Don't Be an Old Fool!

I grew up in a single-parent household and I watched my mother struggle tremendously trying to raise my brothers and me on limited resources. Things that other people took for granted like having clean clothes on a daily basis, weren’t always a luxury for me. As a result, the spirit of lack took hold of me and even as I became an adult, that spirit manifested in my life to the point where I was living hand-to-mouth on a regular basis. To look at me on the outside, you wouldn’t have known because I had become a master at disguising my struggle. When I was on my own and earning an income I got into credit trouble where I ended up with two car repo’s and credit so bad that I probably couldn’t even finance a pack of bubble gum!

Now, many years older and wiser, my credit is restored and I can probably buy just about anything I want on credit. Through my many mishaps in life I have developed a motto of, “No experience is a wasted experience”. What I mean by that is that when setbacks occur in life, whether they were based in your own ignorance or not, there is always an opportunity for growth. What having jacked-up credit has taught me, is to never intentionally get myself in a situation where I can’t rent a car if I need to, open a checking account if I need to or get the lights turned on with the power company without a having to fork out a huge deposit. I took the obstacle of having poor credit, and the consequences it brought with it, to learn and grow from it.

I’m sure there are situations that have occurred in your life that you thought you would never recover from. But you did! And although you may have been down, you don’t have to be out. View the apparent set-back as a set-up; a set-up to start a new business, a set-up for healthy, loving relationships, or a set-up for that dream house. Turn those past experiences into gold mines of wisdom-gained and don’t let it go to waste. Getting older doesn’t necessary equate to getting wiser. There’s a saying that says, “There’s no fool like an OLD fool!” Capitalize on the things that you’ve learned and, please, don’t be an old fool!