Desire Beats Gratification

 

To create lasting change our desire to reach our goal has to be stronger than our weakness for instant gratification.

The long term has to have precedence and veto power over the short term.

Our desire to keep our money (save) has to outweigh the desire to get rid of it (buy more shit).

Our motivation to eat healthy has to override our obsession with meaningless calories.

Our ambition to workout has to nullify our love affair with the couch.

This is about the long-haul. Our target. Our mission.

If we don’t want it enough. We won’t get it. Period.

Radical Action

Once we know the truth, our decision has been made and our target is in focus -  it’s time for our next move. Radical Action.

Radical Action is doing anything and everything to jumpstart the change process.

We must become a fanatic. We must be willing to create significant and extreme change. Now.

Radical Action means sacrificing more than we ever want to. And working harder than we ever thought possible. It’s about stretching our strength. Our resolve. 

It’s a memo to the universe that we’re serious. And that we’ll do what it takes.

It seals our self-promise in blood. Sweat. Maybe even tears.

If we’re not serious about changing, this step will be painful. Maybe even excruciating. It will eventually cripple us. And stop us in our tracks.

But if we are serious about changing, this step will be laughable. Comical. We’ll see how simple it is to apply effort and see change happening right before our eyes. We’ll see ourselves as the creator of this change. And we’ll love it.

This step separates the talkers from the doers. It leverages our investment in the change process and catapults us toward success.

Radical action isn’t just doing little things here or there. It’s about being a disciple  for change. An advocate for our future. A visionary. A rebel.

Radical Action is drastic. It’s getting another job. Or two. Or three. And using that money to pay off debt. It took me three jobs to jumpstart my debt-payoff. I wasn’t fucking around. I wanted to pay it and get it done. And it worked.

Radical Action is selling all your shit. Seriously as much as you can.  I sold upside-down houses, my real estate investments, my retirement accounts. I sold dresses, handbags, furniture. I sold tools, toys, electronics. I sold anything and everything that I could and put it all toward debt.

Let me be clear, Radical Action isn’t just living on beans and rice. Or moving under the nearest highway overpass. It isn’t about deprivation or punishment. It’s about conscious deliberate choices that are made from an empowered place. 

It’s about being a hero. Not a victim.

Radical Action is lowering your overhead. It’s canceling your cable, gym memberships and yoga classes. It’s letting your roots grow in and your nails go back to natural. (And yes - you might end up looking homeless - briefly. But it’s a lot better than being homeless.) It’s about cooking at home, pot lucks and movie nights. It’s about coffee rather than cocktails. It’s about making real changes in your lifestyle.

In the realm of weight loss, Radical Action looks like sweat. It’s about moving your body hard enough to raise your heart rate and to make your breath audible. It’s about doing more than you think you can. It’s about going faster than you can imagine. It’s about dragging your ass out of bed at 5. Or maybe even 4. 

Radical Action isn’t starving yourself.  It isn’t punishing your body through extended hunger strikes or body-harming-workouts. It isn’t taking pills or drugs. It isn’t about a juice fast. Or the latest cleanse. Radical Action is about being responsible for your own body. It’s about self-care. It’s about taking responsibility for this change. It’s not about blaming, punishing or depriving. 

Radical Action is clearing out the cupboards. Shopping mindfully. Preparing a menu. It’s about packing a lunch. Having snacks on hand. It’s about being conscious and deliberate with your food and drink choices.

The beauty of Radical Action is more internal than external. 

It is explicit evidence that you are keeping your promise. It is a testament of your commitment to change. It’s a chance to be proud of yourself. To high-five yourself. To feel awesome.

Externally, Radical Action jumpstarts a powerful chain of events. It’s the first domino to tumble in the series. It gets the momentum going. 

And you’ll need this momentum. It carries you through the times when you want to give up. When you think changing is too hard. And when you want to quit. 

Radical Action helps redefine who you are. It helps you prove to yourself that you are not just someone who hopes to change.

You are someone who creates it.

Set Your Target

The process of creating change is a temporary condition. 

It begins with the decision to change the status quo. It continues as you undergo the procedures, efforts, consequences and actions of creating The Change. And, it terminates at the point where The Change has been made. 

Our Target is the point where present tense becomes past tense. We are no longer changing. We’ve changed. 

The debt isn’t being paid off. It has been paid off.
We’re no longer losing weight. The weight has been lost.
We’re not quitting. We’ve quit.
We’re not starting. We’re doing it.

The target isn’t The End.

