Don’t take things too serious but……
Remember that life is not too forgiving.
What do I mean by that? Well let me explain the basics and then I will relate that to our favorite topic…..money.
Life is not too forgiving, meaning small mistakes can have catastrophic repercussions.
Recently I have vowed to restrict my cell phone usage while in the car. No text messages, no phone calls initiated, just answering calls. Just picking up the phone and talking. There have been too many accidents caused by negligent drivers. We aren’t that good, we are just lucky. When you are lucky so many times you start to misconstrue that luck until skill. “I got this” you say while texting, glancing up, and driving with your knees. All is well until you hit the car in front of you. Or maybe just rub the divider. A simple scrape on an unblemished car is a like a boil on Hale Berry’s face. All because someone texted you something stupid that you just had to read. Now you have to look at that dumb scratch on your car everyday. So not worth it.
DUI is another prime example. Look at Beecher from the show OZ. He got a little tipsy at a company part and he kills someone on his way home, and now he ends up in prison on manslaughter charges. A really good guy, small mistake, catastrophic results. Who hasn’t driven a little tipsy. While you are learning your threshold and tolerance you might drive home just a little on the edge. So let’s say you don’t kill anyone, but you get pulled over. Boom! DUI. fines, tickets, etc. All because you had one drink too many, or started to drive just an hour too soon, or didn’t eat enough before the night’s festivities began. All little mistakes catastrophic results.
AIDS. Same thing. Girl meets boy, girl get carried away, unprotected sex. This Small mistake results in AIDS or baby. Life taken or life provided. The entire dynamic of your life is changed in the blink of an eye. I can’t think of an analogy that can capture the amount a life can change due to one instance this small.
The list goes on an on. Christopher Reeve had a horse back riding incident. Did he do all his safety checks, was he playing around on the horse, or was it just one of those things. When it’s “Just one of those things” then it’s more acceptable then you doing something dumb.
You must take the above into consideration during your daily hustle. Even when you are doing the right thing life throws you setbacks, so you need to minimize these setbacks by taking control over what you can control and minimizing your errors. That comes with better judgment, utilizing and listening to mentors, and learning and reading. Doing the right thing is a learned behavior. All of these things are difficult but doing the difficult is what separates us from the masses.
We specialize in the difficult. Difficult we get done in a day; Impossible we get it done in a week. That’s how we roll.
-MJL