Building Capacity

A friend and I were reminiscing about school days when we used to do well over 50 push-ups a day. Then we grew up! We stopped the good discipline as life got busy. Then as life got busier, the need for exercising got more attention. So we thought to go back to where we stopped more than 15 years ago. We couldn’t even do a tenth of our daily push-up limits. It was as though we had never done it before.

When you want to climb a high mountain, you don’t just wake up on Saturday morning and decide to climb. You plan for it, you guide your daily nutrition and workouts, grow your endurance, understand your body, and plan the luggage of supplies you would haul uphill.

When it comes to money, we’d rather just wake up rich, like in the fairy tales. Ok, it rarely works out that way. But at least, can’t we jump right in and join the race in the middle of the marathon?

No! Warren Buffet is said to have bought his 1st stock before age 10. A friend bought his first at age 38. How should they compare at age 45? One should be a “post-graduate” while the other could still be in “elementary school.”

To build capacity, we need to “build it” and that cannot happen from the top. Start with little things: save 5%, grow to 10%, then 15% and 20%. Maybe one day, you will attain 50%. To budget, start with your next shopping, then try a budget for one week. Then you grow to one month. Some people really do an annual budget.

When you plant a tree, it starts to grow as a seedling. Build capacity just like that.

.

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay