2023 is coming up fast. What is your plan? Do you know what you want to accomplish? Or is your plan to drift through another year, stressed and flying by the seat of your pants? Did you have a plan for 2022? If not, how did the year turn out for you? Please listen to the video below by Dr. Jordan Peterson to find the proper way to make a schedule. If your schedule feels like a jail sentence, you’re doing it wrong.
This is an important video bought to you by the Grow Successful channel on YouTube. People use the cliché, “it will change your life forever.” It’s nonsense. The only person that can change your life forever is you. If you’re overwhelmed, you change your life by taking action, one step at a time.
Time Index
0:00 – Stop suffering
1:08 – Get your act together
2:05 – Spend time making your life better – 10 minutes at a time
3:00 – Start where you can
3:21 – You see what you expect to see
4:10 – Aim up
5:10 – Once you aim, the world reconfigures around your aim
When you keep saying, “I’m broke,” “I can’t afford it,” “Prices are too high,” “People are mean,” or “I hate my job,” you know where you’re headed.
7:00 – CREATE A SCHEDULE
8:10 – Negotiate your schedule
Every part of you has to agree. The party animal has to agree to work. The no-nonsense part of you has to agree to play. Keep your commitment to yourself.
Example: The “all work” part of you can’t say, “I know, I know, but just five more minutes,” which turns into 5 more hours. The part of you that needs to play (or needs a break) cannot be cast aside.
The part that doesn’t want to work can’t say, “Just 5 more minutes of TV,” “I’m going to rest my eyes for just 10 minutes,” or “I’m going to focus on these NON-PRODUCTIVE tasks until I run out of time today.”
You are saying you cannot be trusted when you break your word to yourself. You commit to your plan every day. Even if you fail, you must get up the next day and try again.
10:10 – Your mission – DISCIPLINE
You know in your gut when you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing because you feel AWFUL. It’s that nagging sense that you’re wasting time. It’s not the same as, “Be afraid and do it anyway.”
11:25 – Pursuing your highest goals
11:41 – What to do when you’re not happy
I’ll share something with you. I have a remote job. Comically, I thought the office politics, mean people, and terrible work conditions would go away. NOPE! For me, it got worse.
When I feel upset or afraid, I walk to my fridge and look at my calendar and look at my note, “Focus on what you CAN do.”
I shut my eyes and think:
Can I stop people from being mean-spirited jerks? No.
Can I change the office politics or culture of this company? Perhaps, but not today.
What CAN I do right now. I can do my job to the best of my ability. I’d take a deep breath and go back to work.
Did it work? I got a promotion in six months, and left the mean-spirited jerks behind. 😊
When people/situations are no longer relevant to your life, you don’t have to resist or work hard to make them disappear. They will disappear when they have nothing left to teach you.
12:50 – Two things to pursue
14:14 – What will sustain you during evil times
15:48 – The gloves come off. Welcome to basic training, aka boot camp.
16:40 – Mortal Combat
17:56 – The world shifting around your aims (apparently, worth repeating)
19:08 – CHAOS IS COMING
Several reports state we will go into recession in 2023. Some reports say it will happen in 2023 Q1; others say it will happen 2023 Q3. However, finance gurus have been screaming about a recession since Covid hit. You never know, but it never hurts to be prepared whether the recession hits or not.
20:15 – Twisting the fabric of reality
22:05 – The Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith is an interesting concept. Click the link for an explanation. If moment 2:58 of this 3-minute video doesn’t make you ROTFLOL, I don’t know what will.
23:15 – Why have a goal?
23:48 – Setting vs. Attaining a goal
24:24 – What should be your goal?
25:46– PLAN YOUR GAME – the rules of your game must make sense to you
26:57 – Life is pain – don’t resist it; embrace it
Why make a plan now? Currently, you have 1.5 months to reflect on what you need to change and devise a plan to stick with. Hopefully, it will prevent you from procrastinating to the last second and coming up with lame, weak resolutions you’ll end up breaking three days into the New Year. I mean it; get on it.
