Thursday, April 3, 2014

Increase your overall

Life is interesting. There are many decisions that must be made, decisions that could impact your future. We are constantly wrestling with decisions to ensure we gain the best possible outcome. One of the most important decisions is "how do I spend my money?" Growing up in my family, I learned at an early age to show what you have for your money. Buying those expensive cars and big houses was the best way to spend money. This seems like the typical American approach. Growing up was all about changing money over to assets. Further down the road I began to envision my own view on spending money. This vision was a complete 360 from what the house norm was. I began thinking that the money I spend should in some way enhance me as an individual, help make me that much better as a person. I can relate my thought process to a basketball video game. During a video game player creation, the ultimate goal is to get your player to 99 overall. This means the player will be the the best player on the court. How do you get your player to be 99 overall? Do you put some awesome looking shoes on them? Do you give them a headband to catch the sweat easier? Or do you give him a sleeve to keep warm his shooting arm? When you do each one of these, the overall of your player does not increase. Their skills stay the same. The only way to get your player to be the desired 99 overall is to practice with him. Shoot with him to increase his shooting skills. Run with him to increase his conditioning skills. Performance over appearance will move him closer to 99 overall. 



This idea can relate directly to real life. If you go out and purchase a brand new car opposed to your old car that you had previously, how is this going to make you as an individual better? Will your personal overall increase? Your last car was not as nice as the one you just purchased, but it still got you from point A to point B on a regular basis. This weekend you go to the mall to purchase a pair of new Nike shoes, which you thought looked awesome. Your overall once again as a person won't increase. BUT if you use that money to travel to another country, you will be learning about another culture and experiencing new things. These experiences are going to change the way you think about that particular culture, and possibly how you think about the world in general. That is the aspect that is going to help you get to that 99 overall during your lifetime. For these reasons I have a whole different outlook than the one I grew up with as a child. I believe strongly in this analogy, and will continue to better myself as an individual by traveling and encountering these new experiences. Reach the goal of 99 overall, and do it in effective ways. Those experiences that you have nothing to show for, but are forever ingrained in your memory are going to be the experiences that help you reach your highest potential. So get out there! Travel the world! Increase your overall!

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