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31 causes of failure #6: ill health

Written by Steve

sick butterfly

I abandoned this series (based on the 31 causes of failure Napoleon Hill lists in his classic Think and Grow Rich) for a while, but then I decided that abandoning it was actually succumbing to the fifth and most recent cause I wrote about: Lack of self-discipline. Unfortunately the next cause of failure is one that’s somewhat out of our control: ill health. I’d like to put ‘ill health’ into two different categories and examine why one of them is far more likely to be a cause of failure than the other.

The first category is out of our control. You can get sick for reasons completely outside your control: you can have a genetic disposition towards cancer, or suffer a car accident or simply be unlucky enough to come down with some disease. It happens; we’ve all heard anecdotes about perfectly healthy people who suddenly got ill for one reason or another.

The second category is more unpleasant: illnesses you cause. You eat too much junk food and become obese: say hi to heart troubles, diabetes and hypertension. Smoke and you invite cancer. Live a stressful lifestyle? Get ready for all sorts of illnesses. It’s easy to assign blame, of course, for blatantly bad behavior. But most people indulge in some behavior that’s not ideal; few of us are perfect exercise machines with carefully and consistently monitored food intake.

Here’s the kicker about ill health, though. More than any other item in this ’causes of failure’ series, ill health can derail your plans and prevent you from achieving your goals. Why? Just read.

  • Medical bills make up half of bankruptcies
  • Half of Bankruptcies Due to Medical Bills, Harvard Study Says
  • bnet: Medical expenses responsible for half of U.S. bankruptcies, according to new survey.
  • Healthcare Crisis In America Medical bankruptcy: middle class families at risk (Dr. Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School, Testimony before House Judiciary Committee 2007).

29% of people with credit card debt indicated that some of that debt was medical-related. It’s a bit dated, but a 2006 USA Today, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard School of Public Health survey showed that 25% of the households affected by cancer said they had used up all their savings dealing with the fallout from cancer, and one-tenth could not afford basics such as food, heat and housing. The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without a universal health insurance system. U.S. health care spending is approximately $2 trillion per year, or $6,697 per person. The United States continues to spend significantly more on health care than other countries in the world.

In 2006, the U.S. census reported that more than 45 million Americans had no health insurance; more than 9 million children lacked health insurance in America (those are dated stats, of course). I don’t intend to get into politics for more than a second here, but the health care bill - mockingly and (in my opinion) disrespectfully called Obamacare - will not fix these problems. It may help slightly, and it may hurt slightly, but the root problem hasn’t been fixed: you can be financially destroyed by a medical problem.

That’s the issue. Is it fair for someone to lose their life savings because they get cancer? I don’t think so - but that’s the way it is now, and I doubt that will change anytime soon. In my opinion, only universal single payer health care can solve this situation; whether you view that as a good or bad thing is up to your own political mindset. So for this cause of failure - one of the most important ones, over which we have some of the least control – you have to be extremely focused. Ill health can impair your ability to work; it can drain your savings; it can make progress towards your goals difficult, or even impossible. Taking care of your health is the single most important things you can do for your wealth. I’ve written before about losing weight and how I quit drinking soda. Regular exercise and a low-stress lifestyle are key, as well. But it’s important to remember that the sixth cause of failure from Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is one of the few that sometimes lies outside our control.

Previous posts in my “31 causes of failure” series:

Photo Some rights reserved by Eliezer Borges

31 causes of failure #5: lack of self discipline

Written by Steve

I have a stupid phrase I like to bark out at everyone (including the extraordinarily unimpressed Bubelah): “Focus and discipline! These are our watchwords!” I suppose I ripped that off from a movie. I yell it out a la Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men.” You know the scene - when Nicholson famously snaps and in a rage shouts out “You can’t handle the truth!”

I suppose now that I have made myself appear both insane and irritating I should say that it’s all done in good humor. I put my fingers in a V and point them at my eyes when I say “Focus!” I then clench my fist and hold it in front of me and rasp “Discipline!” Then I laugh.

