Under My Roof
Yesterday, I mentioned being in $236,000 of debt at one point. It was 2008, and I was 27, newly engaged. I had my entire life planned out, all the way down to how many children I would have.....and when. Yeah, talk about being young and naive! Everything was going swimmingly until I walked into work one day and was met by a stranger, a stranger who pulled me into a conference room where I found all of my co-workers. Over the next 30 minutes, we were informed that the company was being shut down and that everyone would soon be fired.
That day was the turning point of my life. That was the day I realized that my way of perceiving and handling money was going to painfully catch up with me, and I would soon lose autonomy over my own life decisions. I had $236,000 of debt that wanted to be paid, and the prospect of no income (worst job market of our generation) was a scary proposition for a young man just a few years into his young career.
Self-pity and victimhood were running at full speed in my mind! I had every excuse in the book why I was done dirty, and I was going to suffer the consequences of other people's decisions. That's when I had a wake-up call....a very harsh and humbling wake-up call.
Somewhere in there, I realized that the causes and solutions to all of my problems lived under my roof. I was the common denominator for my crappy situation, and whether I liked it or not, I was responsible for navigating my life to a better situation. Until that moment, I thought my fortune and failures rested in the hands of outside forces. In other words, personal responsibility played less of a role than luck. That wake-up call changed everything for me.
If my past decisions led me to a place where I had limited life options, then perhaps my current and future decisions could get me to a place with more life options. My new fiancé and I set a new plan for our lives, and that plan involved never repeating that debacle again. We committed to ourselves that we would forevermore perceive money differently and would never again allow finances to dictate our lives.
It took 4.5 years to work our way through the debt mess, but life was so beautiful on the other side. Turns out, my wake-up call was right. The cause of and solution to most of my life's problems lives under my roof.....and it stares at me in the mirror.
The same goes for you. The cause of and solution to your life's problems probably lives under your roof. That's never a fun thing to admit, but once we do, it has the power to change everything. We must own our past decisions and equally own the responsibility for working ourselves toward a new reality. Discipline, humility, and persistence are key. It's not always fun, but there's something so powerful knowing it lives under your roof.
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