The Grim Old Days: Birth

The Good Old Days?

If you watch the news, it seems like things are getting worse.  We think it is all going to hell.  The news likes you to believe that so you have a heightened sense of danger, so you will keep watching.

Would you trade places with an ordinary person living 300 years ago? Before you answer, imagine giving up your running water, refrigerator, heating system, and access to modern medicine. We sometimes picture the past as simpler and happier. But how much of that picture includes what it actually took to get through a day?

Chelsea Follett’s book, The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past, explores life beyond the kings, castles, and famous battles. What did ordinary people eat? Where did they sleep? What happened when they got sick? Drawing on her book, I will post over 25 Think Daily posts that will explore everyday life before industrialization—from birth and childhood to work, food, dentistry, and aging. Some details may surprise you. Others may make you very happy to be alive today.

We still have problems worth solving. But understanding where we started can help us appreciate what we have—and recognize what human effort can accomplish. So much of what we consider ordinary would have been extraordinary to our ancestors. Perhaps a closer look at their lives will help us see our own differently.

I think this is a good exercise for Think Daily readers to get a historical perspective on life today.  These depictions of “The Old Days”, which were really not too many generations ago, can be depressing.  But my intention is the opposite: to make us all happy we are here now, rather than then.  It was not my doing to be born in 1964.  I am glad I was not born in 1864 or 1664!  Life with freedom and capitalism sure has made things better for humans like me.  I hope by the end, you agree more than ever.

I will not do a solid month of ‘Grim Old Days’ posts.  I will sprinkle them in, maybe a few a week.  I hope you “enjoy”.

A healthy mind in a healthy body

I don’t know about you, but if I am not healthy, or when I have no energy, I am not doing my best mental work.  Here is a passage from “Wisdom Takes Work” by Ryan Holiday.

“Today, when we think about Socrates, we think of him as a thinker – a man with a great mind.  But his friends admired him for so much more.  They admired him for his bravery in battle.  They were impressed by his ability to withstand cold and discomfort.  It seems almost unbelievable that Socrates – a philosopher – was kind of a macho figure, but he was.

‘No citizen has any right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training,’ Socrates said at one point.  ‘What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.’

It’s not just a disgrace; it’s a failure of curiosity.  Don’t you want to know what you can do?  Wisdom need not condemn a person to a life of scrawny weakness or a nerdy lack of coordination.

A strong mind needs a strong body and vice versa.  In fact, the Romans considered a poorly educated person someone who hadn’t learned to read or swim.

You need both the mental and the physical.  A person is incomplete and imbalanced if they neglect one in favor of the other.”

5 Things you should not do. 5) Thinking it’s too late.

Saying I love you.  Apologizing.  Showing gratitude.  Telling the truth.  Going on an adventure (with _________ ).

Learning something new.  Visiting __________ .  And _________________ .

If you are breathing, it’s not too late.

This is your chance.  Take advantage of it.

Don’t waste time –

1) Wishing for a different life.

2) Waiting for the perfect moment.

3) Living in regret.

4) Blaming your age.

5) Thinking it’s too late.

5 Things you should not do. 4) Blaming your age.

Many blame their age for how they behave. They “act their age”.

You are not too young or too old.  

If you want to do it, then learn what you need to learn and prepare what you need to prepare, but do it.

You’re going to die.  

But not this week.

Let’s go.

5 Things you should not do. 3) Live in regret.

If you made mistakes, by doing or not doing, learn from them, but don’t regret them for the rest of your life.

Regret is self-imposed suffering.  No one else feels it – only you, because you created it.  

And what you create, you can let go of.

You can’t change the past, but you can change the future by what you do today.

5 Things you should not do. 2) Wait for the perfect moment.

Don’t waste time waiting for the perfect moment.  Years go by that way.

If you want to make a big move toward your dreams, there will never be the “perfect time”.

You make that time.  You do it.  You learn fast and save years.

When you move on your dreams, they get closer.

When.

When?

5 Things you should not do – 1) Wish for a different life

Don’t waste time wishing for a different life.

It’s not going to happen anyway – you cannot change the past.

Accept who you are and where you came from.  That is the first step to high self-esteem and personal power.  Acceptance.

Be grateful – gratitude will take you much farther.

Turn shit into fertilizer.  Ask: How have my troubles made me better, stronger, and smarter?  What am I now uniquely qualified to do?

There is nobody just like you.  It all happened for a reason and you have a job to do.

Not all critcism is equal

People who don’t try don’t get criticized a lot. They say if you have haters you must be doing something right. lol. 

But not all criticism is equally valid. For example, social media commenters giving you “advice” that is out of context when they don’t really care about you and your future is not anything you should give weight to.

It’s people who you admire, that have their act together, that care about you, that have some experience – those are the ones you should listen closely to.  

If you have a handful of these people in your life it can be very valuable. Some will give you advice even if you do not ask for it.  Others, you have to ask. Many people never ask for advice from people smarter than them because they are afraid of what they will hear.  But you need to be smarter than you are afraid.  Ask.

What do you think about the path I am on?

How am I showing up to others?

What are people really saying about me?

What advice do you have for me?

I am not saying that you should follow the life plan of others.  But you can get a pretty good idea of adjustments you need to make to stay out of trouble and make things easier on yourself for whatever journey you are on.

Whose advice would you value? 

Go get it.

Give yourself a software upgrade.

Your brain is your hardware.

What you learn is your software.

The problem is the brain will function with bad software.

Your teachers will put their best ideas into you, which may be flawed.  (By “teachers” I mean everyone you learned something from, which is most of the people around you.)

Maybe in the environment you learned in, all the teachers (friends, voices, beliefs, “news”) were the same.

