How to Stay Motivated When You’re In the “Messy Middle”

Patrice asked, "How do you keep motivated during the messy middle after buying a house this year and saving almost 30 percent in this down market? We feel like we're not making much progress. What do you guys think?" Man, I'm going to tell you something that I've done - this is a little off, but not incredibly off. Go on Instagram and start looking at just Warren Buffett quotes and videos, because when he talks about buying during market crashes in the past, it is so amazing. If you are Patrice in the messy middle, I assume that puts you somewhere in your late 20s to early 40s, probably somewhere in that age range. Odds are, you're not retiring anytime soon, so basically, what you're trying to do is get your dollars to work as quickly as you can so they can start working for you. Well, right now, I'd love for you to flip that mindset. I want you thinking, "Holy cow, every dollar that I put to work right now today is 20% cheaper than it was a year ago." And if I can get those dollars piled in quickly, when this thing rebounds, it's gonna be exciting. And as long as I believe the system's still going to work, I'm going to trade a little bit of my time at my job to get some money. Then I'm going to take that money, and I'm going to buy something from someone else at their job for some good that I need. And so long as we live inside of that environment, businesses will prosper. And businesses in this country have continued to prosper right over the last however many years the country has been around. It has proven to be pretty resilient through a number of things, through pandemics and world wars and savings and loan crises and terrorist attacks. It's a really, really interesting thing to be an investor, specifically an investor in this country. So for someone in the messy middle, what's the motivation to keep going? Historically, while things may be painful now, my net worth statement may not look as good right now as it did last year, I'm still doing the hard work of saving and building because I believe in the future. There really will be a great big beautiful tomorrow. The key thing you just said is that you're taking a little bit today, so you have that great big beautiful tomorrow. And I love that you brought up Warren Buffett. Why is Warren Buffett so powerful? Because he's had tremendous success, and you can see he's cool as a cucumber through whatever's coming. We've done a ton of studio tours, and somebody said, "Hey, I went and fact-checked you guys. I watched your 2008 content. Y'all are saying the same thing you're saying now. It's just, man, y'all seem so much more cool about it." Yeah, because we've had a little more financial success, we're a little more comfortable, we're not worried about how we're going to pay for it. It's the same thing with Warren Buffett. There is comfort in seeing people who've been around long enough to experience this type of turmoil and know, "Hey, it's going to be okay. We're going to get through this." I also want to give you some breadcrumbs. I was traveling for the holidays and saw that our show last Friday was a recession show. You can pull up the actual name and the date that it was released. I was like, "What in the world? What are we doing releasing shows that are now 15 minutes?" Because I am doing everything in my power to get these shows down to 35 minutes. Then I was like, 'Oh, this is a highlight show,' and I mean, I started watching it, and it was bangers! I mean, this thing, whenever you go on Spotify and you're like, 'Country bangers' or 'You know how to get the party started,' you're trying to figure out, okay, this is a recession show that I found myself. And I maybe should admit this because you're like, 'What? You know this stuff. You're the one that created the car.' I watched like 20 minutes, and I was like, 'Whoa, we're dropping bombs here!' So there are shows like that where they have taken our greatest hits and smashed them all together to help you feel motivated to stay the course. Take advantage of that because it is one of those things we give you the data; we actually show you the deets so you can know what's really going on and stay motivated. Because look, you've already messy middles because you already have a lot of life pulling at you. You need to keep in and just trust that if you keep investing, doing what you're doing, with that great big beautiful tomorrow, remember a little bit of sacrifice advice a day for that great big meal for tomorrow. Tools like what we did with that highlight show will be very powerful for you. So what was the name? Yeah, if you want to go see this show that Brian's talking about, it's 'Win Financially During a Recession: Everything You Need to Know.' That's the name of it. 'Win Financially During a Recession (Everything You Need to Know).' Go check it out. Well, now you got me super curious. I kind of haven't watched that episode yet. Here's what's cool about it, and I don't know because YouTube's now gotten where they try to give you bookmarks, you know? I haven't gone to go see what they do because it's short enough; it breaks it into sections. It's very easy to digest."