I’ve heard some version of this sentence many times over the years:

“Tom, if only whatever happened to you would happen to me, I know I’d be doing really well too.”

Sometimes it’s said directly.

Sometimes it comes disguised as something else.

“You were lucky.”
“You must have known the right people.”
“You probably had money to get started.”
“You got in at the right time.”
“You had opportunities I didn’t have.”

I understand why people think this way.

They see the outcome.

They see that I retired from the job life in February 2010 at 32 years old.

They see me at 49 years old today, still living without having to return to a conventional job.

They see the financial independence.

They see the physical fitness.

They see the years of consistency.

And when people encounter an outcome they want but don’t currently have, there is an enormous temptation to reverse-engineer that outcome into a story about circumstances.

Something must have happened to that person.
Some door must have opened.
Somebody must have helped.
Life must have lined things up just right.

And whenever I hear that, I think back to what life was actually serving me when I got started.

It wasn’t exactly serving champagne.

What Was Actually Happening When I Started

When I first said yes to becoming a home-based business owner, I didn’t have some pile of money sitting around waiting to be invested.

I put the startup expense on a credit card.

My bank account was dry.

I had just lost my job through no fault of my own.

So I didn’t merely have very little money.

I had very little money and no income.

At approximately the same time, I had started attending college.

My parents were getting older and beginning to require more of my time and care.

I wasn’t sitting around wondering what to do with all my excess free time.

I was busy.
I was broke.
I was unemployed.
I was going to school.
I had increasing family responsibilities.

And somehow this was supposed to be the perfect time to start a business?

If I had been waiting for a sign from the universe that said, “Tom, conditions are now favorable. You may begin,” I would probably still be waiting.

There was no perfect moment.

There wasn’t even a particularly good moment.

I did it anyway.

And that distinction has become one of the most important philosophical principles of my life.

I Didn’t Wait for Life to Become Convenient

This is where I think people sometimes misunderstand success.

They imagine successful people reached some point where life finally cooperated with them.

Then they took action.

My experience was almost exactly the opposite.

I took action while life wasn’t cooperating.

I didn’t wait for things to become convenient.

Truthfully, I didn’t even wait for things to ease up a little.

My philosophy was simple:

The harder things got, the more I doubled down.

There’s an old saying:

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Notice what it doesn’t say.

“When the going gets tough, wait until conditions improve.”

“When the going gets tough, check back next year.”

“When the going gets tough, wait until you have more money.”

“When the going gets tough, wait until you’re less busy.”

“When the going gets tough, wait until you feel confident.”

No.

The entire point is that the response to difficulty is movement.

That doesn’t mean recklessness.

It doesn’t mean pretending circumstances aren’t real.

It means refusing to confuse difficult with impossible.

Those are very different words.

Procrastination Is the Cornerstone of All Poverties

Another philosophy I’ve carried with me for years is this:

Procrastination is the cornerstone of all poverties, financial and otherwise.

And I don’t mean poverty only in terms of dollars.

There can be poverty of health.
Poverty of relationships.
Poverty of experience.
Poverty of knowledge.
Poverty of confidence.
Poverty of purpose.
Poverty of options.

How much of it begins with some version of:

“I’ll start when…”

I’ll start when work slows down.
I’ll start when the kids are older.
I’ll start when I have more money.
I’ll start when I’m less stressed.
I’ll start when January comes.
I’ll start when I feel motivated.
I’ll start when I’m in better shape.
I’ll start when somebody gives me an opportunity.
I’ll start when life gets easier.

There is a serious problem with building your future around that word when.

What if “when” never comes?

Your Environment Matters. It Just Doesn’t Get the Final Vote.

I want to be careful here because saying circumstances don’t exist would be ridiculous.

Of course circumstances matter.

Someone starting with money has advantages over someone starting broke.

Someone with abundant free time has advantages over someone caring for a family.

Someone with great health faces different challenges from someone dealing with serious illness.

Connections can help.
Money can help.
Education can help.
Timing can help.
Luck can help.

These things can absolutely affect the difficulty of the journey.

But here’s the distinction that changed my life:

Something can influence your starting position without being allowed to determine your finishing position.

My circumstances were information.

They were not instructions.

Losing my job was real.

Having very little money was real.

College demanded real time.

My parents needed real attention.

None of those facts automatically contained instructions telling me what I had to do next.

That part belonged to me.

And that’s where personal philosophy enters the picture.

Behind Every Action Is a Philosophy

We spend an enormous amount of time talking about behavior.

Exercise more.
Spend less.
Save more.
Eat better.
Start the business.
Study harder.
Stop procrastinating.
Get organized.
Be disciplined.

All useful advice.

But I’ve become increasingly interested in something underneath all of it.

Why does one person do those things consistently while another person, who already knows exactly what to do, doesn’t?

Knowledge isn’t enough.

Most people already know that exercising is better than sitting on the couch every night.

Most people know that continuously spending everything they earn probably isn’t a great wealth-building strategy.

Most people know that procrastinating indefinitely doesn’t improve problems.

So why do we keep behaving contrary to things we already know?

