There are two statements in the English language which are common to all of us. I've said them, you've said them, people all around us on a daily basis use these two statements. But I believe that if you really want to make progress in your life, you need to recognize how damaging these two statements are and eradicate them from your life.

I challenge you to eliminate these two phrases from your vocabulary. Phrase number one, "I don't have time." Phrase number two, "I can't afford that." Time and money are alternate forms of currency. We use time to make money, most of us, and then we use money to buy time. So they're closely related.

The more impactful of these, by the way, I believe is not the basis of money, but rather the factor of time. One of the most damaging phrases that you can use in your life is, "I don't have time." Two reasons why you should eliminate this phrase and also the phrase, "I can't afford that." Number one, these two phrases are simply not true.

They're never true. Now obviously that's a big statement. Do you doubt me? First, you can't actually have time. Time is not something that you possess. Time is an experience that you have. It's a bit of a mystery. The philosophers work to pull it apart and try to understand it.

It's one of those things that we experience and you know exactly what time is until you sit down with a pen and paper and try to actually write out a definition of time. But you don't have more or less time than anybody else. You have the same 168 hours in your week that I do in my week.

You have the same 24 hours in your day that I do in my day. And we have the same amount of time as every other person in the world. So you can't have time. You can only use the time you have. Now you say, "Obviously I know that. That's not what I meant, Joshua.

I meant I don't have time, meaning I've got too many important things to do so therefore I can't do whatever it is that I don't want to do." Well here I point out to you that you actually don't have anything that's more important than what you're doing unless you decide to give it more importance.

No matter the urgent task that's on your plate today, no matter the urgent project or priority, the pressing deadline, no matter the task, project, or deadline, it is negotiable if the stakes were high enough. If you got a phone call right now that your son or daughter was in the hospital and had been in a serious car accident and might live only out the hour, you'd be in the car headed to the hospital as quickly as you could be.

No matter who you are, it's all a matter of priorities and not a matter of time. You always have enough time to do the things that are the most important to you. One of my favorite maxims of life is, "There's never enough time to do everything, but there's always enough time to do the most important things." So the statement, "I don't have time," is not true.

What about, "I can't afford that"? Well, this one isn't as clear as, "I don't have time," but I think it's also... We can also apply those same two arguments to it. This is going to sound very metaphysical, but it's not true. The phrase, "I can't afford that," is actually a phrase that has very little meaning.

First, who says what you can and can't afford? You're the one who has control of your budget. You don't run your budget based upon an article in Money Magazine or a percentage of advice that Joshua Sheets gives on radical personal finance. You choose what to spend your money on, and you're always going to spend money on the things that you value, on the things that are the most important to you.

It's also not true because money is literally unlimited. Money is created, and there are always ways to go and get more money. If the idea is good enough, if the need is grand enough, if the project is compelling enough, the money can flow in. So the phrase, "I can't afford that," it really doesn't have a lot of meaning to it.

Now of course, as with time, I understand what you mean when you say, "I don't have time," and I understand what you mean when you say, "I can't afford that." But the meaning that you think is there is actually not there. These statements have a lot less meaning when you sit down and examine them.

But the big reason why I think you should reject these statements is they're simply not useful. They're not true, and they're not useful to you. The reason they're not useful is they don't need to action. Saying, "I don't have time," is a negative statement, and your mind immediately stops.

Well, I can reject this opportunity because, well, I don't have time. You won't go beyond that. If you say, "I can't afford it," you'll probably just quit, and you won't go beyond that. These ending negative statements are not useful because they don't lead to a solution. And if you've got a problem, you should lead with a solution.

And the way you do that is you ask a question, or you at least start with an honest statement. So I urge you to banish these two phrases from your life because they're not true, and they're not useful. And I urge you to supplement and utilize some truthful, useful statements instead.

Here are some ideas to get your brain working, but of course, you'll have to come up with the ones that are appropriate to your situation. Instead of saying, "I don't have time," try an honest, truthful statement like, "I don't want to make time for that activity right now." Instead of saying, "I don't have time," say, "What you're proposing is not important enough for me at the moment to dedicate the time to it." Instead of saying, "I don't have time," say, "I have other priorities in my life right now that are more important to me, and so I'm choosing to spend time on those other things instead of what you're proposing." Or just, if you need to give a flat-out no, just simply say, "What you're proposing is not important enough for me to dedicate any of my precious time toward it." You don't have to be completely abrupt and brusque with your statements to annoy people and offend people in order to be honest.

You can find an honest, truthful statement that would indicate the reality, which is, it's not important enough for you to use some of your time in that manner. Instead of saying, "I can't afford that," say, "I don't have the money to pay for that right now." Very small difference, but even just that slight difference, still a statement, not as powerful as a question, but even that slight difference is much more empowering.

