Lifestyle of Success

I was a little nervous the first time I met Jack; I had only talked to him once over the phone, but I could tell by our conversation that he was a busy man. I had arranged an interview at his house for early evening and promised to only take 30 minutes of his time. He agreed and gave me his address, even though I already knew where he lived. His house was the mansion on the side of the mountain overlooking the valley, but I humored his directness and jotted it down on my notepad anyway. That evening, I found myself on his doorstep extending my hand towards the doorbell to announce my arrival. As the chimes rang, the door flew open. I put forth my hand and introduce myself as the guy he talked to on the phone. With a bright smile and a welcoming voice, Jack invited me in. We made our way through the front entry and by the time we reached his front living area to sit on the couch, the little anxiety I had was replaced with amusement I found in the architecture of his house: 12 foot vaulted ceilings with extravagant hand carved dark mahogany wood trim from top to bottom. My eyes were still taking it all in as I sat on a couch across from where Jack was presumably going to sit. Jack sank into his chair across from me and said, “So, you want to know how I made my money, huh?” I smirked at his eagerness to talk and began to explain. “I’m looking for commonalities among people who seem to understand how money is made. I want to know the similar practices or employments that set them apart from the vast majority. People like you seem to know something most do not. I want to know what you know about money, what helped you make your money, and how others can learn to do the same?” Jack sat back in his chair crossed his legs and said, “I don’t know any secrets on how to get rich quickly, but I can give you something to write down and consider. It’s an important lesson in life that I don’t think most people put enough time and effort into knowing.” “That’s all I’m here for,” I replied. Jack began, “Back when I was in middle school my friends and I loved to play football. We would play every chance we got. Of course, I considered myself to be one of the better players on the field, but one day I found myself lying on my back wondering what just happened. Out of breathe and a little dazed, I looked around and realized I was tackled by one of my own teammates! Now in a different setting I would have been livid at the moron, but the guy who tackled me was a heavily accented foreign exchange student from Germany named Henning. This kid had been in the U.S. for about a week and was introduced into our middle school class just hours before. My friends and I invited him to join our game during lunch hour and it was immediately apparent Henning had never played football in his life. He ran offside during kickoff, literally held other players from getting a tackle, and tackled anyone who had the ball. He was an absolute mess! As mad as I should have been at the time, I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him too much. Lying on my back, I quietly laughed to myself to release the frustration and called a timeout. Apparently I needed to explain some things to our new recruit. Schoolyard football didn’t have many rules, but not tackling your teammate was one of them.” “Now, this brings me to the lesson you may want to write down. To those of us who understood the rules of football, Henning’s actions were almost intolerable. We couldn’t help but laugh to ease the frustration every time he did something wrong. It became a little bit of a joke to us, but in the mind of the inexperienced foreign exchange student, everything he did was right. He consistently ran, blocked, and tackled just like everyone else. Anyone could tell from the sweat dripping down his face to the competitive look in his eyes, that he was trying hard to impress us. At the time, I didn’t realize this, because I was too caught up in the game to analyze anything or even to properly explain the rules to the poor kid. He continued to make mistakes until I was affected personally and found myself angry and lying on my back. After I took the five minutes to explain the basics, he wasn’t that bad of a player. Hell, I even went out of my way to make him look good sometimes.” “Now Tyler, I have thought about that day multiple times and came to the conclusion that it was one of the most pivotal learning experiences of my life. It showed me that if I wanted to be successful at something, whether it’s sports, work, money…anything; I would have to absolutely know the rules before the game begins. I don’t want to ever be like Henning was that day and have people pulling me aside in the middle of the game to tell me I messed up and that I am a joke.” I interviewed Jack for about an hour as he touched on some of his background with schooling and good work ethics. Ultimately, he credited his success to a lot of hard work and a whole lot of luck, which seems to be a generic humble response from most of my interviews. However, I found a lot of truth in his analogy of “learning the rules of the game before the game ever begins.” In the financial game of life, most of society seems to be stuck in a similar scenario as Jack’s classmate, Henning. They are working just as hard or harder than most, without fully understanding the rules of success. In their mind, they are doing things right. They work to pay bills, save money whenever possible, and spend money to be happy. Well, it’s time to call a timeout and explain some rules, because most of society has either misunderstood the rules, or they were never taught in the first place.