Because behind the action is a philosophy.

And that philosophy determines what the facts mean to us.

Two people can encounter the exact same obstacle.

One thinks:

“This is proof I can’t do it.”

The other thinks:

“This means I’m going to have to find another way.”

Same obstacle.
Different philosophy.
Different action.

Repeat those different actions for five years.

Ten years.

Twenty years.

Now look at the difference in their lives.

What appears from the outside to be luck may actually be the compounded result of thousands of tiny decisions generated by two completely different philosophies.

This Is Why I Care About Root Causes

I’m not particularly interested in Band-Aids.

If I’m getting a result I don’t like, I want to know what’s producing it.

And if an action is repeatedly producing an undesirable result, I want to go one level deeper.

What belief is producing that action?

That’s where things become interesting.

Because if I can identify the philosophy behind my behavior, I can challenge it.

Refine it.
Replace it.

Then my behavior begins changing.

Different behavior produces different results.

Those results give me feedback.

That feedback allows me to refine my philosophy again.

And now I have a feedback loop:

Philosophy → Action → Result → Feedback → Refined Philosophy → Better Action

Do that repeatedly for years and something remarkable happens.

People start calling you lucky.

The Same Principle Applies to My Physical Fitness

This isn’t merely a story about money.

People sometimes look at my physical condition and make similar assumptions.

Maybe I’m naturally athletic.
Maybe fitness is easy for me.
Maybe I have more motivation.

But motivation isn’t a reliable long-term strategy.

There are plenty of days when I don’t particularly feel like doing what needs to be done.

My fitness isn’t built primarily on how I feel on Tuesday morning.

It’s built on a philosophy I’ve practiced for decades.

My philosophy determines what I do when I don’t feel like doing it.

That’s the part people don’t see.

People see the body.

They don’t see the thousands of ordinary decisions that built it.

People see financial independence.

They don’t see the thousands of decisions that preceded it.

People see an outcome and call it an event.

Very often, it wasn’t an event at all.

It was accumulation.

Be Careful What You Call Luck

Luck exists.

I’ve had good luck.

I’ve had bad luck.

So have you.

There are things in every person’s life that are completely outside their control.

But I think we sometimes use the word “luck” too generously when describing other people’s accomplishments.

Calling someone’s result luck can unintentionally erase everything that happened between their starting point and the result you’re looking at.

The failures.
The uncertainty.
The embarrassing beginnings.
The sacrifices.
The boring repetition.
The decisions nobody applauded.
The work that produced nothing at first.
The days they wanted to quit.
The months when nobody cared.
The years before the outcome became impressive enough for anybody else to notice.

And there is another danger.

If I convince myself that someone else’s success happened primarily because life favored them, I’ve simultaneously given myself a wonderful excuse for not changing my own life.

Because now I don’t need to change.

My circumstances do.

I just have to wait.

And that is precisely the philosophy I refused to adopt when I was broke, unemployed, attending college, helping my aging parents and putting the cost of starting a business on a credit card.

Had I waited for circumstances to give me permission, I have no idea how long I would have waited.

Instead, I decided that circumstances could make the journey harder without getting to decide whether I took the journey.

That decision changed everything.

So What “Happened” to Me?

If someone asks me today:

“Tom, what happened to you?”

Maybe this is the best answer I can give.

Nothing happened to me.

At least nothing magical.

No wealthy person rescued me.
No secret connection appeared.
No giant bank account financed my beginning.
No perfect window of opportunity opened.
Life didn’t suddenly become convenient.

What happened was much less exciting.

I adopted a philosophy and acted on it.

I decided that difficulty was not an instruction to stop.

I decided that procrastination was more dangerous than imperfect action.

I decided that my current circumstances described where I was, not where I was required to remain.

I decided that when something wasn’t working, I would examine my thinking, modify my approach and try again.

And then I kept doing that.

Again.
And again.
And again.

Until eventually the results became visible enough that someone looking at my life from the outside might reasonably wonder:

“What happened to that guy?”

What they couldn’t see were all the years when the answer was:

Nothing.

Nothing was happening for me.

So I kept happening for myself.

Maybe You’re Waiting for Something That Isn’t Coming

Maybe your life isn’t convenient right now.

Maybe money is tight.
Maybe you’re exhausted.
Maybe you’re overwhelmed.
Maybe you’re starting embarrassingly small.
Maybe you’re 25.
Maybe you’re 49.
Maybe you’re 70.
Maybe you’ve failed before.
Maybe nobody around you understands what you’re trying to do.

I’m not going to tell you those circumstances aren’t real.

They are.

I’m asking you a different question:

Why should they get the final vote?

You don’t control everything that happens around you.

Neither do I.

But between what happens and what you do next lives something enormously powerful.

Your philosophy.
Your interpretation.
Your beliefs about what this moment means.
And ultimately, your response.

That is where I would look first.

Because if you change the philosophy, you can change the action.

If you change enough actions consistently, you can change the results.

And if you keep doing that long enough, one day somebody may look at your life and say:

“If only whatever happened to you would happen to me.”

And you’ll know something they don’t.

It didn’t just happen.