Replace These Simple Things in Your Life to Become Successful

#8 – Replace spending money with investing

Photo by Studio Reasons on Unsplash

Substitution is one of the best life hacks.

You can take one thing you do and replace it with a better option. After a while the replacement thing becomes better than the original thing.

Here are my favorites that are inspired by writer Aaron Will.

Replace influencers with creators

The influencer movement started by Instagram will die. It’s a world of fakery. If you see anyone on social media asking you for likes or follows then run. They seek to inflate their ego, not help you in life.

Support a member of the creator economy instead such as writers, podcasters, musicians, Youtubers … people with real talent.

Creators flex creativity – not ego – to help you rethink parts of your life. Creators build tribes, instead of curate posers for a group selfie.

Replace toxic friends with mentors

Some of my high school friends were druggies. I tried to help them. I tried to enable them to see life is worth living.

Didn’t matter what I did, they simply went back to their old ways. Up until 20-something I had zero mentors. Later on I actively sought out high-quality individuals who respected their families and wanted to teach others.

I didn’t ask them to help me for free, though.

The best one I found I paid money for with the little savings I had from my call center job. Best investment I’ve ever made. No more Saturdays on the porch drinking beer. Nope. I spent Saturdays with people who were obsessed with learning. I was dumb as dog sh*t, yet these individuals raised my standards and forced me to become a better person.

They gave me books to read instead of joints to smoke. They gave me actionable advice instead of “life is unfair” excuses. They gave me tickets to seminars for my birthday instead of tequila shots at a nightclub of broken dreams at 3am on a Wednesday morning.

Toxic friends push your self-destruct button. Mentors help you learn – they don’t accept your mediocre excuses. The choice is yours.

Replace alcohol with water

At the height of my business success in my 20s, I got hooked on alcohol. Alcohol helped hide my anxiety. It helped distract me from my terrible luck with women (due to my male pig syndrome fused with selfishness).

One day I had enough. Alcohol solved none of my problems. I replaced booze with water. The hardest part was at work. We’d often have social celebrations. I’d go to the bar and order a soda water with lemon.

Most people thought it was vodka. Eventually people worked it out. They called me names like tee toddler. It hurt at first, until I realized they said those things to make themselves comfortable with their drinking habit that produced zero progress in life.

The next day they’d wake up hungover and sleep in until 11am. I’d be up at 6am to go to the gym and then start my writing practice. Alcohol does more than destroy your insides.

Alcohol wastes your time by destroying your energy levels for days and leaving you with a crappy hangover. Water is what the body is made off. It clears out all the garbage your body collects, gives you energy, and makes you feel alive. Give me that feeling every day of the week.

Your choice: cool or alive with energy?

Replace streaming tv with podcasts

Netflix is the next pandemic. Most of the (mental) programming doesn’t help you in life. You sit down passively while you’re being anti-social and consume a lot of fictional nonsense.

There’s another option.

Watch a podcast on Youtube. Learn from someone’s life. Hear a real story that can help you make better decisions. Be inspired rather than be numbed by a Hollywood film designed to make you spend money on your credit card for stuff that features in the movie that you don’t need.

Replace complaining with gratitude

Any fool can complain their life away. Jump on Twitter and search “politics.” Disaster. The more negative you are the more negative the world seems.

The beautiful thing is the opposite is true. The more you appreciate what happens to you and the world around you, the better the world gets. Not to get all self-helpy and hashtag yoga on you, but write down three things every day that you're grateful for. Make it a game. Pretend you will run out of things – you won’t, trust me.

See the world better than it is.

Replace sleeping in with early mornings

Time is more valuable than money. Get your 8 hours sleep like a good little doctor-obeying adult and then … wake the hell up.

Use an alarm on your phone. Place the phone on the other side of the room. Force yourself to get out of bed. Once you’re awake the momentum starts.

Waking up early gives you an extra 1-2 hours per day. That’s how the people society admires achieve the results many of us desperately want.

Replace overthinking with actions

By the time you’ve made some long-ass plan, circumstances have already changed. Fall in love with tiny actions.

See action as a data point, not a point of failure.

Whatever you try and hypothesize will be wrong. We can wave wands and hope for lottery-style luck, or we can take action and adjust our strategy as we go.

Overthinking creates noise in your head that nobody else can see, which can force people to judge you for poor performance. Action produces progress.

Replace spending money with investing

(This part is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.)

This is the biggest one of all. Capitalism and consumerism teach us to spend money first. Any fool can go to a shopping mall and come home with a car of stuff.

What we’re not taught is to invest before we spend. Or to spend after the money we have invested has produced a return.

Society wants you to spend so you’ll get into debt. Debt forces people to live boring lives and ignore their dreams because they have no choice except to pay the loan back and trade their time to earn the money needed for the monthly payments.

Investing is harder. You can’t trust some schmuck in a suit at your local bank to invest for you. You have to learn the hard way. You have to do the research. You have to learn the proper mindset to deal with the inevitable stock market crashes.

School doesn’t teach you to invest because then you’d be free and wouldn’t need to trade your time for money.

Try this: every time you get a deposit into your bank account, invest a portion of it into real financial assets. Make spending money your last priority.

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