We sign, sign, and sign.....for a decade. Then, we wake up sometime in our 30s and realize our life looks a lot different. The wisdom (or lack thereof) in each of those signatures has set the foundation for what our life now looks like.

Here was my response to my friend: "It's simple. A 900-day streak is really just 900 one-day streaks. Just take care of today. Tomorrow can wait until tomorrow."

Why did my friend choose to follow the advice of this far less experienced and less knowledgeable person? Because this person has 100x more social media followers than I do. Translation: This guy is an expert.

My head is spinning. Too many ideas. Too many projects. Too many tasks. Too many next-steps. Too many follow-ups. Too many everythings. It feels like too much. Can you relate?

Here's my beef. Personal finance is typically treated like some sort of above-people's-heads, MBA-level rocket science. In fact, the entire financial industry is constructed that way to convince people they need to hire outside help (you know, the experts!).

I'm witnessing a problem develop in our current culture. With unlimited resources at our disposal - often for low or no cost - we're becoming so fixated on learning that we're not actually doing.

Boom! Just like that, this young woman disarmed all my insecurity. She was right. If I wouldn't take advice from the people levying all that criticism on me, why should I care about their negative comments? That paradigm shift has changed everything for me!

Here's a question I posed to each of them: "What's the worst that could happen?" You know, the absolute worst-case, total destruction, end-of-the-world scenario. Dream big, but in the form of nightmares. Visualize how terrible and life-ending these what-if situations could be.

It would be so easy for us to define our year by those memorable failings. However, that's only part of the story.....a very small part. As humans, we often dwell on the crap while taking the good for granted.