Sunk Cost Trap - Release the Things in Life That Keep You Stuck, so That You Can Follow Your Life Path

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company, I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life, the Sunken Cost Trap. We tend to value the things we already own higher than they need be. And the reason we do these, we do it with regard to things we do with regard to maybe time we spend learning a particular skill. And as a result of this time that we've invested in putting learning the new skill or purchasing an object, we tend to place a higher value on it, even when it doesn't serve us in our life, even when it no longer has utility for us. The cost of holding on to such thing is it is it eats up your resources. It eats up the resources of your time, your mental energy, as well as your money. And if you live in a small apartment, eats up your space. Search the areas of your life. Think about the areas where you know what, Maybe you're holding on to something. Maybe it's a career, maybe it's a material possession that you've had, but you don't want to let go just because you've spent so much time or resources in order to get it. When you have that thing, let me ask you a series of questions. And you can go do this with every single aspect of your life. Every time you feel like there's a change you need to make, but you're not willing to make it because you feel like you've already put so much into it that to to back out now would be a loss. Question number one, do you love the thing? Whether it be a job, whether it be a material possession, do you love it? Question number two, if given the opportunity, would you purchase it again? Would you invest the time? Would you invest the money? And then question number three, Execute. So once you've said, all right, no, I would not spend the time or money to do this again, now you already have your answer. The only thing left to do is to execute, I'm going to give you A story. I was talking with one of my good friends. We were talking about careers. He was mentioning how he wasn't really feeling fulfilled or driven in his current career path. And when I asked him, like, well, what would you want to do? What would light you up? He went on about anxiety and how he loved helping people overcome anxiety because it was something that he had an issue with, and he just knows that it would help people. When I asked him about his job in real estate, I'm like, all right, well, clearly you can do that. I see. I could hear in your voice that it lights you up. Why not go and just start pursuing this? And he said, well, but you know, how many years I spent so much time doing this, and, you know, sometimes I don't think I'm going to get the income I need right away. Like, I could sell one house, and one house will give me the income to, you know, first for six months. Where else am I going to find that? So he was stuck in this loop, and he couldn't really find a way out. And a lot of the time when we're stuck in this loop or when you're stuck in this loop, you're looking it as a zero sum game that it's literally all or nothing, when that's not really how it has to be. Because you can start a. Everything is going to take a commitment of your time, some kind of capital, either whether it be financial resources or your time. So you have to just start taking the baby steps. In the case of my friend, does he have to leave his real estate job and literally completely give it up in order to pursue this? No, he can get a job, something that allows him a little bit more flexibility or takes off some of the financial stress while still allowing him to do the real estate as well as pursue his course with anxiety. Totally a possibility. But when you get trapped in the zero sum game now, all of a sudden, it prevents you from moving forward, it prevents you from doing anything, because every option seems like it's going to be. It's going to be painful. Every option seems like you're going to get the stick. Everything is a progression. Everything takes steps after steps and they. And they compound. I'll give you one more similar story with this. And this was about a guitar I sold on Facebook, Marketplace. So I have this beautiful guitar. Remember the day I purchased it? I was in senior year, high school. I went into the music store. I just started playing acoustic guitar, and I saw this beautiful electric guitar. Inca Silver, maple neck Fender, American Standard, Stratocaster, I still remember going in and seeing this thing on the. On the wall. So I went in there and, you know, the price tag was, I think, 700 and change. It took me the entire summer in order to pay the thing off. I can't. There was a little bit of interest on it. But I had this guitar in my possession, and for the entirety of owning it, I may have played it a dozen times. And when I say played it a dozen times, I literally took it out of the case, strummed it a few times. I may have played a couple songs. I had an electric amp, but I used it more for my acoustic guitar. And then it would go right back in the case. So we could essentially say that for more than a decade, almost like 20 years, I didn't play it. When it came time to, you know, all right, well, I was going through some of my possessions thinking, what is it that I no longer need? I was looking at, you know, the guitar was one of those items. I also sold a couple espresso machines, because how many espresso machines do you really need? I didn't need five. So I had the guitar, and I put it online, and I think my asking price was $1,000 or 999. Just because you don't want to cross that. That price line. I was getting offers from, like, 750, sometimes a little bit higher. And I kept turning them down, like, no, it isn't. I know it's worth it, right? Because if someone were the same exact guitar, and granted, the quality of this guitar was much better because where the parts