Music: How to Apply a Love for Anything into a Love for Learning Personal Finance
Often, people treat music as background noise and are almost completely unaware of melody or
lyrics. They pay close attention only after a piece has become a favorite. They do not appreciate
the full range of pleasure music can give.
Give music the attention to detail it deserves. The artists are amazingly talented and went through great pains for your [listening] pleasure. Should you not return the favor by laboring to fully understand the beauty of their creation?
Music, Art, and Attention to Detail
What do I mean by paying attention to details of music? First, it means listening while not distracted. Certainly this is not practical all the time. However, when I like a song, I set aside time to listen at least once while I am not distracted. Then, for the songs I really love, I look up the lyrics to read them and reflect on them. Ah, the wonders of the modern day search engine! Finally, I turn to YouTube to watch the official music video for those songs and artists I truly love. When I use the term artists, I refer both to the writer of the lyrics and the ones performing the song. Sometimes they’re one and the same.
So what does all of this have to do with personal finance? Simple — applying this level of attention to detail for anything that you love or that you want to learn more about will yield you amazing results. It’s been said that, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I think nothing could be further from the truth. Learning a new language is significantly harder as an adult than it is for comparing to a 3 or 5 year old child. The key to learning that new “trick” or skill is acknowledging that the possibility to learn still lies within you. If you develop a strong reason why you must learn something, then you can develop a mindset and habits around learning it. When you combine these thought processes with good and SMART goals and everything will fall into place.
Find Your WHY – Start With Questions
What are some possible strong reasons why you might want to educate yourself further in personal finance and the investing world? A desire to be wealthy — too superficial. Lacks specificity. A desire to be the master of your own time — better, but still not quite there. Figure out first what you would do with your time if you were independently wealthy. How would all your extra time be of benefit to you? How would your time benefit your family? How would your time benefit others? Reflect upon these questions for a while and seek your answers. Once you find those answers, I suspect you’ll have already come up with a strong reason why you want to learn about personal finance. That why will motivate you to learn all you need to learn about with respect to personal finance and investing — and you’ll learn these topics extremely well.
[My wife, Nina, @Ms_Financiallit , wrote a very powerful article (one of our personal favorites) sharing a possible life you can have once financial freedom is reached. We invite you to read her article by clicking here.]
You Are Not Static
You are not static. You’re not the same person or necessarily good at exactly the same things as you were 10 years ago. Nor do you have to be the same 10 years from now. No matter your age, you can learn new things. You can even learn on subjects you may find intimidating at the moment.
I know this from having lived it. Twice in my life I have fallen off my personal path of learning and that’s ok. Not ideal, but I learn from those darker times and carry them with me always.
My life motto is “Bend reality to the way you want it to be.”
I believe in you. Go ahead, sprinkle some awesome sauce onto your life.
Disclaimer: In my brevity, you may be left craving for further information or a deeper explanation. Please feel free to ask any questions on your mind and I will always do my best to answer in a timely fashion.
I’ll close this post with a poem I wrote about musical lyrics back in 2008. The first stanza of the poem is my own writing and the remainder is a weaving together of lyrics from a few different artists I love.
Music is that which brings us all together.
On the smallest scale, all the universe plays the same song.
Music can be selected to fit your mood or if you want your mood directed.
Great lyricists are like the modern day poets to me.
A little voice inside my head said, “Don’t look back. You can never look back.”
What the head makes cloudy
The heart makes very clear
Celebrate we will
Because life is short but sweet for certain
We’re climbing two by two
To be sure these days continue
You know she feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life
She would change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
Sit awhile with TV’s hungry child
Big belly swelled
Oh, for a price of a coke or a smoke
Keep alive those hungry eyes
It’s a shame our world responds to life
As a puzzle in disguise
I wish our course would lead us towards
The peace and loving kind
And the battle’s just begun,
There’s many lost but tell me who has won
The trenches dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters torn apart
And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and T.V. reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die
“There must be some kind of way out of here”,
Said the joker to the thief
No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
This is my first read of your blog and this article was a great read. I learned how powerful my WHY can be and that I have more control of my life direction than i previously thought. Thanks for writing this.
Hi Jasiel,
Thank you for the compliment! I’m happy to write and I always hope that what I write is of value to others. Please share this post with others who can benefit as well.