049 | Resisting Your Current Circumstances

Often in life we resist our current circumstances, looking ahead to some point in the future when we imagine life will be better.

Resistance is a choice, and it causes you to feel more discomfort and make less progress than if you accepted your current circumstances.

In this episode, we dive into resistance to current circumstances and why acceptance is the better option.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

 Topics Discussed

• examples of resistance from my own life
• why resistance is not useful
• how to get out of resistance

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

IG post: When my parents paid for everything vs. when I started using my own money 🤣🤣

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Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. How are you, I hope you’re doing well, and having an amazing day so far. I have to share. So I started recording this and nothing recorded, because somehow my microphone was on mute, and I never mute my microphone so I have no idea why that happened, but here we are, I’m starting over. We’re going to get at this stuff. So today I want to talk about resisting, our current circumstances. So many of us resist our circumstances, whether it’s not liking your job or not liking something about a relationship, or your financial situation or something else happening in your life, and I have had a lot of resistance in my own life, especially in the early years, like I spent a lot of my early years, rushing through life and wanting to be an adult I could not wait to be an adult I just knew that life was going to be so amazing. When I became an adult. And it’s funny because you’ve got this perspective as a child of what being an adult is like and how you can have this complete control over your life, and you can do whatever you want to do, but you don’t think about things like bills right you don’t think about all of the responsibilities that fall on adults that children don’t have, there is, there’s this great Instagram post that I saw, and the person was talking about how you use different items when your parents were paying for it versus how you use them now, I’m gonna link that in the show notes because I was cracking up and I don’t think that it was a corny thing as my husband would say like I think it was really funny so you guys have to let me know if you agree. But anyway, I couldn’t wait to you know get to college and be out on my own and be an adult. And then I got to college, and I was living the college life and doing all the things and having all the fun and then my senior year, I couldn’t wait to get to law school, right, that’s what I wanted to do for most of my life I’ve told you before, I wanted to be a lawyer since I was seven. And so I just couldn’t wait to get to law school and I went to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and by my three year I had a job offer here in Atlanta. I was newly engaged, I had just gotten a taste of what my life would be like at my new firm from the summer program, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Atlanta and start my life with my fiance now husband. These next stages were always so exciting, at first like oh my gosh I’m on my own, I’m in college. I’m finally in law school I’m doing and I’m going to be a lawyer. Oh, I’m, I’m going back to Atlanta, I’m gonna be doing this and doing that all the thoughts about what that next stage would be like. And I was resisting the current circumstance, right. I remember thinking that each next stage would be better than the one I was in at the time, and that’s just not true. Like, it’ll be great for a while but when the novelty wears off, then it’s just your life, you adjust to it. I remember spending a lot of time thinking about when I get to the next stage and researching things related to that next thing, it’s like for example, when I was in law school. My three year, and I’m thinking about, you know, moving back to Atlanta. I was spending a lot of time looking at apartments and things like that and this wasn’t like oh I’m moving in a couple of months so let me look at some places, I was looking probably from the start of my three year, like I was resisting having a whole year to go and law school and I was so focused on when I would graduate and would be going back to Atlanta, and I did the same thing with our debt. So we made a budget for the first time, and we were going along and things weren’t progressing as quickly as I wanted, like we weren’t paying the debt down as quickly as I wanted to. Which doesn’t make any sense, right when you think about it because we started with over $670,000 So how quickly did I expect to be paying that off. But here’s the thing like we made our budget, and we were already living fairly lean like we had planned things out where we weren’t spending extravagantly in these different categories. But then I started looking for things that we could cut in our budget. And my logic made no sense because we’re over half a million dollars in debt, so let me see if we can cut this $50 on our grocery budget, like what. That made no sense, But I was resisting, our circumstances and resisting being in debt, and making myself miserable in the process. Right, I was feeling guilty for doing things that weren’t related to improving our finances. I was feeling shame for having so much debt. I was very much in like that scarcity mentality and wanting to scrimp and save and cut, and it just didn’t feel good. I just remember it being a very heavy time feeling like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. And it was all me. Right, I was the only person causing myself to feel that way. And I know that because my husband didn’t feel the same. So it’s not just the fact that we have this debt. My husband was accepting of where we were from jump. And that’s not to say it wasn’t hard on him. I mean I can’t speak for him. I can’t say whether it was hard or not. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy having so much debt, but I know that he didn’t view our debt the same way that I did and he didn’t have the same resistance that I did. So his experience was different from mine. I see the same thing with clients to where you’re in debt, and you don’t think that you can get out or you don’t like your job or, you know you don’t like your boyfriend or girlfriend or wife or whatever, right. You feel so much resistance to your circumstances and causing yourself so much discomfort and other negative emotion, just because of the way you’re thinking about the situation, because you’re believing that your life will be better when you reach that goal. When you reach this new thing, right when you reach that point in the future where your debt is paid off, or you’re in a new job or your marriage is better, or whatever. And maybe you will truly think life is better. When you reach the goal at first, but I’m telling you is short lived, new issues, always pop up. There will never be a time where you think life is perfect, and you never have any problems they may be different problems, but there will be problems nonetheless. So when we can accept our circumstances, we will save ourselves some of that discomfort, and that doesn’t mean that you have to be complacent. You can accept your circumstances and still be committed to changing them. That’s where my husband and I are now with our debt, as opposed to me being so resistant to being in debt and, you know, beating myself up about why I’m spending this or why I shouldn’t do that. I’ve accepted it, we’re here. Right. It’s not dictating my life it’s not…I’m not making all of my decisions around this debt. When you’re so focused on the next thing on getting out of this current circumstance, like I was for a lot of my life, always looking ahead and not wanting to be where you are now. You’re not being present for what’s happening now in the present, the past and the future only exists in our minds and so all we have is the present. There’s no need to beat ourselves up over things that happened in the past. There is no need to wish things were different, or wait until some point in the future to be happy. We can be happy now just because we choose to right. You can find the good in your current circumstances, rather than only focusing on what you perceive to be bad. Find that silver lining everything you’ve experienced so far has brought you to this point, all of my experiences have brought me here with you, right sharing my story sharing my mistakes, sharing my experiences so that you can learn from them. It’s all happening exactly the way it was supposed to, I truly believe that. And so, if you are in a place of resistance. I encourage you to be here now. How is the circumstance that you’re in happening for you. What good is happening as a result of it. What can you be grateful for in this moment. And again, I’m not saying that you should be complacent and give up on your goals, and just settle for where you are, but you can be committed to your goal, while also being good with where you are now, and that will make the pursuit of your goal, so much more pleasant. And it will also help you get there faster. So if you’re in this place of resistance, and you want support changing your mindset as you go after your money goals, or if you’re just feeling stuck and you want to finally make progress with your money, I can help you. Head to rhothomas.com/coaching, we can set up a time to talk, I’ll learn more about your situation and we can go from there. All right, so that’s it for this episode, please take a second to subscribe to the show on whatever platform you’re listening on share this message with a friend, leave a review. All of those things help tremendously with spreading this message and helping more people. If you want to connect with me on social media you can find me on Instagram. My handle is @iamrhothomas, and you can also find me on LinkedIn, I’m Rho Thomas over there. Okay friend, so as we close out, I pray that you will stop living in resistance and accept your current circumstances. I pray that you will be present in your life, and see how your situation is happening for you, rather than to you. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice, you deserve. Talk to you later.