You Will Definitely FAIL If You Believe These Things

The title is pretty harsh, but as already addressed previously we are not in the business of catering to the sensibilities of every single person. Here we will provide an overview of some of the most common rationales, arguments and excuses that people make every single day. We have organized these into three categories: 

• Money Arguments & Complaints
• Rationales to Justify Laziness
• Personal Life Excuses

Chances are you will have heard at least 90% of these statements from others at some point in your life. You may have said some of them too. That is fine, but now that you are consciously aware you no longer have any reason to repeat them again. If you do so, the majority of people you run into will likely agree with you, but the successful people will avoid you like the plague. 

Money Arguments & Complaints

“Money Will Not Lead to Happiness”: Anybody who has experienced poverty knows how miserable that feeling is. There is no worse experience in life than when you need to work your ass off in a minimum-wage job in order to afford basic essentials. You feel as if you cannot afford to think or invest into the future because doing so sacrifices your ability to get by in the present. 

Yes, it is true that there are some things that money cannot buy, such as reliable long-term friends, a cure for a rare disease, appreciation for the little things, or additional time. Nonetheless, money does solve at least 95% of all problems. Being poor leads to a lot of stress, but with a good cash flow you no longer have to worry about living on the edge. You can easily afford any sudden one-time medical bill, go on a vacation when you feel like it, take advantage of rare purchasing opportunities when an undervalued asset pops up, etc. You are no longer constrained by a limited set of choices, and the more available choices you have, the greater your ability to select the one that generates the most happiness. You can go to lunch at the Michelin steakhouse instead of the falafel truck or go on a ski trip to Switzerland instead of renting a budget campervan.

And while money does not buy time, it can save or free up your time. Instead of spending five hours a week on household chores, you can hire somebody else to cook your food and wash your clothes. Rather than doing your own bookkeeping, you can outsource your accounting functions to a CPA. All this additional time that you now have available can be spent doing activities that generate greater financial returns and/or happiness. 

Of course, there are plenty of wealthy people who are unhappy. This is particularly common among the ultra-wealthy, many of whom have personal life issues. But these are usually problems that they neglected from a younger age that have nothing to do with money.

“I Don’t Want To Work Hard In Order To Become Rich”: Mediocre people all have a YOLO mentality. They have a very low tolerance for pain and discomfort and will always delay action until it is already too late. At this point, they will rationalize to themselves to continue on a path of least resistance and immediate gratification. 

This statement (or any similar variation) is extremely stupid when you think about it. By saying it, people are effectively acknowledging that they do want to be rich. But they feel extremely entitled and have an expectation that they deserve to make easy money. This is not possible neither in theory nor in practice. Being rich is a relative state, and in order to be considered so you need to be in the top X% in terms of wealth. If you were not born into a rich family then the only way to get to this point is by being willing to push yourself further than most other people. 

There is also the question of who actually works harder? The guy who works standard 5-day/40-hour weeks for 40+ years until retirement or the guy who hustles for 80-100 hours most weeks for 5-10 years. Here’s a hint: The first guy ends up with a modest amount of savings and 15-20 years to enjoy it, while the second guy has a net worth of multiple millions that only grows larger with each passing year. 

“I Do Not Have The Means To Save/Invest Money”: This type of person is the most annoying kind you will frequently encounter. In most cases, they will consider you to be a friend and will pay close attention to how you are doing in life. If you look like you are doing well for yourself they will not hesitate to complain about how shitty their own lives are and will proceed to counter every single reply you can think of. Here’s a sample dialogue: 

Loser Friend: Hey man, how’s everything been going at work? 

You: Hey, not bad man. I recently got promoted to VP and just closed my largest deal to date. How about you? 

Loser Friend: Shitty. I’m already f***ing tired of work and it’s only a Tuesday. I am also short on money and my rent payment is due next week. Could you lend me $600? 

You: Didn’t you just receive your paycheck less than two weeks ago? 

Loser Friend: Yeah, but you see, I had a BMW payment due last week and I need to set aside some money for groceries. 

You: Don’t you have some savings in the bank? 

Loser Friend: No, I don’t make enough to be able to save anything. 

You: But what about getting a part-time job? Or purchasing a less expensive car? 

Loser Friend: I’m already tired enough working one job, do you really think it’s reasonable for me to have to slave away in a second gig? Also, how is it any of your business what kind of car I decide to buy? 

You: Uh, because you are asking me for money? 

Loser Friend: Well, are you going to lend me money or what?

Shake these people off of you as soon as possible. While they come across as unreasonable, the crazy thing is they actually believe their own excuses. Their sense of entitlement is so strong that they will not hesitate to borrow large sums of money from you. Don’t expect to ever get this money back as they will always have an excuse as to why they cannot set aside their own money to repay you. You cannot save them from themselves and will be much better off not debating with them at all. 

Rationales To Justify Laziness

“I Don’t Have The Time For It”: This is a bullsh*t excuse because we all have the same 24 hours in a day. This excuse is simply a proxy for “I don’t want to do it because it seems too difficult but I don’t want to admit this.” 

This is one of the most common mistakes on this list and one that almost everyone has used at some point before. It is a lousy habit to fall into as it will lead to periods of inactivity and immediate gratification, the results of which will compound over time and lead to regret. Fortunately, this is relatively easy to fix. Replace “I don’t have time” with “This is not important enough for me to focus on right now.” This will have an extremely powerful effect. For those tasks that are really not that important at all, you will be more forthright as to why you are not doing them. But for those activities that are of long-term importance to business or life, this statement will prove directly contradictory. You will immediately come to this realization and feel incredibly stupid for saying so, which should also alter your decision-making and behavior. 

