00:10:43.400 | We have insecurities. We have frustrations, worries, desires and hopes for our children and for ourselves.
00:10:49.040 | These feelings manifest themselves in good and sometimes very, very bad ways.
00:10:54.280 | Things stay bad for a very long time because we do not have the courage to stand up for ourselves.
00:10:59.960 | We stay at jobs we hate because we depend on the income and the health insurance,
00:11:04.880 | which has now gotten to absurd, absurd levels.
00:11:07.760 | We hide in herds because we're too afraid to stand up for ourselves or voice our true opinions. As a result,
00:11:15.240 | we create echo chambers. And when this happens,
00:11:18.600 | I'm always reminded by a quote by Martin Niemöller, who was a German Protestant who spent seven years in Nazi
00:11:25.280 | concentration camps for opposing the religious policies of Hitler. He said,
00:11:31.240 | "First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
00:11:36.960 | Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
00:11:43.640 | Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
00:11:48.640 | Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."
00:11:53.640 | The only way we can stop bad things from continuing to happen for so long is to take a stand,
00:12:00.520 | to have the courage to stand up and say something.
00:12:04.600 | My hope is that all of you take a stand, have a heart-to-heart with your
00:12:09.400 | transgressor and forgive if they've truly apologized for their actions.
00:12:14.120 | By taking a stand, you are helping to break the cycle. At some point, you will realize you're no longer doing it for yourself,
00:12:21.920 | but for your children's future.
00:12:24.320 | Here are some thoughts on how you gain the courage to speak up.
00:12:28.800 | One, the first is getting your finances in order to eventually achieve financial independence.
00:12:34.480 | Once you're no longer beholden to money, you can speak more freely. Trust me on this.
00:12:39.520 | Two, listen to both sides of a conflict and understand what is going on.
00:12:45.560 | Don't just throw out zingers there and say this or that without fully
00:12:50.200 | understanding why there's a conflict because there's always two sides to a conflict.
00:12:55.720 | Three, present your opinion after thorough research on the matter in a civil manner to maximize the potential for the other side to listen.
00:13:04.800 | I don't think we're listening enough. The more we can listen, the more we'll understand and the more we can create some harmony.
00:13:10.640 | This way, if you are civil in your delivery, you're also going to be able to minimize any
00:13:16.000 | backlash that you're going to receive and you will get backlash. Trust me on that too.
00:13:20.680 | And then finally, there's a great book that I just read.
00:13:23.680 | It's called The Courage to be Disliked. It's an international bestseller. It's by the authors Ichiro Kishimi and
00:13:30.880 | Fumitake Koga.
00:13:33.520 | It's a great easy read. It's about a young person talking to a philosopher and
00:13:39.160 | the young person has some problems in his life and he's trying to overcome them and the philosopher teaches him how to overcome
00:13:45.800 | these hurdles and achieve his dreams.
00:13:49.560 | So those are my tips. Keep fighting on and if you enjoyed this podcast,
00:13:53.720 | please subscribe and share and I'll see you guys around in the comments and the message boards. Take care.