How Financial Literacy Changed My Life
Financial Literacy isn’t all about learning to make money work for you. That’s definitely a part of it. A major part; however, in my opinion it’s really much deeper than that. Of course the skills of investing and building the right physical infrastructure around you with the right accounts (brokerage, IRA’s) is all fine and dandy, but really it’s the paradigm shift that happens in the mind that’s more important.
Financial literacy shifts your mind from an “employee” mindset to an “owner” mindset. As you raise your financial IQ, it forces you to think more like an owner because owners get more benefits, they have more power over their own lives and along with that power comes a great deal of responsibility (thanks for the wisdom Uncle Ben)
Owners have to think outside the box along with having to understand every facet of what they own, whether it’s an asset, a business, or even themselves. Ownership of self is extremely important, not just in investing but in life. The more ownership of your life you take the more of a leader you become and leaders, true leaders, take full responsibility. This is what financial literacy has opened my eyes to: taking full ownership and responsibility of my life and becoming the captain of my own ship.
This isn’t really about money for me, although money is very important. We must respect money, but not obsessively chase it. Respecting money means we understand it’s behavior, its truth. We understand it’s a vehicle to serve us whether it be materially or even spiritually. Money gives us options when we have it in abundance. When we understand how to make it work for us, we have more time to do the things we love. Maybe for some of us that means spending more time with family. For others it may mean backpacking in a foreign land looking for deeper meaning and purpose in our lives.
Financial Literacy has enlightened me to become more of an owner of my career as an actor. It’s forced me to think outside the box and put myself out there on social media and attract my own damn attention and audience instead of waiting for someone else to hire me, let alone just give me a damn audition! Owners don’t wait for opportunity. They either seek it out or they create it themselves. Employees, on the other hand, wait to be told what to do. They wait for someone else to give them the way, the answer, the money. That’s why an employee mindset puts you in the passenger seat and not in the driver seat of your own life. It puts you on the crew of your own ship as opposed to being the captain.
Now, this does not mean we should quit our employee jobs and start a business. No. But what it does mean is that we have to start taking more ownership. We have to start taking more responsibility of everything in our lives. If you’ve been curious about starting a side hustle, then do it! If you’ve been curious about learning more about the stock market and investing. Do it! If you’ve been wanting to put yourself on social media and creating content and bringing value to people. Frickin Do IT!!! All these feelings that we have is really us wanting to be owners. We yearn for more of a say. We yearn for more power over our own lives. If we listen to these feelings and get out of our own way we realize that it’s right there for the taking.
Remember: Owners don’t wait, they go. They go full steam ahead, taking full on responsibility, learning by doing, asking questions, trial and error, and failing. But what this gives them is true wisdom and power. Tie in some humility, self-awareness, gratitude along with that power and you become a force that can create positive feedback loops in society and influence people to be a better version of themselves. And that is powerful.
So now you know why I am passionate about financial literacy along with my love for acting. They are not opposites or different paths. In fact, they are two parts of the same whole. This whole being me. I have a funny feeling that you will experience the same in your own way. You will see how a little bit of self education in financial literacy will have positive spillover effects in other parts of your life. And this my friends is called self-improvement and that is all we can ask of ourselves to do with the time we have on this planet.
