Growing up we are told many things.
The most common is that you can do anything.
That you could be anything.
Anything that your heart desires.
But somewhere between being a child and becoming an adult… things change.
Caught up in the hustle of everyday life, dreams get placed on hold. Ambitions are left to fade. Life changes.
And it’s easy to forget.
Forget what could have been.
Russell Wilson, quarterback for the champion Seattle Seahawks, gave a compelling post-game interview after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2013. In the interview, Wilson said that growing-up, he had many conversations with his father about great football players. During these conversations, his father would inevitably ask him: “Why not you? Why shouldn’t it be you?”
“I just remember driving in the car with him so many times and him saying, Rus, why not you? Why can’t you be the Super Bowl winning quarterback and do great things with that? You have all the ability, so why not you?”
It’s easy to do what you think is expected of you now and leave the good life to others. It’s also easy to assume that others have found some sort of secret on how to achieve success, or that there is someone else more likely to achieve financial freedom.
Also, there’s no guarantee that you will become financially free even if you put in the effort, so it can seem like it’s safer to just stay where you are. You may want financial freedom, but feel that it’s difficult to justify the effort and sacrifice to achieve it. But please know this – to get what you want in life, you’ve got to give up what you have. This means you have to give up things like: comfort, fear, procrastination and lack of confidence.
“Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again”
A few years ago I watched an interview with the late Steve Jobs. It was of Jobs looking back on his life, his career, and all that he’d accomplished.
There were a lot of inspiring moments in that interview, but the one that struck me the most was when he realized something profound about himself:
“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it.
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
These are convicting words.
It’s easy to think that things are out of your control. That someone else can do something but you can’t. That others are smarter or better equipped for success. But Jobs and so many others have proven that idea wrong, time and time again.
Everything around you – your income, your circumstances, and your financial future can be changed. And they can be changed by you.
My personal question to you is why not you?
You’ve got the brains.
You can make the decisions that will alter your path.
You can study and copy the greats like I did.
You can change your life.
If you are not sure you can, here are 4 questions to consider:
1. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you started saving more money today?
2. What could you do today that would be different from your past, regarding money?
3. What’s the smallest step you can take towards financial freedom?
4. What’s a financial goal that you’ve walked away from that you now want back?
You can grow immensely in the next few years. You can make your dreams come true. You can build a financial wall around you and your family that nothing can get through. You can be financially free.
If an orphan that returned Coke bottles for money to buy food can create Apple, why not you? If a once homeless man with a speech impediment can go on to create and star in the movie Rocky and many others, why not you? If a farm boy from Louisiana can wander out of the soybean fields with nothing and find financial freedom, why not you?
Why not you?
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Related posts:
5 Things You Must Give Up to Become Financially Free