This is only a target to reach. It’s a fixed point with a clear definition. 

Upon arrival of this target, there will be different work to be done. There will be a new goal. With new actions needed. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

What’s important is understanding this target right now. In vivid detail. Because if you can’t see this target - there is no way that you will be able to hit it. 

We need to understand that the work required to get to the target is temporary work. It’s not forever. It’s not a life sentence. 

There’s a beginning to it. And there’s an end. Even if the end is really, really, really far away. There is still an end.

You will not be paying off debt for the rest of your life.
For a long time? Perhaps. But not forever.

You will not be working to lose weight for the rest of your life.
Can it take an excruciatingly long time? Yah. Of course.

But you can change it.
And after you hit the target - it will be changed.
As in: past tense. It’s done.

It’s hard for some of us to wrap our minds around the idea that one day we’ll actually be debt free. Believe me. When I started, I was nearly $600k in debt. I didn’t even entertain the idea of being debt free in my lifetime. I learned to tolerate debt. I thought it was just part of life. 

Until I got the crazy idea that I actually could pay off debt. Like, really pay it off. And be done. Even if it took me 10 years. Or even 20. There would actually be an end to the debt. I wasn’t dealing with infinity. I was dealing with a fixed number. A big number - yes. But it was still fixed. And if I had made the decision to stop it from growing, I could certainly decide to make the number smaller. One month at a time. 

Once I defined that target in my mind, the focus became very clear. I saw that it wasn’t a moving target. It was a very defined point in time. And no matter how far in the future it was, I knew that it was possible to create it. 

This same concept applies to our bodies. Maybe you’ve been ‘trying to lose 20 pounds’ for the last friggin’ 20 years. Maybe you want to lose 100 pounds. Or more. Don’t let big numbers scare you. And don’t let your past define you.

Extra weight (debt, or anything else) isn’t something that you need to learn to tolerate. Life isn’t about lowering your standards for yourself.  

Losing weight isn’t a life-long process. It’s temporary. There’s a beginning, middle and end to it. 

But, you’ve really got to determine what your “end” looks like. (And please don’t tell me that it’s a fucking number on little box in your bathroom. )

Maybe it’s a pair of jeans. A dress. 

Maybe it’s being able to run a mile. Or swim with your kids. Finish a triathlon. Ski black diamond. Stand up on a surfboard.  

Maybe it’s being able to buy something in your size at a regular department store. Or tuck your shirt in.  

I’ll tell you what a target isn’t: it isn’t a feeling. It isn’t ‘feeling comfortable in your skin.’ It isn’t ‘being confident.’ It isn’t ‘loving your body.’

Don’t get me wrong - those are all wonderful things - but they are feelings. And any feeling is available to any one of us at anytime by changing the way we think.  

Thoughts and feelings are not targets. Targets are definable destinations or goals. They are measurable. They are factual.

And most importantly.
They are attainable.

Tell the Truth

If you want to make a big change. Pay off debt. Build wealth. Lose weight. Start a habit. Or break one.

You must understand the difference between lying and telling the truth. I’m not just talking about lying to other people. Or about lying to ourselves. 

I’m talking about pretending. Faking it. Wishing it was true. Trying to sound optimistic. Looking at the bright side. Acting ‘as if.’ Exaggerating. Minimizing. Fudging. Rounding up. Or down. Bullshitting. Fabricating. Distorting. Spinning. Misrepresenting. Omitting details. Cheating. Being polite. Playing nice. Putting on a smile. Fantasizing. Embellishing. Romanticizing. And all the other ways that we manipulate strings of words in our minds and contort our lives to try to make ourselves (and other people) feel better.

To really change. We’ve got to understand where the truth ends and a lie begins. And we’ve got to learn that this isn’t a fine line. Or a flimsy one. Or a flexible one.

It’s a big fat line marked in stinky indelible black ink. One side: reality.One side: fiction. It’s the fucking truth. Like red is red. And humans breathe air.

And yes - you can banter with me all day long about the varieties of red and the differences between scarlet, crimson, vermillion and burgundy.

But red is never cobalt, azure or turquoise. It’s red. You know what that means. And so do I.

And you could say that our air is really a composition of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, along with other trace gases. And yes, I agree. Humans breathe that. That’s what we call air.

Whether you call it ‘air’ or a mix of gases - you still will die if you solely breathe carbon monoxide. That’s the truth.

You can make the truth complicated if you want. You can argue with it. You can argue with me about it. You can argue with yourself about it. But you won’t change it.