Discipline, though, is no laughing matter.

I imagine that you could meet the richest people in the world and you would find that few of them (other than those who inherited wealth) were lazy while they were building their wealth. I also doubt that you would find a significant portion of them to be severely overweight, drug or alcohol abusers or big fans of TV. Most of them would have the discipline to exercise control over almost every part of their life that did not involve building their business or perfecting their 3-point shot or making the perfect CD. Even Britney Spears had to be disciplined before her recent troubles. I sincerely doubt - even though I frequently disparage her singing - that I could sing and dance even to her level. Not that I would try - nobody wants to see me singing in a schoolgirl’s uniform, anyway.

And I wouldn’t think of discipline as being solely about an unending focus on money, either. A person who is rich, or who has financial freedom, or who simply knows what their goals are also must have the discipline to maintain a personal life. A disciplined business person should bring that same discipline to their relationships with friends and family and community, knowing that real success isn’t possible with money alone. If it was, we wouldn’t see horror stories about lottery winners flaming out after winning the lottery.

Discipline is one of the two most important characteristics you can build INTO yourself. I don’t think anyone is naturally self-disciplined or naturally undisciplined. It’s a simple matter of establishing patterns and altering your behavior consistently. You establish the patterns that lead to discipline. If you tell yourself that you will stop cursing, for example, you have to set goals and rewards when you don’t curse (if you go a whole day with no cursing, add a dollar to a “gift to me” jar, for example). You can also use negative reinforcement like I do - my rubber band works wonders, believe it or not.

Hill says “Discipline comes through self-control. This means that one must control all negative qualities. Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself. Self-mastery is the hardest job you will ever tackle. If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self. You may see at one and the same time both your best friend and your greatest enemy, by stepping in front of a mirror.”


Remember:

  1. All desire, impulses, physical sensations, etc. are driven by your mind. Imagine you are happy now, and you can make yourself happier.
  2. Self-discipline is a negative force that must be used in a positive way - it is the denial of something else. Make sure that you associate your self-discipline with positive ideas, too. Don’t just think of denying yourself the chocolate cake slice - think of getting rid of fat man pants.
  3. There is no discipline without a goal. I can exercise self-discipline to prevent myself from touching a watermelon for the rest of my life -but it makes no sense and it can’t be articulated as a meaningful goal. Without a goal, your self-discipline is a waste of breath and time.
  4. To get self-discipline, zero in on gratitude. Remember that you have been given the opportunity to make your own decisions, and that’s something to be exceptionally grateful for.

Apply your mind today to the concept of self-discipline. Establish a pattern: no carbs after 6 pm, no more trading stocks without studying financials, no more credit card debt, whatever you are attempting to achieve. It is as simple as flipping a switch in your mind. People may tell you that is not true, but let me give you a final example: do NOT imagine a blue elephant. Do NOT picture it in your mind.

When you can read that and not imagine a blue elephant, you get a picture of what real self-discipline can be. Just focus your mind on goals, not the problem itself. I think visualizing your condition once you’ve completed the goal is as important - or even more important - than trying to avoid the negative behavior. That is what self-discipline is all about.

This is a continuation of my series on Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich that began with this post.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Just-Us-3

31 causes of failure #4: insufficient education

Written by Steve

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
John Dewey

This is a continuation of my series on Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich that began with this post.

Of the causes of failure listed by Napolean Hill, insufficient education is one of the simplest to overcome.

Too often the word “education” these days is confused with the words “school” or “college.” A common belief that education can only be obtained from school has made whole segments of the population of the Western world undereducated. Let’s face it - your college years are probably some of the worst times of your life for real learning. With the distractions available, a serious pursuit of academics is probably one of the last things on your mind. In addition, the learning in college is too often static. You may “learn to think” - a common expression for the supposed benefit of sitting around talking to your fellow classmates, etc. - but a lot of what you will learn specifically is going to be completely useless later in your life. Example? I learned Pascal in college. Now, it was a good course - it “taught me to think” around computers, and made me structure my brain in a manner that let me “think” in computerese, but I doubt those Pascal skills count for much these days.

