Five Years or Four Minutes
Everybody has a story they tell at dinner that wasn't funny when it happened.
You know the kind. The road trip that fell apart. The job that went sideways. The week where everything in the house broke at once. You tell it now and people laugh, and you laugh, and somewhere in the middle of it is a lesson that changed how you do things. On the day it happened, nobody was laughing. It took five years, maybe more, for that day to turn into a story.
I've started to think the five years are optional.
Getting my money to work for me
For most of my adult life I heard the same two pieces of advice about money. Get your money to work for you. And buy stock in blue-chip companies and let it sit forever, because that's how money compounds.
I also read a lot of biographies. People who did big things. Somewhere along the way I noticed that doing big things usually takes big resources, or at least big resourcefulness. And almost every wealthy person I read about owned real estate. I want to say every one of them. I can't think of an exception. But I also might have read about one and dismissed him as an outlier, so let's call it almost every.
So I wanted to own property.
Jana and I bought a split 80 in Kansas, next to family land. If you're not from farm country, a split 80 is an 80-acre parcel that two partners buy together and divide, the land and everything on it. Ours came with an irrigation pivot. We lease it to a farmer who works the ground, and we share in the profits of the farm.
Now our money was going to work for us. That's what I thought, anyway.
And it did go to work, sort of. The land has appreciated nicely. We don't owe anything on it. But the profit is small, you can't turn it into cash on a Tuesday, and there's no regular cash flow. What does show up regularly is our share of the seed, the fertilizer, and whatever else falls under our half of the management. Our money went to work. Mostly for the fertilizer company.
I was proud of it anyway. I'd saved and earned enough to do big things in the little puddle I played in.
Day one in a different room
About three years after we bought the farm, I walked into a real estate syndication mastermind.
On day one I learned about leverage. Syndication. Cash flow. Depreciation. Why having the right CPA matters. The idea of investing in what the government rewards you for investing in, which is its own way of helping. And I watched people send their dollars out and have those dollars come back with more dollars, because money likes to work, and it likes to flow, and it works best when it's flowing.
I sat there and did the math on my little puddle.
You know the feeling. You find out other people were taking a shorter, faster, completely legitimate route the whole time, and you were out there doing it the hard way, working so hard for so little. You didn't know. You didn't ask the right questions. Maybe nobody told you. Maybe somebody did and you weren't listening.
That's the moment you want to beat yourself up. I did, a little. "Wasted years" was sitting right there, ready to go.
I'm not in that mastermind anymore, and syndication isn't for me right now. The room did its job anyway. The people in it opened my eyes to a whole world of possibilities, and to doors I didn't know were there.
I'm a coach, not a financial advisor. This is my story, not a recommendation.
And it didn't have to be a money story. It could have been 2001, when I got laid off and my car broke down the same week, and I had about $300 in the bank and two weeks to wait for my final paycheck. It could have been the relationship I was sure was the one, until it turned out I wasn't the one. Swap in your own. Everybody has a season they're tempted to call wasted.
Running the questions on a whole season
At the end of a day, we run four questions. We call it the 4-Minute Reflection Formula. But a day is only one size of segment. You can run the same four questions on a conversation, a rough afternoon, or a long stretch of your life.
What did I do well in that season?
What MIGHT I have done differently?
How will I be more effective from here?
How lucky am I?
The timing matters. If I'd run them in that room on day one, I'd have gotten hot answers. "What did I do well?" would have come back "nothing," and "What MIGHT I have done differently?" would have been a long list with my name at the top of every line. You have to let the clouds clear a little first. Knowing when you're ready takes practice, and helping people get there faster is a big part of what Jana and I do with our clients.
Once the clouds cleared, the answers changed.
What did I do well? I saved. I earned. We bought land and paid it off. I kept reading. And when the invitation came, I walked into the room.
What MIGHT I have done differently? Asked better questions, sooner. Gone looking for the people already doing what I wanted to do, instead of only reading about them.
How will I be more effective from here? Get into rooms where I'm not the one who knows the most about the thing I want to learn.
How lucky am I? Pretty lucky. I made it to the room.