“I’m Not Feeling Good Today, I Will Do This Tomorrow”: Pushing things back until a later date is the epitome of laziness. The crazy thing is that from a rational perspective it doesn’t even make any sense as it will usually increase your overall workload. As an example, just imagine that you have finished dinner and piled a bunch of plates into the sink. You feel exhausted from work and decide that you will wash them tomorrow. For now, your immediate plan is to grab a six-pack and watch a movie on Netflix. The next evening you wash your dishes because you have no choice; there are no more clean plates. But now the leftover bits of food have stuck to your plates and the process of washing dishes takes you twice as long as it otherwise should. 

This is exactly the problem with this excuse. It demonstrates that a person is not only lazy but also highly irrational. A lazy but rational person would have done the dishes immediately as he recognizes that it involves less work compared to doing them the following day. A rational person with a strong worth ethic would go a step further by working hard and intelligently in the immediate term to become financially independent, then hire outside help to do things such as cooking and washing the dishes. 

“I Can’t Read Books Because They Are Extremely Boring And It’s Too Hard To Concentrate”: While taking action ranks at the very top of the list of priorities, the importance of reading cannot be underestimated. For $15 to $20, you are essentially buying and learning valuable information that has taken someone else many years and decades of trial and error to figure out. You should always aim to read at least two books every month. 

With that said, lazy people rarely spend their time reading because if they did they would no longer be lazy. Reading requires the willpower to concentrate, and the more you train yourself to sit down and consciously read books the more your ability to concentrate will improve. 

Audiobooks are a great alternative as well. You can get through large chunks of books by listening to audiobooks while you exercising. Of course, lazy people are often too lazy to exercise either. 

Personal Life Excuses

“If Only I Had XXX, Then I Would Easily Be Better Than Him”: We are sure you have heard this excuse time and time again in many different variations. You have probably also thought this yourself a handful of times too. The root cause lies in envy. You see someone else being good at or in possession of something you want and immediately seek to justify your own deficiencies. For example, back in high school there was a 6’5” kid on our basketball team who couldn’t dunk. Another short 5’9” kid would constantly gloat and say that if he were 6’5” he would be dunking on people all day. There was only one problem: This 5’9” kid was not very explosive and had a lower vertical leap than the 6’5” guy. 

While it is true that life can be incredibly unfair, being bitter about what other people have is a waste of time. We can’t all be 6’5” when only fewer than 1% of the US male population is 6’3” or taller. Instead, if you want to be able to dunk a basketball you should focus more on training your explosiveness. Likewise, it is absolutely pointless complaining about how much money someone else from a rich family has. You have the potential to get much further than that person by working harder and smarter than him, and that’s the approach you should take. False justifications get you nowhere and only result in more inaction, which will only compound your insecurity and dissatisfaction over time. 

“I Chose To Do This Because Everybody Said So”: This is a classic example of herd instinct, the phenomenon whereby individuals actively join groups and follow the actions of others. Every single person has been guilty of this at some point. Just ask yourself the following question: Have you ever made a decision without really understanding it because you saw that most of the other people around you were doing it, and it resulted in a negative outcome? Yes, we figured. 

It is very hard to change this kind of mentality and you are better off not even trying to do so when it comes to other people. But you must do everything in your power to get rid of these tendencies within yourself. The reason is simple. Popular decisions are usually made out of emotion, not logic. In order to be successful, you must be able to draw your own conclusions based off of careful research and logic without listening to other peoples’ emotional arguments. Be prepared to contradict the social norms and stand alone. 

At the same time, knowing how most others think and behave works in our favor too. Use herd instinct to your advantage. If you are selling a product, always include social proof such as testimonials on your website along with referral programs. If you are looking to cash in on a future market bubble, look around you and see what kind of stocks and assets ordinary people are hyping up. Then do your own research and due diligence to check and see if the underlying fundamentals back up the growing valuations. This will give you a reliable indication of the shorting potential.

“I’ve Already Gone Down This Path And Don’t Want To Start All Over Again”: These are peoples’ emotions talking again. Most people will double down on mistakes instead of pivoting to a new path. Of course, nothing good ever comes out of this. They dig a deeper and deeper hole until one day that hole is so deep that no matter what they do they cannot get themselves back out. They live the rest of their lives feeling even more bitter and angry. 

We can see this in politics. People back and vote for a certain politician and after he gets elected his decision-making disappoints but these same people continue to back him no matter what. Over time, the politician’s decision-making deviates more and more from his campaign promises but the same people continue to justify his moves, even though this results in zero gain for themselves but increasingly drives people in their circles away from them. 

Resistance to change can be particularly powerful if a person has already devoted a lot of time and effort into something or if that specific change is perceived as being very unpleasant. Even successful business executives who make multiple millions a year are susceptible to this. They will frequently clutch onto a single idea that they have already advocated for in public even after they receive solid evidence in favor of the contrary. 

You can avoid falling prey to this by simply being very cautious about what you say in public. If you are unsure about how something you say will be interpreted or remembered, don’t say it at all. Similarly, be mindful of what others say. Instead of disagreeing with them, agree with them. Even better, sell them a product or service that backs up the existing course they have committed too. 

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