I’m sure you are aware of it by now (if you are reading financial blogs, that’s probably a good indication that you are no longer a teenager and live in the grown up world) but life is full of SETBACKS. I have a good friend of mine who aptly named these life setbacks as, “kicks to the groin.” Well described if you ask me.
Maybe it is a
- loss on an investment
- a broken car
- appliances that reached the end of their life
- a storm damaged roof
- a loss of a job
- an unexpected medical expense
Financial setbacks suck. But they are part of the process. There is not a person who progresses through life without them. The difference is how prepared we are for the setback (i.e. kick to the groin) and how quickly we can get back on track towards our personal goals. It’s one thing to lose a job at the tail end of your career when you are ready to step away anyway. It’s another when you still have a mortgage, car payments, kids to feed and no emergency fund. That doesn’t sound like a stress free situation.
Successful people still get upset at setbacks. They still may scream and cry. Or pout. Or swear at the heavens for the mistreatment. But successful people get on with things and go back to executing and making forward progress as quickly and effectively as possible.
There’s only a few setbacks that are unconquerable and those are death or major illnesses. Those are the ones that will finally bring us to the end of the journey. We usually don’t know when that day will come so in the meantime we do our thing and execute based on our own personal values and principles. If you are a saver, then save your money. If you are an adventurer, then do your adventures. If you are an entrepreneur, then do your start-ups. Do what you do to your heart’s content and when the setbacks occur, get back up, dust yourself off and grind on forward.
But if you are a wealth accumulator, I can assure you that setbacks are part of the process. Some will be bigger. Some will be smaller. Hopefully all of them are recoverable. Risk management is about avoiding situations that could end in a giant wipe-out. But even in those cases, many people have started over (from scratch) to climb the mountain again and reach even a higher peak than before with their new found wisdom.
“Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.”
Mistakes are part of life. Making the same mistake repeatedly is something to be avoided. Choose wisely.