Don’t bank your life on other people.
Whether that person is your significant other, your family, your boss, or a god they’re not responsible for taking care of you. Really. That’s the short of it.
Banking your life on other people and outside circumstances results in the following:
1) Expectation
“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian”
- Dennis Wholey
Banking on other people to live your life places an unfair burden on others. An expectation, that ultimately, they will never satisfy because they can’t live your life for you.
Be your own banker.
2) Blame
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them”
- George Bernard Shaw
Banking your life on other people causes you displace any sense of responsibility off of yourself. You blame people and circumstances for your life, as if you had no power over it.
Take responsibility for your investment.
3) Dependency
“Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.”
- Fritz Perls
Banking your life on others places your self-esteem, your livelihood, your life in others hands. It becomes a submission to whatever may happen, you hang your head and just keep letting others do it for you.
Don’t let your investment be subject to the rise and fall of market whim.
4) Deferment
“Live your own life, for you will die your own death.”
- Latin Proverb
Banking your life on others is letting the moments you have to dance through life slip you by. You become a spectator, letting someone else dictate the steps and the music of your life.
Don’t let someone else cash in on your life.
5) Disappointment
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
- Norman Cousins
Banking your life on others leads to expectations, blame, dependency and deferment. Those all lead to disappointment.
Your Life Is Your Bank
The sooner you put yourself into your life, the more you put into your life, the more it gives back to you.
Just like compound interest.
Have compound interest in your life.
Flickr photo by thinkpanama.