were being made, if they were going to buy the same exact guitar, what would they have to spend today? And it was well over a thousand dollars. So I was looking at it. Well, I was valuing it much higher. I said, all right, no, $99,099 is the minimum I'm willing to take. There was one person I was, who I ended up selling it to. I ended up, you know, we were going back and forth. I end up settling for 850 and looking back on it, yeah, I'm happy that I sold it, because without 100%, beyond a doubt, I would not have played it. I would not have picked it up once since the moment I sold it. But I was valuing it because I had already sunk so much cost. There was even emotional energy. I remember I was getting nostalgic, remembering the first time I purchased it, and, oh, well, maybe one day my kids will want to play guitar. And then I could give this to Them. I'm not even dating anybody right now, so kids are not even in the picture. So I was, you know, putting all the. Creating all this junk in my mind, but I. The truth of the matter was that I was not going to use the guitar. Right? It had no value in my life other than looking at it and looked pretty on the wall. But that wasn't. That wasn't enough. How often do you do that with the things in your life, with your career, with the place that you live, with the relationship you're in? Right. Well, you know, I can't tell you how many times I hear people are in unhappy relationships, but they're not willing to get out of them because they spend so many years in the relationship that they're like, oh, but then I'll have to start over. Well, what's. If you're not happy, why torture yourself? Why keep yourself in a place that brings you. That doesn't give you the emotional feelings that you want? It's a safety. Because you're too afraid to say, well, at least you know, the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't know. But what you're really doing is you're denying yourself the opportunity to get the very thing that you want. To have a life that's more fulfilling, more passionate, or a relationship that's more fulfilling and passionate. The point of this podcast is I want you to take an inventory of the things in your life. If you live in a very cluttered house, you could look at the physical items in your. And literally, that could be a star, right? Because literally, you could look at that as a metaphor for your life. And as you're sorting through all the stuff in your room and your house, you can start to look at the things in your life. But let's take inventory. What are the things that are no longer serving you? If you wanted to, you could literally use that first question, say, do I love this? If it's yes, then you keep it. You keep it in your life. If it's no, you move on to step two. Or maybe you're confused. If I didn't already own this, how much would I be willing to spend in order to obtain it? And how much you're willing to spend is not just in terms of dollars. How much you're willing to spend is also with regard to your time, because everything is an investment of our time. If you want to take a new career path, if you want to get into a new relationship, if you want to move to a new city, it's going to take an investment of your time. So would you be willing to put that same time into the thing that you currently have? Once you have that decision, when you say no, then the decisions are already made, right? Like once you say that you're not willing to put any more resources or that you wouldn't go back and put the resources in this, you've already made the decision. Now you know the path has literally been laid out in front of you. The only thing you have to do is to move your feet. And as I said before, it's not a zero sum game. Sometimes the process alone could really invigorate you and energize you. So let's go back to the example of my friend. He's doing real estate and he doesn't want to give up the real estate because he knows that one house could literally set him off. You know, could put him out for six months, maybe even a year, depending on the price of the house. So the idea of taking a 9 to 5 job that won't give him enough money to pay for his expenses didn't really strike a chord with him. It didn't really make sense, as it shouldn't. But maybe there's something that can literally just take the pressure off, something that could give him everything he wants, right? He could. If a house opportunity to sell a house comes up, he can sell the house. But he also has the opportunity to be social, be around people to make new connections, as well as the free time to work on his anxiety course. You could have the best of both world. Like I said, it's not a zero sum game. But by deciding and saying what you will commit the time or what you wouldn't commit the time to, again, you're literally, you're letting the path unfold. You're letting the compass point you in that true north. So that is what I want to give to you guys today. I want you to just kind of take an inventory of your life and say, what is adding to my happiness? What is subtracting from it and make the decision, make the choices, take the action to move in the direction those things that fill you up rather than things that drain you. Because not a single day is for granted or should be taken for granted, right? Because we don't know. So why spend the time in a place that is not serving you, doesn't give you the feelings that you want? If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a share, Share it with a friend who might be struggling with the thing. So maybe they can ask some internal questions and you could change help them change their path or their trajectory. If you want to ask a question, subscribe or ask or comment, you can do so by visiting www.donnyrouse.com www.donnyrouse.com thank you guys so much for tuning in. Remember, you get one life. Live it. God bless and I will see you again soon.