Hill is talking about continuous education. You can acquire this continuous education in a few different ways:

1. Continuing your education in a semi-formal fashion. I don’t do this myself but I know many people who do - keep taking courses at your local college, university, community college or even just some community organization (churches, clubs, etc.) The courses can range from practical (technical courses to advance your career) to meaningless but enjoyable (in my case, something like early Soviet history or astronomy). I think this is very difficult for most people. With busy lives, children, spouses, work and frankly the creep of old age, taking a class “just for the sake of learning” reeks of self-indulgence. It shouldn’t feel that way, but it does.
2. Brief “burst” education (such as seminars). I’ve gone to a number of seminars, almost all of them professional seminars around my line of business (audit and corporate governance). Every time, I go into the seminar feeling superior and telling myself “I have nothing to learn from these hacks!” Every time, I come out of the seminar having learned SOMETHING. I’ve interacted with my fellow students; we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve learned something about ourselves. OK, that’s a bit much, but you get the point. You can sign up for short, intensive training courses or boot camps and cram a lot of learning into a short span of time. The major objection to this is usually cost. I went to one course that cost my company $5000 for three days. “Holy Corporate Overspending, Batman!” I wouldn’t pay $3000 for a three-day course! But the skills I learned in that course made me invaluable to the company, secured a promotion and even beefed up my resume substantially when I jumped to my next working life, consulting. I have seen a tremendous return on investment from that seminar; but I would still get squeamish at doing something similar today. Ah, cognitive dissonance!
3. Reading. If you are reading this blog, you probably read more than your average person (and your reading tastes are exquisite, and you are charming and beloved by small children and pets, I imagine, Dear Reader). But in general, reading is tricky. I have a couple of bad reading habits: I like to reread books and I like to read novels. I just read the whole Earth’s Children cycle. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s an epic that covers about 20 years in the life of a cavewoman over about 6000 pages. I think the author has about 4 more books to go. I am not sure reading those books educated me. Sure, I know a lot more about what a novelist thinks cavepeople did in their daily lives (think hunt, sleep, eat and, er, the “other” kind of sleeping - a lot). But it didn’t educate me. At the same time I’m usually working my way through financial books, parenting books, productivity books, self-improvement books, etc. - not to mention 100+ blogs dailiy. Reading can be a form of education, but you have to keep a filter on it. But it is far and away the simplest, cheapest and often easiest way to keep educating yourself.

But the most important thing you can do with knowledge is apply it. I know a lot of Soviet history, for example. You know what I get out of that? Not education, per se. I enjoy it, reading good works probably helps me understand human history in general and Russia in particular (a matter of some importance to me since I lived there and my wife grew up in the Soviet Union) but it’s not exactly education. I don’t apply that knowledge - particularly towards getting rich. This is an important point: I think learning for the sake of learning is fine. Have fun. Learning is growth, and that’s worth something. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that reading something you’ve read before or reading a dopey novel or reading about the horrors of crime and terrorism in your paper make you more educated. No, no, no. What makes you more educated is learning something new that improves your life. Flower arranging blogs may make your life better just by bringing beauty into your life; but if you read and never DO anything with it it’s just entertainment - like watching “Lost” or playing video games. You have to DO something with that knowledge to make it REAL education.

But if you feel undereducated, you have no excuse to feel that way. Between public libraries in most of the Western world, the Internet and even the creaky old print-on-paper the wealth of knowledge available today is staggering. If I wanted to learn about freaky astronomical theories or commodities trading it takes seconds to find them. Want to learn how to lose weight or build prosperity? A single click away.

So if you want to get rich - or even just have a better life - identify areas you like to study, and like to read about, and attack them. Take a seminar. Audit a community college course. Read 13 blogs and 5 books on the subject. But keep learning, because if you aren’t growing and learning, you’re just marking days off the calendar of your life.
Creative Commons License photo credit: clgregor

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