In this episode, we discuss how to prevent from becoming stuck in life.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista, where 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.
In today’s episode we’re going to talk about the importance of having options in life. I’m a big believer that when we make decisions, we should make a decision on what’s good or bad, but what is going to give us the most flexibility and control over our future.
When we have flexibility and control over our future, we limit the possibility of becoming stuck. Now where you’re stuck in life, that’s when feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, and depression kick in. I know for myself personally, I don’t want to become stuck in life. I want the freedom to do what I want to do and have the ability to say no to the things that I don’t want to do.
In order to get this type of freedom though, we need to have options in life. The way you have options is by having resources and the type of resources you will have will be dependent on the decisions that you made in the past. So when you’re making a decision in life, don’t look at it from a pros and cons perspective, look at it from a value perspective.
One decision might have ten cons to it, but the one pro is worth having 50 pros to it. For example, I made the decision to go into the Marines to pay for my college. Most people think you’re going to be on the front line if you join but the Marines have a lot of different jobs that you can choose from. I was in supply so I was in charge of ordering gear, keeping track of property records, and maintain the budget for my battalion. This job allowed me to go to school because I was not constantly in the field like someone who was infantry.
My goal was to do four years and get out and go to school. I end up doing seven years because I got married during my fourth year and ended up re-enlisting but I was able to get even more money for school during those extra three years. But before I joined, I had to ask myself, do I go to school and take on a lot of student loan debt or do I give my life to the Marines.
If I went to school and didn’t have any scholarship, I probably would have graduated with $40k in student loans than I would have had a monthly payment of $286/mo over 20 years. I would have had more freedom in terms of which classes I choose, how long I could have stayed out, and would have been closer to home. But I’m not sure what career I would have chosen if I went straight to school so I might have wasted more time in college by switching majors. I definitely would have needed a job to help pay for expenses while I was going to school as well.
If I went into the Marines, I would be stuck with them for four years at a minimum, I would be under their control and can’t just quit. I would probably be going overseas to Iraq or Afghanistan, which I went to Iraq for seven months. I did gain a paycheck, I also grew up a lot by being put into a leadership position and for getting my ass chewed for making dumb mistakes. And my schooling would be paid for.
Thinking past 25, where would I be in terms of both paths. I think the Marines was good choice because that $286/mo over 20 years or $444/mo would have hurt a lot when it comes to my budget. Plus I got a real sense of who I want to become in the future by choosing the Marines. I would have looked at things in the short run and say that I don’t want to go through boot camp and rather have a more care-free life but I knew that in the future I wanted to be in a place where I had control over my future and that’s why I choose the Marines.
Now I continue to make decisions based on value instead of what’s good and bad. I try to look at the future and realize what I can have in the future if I continue this path. Is it going to make me better off in the future or is it going to slow me down?
I decided to run my business with Grow With Joe because I saw that I could do more for myself than working for somebody else. It is not an easy path to take because there is a lot of uncertainty when you’re running your own business and things are not guaranteed but if things do work out like I planned out, then I will have everything that I want in life and that’s why I continue with running my own business.
I see that having your own business can give you options in life. You can take off time when you need to and you can have the financial resources to do what you please if you manage your business correctly. I don’t want somebody to tell me what to do and so I work for myself. You have to realize when you’re working for yourself, you’re basically saying you rather work 60 hours for yourself than 40 hours for somebody else, but you know what, those 60 hours are for me and I enjoy them. I don’t have all the options now but I am working on them for my future self.
So to have the options in life you need to build up resources. You have to have financial capital, human capital, and social capital. Financial capital means you have money in the bank to handle financial problems. Human capital means you have the physical and mental resources to handle problems that come your way, and social capital means you have a network that can help out when you’re facing problems out of your expertise.
Having these types of resources will prevent you from being stuck. This is why it’s important to have an emergency fund of 6-12 months, so if you don’t like your job, you can quit it and spend time to find another one. There have been times where I saw things not going well in my organizations that I didn’t agree with and I decided to leave because I don’t want to deal with those things. Thank god I have money saved up so I could pivot into my next position
Now I don’t have to deal with those things and I can focus more on the things that I want to do.
To summarize today’s episode, don’t become stuck in life and that way that you need to do that is to have resources and to have resources you need to make decisions that will give you the most value for your future self. It might suck in the short run but in the long run, it will all be worth it.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode.
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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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