Most people have goals in life and many of those goals are related to their finances. No matter what your goals are, achieving them is about more than just thinking positive thoughts. Financial truth-teller and chief honey badger Damion Lupo shares his One Big Tip for achieving financial freedom and reaching your goals.
The Essence of the Honey Badger
Damion considers himself a financial underdog. “Unless you're born on third base with a silver spoon,” he says, “we think of ourselves as an underdog like we're fighting against a system.” The problem is, we are fighting against a system we can’t identify or don’t understand. All we know is that it’s not working.
This feeling of helplessness and fear drew Damion to the personality of the honey badger, one of nature’s most fearless animals. A house cat-sized animal with the gumption to take on an adult lion, the honey badger takes matters into its own hands and never backs down.
The reality is that the system we’re fighting against can be understood, and there are actionable steps we can take to transform our thinking from that of an underdog to a honey badger. We may not have been born lions, but we can have the confidence that lions have to achieve our goals. Damion puts it best: “If we're going to break the financial shackles in our lives, we have to be willing to be fearless, committed, resilient, and decisive all the time.”
Approaching Life Through Questions
We tend to approach life by defining what we want, but we’re missing a crucial step. We also need to be defining the steps that will lead us to those goals. According to Damion, this starts with asking yourself the right questions.
For example, he recommends putting your goals down on paper. “Write down your goals. Which of them are stuff versus experiences?” Are your goals material items like cars or houses, or are they intangible things like a strong marriage or financial freedom?
“People tend to have a lot of stuff.” Damion points out, “And there's never enough...gadgets and the widgets and the gizmos. They're never-ending—you could always have more stuff.” Rather than place value in material successes, we need to shift our thinking “from a success target to a fulfillment target and it changes everything. That’s because success is a moment, fulfillment is your life.”
Asking yourself the right questions and giving honest answers is the first step toward taking control over your financial destiny. We can’t plot out where we want to go unless we know where we are currently, so a healthy self-assessment can help us break free from the route that the system has set for us.
To get in touch with Damion and learn how to apply the honey badger mentality to your life, you can find him at financialunderdogs.com.
