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Sunk Cost How Your Past Keeps You Stuck
[00:00:00] Okay. So have a sunk cost. Fallacy keeps you stuck. It's probably the number one reason why you don't have the life you want a sunk cost is something that we've invested in. Something. Business is an obvious example. You spend a bunch of money build this business or this product. Nobody buys it. And instead of listening to the data, the marketplace is giving you that like maybe you should pivot or edit or audit or try something else or quit completely.
[00:00:21] Maybe you should stop throwing good money after bad has, has the saying goes. Yeah, we feel like we've invested so much time, energy, money. Even if a new solution comes up, that's cheaper, better, faster. We stay committed to this thing that isn't working because of our investment. I can tell you something as an entrepreneur and dealing with the free market for 15 years, this is toxicity for your growth, your development, your, your finances, your focus, your clarity, everything, and businesses, and easy one.
[00:00:51] But what about your personal life? So you have these stories. You tell yourself about who you are based on your past things you've done, or things that have happened to you. And these create limiting beliefs. They create narratives in your mind. They create an identity that everyday you wake up, you try to fulfill that identity or lifts that identity, or you actually say yes to certain things.
[00:01:10] Notice certain things. You do certain things. You sabotage yourself to support the narrative that you have of who you are. And this holds you back massively. It's the imposter syndrome. It's the, I need permission from someone else. I don't have the credentials. I'm not this. I'm not that these are all labels that do nothing for you, expecially the way most people use them.
[00:01:32] Now, of course, if you have labels building yourself up positive affirmations, you know, that are idealistic to the person you want to be, or your future self, then labels and stories can actually help you. But it's like 1% of people do this. As humans, we're naturally inclined to have the negative labels or to have our fears then justified by the stories we tell herself.
[00:01:54] So we're afraid of something. We tell ourselves a story, it creates this narrative, and then that's the person we are in that state Danny we have, and [00:02:00] that's how we live. So I basically don't care about the past. I'm doing my best to not even think about it that much. Now you should learn from your past.
[00:02:07] But what I found is that most learning as humans that we have comes from our subconscious, if we don't consciously think about the past. Our subconscious will. Now, if you're stuck in the past in negative ways, you're going to have to unpack that subconscious. You gonna have to get in touch with it. Right.
[00:02:22] But for me, I'm more of a future focused person. And I don't have regrets because I am who I am based on what's happened now, I think back to hard times in my life, and I'm picking out things to learn from them, but I'm not upset about them. I have no anger or resentment. I have no shame. I have no guilt.
[00:02:41] This happened. I was this person at that time. And now I am who I am today as a result of it. And I like who I am today. And I like the results I've gotten in life. Why would I look back in anger or in shame or guilt or an any negativity whatsoever, if you actually think about it, the past doesn't exist.
[00:02:58] They say that history is written by the victors. It is. In fact, if you take any popular history, textbook or popular, just history book, you compare that to. Letters written by people that lived during the time. And you see a lot of incongruencies. Why? Because there's pressures to keep history the way it is for a school system, for propaganda, for whatever the victors write history, your history is, whatever your perception of it is.
[00:03:26] In fact, it was really fascinating that the human mind has done research on this. So people think their memory is like a hard drive. And I can just recall with perfect accuracy, anything that's in my mind or anything that's happened to me. But the reality is your current state. When you retrieve a past event affects how you think about or interpret that past event.
[00:03:46] So if you're upset and you're thinking about your past, it's more likely to have a negative connotation to support. Maybe the reason why you're upset or you're trying to blame somebody you're playing the victim and you interpret events that happened, and you, you basically twist them to fit your [00:04:00] current mind state or whatever you're trying to achieve with your current narrative or your current victimhood, whatever.
[00:04:06]Your memory is not the hard drive. Your memory is constantly changing. If you recalled one event in your, in your past, let's say a very tragic event. Like now as 35, when I think back to some of the bad things have happened in my life and losing my father. How I think about it now is miles different than how I thought about it when I was 25 or when I was 21, et cetera.
[00:04:28] That's something to keep in mind if you're living your life based on who you think you are because of things you've done or haven't done. Then you're living in the past and your anchor to the past. And it's really dangerous because a lot of it happens below the surface and you don't even realize it's happening.
[00:04:46] So if you don't get in touch with your past and understand it, you don't have to like do therapy or anything that can be helpful for some people, but I'm more a fan of Adlerian psychology, which is very much just based in stoicism and the framework of control and identifying like who you want to be, and then creating.
