Are You Holding Yourself Back from Financial Greatness?

Ever since I started M$M, I've known in the back of my mind that people seem to hold themselves back from achieving really cool things in life.

It's actually a little crazy sometimes. There have been many many occasions where I've shared something from the site on one of my various social media channels, just to be immediately jumped on by some angry person that blames literally everything but themselves for their financial situation.

Now before we go on – please don't get me wrong. I understand that a lot of people are dealt a bad hand in life. I was lucky as hell that my parents raised me the way that they did and worked incredibly hard to provide a path to success for me. I've been exposed to a large enough portion of humanity online to understand that.

But at the same time, there are a lot of people out there that ARE fortunate like me who are either completely unaware of the ways that they are holding themselves back due to fear, or completely in denial about their situation.

First, let's start with the people in denial that blame everything but themselves

One of the hardest things to do in life is to take a look at what you're doing, analyze it, and then ultimately decide that you are doing something the wrong way and accept it.

I've seen people over and over again who continue to do things like bury themselves in more credit card debt or ignore their student loans, and then immediate lash out when you present them with a list of things that they could be doing differently to fix those situations.

Usually it starts with something like, “Well it must be nice to blah blah blah.”

Or, “Well it's easy to say that if you can blah blah blah.”

That was a big one when my story was shared on CNBC about paying off my student loans a while back.

Just FYI, if you ever get featured on a big website like that, there are two things I suggest for you:

1. Be excited about it, because it doesn't happen very often
2. Do not ever ever ever freaking ever look at the comment section of one of those articles

You will get roasted to death, even if it was a story about how you feed homeless people on the weekend and adopt out puppies in your spare time or something. Internet people are savage.

…but I digress. The amount of people who were complaining that I was able to rent a room from my in-laws to get out of student loan debt was unreal.

I guarantee if I went to any of those people and said:

“Hey, would you like to live in a 1,500 square foot house with your wife's parents?”

They would be like…”Uhhhh no I'm cool, but thanks for the offer.”

And then they would find the next success story to go unrealistically compare their lives to while simultaneously ignoring their *very* obvious self-inflicted poor financial choices.

Here's the problem…

Nobody cares when you complain. They just don't.

Not once have I seen the magical life fairy drop down and fix anyone's life when they complain about the cost of living being too high or how little time they have to do a side hustle in addition to their job.

Like if I did see that, it would be pretty incredible and I would legitimately try to hire the life fairy to make those things happen over and over again for my readers.

But, it doesn't work like that.

In a lot of cases (not all of course), it's just purely a matter of someone avoiding things that are hard, or not thinking outside of the box.

Just in case you were thinking that I'm just talking down to people, please understand – I used to be one of those people that complained.

In college, I was so mad that my parents weren't able to create a situation where I wouldn't have student loans after graduating. I should have been grateful that they put me in a position to succeed in the first place by being great parents, but I was too young/stupid to see that.

When I was a band director, I was so upset that I wasn't really happy in my career, even though it was 100% my idea to choose that line of work.

But the reality is that I could have made different choices. I could have gone to a community college and lived at home after high school.

I could have tried harder in high school to get scholarships (I didn't out of laziness).

I could have chosen to major in business (which is ironic) like I originally wanted to before changing my mind to do music.

So what eventually happened?

At some point, I looked at my situation and decided to do whatever I could to get on the path I wanted for my life.

I did everything I could to pay off my student loan debt. That included putting myself in the very uncomfortable position of looking like a loser living at my in-laws' house.

Then after that, I looked at my job and realized that I need to make a drastic career decision if I wanted to be happy. So I did what most people wouldn't do and quit my job for my absolute passion in life (writing for this site).

The common theme here is that I had to realize that the path I was on wasn't one that complaining would help me maneuver away from.

I had to freaking do something, and nobody else was going to do it for me.

Now? I have zero student loans or consumer debt, and I make magic money online every day.

Complaining doesn't produce those kind of results.

Action does.

Complaining might get you some sympathy here and there for your situation, but ain't nobody opening up their checkbook to fix it for you.

Next, let's talk about the people who are holding themselves back because of fear

I've talked about fear on the site before. We all know that fear tends to keep people from really going out on a limb to change their lives, because change is scary.

I can tell you from when I quit my job to run this site – I was terrified. I definitely can see why people don't like doing the whole “leap of faith” thing.

But until I started launching courses on M$M, I had no idea how strong that fear really was.

I'm going to give away some very powerful advice when it comes to selling anything:

You have to overcome people's fears and objections about your product if you want them to buy it.

That's why you see sales pages like ours that answer a lot of questions, and you also see course sales pages that have long FAQ sections.

In order for people to give you their hard-earned money for a product (even if the product is super legit and helpful), you have to answer those questions to their satisfaction first.

Why? Because people are afraid that they are going to be ripped off (understandably…a lot of stuff online is 100% crap).

They are afraid that whatever you are selling won't work for them.

They are afraid that they won't ever see real success.

They are afraid of how hard it will be.

They are afraid that it costs too much.

They are afraid that they won't have the time to make it happen.

More than anything (especially with courses like mine), they are afraid of failure.

What if they take the leap of faith on something new…and then fail?

But after the course opened, I saw something INCREDIBLE

The people who took the leap of faith into the course (and were terrified) started to blossom.

We have people that have never sold a thing in their life picking up clients like candy. It was like overcoming their fears unleashed a completely different version of themselves.

One student sent me a picture of two $1,500 checks from clients last night. That's life changing stuff, and I was so happy for him.

What if all of those people who are picking up clients (or getting very close) had let fear talk them out of taking the course?

It's the same thing that could have happened to me.

I could have bought into all of my fears about starting my business, or living at my in-laws' house after college.

I don't know where I'd be if I had listened to the fear. I might have nicer cars, and maybe I would have gone on some vacations earlier…but I would feel empty inside.

Is fear holding you back from being a better version of yourself?

Honestly, I can't answer that for you. But if I had to guess – yeah. There is probably something you want to do in life that you are worried about.

I'm not talking about quitting your job or taking some course. It could be making bigger payments on your student loans. It could be cutting up the credit card that you've been looking at in disgust for weeks.

Maybe it's buying the used car instead of the new one with the fancy warranty, or getting on the phone and finally cutting the cable cord.

I don't know. But I DO know that on the other side of whatever fear you have, there's a better, shinier version of you waiting on the other side to kick some financial a**.

I'd like you to do something today (please):

After you are done reading this, pick one thing that you've been too afraid to do, and go do it. If it's something that takes some time, at least start the process.

Remember:

Fear and complaining do not get anything done.

Action does.

 

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March 7, 2018Posted in: Student Loan Debt