It Is What It Is? The Most Commonly Used Clichés Of The Unsuccessful…And What To Say Instead!

Question: What’s your first impression of it?

Is it safety concerns, given its tiny size? I don’t think you would be alone in that opinion.

One of the major problems with very small, light automobiles is that they can be unsafe in a collision. So, all small cars must be unsafe in a collision, correct?

Surely, something that tiny can’t fare well in a wreck, right?

Wrong and wrong.

So, guess what? The Smart Car has performed remarkably well in safety tests.  In crash tests, that safety shell does what it’s supposed to do – transfer the impact around the cabin, instead of through it like many other vehicles.

Lest you think I’m turning this blog into the next “Top Gear”, the point is this – thinking that all small cars are unsafe in an accident is an example of what I call “clichéd thinking”.

Here’s another…

In a few months, the nation’s attention will be on hurricane season once again. Having a house and investment real estate in Houston, I have personal experience with hurricanes, weathering the likes of Rita, Ike and that recent heavy weight champion of hurricanes, Mister Harvey.

What’s odd about hurricane preparedness is that the first thing that grocery stores sell out of is…water. Everyone stocks up on it. Cases and cases. Water bought by the truckloads. As hurricanes approach, people even fill up their bathtubs, sinks and every container they can with…water.

Now, stop and think about this for a minute. Most hurricanes are accompanied by what? Torrential rain. Double digit inches of downpours. Street flooding.  There’s so much water, rivers and lakes overflow their banks.  Harvey alone dropped more than 4 feet of rain on Houston, breaking the record for the greatest amount of rain dropped from a single storm or hurricane, ever.

The least scarce resource in a major hurricane is water! Yet, with each hurricane, everyone sees their neighbor loading up on water, so they do the same.

I read an article recently about a group of personal trainers that did something remarkable. Having grown tired of their client’s excuses for not exercising and eating healthy, they did the unthinkable – they started eating junk food and stopped working out. Lo and behold they gained a lot of weight. And then they did something equally remarkable – they lost all the weight they gained! How? You guessed it  – exercise and eating healthy. The very things they had been trying to teach their clients.

The point these personal trainers were making to their clients was this – drop the silly clichés:

“I’m big boned, so I can never be lean”. 

“My metabolism is too slow, so I can’t lose weight”. 

“I don’t want to lift weights, because I’ll turn into The Hulk”. 

Clichéd thinking.

Friends, I’ve been focused on success and wealth building for a long time. Therefore, I’ve heard all the clichés related to personal finance:

“We don’t make enough money to save”. 

“We need to buy a new car because ours is a few years old and it will leave us stranded one day”. 

“There’s no way I can learn how to invest. Investing is for professionals only”. 

“Nobody in my family has ever been rich, so it would never happen to me”.

Our brains are problem solving engines. And as great as the human brain is, it has a major flaw – it likes shortcuts.  The reason for this is to save energy and time. Why fire up the big parts of our brain when we can just use shortcuts we’ve learned along the way? “This” always equals “that”, so when I see “this”, I’ll just automatically think “that”. Easy peasy.

The problem with this is that it gives way to bandwagon thinking, peer pressure, generalization, selective observation and “common practice” ways of thinking. These forms of thinking are not about seeking the truth. Rather, they are about how many people believe something. And we all know the fallacies of group think…

In the 1800’s there was a widespread belief that bloodletting cured sickness. The clichéd thinking at the time was to remove the blood that contained the sickness and voila, you’re cured. All of these people where not just wrong, they were horribly wrong. Bloodletting actually made people sicker. Clearly, the popularity of an idea doesn’t make it right.

Here’s an example of the opposite of clichéd thinking – your life unfolds according to what you think you deserve. That’s right. If a person is not where they want to be financially, it’s because of who they think they are.

You see, the granddaddy of all clichés – “it is what it is” is patently false. It’s the Trojan horse of the mediocre. It’s their most prized clichéd thought because it magically explains–away their lack of success. Here’s the real truth – “It is what it is” for the mediocre because they are who they are. If they were someone else, it would be different.

Dear reader, don’t outsource your thinking to common jargon and poetic language.  The peanut gallery has a lot of clever slogans that mask their inherent laziness. Gibberish and hand-me-down phrases usually come from people who can’t, or won’t, find meaning in their lives. So, they invent clever catch phrases to do a snow job on themselves and anyone else who is foolish enough to listen to them.

My advice? Leave the ambiguous assertions to the ambiguous people who are living ambiguous lives. Say to yourself, “I won’t live a vague life”.

If you want to be successful, go be that someone who deserves to be successful. Say to yourself , “I deserve the good life”.

If you want to have great relationships, go be that someone who deserves a great relationships. Say to yourself, “I won’t tolerate toxic relationships”.

If you want to be the person that others admire and respect, go be that someone who deserves admiration and respect. Say to yourself, “I’ll build a life of dignity”.

And lastly…

If you want to be financially free, then ignore the silly clichés and go be that someone who deserves to be financially free. Say to yourself, “It’s my duty to become financially free”.

Be free. Nothing else is worth it.

P.S. Why aren’t you wealthy yet? It’s because of something you don’t know. Otherwise you’d already be rich. Isn’t it time to learn what you don’t know? Consider signing-up for my newsletter below, to help you build wealth faster.