Hey,
I’m back from Cancun. My wife and I chilled on the beach, swam in the ocean, ate food like it was going out of style, and slept, slept, slept. I didn’t realize that my Spanish was still decent. I guess it’s the Californian in me. I read a great book you should check out called The Time Keeper. And most importantly the world didn’t stop because I stopped working. In fact, I got some bulk book orders while abroad.
As great as vacation was, the week started off pretty tough. Within 48 hours of my last email, I lost 3 important things that were costly financially.
As a workaholic, I realized that my fear of not having enough makes me dread going backwards in any way. I think that if things aren’t going forward, then I must not be working hard enough. But the hardest working people aren’t always the most successful.
That’s were the difference between hustling harder and hustling smarter come into play. I’m still trying to do a better job of distinguishing between the two.
First off, I lost $200 cash.
It was a money order for a relative in need. The envelope was sealed, stamped, and ready to go. All I needed was a mailbox. And the moment I found a mailbox, the envelope was gone. I searched everywhere twice and got frustrated. Not only was the relative still in need, but I still felt inclined to get another $200 money order for them making my contribution $400 now.
A friend who I happened to be having lunch with right after I lost it reminded me that “It’s water under the bridge.” After 10 minutes of being mad at myself…and the envelope…and the person in need, we finally went on to enjoy our lunch. To me, “It’s water under the bridge” means that what happened in the past happened and I can’t change what happened or hold on to what I had.
I hated the way I reacted to losing a stupid $200. I even hate when I lose smaller things or amounts. Part of my workaholism is definitely connected to how much power I’ve given money in my life.
My goal isn’t to have the most money in the world. In the end, I just want to be able to give freely without worrying if I’ll have enough for my family and I. Of course it always seems like the more the merrier, but as a middle class kid, I’ve felt like sometimes people with nothing to lose are better off than people who feel like they have everything to lose.
So I decided to do a little experiment on myself.
Before leaving for Cancun, I invested money in the stock market. I didn’t do it in hopes to get rich quick. I did it to
1. Examine how I deal with losing even larger amounts of money
2. Examine how I deal with receiving money that I didn’t necessarily work for, and
3. Learn how to let go of control (of money)
I’m not rich financially, but this was a lesson that I thought was worth the investment. To me, the potential upside and downside of the stock market is a better option than the interest rate on my savings account anyway. So why not?
After a first day gain, my portfolio plummeted by over $1,000 in just a few days.
And then I went abroad and let go. I wasn’t checking stock prices every hour on my iPhone like I did in the US because I didn’t have cell phone service in Mexico.
It felt liberating. Money comes and money goes. Money is an energy. It’s a resource. A form of capital. It just happens to be the easiest form of capital to convert into the other forms of capital that we want.
Ultimately, I don’t want my happienss and self-worth to fluctuate with the economy or my bank account and I hope this experiment helps with that.
The third thing I lost this week was my voice.
It barely held up for a speaking engagement I had at Texas State during the first leg of my trip. After that it was gone until the end of my vacation. Thankfully my wife was the only person I had to whisper to with my sexy raspy voice.
Right now, two-thirds of my business, which include my corporate trainings and college speaking is based on my voice. In fact, I have 3 speaking engagements this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This was the first time I lost my voice during my career as a paid speaker and it worried me.
In this situation I was out of control. Working more or harder wasn’t gong to solve this one. I needed to work less and rest. Vacation was right on time.
I traced the root cause to a stress-induced cold I got just before my vacation. That stress was caused by a few different sources having to do with work and my family member in need.
As you know, I don’t believe in having only one source of income and this week increased my urgency around creating more products and online programs which currently make up the other third of my business.
I don’t have any BIG SOLUTIONS for dealing with the idea loss based on this week, but I’m learning and I am curious to know if and when you’ve experienced losing money and how you dealt with it positively.
Your comments and emails continue to be extremely helpful and inspire me.
Sincerely,
Jullien
