Don’t Let Money Be Your God

I’ve written about the almost comical mess of afflictions I had as a kid.  I was fat, pigeon toed, buck toothed, pimple-faced, and had a crippling stutter.  And that’s just a partial list. 

But even after I overcame many of those, I stayed obese or overweight well into my late 20’s.  My entire childhood and early adulthood was that of an overweight and pretty unathletic guy. 

Where I grew up, sports mattered.  And as a boy you can only imagine the mental toll it took as I plodded through my childhood and teens watching my peers play on sports teams and having those awesome experiences while I sat in shame from the bleacher seats. 

Eventually a narrative formed in my head that most other boys had powers and gifts I simply didn’t have.  I wanted those powers desperately, and their absence from my life took a horrible mental toll on my confidence and identity.

Endurance

Throughout my 30’s I started losing weight, slowly.  As that journey progressed I started to see a knack for endurance sports come to life.  Obviously those two things go together, you don’t see many overweight folks winning running or cycling races. 

I kept paradoxically achieving better results in running races as I got older, and found I had a knack to hike and climb uphill on mountains with a heavy pack.  I could go and go, often ditching my younger climbing buddies.

In my 40’s I grabbed ahold of this newly discovered ‘talent’ if I can be so pretentious to call it that.  I eventually bottomed out at my lowest bodyweight ever in my late 40’s.  With a new body and a heart and circulatory system that were grateful to be relieved of the massive burden they had been carrying, I started to see results in competitions. 

This change from someone who never played on a sports team (and still hasn’t) to having my picture taken on the podium of a regional cycling race has been gradual, but monumental.  To be honest I feel like a reinvented person. 

It’s only natural that I focus on my pursuit of these activities so much in life.  I finally found my thing in the athletic world, and damn it took me friggin long.  I feel like I’m making up for lost time, like I’m fixing and erasing the wounds of my childhood. 

But I need to be careful…

Moderation Isn’t My Strong Suit

Bottom line, I can’t let my new athletic pursuits become my Gods. 

If I’m honest, things have been drifting that way in the past two years.  The pandemic was good for me and accelerated my progress.  I trained harder and doubled down on my diet and sleep hygiene.  I’m here to tell ya, that shit works, try it.

Most of my weekly planning revolves around which workouts to do on which days to get the best weather.  I have that flexibility.  Over the years my social circles have changed from drinkers and partiers to competitive athletes. 

This all sounds good, and I can say unequivocally that being more fit and healthy makes me a better person.  I’m happier, have less of a temper, and am more patient and at peace.  More importantly I show up better for everyone and everything in my life.  My reinvention has been all positive. 

But… like everything in life it needs to be balanced.  I can’t let it become the only thing in my life. 

The phrase “everything in moderation” is thrown around to address issues like this.  That phrase gets at the actions you take regarding the thing you want to moderate and how much you do it. 

But how you perceive the thing you want to moderate – the proportion of mental space it occupies in your brain – is a different matter.  It’s much harder to moderate thoughts than actions. 

What does this have to do with financial independence?

Don’t Let Money Be Your God

Whether you’ve had a life reinvention and gone from mounds of consumer debt to a thrifty saver, or you just hate your job and desperately want to get to financial independence and retire early, don’t let money be your God. 

Money is a tool, albeit an important one.  But worshipping at the altar of the almighty dollar is probably not a good path to follow in life. 

Get your money life squared away.  Get out of debt if you’re in it.  Start saving, make a plan. 

Then put it on autopilot and focus on some other things.

Balance

I think about my training and workouts all the time.  Besides my business it probably rents time in my thought streams more than anything.  While that has paid valuable dividends, I probably need to throttle it back a bit.  I think I’ve made up nicely for aspects of my youth that I missed regarding athletics.  I need to strike a better balance in my brain between that aspect of my life and everything else. 

So if you’re new to financial independence and just spent a week reading every blog out there and going down every rabbit hole, let it soak in.  Make a plan.  You can do it, just don’t let money be your God.