Control – Dave Glardon

Good morning! I hope your day is starting off nicely.

Well, the verdict is in. Our washing machine has a faulty RF line filter. Unless you’re into electrical stuff, that means nothing. In layman’s terms, it’s fried. And it may or may not be my fault. That all depends who’s paying the bill. I say it was defective, but the manufacturer may have other ideas. All I know is that repairman sure knows his stuff. And the bill reflects it. $523 just to tell me it’s broken. Wow.

The good news is we can get it fixed. Next week. Which means all the dirty clothes that were in it are back in the closet. The nice thing about camping is that people don’t notice smells quite as much. That’s probably due to the multitude of odors that are so prevalent in campgrounds. Like the smell that hit my wife’s nose when I emptied our tanks this morning. Phew! By comparison, I smell fine.

Yes, we’ll have to find a laundromat today. Always have a plan B, right? And a little extra in the bank, because none of these things are cheap. A friend once told me that emergencies have no regard for your dreams, but they know exactly how much you have in savings and the estimate will always come in just a little higher. Can I get an amen?

Thankfully, we’ve got this one covered. Ten years ago, a similar repair would have brought us to our knees. A recent survey revealed that only 39% of adults could afford an unexpected $1000 expense. And for many of them that expense would wipe out their savings completely. Well, guess what? With $250 “service fees” and labor at $135 an hour, you can blow through $1000 in an instant.

Financial experts suggest we should have enough money in savings to cover 3-6 months of living expenses. We’ve all heard that, and we’ve all said the same thing. “On what planet???” You might as well tell us to grow wings and fly. Sure, that looks good on paper. But when you’re barely making ends meet, it’s a little hard to fathom.

Yet, when you ask people why they don’t make more, they pretty much say the same thing … “If I knew how, I would!” Okay, so let me show you how. “Well, yeah, but I don’t have the time for something like that. I’m too busy already. And my brother-in-law said his neighbor’s cousin tried something similar and failed. Besides, I’m up for a cost-of-living raise in a few months. We’ll be fine after that.” Really?

Thankfully for some people, excuses are cheap. Otherwise, they’d go broke just telling you why they’re going broke. If $10 were deducted from their bank account every time they uttered a lame excuse, they’d be overdrawn by dinnertime. And then they’d whine about the overdraft charges. When, all along, they could have used the same amount of energy to actually fix the problem.

You can make money or make excuses – but you can never do both. I didn’t dream that one up. It’s been around a while, but it’s as true today as ever. And sooner or later, we all have to answer this question – which one will make your life better? Which one will make the problems go away? Excuses may buy you some time, but sooner or later you’ll have to pony up. Or give up. It’s your life.

You know one thing you almost never hear? “I make enough – I don’t need any more.” We ALL need more. Things can change in an instant, and what we know today may not be what we’ll live tomorrow. And even if things don’t change, is there nothing else in life you want that you don’t already have? “Sure, if I had the money!” Seems this is right where we started.

We all think our situation will change with time, but it never works out that way. Pay off the car, and it needs repairs. Pay off the house, and the kids are headed to college. Pay off college, and the kids are having grandkids. Get a promotion, and your property tax goes up. Get all that under control, and it’s time to retire. You know, on half-pay (if you’re lucky). And that’s when the medical bills get real.

The question is, what will you do about it? Will you fix the problem, or spend your days in a rocking chair explaining that it’s the best chair you can afford? There are dozens of ways to make more money, and just as many excuses for why you can’t. Take control now, and you won’t need those excuses. Open your mind, and you may find the answer right there waiting for you.

Money can’t fix everything, and there’s something to be said for enjoying what we have. But sooner or later, you’ll need more. We all do. Fix the problem today, and you won’t even have to think about it tomorrow.

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

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Good morning! I hope your day is off to a nice start.

The weekend is over, and it’s back to the grind. I hope you did at least a few things for yourself this weekend, in the midst of all those other things you have to do. It’s funny how the boss thinks we all go home on Friday evening and just sit around and rest all weekend. That doesn’t happen very often, and usually when it does, it’s because we’re too sick to do anything else.

I spent my weekend trying to regroup from a setback that threatens to undermine a lot of what I’ve worked to accomplish, and to refocus my mind on the next steps moving forward. It happens to us all, and it can make you feel the weight of the world come crashing down. We can let these moments define us, or we can use them to redefine ourselves. This is where we find out what we’re made of.

Things rarely go just right. Life is a series of ups and downs and, like the world’s most thrilling rollercoaster, some of those ups and downs are a lot bigger than others. But without those scary drops, we’d never have the momentum to make it up the next climb. And, as any coaster enthusiast knows, when the track flattens out, it means the ride is just about over.

I’m not sure I every want my track to flatten out. Sure, I could do without some of the death-defying twists and turns along the way, but without them life would be pretty boring. The thrill comes from facing those terrifying situations and standing tall on the other end. Without any of those steep drops and twisting inversions, the line for a rollercoaster would be pretty short.

The reason we enjoy things like that so much is because, no matter how scary the ride appears, we know deep down it’s not nearly as dangerous as it looks. We may get bumped around a little, and we may get dizzy at times. We may even wish we’d skipped the churro dog and dumpster fries we ate right before we got in line. But there’s little doubt we’ll make it safely to the end.

It’s that way with almost everything we face in life. With very few exceptions, there’s nothing we’ll ever face that doesn’t present at least the possibility of a positive outcome. And, more often than not, the odds of a successful outcome are much greater than we think. It’s all in how we approach those situations. We can take control, or simply go along for the ride.

And if you already know where the ride is headed, the option of just sitting quietly in the passenger seat becomes a simple question of whether the destination is someplace you want to go. On a rollercoaster, you’re at the mercy of the ride’s designers. You go where the track leads, every single time. Once you’re strapped in, there’s no turning back.

But in most of the things we face in life, we don’t have to just sit there and go along for the ride. At any moment, we can slide into the driver’s seat, take the wheel, and either correct an errant path or choose an entirely different destination. The choice is ours to make. And sometimes, it’s only when our primary choice goes away that we can clearly see all the other options we’ve been missing.

It can feel scary. It can feel dangerous. But some of life’s greatest achievements come from moments of desperation, when we have to either stand up and fight or lay down and quit. And in those moments, the kiddie cars may seem a lot safer than hopping back on a rollercoaster. But in the end, it’s just a much slower and less exciting way to end up right back where you started.

Just this weekend, I read a quote in “The Magic of Thinking Big” that fits this situation perfectly … “I’d rather burn out than rust out.” I read those words several times, and their meaning set in deeper every time. I’ve seen where the “safe” road lead. There’s very little risk, but there’s also very little excitement. We can stare at a mountain all day, or we can climb up and see what’s on the other side.

Life is an amusement park. It’s got everything from park benches in the shade to the most death-defying rides known to man. Some people ride, and others watch from the sidelines. And others just sit on that park bench and as they eat the world’s most expensive ice cream and watch life completely pass them by. At the end of the day, they’ll all end up right back where they started.

You’ll face challenges. There’s no doubt about that. And some of those challenges will scare the daylights out of you. The question is, do you close your eyes and hold on for dear life, or do you throw your hands in the air and yell “rock and roll” the whole way down?

That’s all for now. Have an awesome day!

Tag: Control

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