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you always got. ~Tony Robbins
How did 2022 turn out for you? Were you one of the millions caught up in the emotion of the Great Resignation? Were you a rage quitter or a quiet quitter? It was exhilarating at the time. For a second, corporate America panicked, and they started handing out reasonable, livable wages.
The tables have turned. The same people that resigned ran out of unemployment, savings, or both, and are now desperate for work. Corporate America is well aware of it, and they are offering wages that are even lower than before. People are being laid off by the thousands (by email)!
If you’re tired of begging for scraps like a dog, it’s time to create your own game. I’m not saying it will be easy. Depending on where you are in your journey, it can be incredibly difficult. Do not look at others a decade (or more) into their journey and compare yourself to them or ask, “Why can’t I make $1M tomorrow?”
The first step is to dig yourself out of the hole you created. It could take months, years, or decades. You will never get out of the hole if you drift aimlessly with no plan to get where you want to go. Playground or battlefield, what will you design?
Do you have a plan for 2023 that you would like to share? Do you have questions or concerns about making a plan for 2023? Please, submit a comment below. We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Do you ever think, “I want to be my own boss,” yet you fear you cannot survive outside the corporate system? If you think about it, it’s not shocking – you were bred by the school system to be that way.
This book was written in 1992; sadly, it’s still relevant today. It helps us to understand why many of us struggle and fail to set ourselves free from our corporate shackles. The principles we were raised on in school are the values prevalent in corporations today. Here are some excerpts from the book demonstrating the 7 principles of the academic system.
Confusion
“…a lack of coherence and a host of internal contradictions. Students have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at the constant violations of natural order passed off as quality education. I teach students how to accept confusion as their destiny.”
Class position
“I’ve shown them how to envy and fear better classes and how to have contempt for the dumb classes. The class mostly polices itself into good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.”
Indifference
“They [students] must turn on and off like a light switch [at the sound of a bell]. Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world without important work to do.”
Emotional Dependency
“I teach kids to surrender their will [through prizes, honors, and disgraces] to their predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal because rights do not exist inside of a school.”
Intellectual Dependency
“Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don’t know how to tell themselves what to do. It’s one of the biggest lessons I teach.”
Provisional Self-Esteem
This one is so heinous you need to read it for yourself. If you decide to buy the book, read every word of this and find out where you fall in this system. Discover for yourself if it has any bearing on why you act the way you do.
One Can’t Hide
Do you know the real agenda of homework? It’s closely related to why you can’t find work-life balance in any job. Jobs are designed to be all-consuming. Find out why.
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? We are programmed in a 12-year curriculum to “know our place” in a corporate system.
As we see, our bosses are just as caught up in this as we are. They have a role to play too. They have been trained to be:
Indifferent to the suffering of their subordinates
Threaten by superiority (in superiors and subordinates)
Intolerant of inferiority
Destroy/break the spirit of anything that threatens their control
Performance Improvement Plans (PIP), overly critical evaluations, gaslighting, etc.
“We need to burn this system to the ground!” one reader exclaimed. I agree. We could do that. “It would mean the end of the paycheck – the end of individuals getting paid to be told what to think or do.”
Are you ready for that? If you read this book and identify with it more than you’d like to admit, you may be ready for a change. So, the next question is, how do we repair years (or decades) of learned helplessness?
Solo Agers are people (aged 50+) who never married or had children by choice. This means that Generation X is heading toward their retirement years. This is the Do-It-Yourself generation.
We are a generation of survivors. Whatever life throws our way, we meet the challenge. “Live today, fight tomorrow” sometimes becomes the mantra of a survivalist. That mantra can leave you in a dangerous space.
We live our lives like teenagers – we think we’re invincible and nothing can harm us. We believe because we are in good health and financial standing today, we’ll be ok tomorrow. Our financial plan is to roll the dice, cross our fingers, and hope we don’t roll snake eyes.
Wake-up Call 1: The Universe is talking to you
Dailey turned 55 in 2020, around the same time that Covid hit. He started to experience severe joint pain, especially in his hands. He is a carpenter, which means his hands are his livelihood. However, his joint pain prevented him from working for long periods.
