Second Chances – Episode 188

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh, alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your hosts, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. And once again, we have our co-host and bestselling financial author, Kim Butler, with us today. And today we’re going to be talking about life is about second chances. Now I really got to thinking about this. I was at church this weekend and I looked around and, you know, there’s no way that you can get through this life without experiencing something that makes you have to start again.

[00:53] I don’t know of anybody who just went from zero to death without ever having adverse things and having to start again. And I was thinking, what is the most difficult part of starting again? And it’s the fear that you’re going to make the same mistake or a worse mistake. And Kim, you’ve been dealing with this with your clients for a long time. How do we get past that? Well, I think it’s a great question and I’ve dealt with it personally as well. And I think part of it is to really work on your mindset. And so the very first principle of prosperity is to think from a prosperous mindset, but also to go slow and start small. Now I am one of those people that loves to have my foot on the gas. So the concept of going slow is a challenge, but especially when it relates to an area

[01:51] that you’ve made mistakes in before. So maybe those mistakes are financial and we’ve all been there. We’ve bought clothes we shouldn’t have bought. We’ve got cars we shouldn’t have gotten. We have spouses we shouldn’t have had. Yes, that too. And boy, doesn’t that play a big role in our finances? You know, the I think the number one reason for divorce is money related. So we’ve also made investments where we’ve lost the money. In fact, I talked to a couple recently where the husband, unfortunately, it could have been the wife, but it happened to be the husband had lost a lot of their money making some of his own personal investment choices. And the wife was being polite and nice about it, but saying, you know,

[02:32] I need to get involved. I clearly wasn’t involved early on. And he made some decisions and I don’t agree with those. And now the money’s gone. And so I need to learn. And I want to be, even though this maybe isn’t my favorite area, you know, I want to be more involved. And and to his credit, the husband was like, yeah, I like I didn’t I didn’t know. I thought I was doing the right thing, but it didn’t work out. So now what do we do? And so it’s super critical, as I said, is to go slow and start small. So begin to make small decisions that you can make with confidence and begin to take baby steps that you can, for example, invest in your money or saving your money with small dollars that don’t have to make this huge, big decision and realize that

[03:19] there is no such thing as it’s too late. We get people of all ages in here that want to get their finances on a more solid ground. And I hear often, oh, I wish I’d known about this 20, 30, 40, fill in the blank years ago. And my gosh, I do, too. But it’s never too late. You can always do something. You can always take a baby step. You can always pull forward in some way. Take a step forward in some way to make things be different. And so much of it, again, is mindset first and then actual baby steps with your finances second or your health or your relationships or whatever area it is that you want to have a second chance in. It’s always so fun for me to read the various things that are starting

[04:18] to crop up a little bit more often in the news of people in their, I’m going to just say 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s of second careers. There’s a great resource called GrowingBoulder.com, and they have some TV shows. They’re on YouTube. They have a magazine. They have a radio show. And it’s just story after story after story of people, you know, maybe they had to pick themselves up and get a second or third or fourth chance, or maybe it was just a more natural progression of, OK, what’s the next thing? But read these inspirational stories and be really careful what you feed your mind, because just like the food that we put in our bodies is super critical, the things that we read and watch and listen to are very, very important.

[05:15] And so you just want to pay attention to staying away from negative information, negative movies that cause you to be depressed, negative news that helps you feel like the sky is falling, negative projections, I guess, if you will, from the talking heads that often create the news. Possibly this may even have to do with family and friends. And this is a challenge. Now, when it comes to family and friends, I don’t believe we can shut them out. I believe that it’s our job to lift them up and help them. And so that may mean for yourself that you have to do some lifting up of your own mental standpoint before you’re able to go help another. But sometimes helping another first is what will actually give our own self

[06:06] the second chance that we’re looking for. I’ve had a give first attitude for as long as I can remember, because my mother used to tell me to give a good time rather than have a good time. And this sometimes is what enables me to give myself a second chance, is to go out and in a proactive manner give to somebody else, whether it’s my time, my talents, my thoughts, my energies, my smile, my upliftedness, you know, whatever it is. Sometimes that’s what happens in order to give myself the freedom and the space to have a second chance. I’m curious, Todd, if you’ve got a strategy that helps you when you’re feeling like you want or need a second chance in an area and can’t seem to find a way to it.

[06:50] Well, I think the most frustrating thing that I’ve witnessed is, is how many people who once they have made a mistake, no longer feel that they’re worthy of educating in themselves. And if there’s one thing that you can spend money on, it’s you. Yes, the best investment, absolutely, is your own mindset, your physical health, your mental health, and really your education, which, of course, is so much more than just school or formal aspects of education. I think it’s a wonderful goal to strive to learn something every day. And it’s fun, actually, once you do feel like you’re particularly educated in one specific area to pursue other areas and really work on learning aspects outside of your main cash cow, if you will.

[07:48] So, you know, if you have a business and you’ve learned a lot about that business, that’s awesome. Now, go pick something else to learn about. And maybe it is a health thing or an exercise thing or a food thing, or maybe it’s an artistic thing or an animal thing or whatever it is. I think sometimes learning outside of our main area of focus can really value or provide value to our initial area, as well as obviously just the broadening of our mind to be able to pick up other things and learn about new areas. And I’m going to go completely against the flow here and say that it is not necessary for you to fully understand all of the technology that is going on around you. I cannot read books or magazine articles on a cell phone.

