In this episode, we discuss the importance of having alternatives in life so you don’t become stuck.
Full Transcripts
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the need to have options in life. When you don’t have options in life, then you’re stuck with whatever life has to give you. Sometimes in life, you just have to get past the moment of being stuck so you can have more options.
The first step to getting more options in life is to believe that you can have more options in life. You can’t just look at your life and say this is all that I can obtain in life. You have to see a future where you have more control over your life. This is what I did when I joined the Marines out of high school. I believed this was the fastest and more secure path that I could take to give me more options in life and it really has given me a lot more options in life.
I did have to go through the period of feeling stuck. If you don’t know me, I value the freedom to do what I want, when I want. I don’t want somebody else to dictate my schedule but I know when I have to face reality and joining the Marines was going to restrict my freedom.
I basically had to do what people in the Marines told me to do. If I had to come in on the weekend, I came on the weekend. If I wanted to quit, I couldn’t quit because I signed a contract. I to fulfill my time and once that was over, then I had more options. It wasn’t all bad but it could really suck at times. I even went on anxiety medication while I was in for a short time.
I did learn a lot about life and how people are when I was in but I was so happy when I got out. Then I went to school and got a degree in Public Health then moved to Washington, DC. When I was in Washington, DC, I had the intelligence but I didn’t have the social capital to get a job that I really wanted. So then I was stuck in getting a job with the Federal Government that I didn’t really like and end up quitting after 8 months. I was able to quit because I had my GI Bill to pay for all my tuition and give me $2100/mo for living expenses.
Then I went to work for a financial services company after I got my degree in Economics thinking this was the best option to become a financial planner. I was stuck with my last firm because I had no career capital as a financial planner but after four years of working for that company and accumulating skills, I left that firm to start Grow With Joe.
Now I have the freedom that I want and I feel like I’m living life on my terms. The key thing for this freedom is that you need to have human capital, social capital, and financial capital. I basically had to go through periods of feeling stuck because I didn’t have the capital to become free.
I could of started a financial planning firm after I finished school but I don’t think I would have been that successful because I wouldn’t know how to run a financial planning firm. I haven’t lived a horrible life but I feel like it was a restricted life. It was comfortable but it wasn’t fulfilling.
I love having options in life though because it gives me the freedom to do what I want to do. If I don’t like doing something, then I can switch because I not 100 percent dependent on this one thing. If all my income is coming from one employer, then I’m dependent on that one employer for my livelihood.
For me I have my financial planning clients, I have my self-development/Business consultant clients, I have my book sales, and I have the courses that I’m working on. I’m also constantly learning so I can learn how to do better in life so that helps me out as well. Plus I’m keeping my expenses really low now so that I don’t have to deal with accumulating debt and can save more.
When you don’t take something, the person or organization can’t tell you what to do. I’ve had to do things in the past that I didn’t agree with just because I earning a paycheck from those entities. It’s not a good feeling for me and is a reason why I would rather die in freedom than to succeed in chains.
It just takes a toll on my mental health and I value my health so I’m going to do things now that will provide me the freedom to do things that I believe are the right things to do. To help me do the right thing, I just need to have options and to make sure I’m not overextending myself. It’s okay to have debt but you need to make sure it’s holding you back. If you have $20k in debt but you’re making $500k a year, that’s not really a problem. If you’re $20k in debt and are make $15k a year, then that’s a problem. That that of debt will limit your options. If you’re making $500k/yr, then you could use that debt to provide you with new opportunities and if it doesn’t work out, then it’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things. It all depends.
The number of options you will need in life will be dependent on how ambitious you are as a person. The more ambitious you are and the more stuff you need, the more options you will need to prevent you from getting stuck. I have big goals for myself in the future, so I’m going to spend the next five years of accumulating options. I’m going to need these options for when I start hiring financial advisors underneath me.
Overall, if you don’t like the situation you’re in, start getting options so you can pivot out of that situation. Life is too short to be miserable.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, life is about having options. This prevents you from being stuck in life and having to deal with the miserableness of life that is in front of you. In order to have more options you need to believe that you can get more options in life, then you have to be patient in accumulating those options, and then once you get your options don’t waste them or overextend yourself so that you run out of options. Do this and you’ll have the freedom that you desire. You want to design your life, not have your life designed by someone else and having options in your human capital, social capital, and financial capital will get you there.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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