Today I want to talk about the consequences of your decisions, and the fact that you have to own them, and that by only by facing the fact that you own the decisions that you make, can you really lead to success in anything.

When you start on a path and make choices, you are affecting your future, both personal success and family.

I had a headhunter give me a call, and she was talking a little bit. I decided: “Wait a minute,” there were a couple of things that she was saying, and I just decided to switch the subject a little bit and talk about Life Unsettled, what we’re talking about, and how the 45- to 64-year-old age group has so much to worry about today, and many people aren’t really facing it. Some are, some aren’t, whatever. It made me decide to change the episode that I was about to do.

We talked about the lack of savings that people have, and also what they were facing: the layoffs, the low income because they were in the baby boom, and they’ve entered a period where they should be in the net savings group, and they really have to have a lot more to save for a much longer lifetime. Part of Life Unsettled. Yet, the 65-year-olds, 97% of them can’t write a cash check for $600. Yes, they can put their credit card and put it on credit of some sort – that’s borrowing it; that’s not what I’m talking about. They don’t have $600 in cash to pay off an emergency.

I was thinking about: How do you motivate people, and how can that be passed on? The last few days, I was watching football. I’m looking at the news and stuff, and seeing people that really have a substantial income coming in. How do they get motivated, and why aren’t they motivated by the fact that when they make a bad decision, they lose a lot of money? We can take a look, for example: Johnny Manziel of the Cleveland Browns, his story. Realize that he signed an 8.3 million dollar deal. 4.3 million signing bonus, but 8.3 million dollars. He’s on the verge of killing his career, or possibly getting kicked out. He’s not the only example; there are many of them. He can’t go and make a decision and prevent himself that might cost him a million or more dollars, not to go out and party some night? If he can’t do that, how do you motivate somebody that doesn’t have a promising income to motivate themselves to pick up and earn more? That’s a very perplexing thing.

Even on the low end, you’re going to have people making $450,000 to $500,000 in a year, as I looked at it because I just looked over the salaries as they’re published of a few different teams, and they have at least a million dollars coming in this year, plus next year. That’s a lot of money. To think that if they’re going to risk that… I started relating that and said: “If they’re going to risk that income and not do what they need to or are supposed to do…” I’m not talking about performing well. I’m talking about just showing up, not going out and partying and getting drunk, or taking drugs, or something else. If they can’t do it, how’s the ordinary person going to do it?

One thing, I will give the person who’s in sports a little bit more slack than I will give you or I when it comes to things like drugs, because some of them get caught up because happens is they’re in pain from day two of training camp and they are being given different kinds of painkillers, and that could be another kind of problem. For that, I can sort of understand how that could affect somebody, but they still have to somehow get out of it. That can happen. That’s not you and I. How do you motivate the individual person, and what do we have to do?

Back in college, one of the things I noticed was the way people did things for tests, reports, and other things they had to do. Let me ask you, before I give you any more info: When did you study for your tests? When did you study for your final exams? When did you do your reports? Most people, whether it be high school or college,