[08:44] I don’t know how people do it. So I buy magazines. I cut the pages out. I fold them up. I stick them in my back pocket. And if I’m stuck in a bank line somewhere, I pull it out and read my paper magazine. It’s funny how each person has to forage their way through the available opportunities and choose what works best for them, because I love to read phone books. I read literally on my phone. I have a Samsung Note, so it’s not a super small phone, but it is a cell phone. And I read almost every book on there unless somebody happens to give me the hard copy of one. So yeah, it’s just different for every person. But isn’t it wonderful that we live in a world where we can be OK with that? Stop comparing yourself to the Joneses or even to your spouse

[09:43] or to your kids or to the guy in the office next door or whatever, and find ways that work for you and especially as it relates to something that didn’t work for you the first time. That’s great. Then that’s good knowledge. That’s learning. Failure is learning. And that means you set that way aside and then you come back at it and you try a different way. And then you set that way aside and come back at it and try a different way. And it is challenging sometimes. I find myself many times, especially around technology, who sometimes does frustrate me, just trying to remember to take a big breath and just not get frustrated, not call it stupid, not want to slam the thing on the desk. I’ve found that’s not very helpful.

[10:33] But to take a big breath, try again, be patient and work through it. And whether it’s taking a class on meditation, I did that recently, an online class, just something that I was curious about learning about. I don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with it, but I wanted to learn. And actually, in this case, I was more curious about the platform that they were doing the teaching on than the actual content. But I learned some good things. And then I can choose myself whether I want to use those things or not. And I can be completely free to choose what works for me around them, giving myself a second and sometimes third and fourth chance to give it a go, have a try, maybe take a step backwards on occasion

[11:22] in order to go forward again. There’s nothing wrong with that. And we can better ourselves by being at peace with those second chances rather than berating ourselves for, oh, my gosh, why didn’t you get this right the first time? You’re silly, you’re stupid, you’re dumb, you know, whatever words we sometimes will apply to ourselves. That is not helpful. We wouldn’t do that with a child that was learning something new or a grandchild. Why would we do that with ourselves? I just will have to bring up that, you know, sometimes Kim and I have private conversations and sometimes I don’t have the best of moods. And her comment is always the same. Do something, just do something. And I can’t believe how valuable that is.

[12:13] And I’ve almost got to the point now where when I get myself, I can hear your voice in the back of my head saying, do something. Well, thank you. Yes, I’m a big believer in forward motion because when fear does come in and wants to shut us down, if we can engage in forward motion, sometimes that might mean literal, then we can course correct, we can self correct. And so you said it so well, if you’re doing something, then you’ll get the next message in terms of what the second step is. But I find if you don’t even take that first step, then it’s very, very difficult to even begin to think about the second step. And I’ll admit, I’m not a big one for doing a lots of planning about things ahead because we all know that I don’t like the plan word.

[13:09] But some people are their nature, their Colby profile, whatever it is, causes them to want to do more of that planning. So that’s fine. Acknowledge that and try to go about it in a way that works for you. But if that way is not working, then what’s the line, Todd? Do something. Yeah, that’s right. I am not Mormon and we’re not trying to endorse any particular religion, but I had a chance to meet the president of the Mormon Church. And the one thing he said to me was he said, Todd, Moses spent 40 years in the desert and never knew more other than where he was going the next day. Isn’t that amazing to think about? Yes, absolutely. And there’s so much good sometimes in just being super, super focused on the present and maybe tomorrow, you know,

[14:11] the next day, if you will, and to realize that time frame. And I think, you know, the statistics of our gal that just passed on, the oldest human being, 117 year old. When we think in terms of our life being so much longer, if you take that time frame, as an example, 40 years, when you think in terms of 30, 40, 50 more years, it can really take the pressure off of things. And if you’re thinking, oh, my gosh, my finances are a mess, then you have another 30, 40, 50, maybe even 60 or 70 more years with which to get it right. And there are many, many people, millionaires and probably even billionaires that did start over sometimes more than once with their dollars and were forced to figure out a way

[15:07] to go forward again, to do something again. And so it is possible to do that. And with if you’re just feeling like, oh, my gosh, I’m back at ground zero again, I want to go forward. I want to do it right this time. And so that’s a time to reach out to us. We’re happy to help when people are ready to go forward, when they’re open minded, when they’re willing to learn. And the ways that we help people with their finances enable those finances to be on a much more solid footing, a much more firm foundation and in a place where it’s going to be very, very difficult to go backwards again. We can help you get the learning and the knowledge to take the steps that you need to take. Yes, the baby go slow, start small steps,

[15:58] but also steps where you won’t have to be going backwards, losing money, trying over again, et cetera. Super. Again, we invite all of you to reach out to us at hello at partners, the number four prosperity dot com. We appreciate your questions and comments and Kim, your wisdom is, as usual, very useful to all of us. This is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel for the Prosperity Podcast. Look forward to talking to you all again real soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partners for prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.