Limiting Belief #7: I Should Be Able to Read a Book or Attend a Conference and Immediately Become Financially Successful

Seeking the Quick Fix

When I was in high school, I’d lift weights twice a day, drink protein concoctions three or four times a day, and try just about anything to build muscle faster (only natural supplements of course, no steroids!). My mother worked at a local health food store, so I had plenty of opportunities to try the latest and greatest pills and drinks. I’ll never forget this one liquid “instant muscle” potion I tried. The idea was to fill up a liquid dropper and squirt the fluid under your tongue. Unfortunately, it was disgusting and, if that wasn’t bad enough, it felt like you had a hive of angry wasps buzzing around your mouth. I felt like crying and puking at the same time. I wanted a quick fix, so I did this for months. I’m sure you can guess what happened. Nothing. Like all of the back-of-the-magazine ads promising big muscles with less effort, this one was no different.

Marketers haven’t changed their tactics much since my high school days.

They still pray on that part of us that wants something for nothing—a quick fix. New diets and get-rich-quick real estate and stock trading schemes flood the bookshelves and seem to monopolize our TVs after 11:00PM. The promises don’t change — just the products and packaging.

Although I’m much better than I used to be about spotting scams now, I do get tempted.

Wouldn’t it be great to have abs of steel by exercising five minutes a day?

Or a photographic memory in just two hours?

When it comes to financial success and realizing the life you designed in Day #1, there are no quick and easy solutions. 

There are only quicker and easier solutions. Following these lessons will propel you light years ahead from where you started, but it will require action on your part. Some of the tools, exercises, and Action Steps you’ll have to do yourself while others you can put on autopilot or even outsource. For example, when it comes to saving, investing, and tracking your progress to your goals, you can do it yourself or you can outsource this burden to a firm to do it for you.

Making It Happen

You wouldn’t expect to speak fluently after reading a book on how to speak French, so don’t expect miracles after simply reading these lessons—you have to turn words into action. There’s a popular commercial running that illustrates this perfectly. It shows a group of co-workers having lunch at a nice restaurant when one of them starts choking. Several of them begin discussing the Heimlich maneuver and debating how it should be done while their colleague and friend is dying before their eyes. The commercial ends when someone from another table calmly walks over and successfully performs the Heimlich maneuver. The company tagline, “Make it Happen.”

The goal of these lessons is taking ACTION! If you spend all of your time and energy discussing, debating, theorizing, and pontificating the finer intricacies of saving, investing, and protecting your hard-earned assets, you’ll never get around to actually doing it. Take heed from another company’s tagline and “Just do it!”

The Take-Away?

Your six-day financial makeover requires action. It doesn’t matter how great and insightful this or any other book is, you’ve got to implement, implement, implement.

The proceeding blog post is an excerpt from The Six-Day Financial Makeover: Transform Your Financial Life in Less Than a Week!, available now on Amazon.