Reality will still be reality. And we can’t go about making big. Substantial. Meaningful. Change in our lives. If we don’t tell the truth.

We can’t pretend our way into awesome. The nearest we can get with pretending is synthetic-plastic-tasteless mediocrity.

To get where we really want to go. Whether it’s a money goal. Or a weight goal. A quitting or a starting goal. We’ve got to know the truth. Tell the truth. Live the truth.

In the money world, it means knowing what we owe. Who we owe. When.  And most importantly: why. It means knowing the definition of debt: money that is owed to someone else. As in: real cash that will need to be paid to a real entity at a real place and time.

The truth about debt isn’t the monthly payment. The truth about debt is the whole enchilada. The total pay-off amount. This goes for student loans, mortgages, car loans and leases (yes, with all the fees and penalties). This goes for finance charges in all sizes: 0% to 100%. 

If you owe someone else the money. Then you’re in debt. Whether you’re up to date on your payments or not. 

It means knowing the balance in every single one of our accounts. It means knowing what we’ve spent and why. It means knowing what we earn, how we earn it and why. In detail. It means knowing our exact overhead. It means accuracy and deliberate consciousness. What every single piece of our lives cost.  It means understanding the value of a customer, a job, a paycheck. It means knowing our own self-worth and our net worth. 

It isn’t an opinion. It’s a number. With a dollar sign.

It’s not the money that you expect to earn. It’s not the money that someone else owes you. It’s not the money sitting in your bank account right now that you’re saying is “yours” when it has already RSVPed for someone else’s party.

Your net worth is the money that you’re left with after you liquidate and you pay your creditors. It’s what you’re financially worth if you add up everything you own and subtract everything you owe.

Your net worth is the only money that you really own. Whether you tell yourself the truth about money or not. Your Net Worth will.

When you understand the truth about money, it’s much easier to pay off debt. You can see that the money in your bank account doesn’t belong to you when you owe someone else. It’s just pretending to belong to you. You can see that the money that someone else promises to pay you doesn’t belong to you either. You start to see the truth. Reality. And what owning money really means.

Upside-down mortgages, car leases and students loans become very clear. There’s simple math involved. There is a dollar amount at the end of the equation.

In the world of weight loss, many people think the scale is the truth. I disagree.

The scale tells you the truth no more than your ATM receipt gives you an accurate checking balance.

If you write a check for $20,000, stick it in an envelope, drop it in the nearest mailbox and then rush over to your bank and withdraw twenty bucks. You absolutely know the stated balance isn’t accurate. You know you have an outstanding check.

We get this easily when it comes to money. If we have outstanding transactions (deposits or withdrawals), I don’t care how much you stare at that receipt - the balance isn’t true. 

The receipt should read: “With the amount of information I have, at this given time, I believe your balance is: $ ______ (+/-) infinity.”

And that’s about as accurate as a scale can ever be as well. It is not the word of God. It does not accurately measure your worth, your size, your appearance or anything friggin useful. All it will tell you is that your human matter (bones, muscles, tendons, tissue, waste), plus food, plus water, plus chemicals weighs x amount at this given time.

If we could only have the same resolve when we see the number on the scale as we do when we look at the number at the bottom of our ATM receipt.

We don’t look at that receipt and go “Woohoo! I wrote that check for $20,000 and I got away with it. Sweet! $20k of free money!” We know in due time, that check will clear and that the bank balance will reflect this withdrawal.

Nor do we look at that receipt and say “WTF? I was just paid $10,000 by my client - why the hell isn’t it showing on my balance?” We know that we actually have to deposit that check. Wait for it to clear. And in due time, the money will be available to us. 

We know that these transactions don’t magically appear on our receipt. We also know that they don’t magically disappear either.  

But for some reason, millions of women believe that fat does just that. It magically disappears when the scale says one number. And magically appears when the scale says a different number.

This is delusional. Crazy-making. Straight-jacket logic. And, it’s time to understand the truth. 

Here’s the truth: sometimes we overeat and under-exercise and the scale goes down. Yes, down. This doesn’t mean we’ve gotten away with anything. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t being accounted for. Or that we are beating the system. We’re not.

Another truth: sometimes we workout and eat mindfully and the scale goes up. I know! Annoying but true. That doesn’t mean we’re being punished. Or that it’s not working. Or that we aren’t directly creating a healthy body. We are. 

What the scale should say is “With the amount of information I have, at this given time, I believe your weight to be ______ (+/-) infinity.”

And that. Just isn’t factual enough to be the truth.

