The stories we tell ourselves

I had lunch with Sabino yesterday. He’s my accountant — but he’s also my friend (and a loyal Get Rich Slowly reader).

I told Sabino about how our house has been a money pit over the nine months since we bought it. I told him how much fun I’ve been having with Get Rich Slowly since I bought it back, and about how much work it has turned out to be to get the site renovated.

Sabino told me about his businesses (he doesn’t just own the accounting firm, but bits and pieces of several other companies too) and about his kids (who, to the surprise of both of us, are all teenagers now). He’s worked hard all of his life to give his family a solid future, and now — at age 48 — all of his dreams seem to be coming true.

I’ve shared Sabino’s story several times in the past. But for those who are unfamiliar, here’s a synopsis.

Sabino’s family moved to the United States when he was ten years old. They were poor and didn’t speak English. But from an early age, Sabino wanted to be part of the American Dream. He learned English, worked hard, and put himself through college.

After Sabino got married, he and his wife Kim set financial goals. Their chief aim was for Kim to stay home and raise a family. So, while our friends were buying new homes and new cars, Sabino and Kim rented a mobile home in the country for $200 a month and paid $950 cash for a 1982 Honda Accord. They both worked full-time jobs, but they lived off Sabino’s income alone and used Kim’s salary to repay $35,000 in student loans.

“We made sacrifices,” Sabino says. “We made these choices because of the goals we had. We knew what we were working for, and we were happy to do it.” (Back then, I didn’t understand their choices and sacrifices; twenty years later, it all makes sense.)

Today, Sabino is a successful business owner while Kim stays home to raise their three children, just as they planned. Because of their diligence, they now own a nice home in the country (they paid off the mortgage last spring) and new cars that are fully paid for. By staying focused on their purpose, they’ve been able to build the life they always dreamed about.

Rejecting Society’s Narrative

Yesterday over lunch, we talked about the qualities that lead to success. As I often do, I complained about the current narrative that the mass media is trying to sell Millennials: their lives are tough because the economy sucks and the deck is stacked against them.

Bullshit Article with Lots of Reddit Upvotes

“I just don’t believe it’s true,” I said. “The economy doesn’t suck. And now might be the best time in history to be alive. Besides, even if this story were true, so what? If you’re dealt a crappy hand, it’s up to you to make the best of it.”

Sabino nodded in agreement. “I don’t like that sort of thinking either,” he said. “But it’s nothing new. Our culture always has a story they want to tell you about yourself. When I came to this country, for instance, everyone — my friends, my teachers, my family, everyone — had expectations for me and what my life would be like.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When I was young, my parents worked in the fields. That’s how they made money to support us. One day my father pulled me aside. He told me that my future too was to work in the fields — unless I chose to change my destiny. That talk made an impression on me. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to graduate from high school, but that’s what I did. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to graduate from college, but that’s what I did. Nobody expected a poor Mexican kid to own an accounting firm, but that’s what I did. I decided to live a different story than the one that others had written for me.”

Sabino is one of the inspirations for my financial philosophy, and the reason is obvious. He’s lived it! (And he continues to live it.)

For more on Sabino’s story, check out this interview he did for the Oregon Multicultural Archives at Oregon State University.

Determine Your Destiny

My lunch with Sabino reminded me of a New Yorker article from a couple of years ago. In the piece, Maria Konnikova explored how people learn to become resilient.

She cites the work of Norman Garmezy, a developmental psychologist from the University of Minnesota. Garmezy, who died in 2009, spent more than forty years researching the qualities that lead to success and prevent mental illness. The quality that seemed to matter most? Resilience, the ability to surmount life’s slings and arrows instead of succumbing to them.

[Resilient tree]

Writing about the work of another resilience researcher, Emmy Werner, the author says:

What was it that set the resilient children apart? Because the individuals in her sample had been followed and tested consistently for three decades, Werner had a trove of data at her disposal. She found that several elements predicted resilience.