You may expose yourself to stupid people repeatedly and start thinking as they do.

Do you need to unlearn some things (delete some programs)?

Do you need to overwrite some programs with better ones?

Answering these last two questions takes a lot of brutally honest self-awareness, but can be a pivot point in your life.

Books, audiobooks, videos, mentors, training, etc. – Get some new and better voices programming you.  

Embrace necessary discomfort

Uncomfortable moving forward?  Good.

It’s hitting your ego a little?  Good.

Gonna be a little sore tomorrow?  Good.

Breaking your cozy habits?  Good.

Struggling a bit to focus a little longer than you prefer?  Good.

All growth lies outside your comfort zone.

The Wills and the Will Nots

When I show someone to the doorstep of the journey to success, and it looks like work, some people just won’t go it.  They just don’t respond.  They are not willing.  And there is nothing wrong with that, so long as we all understand how this works.

The other day a FedEx driver comes up to my house and I went outside to meet him.  He told me he drove this truck to get some extra money, but he had a business.  He told me about it.  He had energy and enthusiasm.  He was a hustler.  I was impressed.  I ran inside and got my book The Highest Calling and a bunch of other materials that would help him.  He was grateful and eager to dive in.

When you have enough desire to take action, to step into the gray and search and do, the things you need will show up.

If you have no desire, you don’t recognize value even when it is right in front of you.

The variable is what is in you.

From the invisible…comes the visible.

Who do you want to become?

Who are you?

Who do you want to become?

What are your core values?

Is doing what you are doing and being who you are in alignment with them?

“The ultimate purpose of goals is to entice you into being the kind of person you need to be to achieve them” – Jim Rohn

Say “YES!”

Invited?  

Invited to something out of your comfort zone?  Something you have never done before?

Say yes.

You never know what it will lead to.

Excitement, adventure, new friends, or a new passion.

Say “YES!”

It’s called SELF-discipline for a reason

Would you rather be “disciplined” by others, or disciplined by yourself?

Self-discipline is essential to succeeding at anything.

If you can’t do the right thing when nobody is looking, there is no hope for you. Sorry.

Freedom is when others don’t have to tell you what to do all the time. I know what to do and can control myself, (thank you very much).

Self-disciplined (+ other qualities) = free (and likely prosperous).

You can’t change yesterday

But you can change today.

You can create today.

You can change direction today.

This is your chance.

Seize it.

Be grateful for what did NOT happen

We remember what happened.

But we discount so heavily the things that did not happen that we forget about them all in short order.

I could have died many times that I know of, never mind the times I did not know about. It’s probably the same for people I love.  

But it’s not just dying. There are a myriad of bad things large and small that did not happen to me.

Some by luck, many by someone else’s design, and many from the grace and kindness of others.

I have a lot to be grateful for.

You?

Building wealth for newbies

Build wealth by doing ordinary things with extraordinary consistency over long periods of time.

What do I do?

Here is something anyone can do starting now, no matter who you are.

Open an ETrade account on your phone.  You might open a Roth IRA account.  Then link it to your bank account.  Then have it automatically take a certain amount of money each week from your checking account.  Then buy shares of an S&P 500 Index fund such as ticker symbol VOO or IVV.  Keep doing that for years.  If you had your own private investment advisor, it would be hard for them to beat this strategy.  Most don’t.

If you had started that in 2010, you’d have $110,000 today.

If you put $100 a week, you’d have $220,000 today.  Of that, $82,000 was your contribution, and $132,000 is growth.

If you started with $50 a week, and every two years you added $10, (so in 2026 you’d be putting in $130 per week, you’d have $244,000.

If you started in 2010 with $50 a week and added $10 a week each year (so in 2026 you’d be adding $210), then you’d have $360,000 today.

The S&P 500 is an index of the 500 biggest companies by market value.  It has gone up by 15.7% on average per year since 2010.  

The Rule of 72 says that if you divide the appreciation rate into 72, that is how many years it takes for your money to double.  So if you put in $10,000 to an S&P 500 index fund, and IF you got an average year compared to the last 36 years, your money would double in 4.58 years.  It would double AGAIN (4X) in 9.17 years.  It would double AGAIN (8X) in 9.17 years.  It would double AGAIN (16X) in 18.34 years.  At this point you are getting around 100% a year on your original investment, and it keeps getting better.  (This is if you let it compound and do not sell and have to pay income tax on it.  Eventually you will, and you can pay the lower long-term capital gains rate on your appreciation.)

Years are going by.  It sounds boring.  It is.  Most people can’t do it.  Why?

They get some money and spend it.  No discipline.

The market goes down, and they panic and sell at a loss.  Their emotions get the best of them.  No faith.  Not every year is the same.  Some years the market goes down a bit, and sometimes it goes up 40% a year.  Just keep contributing each week.

They get a hot stock tip and sell the index fund (and pay income tax on the appreciation) and buy the hot stock.  It goes up, and then down, and they panic and sell.

They get bored and think it will take forever so they stop contributing.

They can’t save any money.  They’d rather go out to eat again (or one of a million other things) than to save $50 a week.  No discipline.

So, most people don’t do it.

But to get results most don’t get, you have to do what others don’t/won’t do.

The wills and the will-nots….

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The second best time is now.

My advice – ask more questions of the right people, and get started.  It’s not hard.

Depressed? – part 2

Stop thinking about yourself.

Think about helping others.

Show up for them.  Serve.  Help.  

Lots of people need you.

Depressed?

“A person who is depressed is spending too much time thinking about the way things are now and not enough time thinking about how he wants them to be. – Andy Andrews

The hole you are in is only in your mind.  

Think about what you want, not what is going on now (- that is temporary).  Take action to make it come true. 

Small step by step, feel the forward momentum.