The truth about your body is the way you look. It’s how your clothes fit. It’s how your lungs work. It’s how your heart pumps. It’s how fast you can run. Or how far you can walk.

It’s about so much more than a friggin number on a little box. 

Telling the truth means knowing about the food we eat in detail. How much, when and why. It means telling the truth about the ingredients in the food, the preparation of the food. Whether it’s grilled or fried. Whether it’s whole or processed. It means opening our eyes and refusing to be conveniently ignorant. 

Telling the truth means knowing the facts about exercise without exaggeration or embellishment. It requires a visceral connection with your lungs. With your own heart beat. With your own sweat. It means knowing the actual value of physical exertion. When to push harder and when not to.  

The truth can be measured. It is a half-cup. Or a tablespoon. It’s an ounce. It’s a mile. A half-hour. It’s more reps. It’s a pant size. It’s an inch. 

It’s a calorie: the measurement of energy held in a unit of mass that is being stored on your body. And the truth is what is required to transform that stored energy into something else. Sweat. Heat. Air. 

Whether you tell the truth to yourself. Or not. Your body will. Your finances will. Your life will. If you want to create big change in your life. It’s about knowing yourself. Knowing the truth. And telling it. It’s about stopping the lies. The pretending. The fudging of the numbers. The making-it-sound-prettier-than-it-really-is.

It means coming to terms with who you are. Where you are. And why you are here.

And from this place. You can go anywhere.

Join me for a special class series The Weight of Money: How to Get your Body and Bank Out of Debt offered exclusively to the members of Money Love & Life (#Rowdies) throughout June, July and August 2012. This post is Tool #1 (of 50 - yes 50 tools to help get your body and your bank out of debt)

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What a Lemon Tree Taught Me About Money

I have an over-achieving lemon tree in my back yard.

It's a small tree. It doesn't take up a lot of space.

But it is serious about lemon production.

It's not like a regular citrus tree with its arms reaching up to the sun. It more like a weeping willow with heavy lemon-laden branches. 

There are at least five hundred lemons on it right now. (I didn't count... just go with my story here.)

When I first moved in, it was spring.

I thought lemons were in season.

And I picked tons of them.

And tried to use them all.

And then they rotted on my counter tops.

And the lemon tree kept on making lemons.

Summer came.

Still lemon season.

I ignored the tree.

The lemons fell on the ground and ended up getting mowed into the lawn.

And the rest went to compost.

And the lemon tree kept on making lemons.

Fall came.

And with it came the heat of the Indian Summer.

And hundreds of lemons ripened and fell.

And the lemon tree kept on making lemons.

Christmas came and went.

We made lemonade.

And that tree kept on making yellow ornaments.

The entire first year - I watched it.

Expecting lemon season to stop.

Being worried that I wasn't using them.

Worried that they were going to waste.

Worried that someday I might really need a lemon and that I didn't enjoy the lemons in the right way.

At the right time.

Three years later...

I now know that it's always lemon season in my back yard.

I cook everyday with lemon.

I put it in my water.

I use it for tea.

I have trained myself to use more lemons on purpose.

Every morning I go out an pick lemons.

By the next day. The fruit bowl is empty.

And it's time to pick more.

Four or five a day. Sometimes more.

And still.

My daily lemons don't even make a dent.

My tree still looks a weeping willow.

And there are still lemons all over the ground.

I now love my lemon tree.

I love picking the lemons.

And using the lemons.

And knowing that it's always going to be lemon season.

I love knowing that I always have more lemons than I need.

Even when the recipe might call for 10 or even 20 lemons.

It's not going to wipe out the lemon supply.

It's impossible.

My lemon tree grows them faster than I can keep up.

Which got me to thinking...

Wouldn't it be cool if we could think about money in the same way that I now think about my lemon tree?

We would stop being worried that this is "money season."

We would stop feeling pressured and afraid that we will run out.

We would stop forcing it to grow faster.

Or slower.

We would know that hording it - for fear that there will be a day that we won't have it - makes it rot.

We would know that ignoring it - for fear that we don't have what it takes to be responsible to it - kills our enjoyment of it.

We would know that when we use it - even when we use a lot of it - we don't wipe out the supply.

There will always be more.

What if we had the same faith in money that I have in my lemon tree?

What if we knew that there would always be more than we need?

That the tree will keep on making more than we can use.

Maybe then, we could just relax.

And pick the few we want for today.

Appreciate our beautiful trees.

And know that there will always be more for tomorrow.