Some elements had to do with luck: a resilient child might have a strong bond with a supportive caregiver, parent, teacher, or other mentor-like figure. But another, quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do with how the children responded to the environment.

From a young age, resilient children tended to “meet the world on their own terms.” They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a “positive social orientation.” “Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively,” Werner wrote.

Perhaps most importantly, the resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the orchestrators of their own fates. In fact, on a scale that measured locus of control, they scored more than two standard deviations away from the standardization group.

This latter statement sounds like statistical gobbledygook but it’s important. Werner’s research indicates that resilient children — those who are able weather the storms of life — score in the top 2.2% when measuring locus of control. Again: Successful kids believe they control their own fate.

Psychologists are convinced that resilience is a fundamental key to success. But where does it come from? Can it be learned? Why do some people respond better to stress than others? George Bonanno of Columbia University believes it all boils down to perception. From the New Yorker article:

Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it…

Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning—perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community—then it may not be seen as a trauma. (Indeed, Werner found that resilient individuals were far more likely to report having sources of spiritual and religious support than those who weren’t.)

The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal.

Konnikova concludes that yes, resilience can be learned, and the best way to do it is to shift from an external locus of control to an internal one. She writes: “Not only is a more internal locus tied to perceiving less stress and performing better but changing your locus from external to internal leads to positive changes in both psychological well-being and objective work performance.”

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

I’ve written about all of these concepts before. I’ve written about developing financial resilience, about how our perception determines our experience, about becoming proactive by developing an internal locus of control, and about how all this relates to mindsets of scarcity and abundance. I’ve written about these concepts in the past, and I’ll write about them again in the future.

These ideas are the foundation upon which the Get Rich Slowly philosophy is built. To achieve your financial goals, you must accept responsibility for your choices and decide that you are in control of your fate. You are the boss of your own life.

I often get frustrated when I hear people complain that they can’t downsize their home, they can’t get a new job, they can’t get rid of their cell phones, they can’t save half of their income. In most cases, these things simply aren’t true. It’s not that they can’t do these things, it’s that they won’t. They’re telling themselves a story that they believe to be true, but they don’t understand there are other plotlines and endings available to them.

Generally speaking, no one story is more true than any other. Each tale is simply a different way of viewing our life. If one story makes us unhappy or uncomfortable, it’s possible to tell ourselves a different version of the story, one that creates a more positive experience. (It’s like the blind men and the elephant.)

Choose Your Own Adventure

A few years ago, I had a conversation with my friend Tyler Tervooren, who writes at Riskology. He and I were both going through a lot of life changes, and we were each trying to re-write parts of the stories we’d been telling ourselves. Tyler shared a technique he was using to change his belief systems.

“I have a list of qualities I want in myself,” he told me. “I’ve written them on index cards in a specific format and I read these to myself every day.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “one card might say, ‘I am the sort of man who always keeps his promises.’ Another might say, ‘I am the type of man who makes exercise a priority.’ I have about twenty of these cards, and I review them every day. This is a way for me to stay focused on what’s important to me, and to remind myself of my values.”

What a great idea!

Affirmation

The bottom line is this: If you don’t like the story you’re living, only you can change it. You are the author of your own life. You didn’t write the beginning of the story, but you have the power to choose the ending. In so many ways, life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Choose an adventure you love instead of one that makes you unhappy.

I know, I know. All of this is easier said than done. Once you’re thirty or forty or fifty years old, you’ve had decades to tell yourself certain parts of your story. You may have written yourself into a corner. Changing plotlines can be difficult. Still, it is possible — and nobody else is going to change the storylines for you. It’s up to you to live the story you want.

More about...Psychology

Become A Money Boss And Join 15,000 Others

Subscribe to the GRS Insider (FREE) and we’ll give you a copy of the Money Boss Manifesto (also FREE)

Yes! Sign up and get your free gift
Become A Money Boss And Join 15,000 Others

There are 11 comments to "The stories we tell ourselves".

