Safety Is A Thing Of The Past

Safety is a thing of the past. If there ever existed a safe path in life what was it? Generally, a safe path would entail following all the rules, going to school, obtaining a degree, working a job, and finally retiring at 65 years of age. If you can find your purpose on this path then it sounds like a good deal.

Hey, you might even be eligible for a pension. What’s that? You’ve never heard of a pension? Ah, that’s right. For the majority of people, they no longer exist.

While the above is true, our purpose here is not to pick apart the traditional path as it is what brought humanity to our present times. Aside from the problems our planet continues to work through, we live in an amazing world with explosive opportunity during unbelievable times.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending time on the traditional route. However, there is a much bigger underlying issue here. Now comes the tough part. The problem with thinking that you are on the safe path is rooted in fear and avoiding risk. This automatically puts a person in a mental state of retreating.

Have you ever seen a boxer win a fight by playing it safe and avoid throwing punches out of fear that he may get knocked out? It’s not possible to win a fight like this. Here’s a secret, life is the biggest fight you will ever experience. Not a fight with the world or people on the outside. This one is 100% an inside job. It’s a fight to stay disciplined, work hard, control your emotions, and make the decisions that will take you where you want to be in life. It requires the exact inverse of the safe path mindset of retreating. It requires calculated risks, setting targets, and attacking.

On this planet the only way to be safe is to crawl up in a corner with a blanket and hope that someone brings you three meals a day. However, I have a good feeling that if you’re reading this right now it’s for a reason. Deep down you know the safest path in life is the one where you take 100% responsibility and ownership for the success and failure you experience. If there is nobody to blame other than ourselves, then we have the ability to change our circumstances.

How exactly do we know how aggressive to get when setting out to turn our personal finances around?

Without a doubt there is no single guaranteed approach that every person should take. It’s called personal finance for a reason, it is personal.

While there are several different interpretations and contexts surrounding the word personal, let’s stick with the following definition from the Oxford dictionary:

1. Belonging to or affecting a particular person rather than anyone else.

2. A personal action is one that is done by someone directly rather than getting another person to do it

Based on this information we are left standing alone in the middle of a jungle with nobody around to offer any assistance on our journey.

Sure, we may come across a pack of hungry lions looking to potentially rip us apart limb from limb. Or possibly feel the toxic effects being bitten from a snake in the grass. Don’t bother asking that orangutan in the trees playing with himself, he’s got nothing to offer.

What we need is a map, something to guide us so we can navigate on this journey of personal finance.

Before moving forward, it’s critical to become at peace with ourselves by accepting the responsibility for our current financial situations.

Regardless of your age, it is our own daily decisions in life that have brought us to this current moment. Good, bad, or ugly if we Own it then we can change it.

No matter how bad you think your situation is or what kind of mistakes you feel you’ve made, there is almost always someone who has had it worse.

Chris Sacca is a successful entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, making successful investments in Twitter, Uber, and several other start-up organizations. Chris Sacca has also appeared several times on the greatest show of our decade, Shark Tank.

What few people know about Chris is that he’s had some major financial difficulties to overcome. As a Law student Chris began investing part of his student loan money into day trading stocks. Things went good for some time but the world of leverage trading quickly turned ugly for Chris.

Chris was left $2,125,000 in debt. That’s not a typo, Chris was in debt over $2.1 million.

For any normal person that would be a devastating blow. However, Chris kept his head down and worked his way out of it and has a current net worth over $1 Billion.

How does this apply to your current financial situation? I’m going to take guess that your personal debts are far less than $2 million. The specific amount doesn’t matter, the point is that you can change your current circumstances.

What you need is a clear route as to where you’re going.

That leads us to our next step of calculating your risks, let’s get to it.