Success in goal setting: the day that will change your life
The day your life changes…
My wife, Aldona, and I were recently married. We both come from very nasty divorces and each of us received all the bills and all the debts from our marriages. Aldona was receiving no child support from her ex and 2/3 of our combined income went to my ex wife in the form of alimony, child support and her college education; things were very bad financially for us.
We lived in a 600 square foot shack that walking around passed 7 different types and colors of siding that had been put on it over the years. We had 1 piece of furniture to our name: a broken vinyl rocker. We had a card table and 4 chairs in the kitchen that my parents had lent us and a mattress on the bedroom floor to sleep on. Like I said, it was bad!
We had picked up my kids in Albuquerque for spring break and spent a miserable 5 days camping in sleet, rain and snow because that was all we could do with them. When that ordeal was finally over and we left them with my ex, we headed home to Denver, only to be caught in a snow storm in Santa Fe and the roads were closed. We knew we couldn’t spend the night in a tent and had to find a motel. We had $17 and some change and no credit. We drove up and down Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe trying to find a motel we could afford. It was incredibly embarrassing to walk in to ask how much a room was and then have to come back out because you couldn’t afford it.
We finally found “The Judy House”, complete with cockroaches and holes in the wall. Cold air was pouring in through the cracks around the window, and the room’s decrepit heater couldn’t handle it. After paying for the room, I had some coins left in my pocket. We had a little food left in the cooler, but nothing to drink. So I went out in the blizzard to the vending machine that was in front of this dump.
The least expensive drink in the machine was a coke for 50 cents. I didn’t have 50 cents! And that was back in the days when a 6-pack of cokes cost around 65 cents. He was outraged! I went back to the room annoyed and fuming… “What a scam!” … “Who do these people think they are charging such an outrageous price for a coke?! … “What absolute nerve of these people to be scamming the public in this way!”
I sat on the edge of the bed, practically crying over the “unfairness of life.” But finally I realized the reality of the situation. It wasn’t that it was too expensive, it was that he couldn’t afford it. In other words, it was my responsibility, not society, to fix my problem. That was the day that changed my life. I decided at that moment that I would do whatever it took to never find myself in a situation like that again. It was the beginning of my search for options and alternatives to working for someone else and letting them decide what I was worth.
That was the day the entrepreneurial spirit took hold of me and the start of our new beginnings. So where are you in your life right now? Is there something you can’t afford right now, that hurts so much that you’re willing to change it? How bad will it have to get before you do something different. Today would be a good day to decide!