  1. S.G. says 21 March 2018 at 07:03

    Agreed.

    And even if you “can’t” do something, owning thr decisions you made to put yourself in the situation is important. And learning from it, and taking action to remove “can’t” is i.portant.

    For example, right now i can’t move. I dont really want or need to right now, but i want it to be an option should we want or need to. I arrived here by accumulating stuff and choosing to have kids. I can only wait for the kids to get older, but I’ve been working through my stuff for the past year and a half (with more to go). I a) know my situstion is my fault and the accumulation of my decisions, b) foresee where it could be a problem, and c) am working to make it so it wouldnt be a problem.

    I call people you’re talking about “victims of reality”. And I think our culture is making more of thrm than ever.

  2. Joe says 21 March 2018 at 08:13

    Your friend Sabino is doing so well. That’s really great.
    I heard that about taking control your destiny in a few studies. It seems to be a very important factor.
    If you don’t like how your life is going, then change it. We live in a free society and we have many advantages. It might take a long time if you’ve dug yourself a big hole, but like the comment above, you just have to keep at it.

    I’m trying to develop some resiliency in my kid, but it’s tough. He’s not a natural like some other kids. Hopefully, we’ll grow his resiliency as he gets older.

  3. freebird says 21 March 2018 at 09:18

    I’m with you on your general premise, a good financial coach is much more psychologist than mathematician. And I would agree that positive changes are strongly associated with a greater degree of perceived influence. But what I question is whether we can simply decide to set an internal locus of control?

    I don’t think it’s this straightforward– my guess is it’s a learned response to life experiences and not so much genetically ingrained or consciously determined. Most likely kids who own their futures have a history where they saw firsthand both cause and consequence and could usually connect the two. But kids who experienced or saw around them a world where everything happens at random probably would quite reasonably develop a learned helplessness. One can imagine how writ large this scenario could blight generations.

    I’ve never been a fan of video-games, but I wonder whether there may be value-add in these for kids? From investing time and effort into playing these they may learn about creating and sizing strategies, how practice leads to improvement, and the eventual joy of mastery. Schools prefer kids develop these skills on their academic curriculum, but this risks leaving out kids who aren’t into books. Sadly this kind of lesson is perhaps most important for those who don’t advance their education because of the greater obstacles they will likely encounter.

  4. WantNotToWantNot says 21 March 2018 at 09:58

    What an inspirational post, J.D…..how true that our reality is made up of and changed by the stories we tell ourselves. I’m reminded, on a very serious level, of a book that changed my life more than any other I have read: Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

    I’m sure many readers of this blog have this on their shelves as a favorite. For those who have not read it, Frankl wrote just after WWII of his experience in the death camps. Trained as a psychologist, Frankl realized that even in such a hell, he had a choice. Rather than concentrating on his own extreme suffering, he “wrote his own story,” determining that this horrific experience provided him with an unprecedented opportunity to study the abilities of human beings to cope in such extremis. He noticed that those who were able to find meaning in their experience–as he was doing, actually–had a far greater chance to survive, and he developed the practice of logotherapy as a result. I highly recommend this brief and important book to anyone who is hovering on the threshold of taking charge of their own lives and their reality.

    I read the book too early–at age twelve–because it was short and I thought from the title that it would give me the “key” to figuring out what life was about (a typical question for a 12-year old). Since then, over the decades, I have re-read it numerous times, always finding that it inspired me to greater efforts to define the story and therefore the meaning of my own life.

    • Brooklyn Money says 23 March 2018 at 14:12

      I just ordered this book. It sounds great. Like it would be really useful.

  5. Steve says 21 March 2018 at 15:23

    I always wonder how accurate those observations are about the kind of people who survive horrific situations. I don’t mean to be rude but it always seems to be that survivors look for traits in other survivors that mirror their views of life; a plan for their destiny, a personal relationship with God, finding “meaning” in your experience, etc.