[00:05:05] Stories, if you will, that support who you want to be, rather than trying to go back in the past and feel like you need to unpack everything and make everything perfect. I don't really buy that. I mean, I, some people that are more stuck in the past, we might need more intervention that way, but you can start today.
[00:05:19] Everyday you wake up and this is kinda my main point. You can become a new person. You can ignore the past, you can write your history now this moment, and you really are doing that, but most people are doing it subconsciously. And they're doing it by connecting a story to their past. So their past and things they've invested in the sunk costs, the narratives, the stories they're living in the past are connected to the past and they don't even realize it.
[00:05:47] And so they wake up every single day and they do things that, and a lot of instance, aren't conducive to happiness and health and wealth and all the things that we want as modern humans. When you understand this and you can become aware of it, step outside of [00:06:00] yourself. Then you know that you have the ultimate power every single day to do anything, be anything.
[00:06:06] And you don't have to have a sunk cost connected to your past because the past doesn't exist. The future doesn't exist. Now is the only thing you ever have. You are what you do repeatedly. You're not some event that happened and you're not some event that may happen. You're here now, today. This is you.
[00:06:22] This is you again, this next moment. This is you again, this next moment on and on and on. That's all it is. It's ever flowing. They say that no man can step in the same river twice because he's a different man, obviously woman too. And the river is a different river. Stop living in the past. Stop letting your stories, blue scenarios and labels define you.
[00:06:44]At least subconsciously create new stories, labels, and beliefs that are going to propel you to where you want to go to become the person you want to be and become aware of how this stuff happens. Your psychology. I mean everything right? This, this is a big idea. It requires self-awareness. It requires understanding human biology, psychology, whatever.
[00:07:03] I hope this was helpful in some way. I hope you take action with something. Start thinking about it. Become self-aware stop living in the past or the future. Start living in the now and start making a decision now to do the things and become the person you want to be. And if you want to kickstart with this and some accountability, you can learn more about my antifragile individual.
[00:07:23] It used to be called a better mind. You probably heard that into my recent videos that you've been following along. I've changed it to include some more things like wealth preservation, security, sovereignty, freedom, as well as health and mindset, instead of just mindset. The antifragile individual is about becoming antifragile and your thinking and your wealth and your health.
[00:07:40] Meaning when things change around you, which they always do because that's the university of in constantly changing universe. Everything changes, nothing is static. Okay. Everything's either growing or dying. When the world changes around you and you take that in and as fuel to become stronger and then robust where you can.
[00:07:55] So you protect your finances, you have strategies so that if things go really bad, like the dollar collapses, you can actually have [00:08:00] assets that will shoot up through the roof that protect you. And then you're as robust as possible. So you're not as exposed to things like inflation, et cetera. Health, same thing, you protect your health, you grow it, you invest in it.
[00:08:10] So that if a new boogie virus comes along, that's hyped up by the media to be scary than it actually is. You don't have to care about that because you've already, don't everything you can do. You focus on what you can control. You're getting vitamin D you're getting sunlight. You're, you're healthy, et cetera.
[00:08:22] And the physical protection, if Saudi collapses, this, that whatever, I don't go full blown prepper mode because. I actually don't think it's ever going to happen. It could, but I'm more interested in being a global citizen so that if things start getting bad in one jurisdiction or one country, I leave and go somewhere else where it's more stable.
[00:08:37] And it's quite unlikely that the whole world is just going to plunge into a zombie apocalypse. And that does happen. Yeah, I guess guns and food and like that stuff's going to matter, but that's not really. A likely thing. I think in, even if that does happen, I don't think any of us are really gonna be able to prepare for it.
[00:08:57] So I'm more interested in urban, antifragility building a strategy for the urban individual that lives in a city that wants to have kind of a plan to backup plan some, some strategies, and also just be prepared financially. So that, I mean, the reality is financially is probably the biggest threat to us.
[00:09:12] You know, dark hops, seeing inflation, the fed, doing the things that does, that's going to be bad and that can have downstream effects to food and supply chains and things like that. But it's very easy to prepare for. And so I covered that inside the antifragile individual, you can learn more at, I am antifragile.com.
[00:09:28] If you have any questions, comments can always send me an email and I have a antifragile entrepreneurial course coming out to teach you how to take back your time. Stop internalizing, stressed out micro-managing everything, and then build a life that your business supports. Rather than your life supporting your business, you can always email me to get on the wait list for that we haven't launched yet.
[00:09:47] We'll probably be launching soon, like subscribe, share if you want. I appreciate you watching and I'll see you in the next one.
