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:
- Be excited about it, because it doesn't happen very often
- 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.
Question for you:
What is one thing you have been afraid to do that you could work on today?
Great post! I often think about the self-limiting behaviors we all do to some extent, me included. I think it’s the comfortable thing — to assume that our current situations aren’t a result of personal choices, but some outside force (my job sucks, I’m just not lucky, not pretty or smart enough).
In reality, we can just decide to change our situations in an instant — and it’s so freeing when you realize that.
Thank you! Yep. I’ve seen a lot of people do whatever it takes to change their situation and it’s freaking awesome!
This is one of the things that always happens whenever I tell people I paid off my 21k student loans in 18 months. People rattle off excuses about why they can’t do it and so on. Understandable to a point since everyone has roadblocks, but there does come a point when you have to do something. (I never realized how much people will defend their massive car loans!).
Now that I’ve been debt-free for a while, I have been freelancing and I could work on being more organized with it. I’m currently testing out different things and it’s going good so far!
Haha dude people will defend their cars to the absolute death. Glad it’s going well!
I seriously don’t get the issue with living with family while tackling debt – completely different than the mooch who lives in his parents basement because he can’t be bothered to get a job.
Haha yeah it is different! It’s been almost two years now since that feature happened – I wonder if things are different now?
Absolutely! I live in a house that my in-laws owned that is split into a duplex. I find tenants, collect rent, take care of the house etc. etc. I’ll be honest, sometimes it’s a pain….but I also don’t pay rent and will be able to put down a large down payment once we are ready to buy a house. Many of my friends are buying houses that they can “afford” and then struggling to get by. Doesn’t make any sense…
Man, I WISH we could live with parents for a while, we’d be able to supercharge our financial plans! Seriously though, no matter whether I’m doing something I hate or something I’m super passionate about, my own self-doubt and hyper-criticism of what I’m doing are my absolute worst enemies. It gets to the point sometimes that it will stop me from doing something that I know will be good for me because I can’t stop thinking about how I might screw it up. It’s a lifelong challenge, but I’m trying to push myself a little bit every day outside of my comfort zone. Thanks for sharing Bobby!
Our office was acquired by a much larger firm about a year and a half ago. Around the same time I was approached by another small firm much closer to home. I decided to hold out and see how the merger went. Or at least that’s what I told myself. After a few months it was apparent to my girlfriend that I was getting less and less happy about my job, but my fear of change was (is) stronger than my optimism and drive for happiness. So fear held me in place for about a year and a half causing me to drive 30-50 minutes each way to work when the other firm would only be 10 minutes away (4.5 miles). But, the president of that company contacted me again and I have an interview today to hopefully get me out of a shrinking office and on to new projects and opportunities. And probably also a raise and I’ll be closer to the boat to go sailing after work!
Hey Bobby,
Great post, totally nails it in many ways. The sentence below is absolute fire and applies to selling literally anything. When I’m selling a property I try to rehab it to being almost perfect…but they aren’t new construction. People ALWAYS find something to complain about, the inspector ALWAYS finds “issues” with the house. It’s MY job to sell the house because I know that I put out quality products. Thanks for sharing!
“I’m going to give away some very powerful advice when it comes to selling anything:”
Whoops, copied the wrong sentence.
“You have to overcome people’s fears and objections about your product if you want them to buy it.”
This post is terrific and inspiring. For such a long time, I was stuck in a rut and felt like I was getting no where in life. My fear was to make a change, to do something different. I think this happens to many of us. Sometimes the fear of change is greater than the unhappiness of remaining the same. We need to remind ourselves that fear is a good thing. Fear can push us to exactly where we want to be. We just need to gather up the courage to face fear head on.
Wow thank you so much Paul! 100% right – fear can be a really powerful tool when used correctly.
Great post Bobby. Jocko Willink has a TED Talk called “Extreme Ownership” I highly recommend it, it hammers this message home. Take ownership for your situation, and do something.
Thanks! I’ll definitely check that out.
Love the post, we can always challenge ourselves to push further and break barriers day by day.
I think my finances are going well and on track this year, it’s other areas I want to progress on, fitness. I need to up my running and yoga game, and do harder workouts.
I could definitely do better in the fitness department haha! Glad you liked the post 🙂
I feel like you just morphed from my favorite personal finance blogger into my personal life coach. Thank you! I needed to hear this today!
muahahahaha
I find myself in this really ironic place where I saw that post about you a long time ago and thought “well if somebody gave me a luxury condo to rent out, I could get out of debt easily too!” and proceeded to do nothing for a while except wonder how I could do better.
Eventually I started looking at my habits and setting new goals, and even though I’m still working at the same job I had when I first discovered your article, I know that great things are about to happen because I can see the exit and I’m ready to take the proverbial leap. I know I’m in a better place because I didn’t even realize that you were the one that I read about before when I subscribed to this blog, but upon finding out through this post I could only laugh and didn’t feel any of that old envy. I’m really excited for the relaunching of your course even though part of me is terrified at the prospect of making such a large investment.
Ha that’s funny! The course relaunch is going to be awesome!!!! We make the whole process a lot of fun, so you’ll definitely enjoy it. 🙂
You’re literally my idol.
Oh wow, thanks Eric!