    I rather imagine that plenty of people who had wonderfully positive thinking personalities perished in those camps. I don’t believe their brutal overlords unconsciously saw these wonderful attributes and somehow held back a bit on the brutality on a chosen few.

    Again, I don’t mean to belittle Victor Frankl’s experiences, he was there, I wasn’t. But it sometimes seems to me that survivors need to make sense of that which can not be made sense of, and they indulge in a wishful thinking that gives them some power that they did not really have.

    • WantNotToWantNot says 23 March 2018 at 06:05

      Dear Steve: You raise an objection common among those who have not read the book, and Frankl addresses that when he writes about the small accidents that could befall any of the unfortunate death camp prisoners: a cut on the leg that would be infected and prove fatal, a enraged guard meting out physical punishment, etc. Any unlucky minor incident could happen at any moment to anyone, no matter what their outlook, or the story they told themselves–this would be an interesting passage for you to read and consider.

      Given the caveat above, when you write: “they indulge in a wishful thinking that gives them some power that they did not really have,” I am reminded of William James (brother of Henry James) and his philosophy of Pragmatism, which I also highly commend to you. James posited that, put in simple terms, since we cannot prove the existence of many of our beliefs, the logical thing is to believe that which helps one get through, that which is pragmatic. For those stuck looking for an “ultimate truth” or orthodoxy, this philosophy is impossible to grasp, but I recommend you look into it and consider its implications.

      When J.D. writes about his friends who have altered the plotlines of their lives and taken charge of their narratives, as it were, he is talking about this, using practical, real-life examples. Within the parameters of the unfortunate accidents, or cards dealt to us, what we do with them is within our influence. It is about this process that Frankl, James—and J.D.—are writing.

  6. SoberFinance says 21 March 2018 at 16:22

    Great story and couldn’t agree more about resiliency. I’ve seen incredibly brilliant individuals flame out of life because either stress from work or other external events became too much. Having a purpose and a goal to work towards (whatever it may be) is an absolute must and makes it easier to remember that Nietzsche quote: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

  7. Michael King says 21 March 2018 at 16:25

    It is what you make of your situation and in all likely hood it is probably better than others and worse than others it is on you on how to look at it. The economy doesnt suck and it sucking isnt the reason Millennials have a deck stacked against them.

    The problem is the cost of education in relation to wage growth has shrunk. It is becoming more and more expensive to obtain an education which some employers are holding on way too high of a pedestal. There are other factors as well as more people get educations because they can it becomes more and more competitive and then you start having to get another degree to be employed.

    Some of it is these schools, in my opinion, are taking advantage of kids. They show these stats which show these high medians incomes and basically make these high promises of getting a degree here will have you set. More people get degrees=high demand price goes up. Problem is for people who maybe arnt as smart or are good at the trade the schools arnt pushing them into the trade they push them to college. They then either fail or get a degree that doesnt do anything. Now your in debt for most of your 20’s maybe 30’s if you cant find a good job. If your spending all your savings to loans then you have no wealth accumulation. You also dont have the ability to take on much other liabilities mainly a home loan.

    The easiest fix is to start pushing more for community colleges and trade schools. Also maybe work with employers to develop more applied courses that could get you hired. One easy thing to do would remove most of the gen eds besides maybe the diversity req and then you need to take prereqs that go to your degree.

  8. Dave @ Accidental FIRE says 22 March 2018 at 02:01

    Another great post JD, you’ve been on a roll man. I know this message rattles the modern narrative that everybody’s a victim, but it rings true. Sure, we’re all victims’s of something, and some of us are more so than others. But ultimately it comes down to how you react and what you do about it.

    Appreciate your blog dude!

  9. Camille says 22 March 2018 at 10:18

    Thank you for sharing the story of your friend Sabino. I greatly enjoyed reading it and will use his example of re-writing his own narrative as a template for my own life.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*