The pain kept him awake at night. He finally went to see a doctor. Over the age of 40, hearing the words, “Oh, that comes with age” from your doctor is commonplace.
Dailey is a Savvy Solo that experienced the downside of aging for the first time. At this point, he should ask the following questions:
What will I do if I can’t physically perform my duties?
If I get fired, do I have enough money to keep going until I find something else?
At my age, will I be able to find something else?
What would I do if I got sick?
Can I afford to get sick?
Without a support system, how long can I age in place?
Kinda strikes fear in your heart, doesn’t it? At first, it struck fear in Dailey’s heart too. In six months, his symptoms disappeared, and Dailey returned to business as usual.
This was a little wake-up call from the Universe. It was a gentle nudge to get Dailey to look at his circumstances and make changes. Have you had a wake-up call that you ignored?
Wake-up Call 2: Social Security as a retirement plan
Now, if this love letter from the Universe doesn’t make you jump up and take action, I don’t know what will. At Dailey’s age, he can retire in 12 years. He can retire in 2034.
Did I mention social security funds will deplete in, you guessed it, 2034? Our government won’t cut us completely off; they will reduce our benefits. We will get 77% of the benefits we were promised.
So that payout gets slashed to $1,283.20/month, which generously puts us just above the poverty line.
I just realized it too. If 96.5% of people aged 75 will have to work, that means the retirees who built a retirement account didn’t save enough. Fifty-one percent (51%) of those over 50 have retirement accounts. The average retirement account is $141,542. That means most retirees will burn through their savings and have to go back to work.
Prepare for the future
I don’t know about you, but I have no interest in donning the “paper hat” and standing on my feet all day at some McJob. You have a lifetime of experience. It’s time to think outside the box and use your brain instead of your brawn to build a healthy financial status. Start with these steps:
Calm down– there are several articles at The Savvy Solo that will help you calm your mind so you can focus on a solution. If all you are focused on is “not enough,” your eyes cannot be opened to the road leading to abundance. Example: Naomi was determined to save money, but she had a lack-mentality. So, every time she saved $1,000, her car would break down, sending her back to square one. She had to learn to take control of her mind that constantly whispered doom and gloom.
Find your tribe – you have the expertise to help someone else. Others in your tribe are there to help you. As you age, you are probably discovering being an island unto yourself doesn’t work anymore.
Quite frankly, financially, you have never made it on your own:
You needed someone to hire you to make money
You cannot grow a business without employees
If you have a product or service, you need people to buy it
You need support personally and professionally. Being a Savvy Solo is knowing the difference between standing alone and when there’s strength in numbers.
Find your niche online and get moving– start small as an online solopreneur. That’s right, to win, you have to create your own game. Ok, I feel eyes rolling and I hear grumbling. Don’t worry; I have answers to your questions.
Competition is fierce online.
So, competition is fierce offline.
But what if no one likes me/my product?
Ok, but you’re facing bullies at work who don’t like you now, so what’s the difference?
It’s all a scam
Are you joking? That scam called Amazon made $469B last year. Warby Parker, a digitally native brand eyewear company, made $540.8M.
I’m an old dog; I can’t learn new tricks.
You’re a Savvy Solo; do you have a better plan? I hate to make myself vulnerable, but here it goes (deep breath). Have you noticed; The Savvy Solo is being built one week at a time. If all you have is an hour per week, give it your best shot. Trust me, it adds up.
Unless you have millions saved for your retirement, what do you have to lose?
Last month I received my pay raise of $1,650/year – Woo Hoo! After taxes, it came out to be $0.57/hr. – D’OH! You know what? I think I’m ready to take my chances in building my online business. After seeing what Corporate America is willing to offer, I think I like my odds.
I’m an old dog too. However, when I see statistics like the ones listed above, it’s time to jump in with both feet. I choose not to be a statistic.
What happens if I fail?
But baby, what if you fly? You won’t know unless you try.
Listen, no one is asking you to be the next Bill Gates. To paraphrase Gary Vaynerchuk, you don’t need to make a billion dollars. You need to make enough to live a lifestyle that allows you freedom of choice and to live in a place with all the support you can handle. Are you with me?