Wasted years or evidence
I can beat myself up over wasted years and wasted effort. Or I can stack up the evidence of who I became on the way. The discipline it took to save. The strength I built doing it the long way. The endurance of my particular path. I think of it as my own spiritual curriculum. Everybody gets one. Mine just had more fertilizer in it.
None of this is new, and I'm aware of that. There's nothing new under the sun. It's all been here the whole time, and every generation puts it together a little differently, with whatever imagination and resourcefulness it's got.
That dinner-table story, the one that took five years to get funny? You can get there in about four minutes. Which is roughly how long the formula takes. You still have to wait for the clouds. You just don't have to wait five years.
Write it down
This is why we built journals around these questions. When the answers are on paper, in your own handwriting, they turn into evidence. The morning pages show what you said you wanted to experience, how you wanted to grow, and how you wanted to contribute. The evening pages show what actually happened. Flip back a few months and you can watch yourself write something into existence and then go live it.
The reflection questions are where you tweak the recipe. Morning questions going in, evening questions coming out, adjust, repeat. That's the Living Lucky® Loop. It works on a day. It works on a meeting. It works on a decade, if that's the size segment you need. There's no wrong way to run it.
Living Lucky® Practice
The Season Review
Bring one stretch of your life you've been calling wasted. Do this once the clouds have cleared a little. You'll leave with the evidence of what that season built in you.
01 Name the season.
The job, the years, the plan. When it started and when it ended.
02 What did I do well?
At least three things. Saving, showing up, sticking with it, learning something the hard way. They all count.
03 Wasted, or evidence?
On the left, what you keep counting against yourself. On the right, what that same season built in you.
What I've been calling wasted
What it built in me
04 What MIGHT I have done differently?
One or two things. Write them like notes for a friend, not charges against yourself.
05 How will I be more effective from here?
One change you can start this week. A question to ask, a room to walk into, a person to call.
06 How lucky am I?
Read the right-hand column of question 03 again before you answer.
The Living Lucky® Practice
Exercise: Pick one stretch of your life you've filed under "wasted." A job, a few years of doing it the hard way, a plan that didn't pan out. Write it at the top of a page.
Reflection question: What did I do well in that season?
Journal prompt: If I were telling this season as a story at dinner five years from now, what would the lesson be?
Action: This week, find one room with people further up the trail on something you want. A group, a meeting, one conversation. Before you walk in, ask yourself one question from the 4-Minute Luck Activation Formula: How do I want to grow in this room?
Questions people ask about this
How do I stop feeling like I wasted years of my life?
Run the reflection questions on that whole stretch, once you're calm enough to answer them fairly. Start with "What did I do well?" Most people find the years built something, like discipline, endurance, or a skill they use every day, that they never gave themselves credit for.
Can I use the reflection formula on more than one day at a time?
Yes. A day is just one size of segment. You can run the four questions on a single conversation, a project, a job, or a decade. The questions stay the same. Only the size of the segment changes.
When should I run the reflection questions after something goes wrong?
Once the clouds clear a little. If you're still angry or embarrassed, the answers will be too. Give it an hour, a walk, or a night's sleep, then sit down with the questions.
Why write the answers down instead of just thinking them?
Because thoughts disappear and handwriting doesn't. A page you wrote months ago is evidence. It shows you what you set out to do and what actually happened, which is hard to argue with on a bad day.
How do I find people who are further along than I am?
Look for rooms built around the thing you want to learn: groups, classes, masterminds, communities. Then go in asking questions instead of trying to look like you already know.
Do I need a coach to use the 4-Minute Formulas?
No. We built them so anyone can run them without us. Coaching shortens the learning curve, especially on knowing when you're in the right frame of mind to reflect, but the questions work on their own.
If you want somewhere to keep your answers, our journals and books are on Amazon under Jana and Jason Shelfer, and at livinglucky.com. If you want help shortening the learning curve, that's what our coaching is for, and you can find it at livinglucky.com too. And if you'd like more of this, subscribe to our YouTube channel. For the bad-day version of this idea, listen to the Living Lucky® Podcast, Season 11, Episode 49: "How to Stop a Bad Day From Turning Into a Bad Life."
So pick the season you've been calling wasted, and ask it what you did well. Give it four minutes.
We Create Our Luck®.
