You Are a Badass at Making Money

Wait, is she describing my journey with trying to make money? listen up
because there’s a lot of good stuff here that will help you escape the icy
forlornness of your empty bank account.
The first and most important thing this climber did was to decide that he
was going to live. This might seem like a no-brainer, the instinctual will to
live and all, but . . . have you decided to live? I mean really live the way
that you know you’d love to? If you’re serious about getting rich enough to
live your life to the fullest, you have to decide to do it with the tenacity of a
man facing life-threatening and unbeatable odds with a really bad song
stuck in his head. Because the second something goes wrong or gets hard or
costs a lot of money or time, if you have decided lite instead of decided for
reals, the second the going gets tough you’ll be pulling out your favorite
excuses, scripting convincing soliloquies on why quitting makes excellent
sense, and weighing your options: Well, if I just give up and lie here, I
reckon I’ll be frozen solid in a couple hours, won’t feel a damn thing after
that, and then I can gaze up at the stars until I slowly slip away and the
birds start picking at my tore-up leg.
You have to have a 10-ton gorilla of no-nonsense decidedness breathing
down your neck to do what it takes, plow past your fears and subconscious
hell nos, and leap into the unknown. Deciding means there is no plan B,
you’ve yanked in your one foot out the door and now both feet are inside,
fully on board, ready to kick some ass.
If you’ve made a backup plan, you haven’t made a decision.

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The Latin roots of the word “decide” literally mean “to cut off,” meaning
all other options fall away and you are committed to the decision alone.
People have such meltdowns and resistance around making decisions,
because they panic and fear that by deciding on one thing, they will miss
out on all the other cool things they want to do. Meanwhile:
You can’t do anything if you try to do everything.
One of the biggest banana peels on the road to success is fragmenting
your time and focus. If you’re all over the place, you’re half-assing a bunch
of different things instead of kicking ass at one thing. Figure out how you’re
going to get rich, make the no-nonsense decision to keep going until you
reach your goal, and, as part of your reward, you’ll get to do all the other
things you couldn’t do while you were busy sticking by your decision to get
rich.
If you ripped this page out of this book and did just this one thing—
decided with 100 percent commitment that you will get rich and stick to
your resolve to do so until you’re rollin’ in it—you would be victorious.
Because when you decide, you automatically become obsessed with
thoughts of making it happen, you’re looking everywhere for opportunities,
scary ones, your faith is strong like bull because if you didn’t believe
getting rich was possible you wouldn’t have decided to do it in the first
place, you’re grateful that what you desire already exists, it’s all you think
about and has become real in your mind, you take huge risks, and you have
zero patience for anyone who tells you it’s not going to work. Think about it
—you can make a decision as menial as changing the color of your
bathroom and you’re suddenly a force of nature, looking at the paint on
walls you’ve seen a million times a whole new way, talking excitedly about
nothing else, inspiring friends to leap behind plants when they see you
approaching with yet more paint samples in your hands. A firm decision
sets everything in motion—your mindset and your actions—and also alerts
Universal Intelligence that this is how it’s going to be, and it starts moving
everything you need in your direction.

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Your desires are brought to you via thought, and you receive them by
deciding to take action.
I want to point out here that when I say that the Universe starts moving
everything you need in your direction, this goes for ideas as well as
opportunities, people, and things. When you make a decision and alert
Universal Intelligence to bring it on, you have to pay close attention to any
thoughts and big new ideas that come into your head. You must catch
yourself before your old conditioning can fling itself in your path and try to
block the new you. What, just jump on a plane and show up on Uncle
Steve’s doorstep to ask him for a job? No way! That’s insane! One good
idea that comes in out of nowhere can change your entire life, but it ain’t
gonna do nothing if you don’t act on it, and your subconscious is so ninja it
can stop you without you even realizing what’s happening.
Brilliant ideas are love notes from the Universe that say: This is for you. I
think you’re hot. And capable. Go share your stunning youness with the
world.
I can’t tell you how much time I wasted (okay, forty years) pretending I
could do things differently, instead of acting on ideas that seemed out of my
reach or would have cost me money I didn’t want to spend. In other words,
ideas that would have forced me to grow. I blazed by countless strokes of
genius without even giving these ideas the time of day, just instantly tossed
them aside as impossible. Next! Then back to complaining, spinning out,
wondering why oh why can’t I get out of my suckhole? The Universe must
have been like, I just gave you exactly what you asked for! Are you freaking
kidding me?
A great example of a life-changing idea is one that came to our poor
climber stranded on the mountain. One of the few possessions that
somehow made it through his ordeal was his wristwatch. As he’s lying in
the blinding snow gazing across the insane amount of ground he has to

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cover with his janky leg and empty water bottle, he picks a spot off in the
distance where there’s a bit of an incline or a drop off or something
noticeable that marks it, and decides he has to get there in twenty minutes.
He sets the timer on his watch and no matter how much pain he’s in or what
obstacles he happens upon along the way, all his thoughts, energy, and
determination are focused on getting to that spot before the timer goes off.
He said it was the only way he could handle crossing the devastating
expanse before him without completely flipping out about how impossible
it seemed. He took each twenty-minute challenge extremely seriously. He
made reaching his goal before the timer went off nonnegotiable and urgent,
and understood that if he blew it, a whole lot more was at stake than just
losing against a wristwatch.
When we set out to make big changes in our lives, it’s very common for
the beast of overwhelm to lunge. We still have everything going on in our
present lives, and now we’re adding more stuff to our to-do list in order to
achieve new goals? Are you kidding me? And it’s not just more stuff, it’s all
the big scary stuff that we’ve been too wimpy to do up until now and it’s all
so big and crazy and suddenly you feel like, Holy crap, I can’t move.
Seriously, I think something happened to my arms, I can’t lift them. . . . And
then, once again, mastering your mindset comes to the rescue. Overwhelm,
just like calm, is a state of mind, and all you have to do is choose which