Saying "I don't have the money to pay for that right now" points out the problem, which is lack of money, not "I can't afford that," which is some kind of weird vice thing that jumps on you and that you're pretending I don't have control over this. If what you mean by "I can't afford that" is it's not allocated in the budget, say that.

Say, "I haven't budgeted the money for that right now," or "I haven't allocated the money for that right now." You'll find that as your wealth grows, you'll need to say that more and more because you can't truthfully say, "I can't afford that." You can't truthfully even say, "I don't have the money for that," and you have to truthfully say, "I haven't allocated the money for that right now," or "I haven't decided to budget the money for that right now." Now, maybe you don't have the money.

That's okay. A more truthful statement would be something like this. It's not important enough for me to figure out a way to come up with the money for that right now. Again, doubt me. I'll pick on your kids again. Your kid has a terminal illness, but there's a cure available.

I could put any dollar amount on that cure, and you would figure out a way to come up with the money. Where there's a will, there's a way. When people have a pressing, urgent need that they need help with, people tend to be resourceful. A statement like, "It's not important enough for me to figure out a way to come up with the money for that right now," is a good statement, or "I haven't figured out how to pay for that yet," or "I don't know what to do to earn the money for that at the moment." These are much more accurate statements, but they're still statements, so here's how you turn them into questions.

A question would be, instead of saying, "I don't have time," say, "That's not a priority for me right now," and ask yourself, "Should it be? Is that a priority for me right now?" If you find that in answer to that question, it should be a priority or it is a priority, then you ask yourself this, "How can I make time for that right now?" You see this all over the place.

People ignore their family until their life is falling apart, and then all of a sudden, they start making time to spend with those they love. They ignore their brother until all of a sudden, their brother is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and then all of a sudden, they start making the phone calls.

People have a tendency to ignore their health until they're diagnosed with heart disease, and the doctor says, "You must solve this problem or you will die," and then all of a sudden, they're the most committed, healthy people that you find. Guess what? You can control that. So ask yourself a question, "How can I make time for this activity?

If this is important to me, how can I make time for this activity?" Because a question like that leads to your thinking about it in the proper light. You're being honest with yourself. You might say, "I can't have time," and you might really mean it, and it might actually be true in the sense that your schedule is so packed that there's no calendar space available for you to insert this activity.

So if you ask yourself the question, "How can I make time?" It empowers you to make a change that leads to the result that you want. Remember, you got to pay the price before you get the reward. You've got to plant before you reap. You got to perform the action that leads to the result.

With your money, ask yourself, "Is there a way that I could afford this? Is there a way that I could come up with the money for this? Is there a way that I could earn the money for this?" From little numbers to big numbers, the young man, about an 11-year-old boy in my neighborhood here who washes my car, he came to me this last week.

Man, you got to admire his gutsiness. Comes to me and usually charges me 10 bucks to do my car wash, which is a little bit of an overprice, but I'm happy to pay it because it's supporting my local entrepreneur and it gives me a chance to talk to him and to encourage him.

But he came to me and he said to me, "Hey, listen. Today, would you mind, I'd like to charge you $12 instead of $10 because there's this sweater that I want down at the store and I'd really like to buy it and I need $12 for it." Now, I had a little lesson with him about providing value for the customer instead of just asking, but at the end of the day, he walked away with his $12 in his pocket to buy his sweater that he wanted and I wasn't unhappy to pay it.

I admired his gutsiness and his clarity. His gutsiness and his clarity was, "I want this thing. How can I earn the money to get it?" You and I could take a lesson from that. Almost any number that you have, if there's a goal that you have, a financial goal, whether that's a personal consumption goal for yourself or whether that is a goal for an impact or something you're trying to fund in the world, almost any number, you can put together a plan that would earn it.

If it were important enough to you, you'd do it. Honest, precise language is the starting point of great change. Seek the truth, start with yourself, and then start to others. In our world today, truth is becoming and has become a much, much debated topic. It seems as though people place less and less importance on truth.

Don't let that bother you. Truth matters today more than ever. As the one of my favorite quote from me from George Orwell in 1984, "Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth. And if you clung to the truth, even against the whole world, you were not mad." Start with speaking truthfully to yourself.

I challenge you, be precise in your language to yourself. Make a 30-day challenge to banish the use of these two phrases from your vocabulary. Do not say, "I don't have time." And do not say, "I can't afford that." Say something that's more truthful, and if what you're talking about is a priority, ask yourself a question of how you can achieve the outcome that you're trying to achieve.