Open your eyes. Use this simple retirement calculator, and let’s make a plan to help us be Savvy Solos for decades to come. See you in Part IV – Solopreneurs, entrepreneurs & digital native brands.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Before you know it, you have a couple of years until retirement. You’ve had struggles, and at times you were living paycheck-to-paycheck, but you’re a survivor who always manages to make ends meet.
The truth is you haven’t saved for your retirement at all. As a solo ager, you have only one question on your mind. Will I be ok? Let’s ask the Spirit of Halloween future…
This infographic shows statistics for solo agers. It’s scary, isn’t it? This article is short and sweet because it’s a wake-up call. We could focus on horror stories or beat ourselves up over procrastination and financial missteps. That won’t change anything. We need to focus on what we can do and take action. The first action we must take is to make a choice.
Choose not to be a statistic.
C’mon, solo agers, those finances aren’t going to build themselves; it’s time to get to work building a future that allows you to thrive. Join The Savvy Solo for future articles as we prepare to repair our finances, and maintain our independence. Let’s take advantage of every opportunity that allows us to age in place with dignity and grace.
● Inflation hits Halloween ● Employers try to prevent skilled workers from quitting ● Student Debt Relief Plan Halted and more. The Savvy Solo Scoop – Newsworthy events, current events, and eye-opening facts at your fingertips.
EDUCATION
Student Debt Relief Plan HALTED – There’s a shock
During the Beta test period, 8 million students applied for the student debt relief program. To date, 22 million hopeful Americans have asked for student loan forgiveness. We were so close, but now hope has been dashed as the plan has been “temporarily” (wink) halted by a federal appeals court. To add insult to injury, 700,000 borrowers that were promised relief have been cut from the program.
FINANCE
Legitimate Work from Home Jobs Presented by AARP
Wham, bam, it’s not a scam. Who says you have to settle for a McJob, working for minimum wage, standing on your feet all day? Here is a curated list of 15 work-from-home jobs that are open. Meaningful work, tutors, therapists, technical writers, and more pay ranges of $14.71/hr. – $55.14/hr. This list is available on the AARP job board, which means they are vetted and senior-friendly.
HEALTH
Do you have joint pain? Get up and do something about it.
If you had a dime for every time you’ve been told, “there’s nothing you can do; it’s a natural sign of aging,” you’d be a millionaire, right? You don’t have to sit down and endure joint pain. Get up and do something about it! Get a better understanding of joint pain and what you can do to prevent it.
TESTED: Collagen peptides can offer significant relief for joint pain. It’s odorless, tasteless, and dissolves completely in hot liquid. It has over 100,000 reviews on Amazon, with 77% of verified purchasers giving it a 5-star rating.
HOLIDAYS
How much will it cost to feed the little trick or treaters?
Inflation hits the Halloween holiday, with candy prices rising between 6% – 42% in a single year. The fastest risers on the candy inflation skyrocket are Skittles and Starburst. Costumes and decorations have also spiked over the last year. At this rate, some Halloween fans may have to settle for a trick rather than a treat.
MORE SCOOPS
Sad: Businesses use training repayment agreements to prevent employees from quitting. Article Snippet: “Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions,” Spellbinding:Spectacular ‘Stranger Things’ Halloween decorations wows trick or treaters. Savvy: Make sure you’re registered to vote, and check the absentee ballot deadlines in your state.
Dailey turned 55 in 2020, around the same time that Covid hit. He started to experience severe joint pain, especially in his hands. He is a carpenter, which means his hands are his livelihood. However, his joint pain prevented him from working for long periods.
Now, if this love letter from the Universe doesn’t make you jump up and take action, I don’t know what will. At Dailey’s age, he can retire in 12 years. He can retire in 2034.
Wham, bam, it’s not a scam. Who says you have to settle for a McJob, working for minimum wage, standing on your feet all day? Here is a curated list of 15 work-from-home jobs that are open. Meaningful work, tutors, therapists, technical writers, and more pay ranges of $14.71/hr. – $55.14/hr. This list is available on the 
Do you have joint pain? Get up and do something about it.