Investments: You
Today I want to talk about investments. Nope, not 401Ks, CDs and stocks. I’m talking about books, audiobooks and podcasts. Honestly, this has been on my heart for a while because, though I feel we’re voicing the whole “don’t compare yourself” stuff to material possessions and physical appearance, we aren’t speaking on a deeper level. I’m seeing farms and homesteaders who share things on Instagram and get commenters who say things like “must be nice”, “if I had a rich husband I could do that too”, “you must’ve come from money”, or “too bad most people need to actually work.”All from a 30-6o second video on a feed of other 30-60 second videos and snapshots of a life.
Can you truly make a sound, logical judgement on a person’s life, their financial history, their education from a feed of images and minute-long videos? If you answered yes, and you have a doctorate in some form of psychology then ok, I won’t argue, but the rest of you, if you answered yes than you may feel so injured by the rest of what I am going to say as you would by seeing someone’s “riches” when scrolling instagram.
Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc. does nothing to show you the discipline, the early mornings, the late nights, the lack of Starbucks runs, the simple Christmas’ and Birthdays, the one bedroom apartments, the working through school, the saving habits, the investment strategies, or even the scholarships they busted their ass for. It doesn’t show the work, the sacrifice, the discipline. 99% of the time it isn’t luck, it’s grit. But yes, having a wealthy spouse or parents would sure make it all seem a bit easier!
Showing the now, the 30s or later, the settled-life, also doesn’t show the education that got them there. I’m not talking the degrees that hang on the wall, I’m talking about the self-education, the personal development. The self-help, self-discipline, the self-development through books, podcasts, audiobooks and all of the resources used to create a high-achieving human. Personally, I always find it interesting when someone complains to me, I recommend a book or podcast, and they don’t make an attempt at reading or listening because it’s so much easier to just complain than to do the work to make a fix, just as it is to comment “must be nice” rather than do the work.
There is no substitute for actually doing the work. There are no short cuts when you seriously want to achieve success in this life.
So when we’re all on the same platform, the achievers and the underachievers, and those waiting for their ship to come in who have never even set foot on the shore, we can’t possibly compare the two. The life of an achiever isn’t even seen through the same lense as someone who is without goals or any fuel for their fire.