From The Desk of Maverick Brenton.
Subject: Everything In Life Comes With A Price.
Almost two years has passed since I last dug my toes into a sandy beach, and that’s exactly what I did a few nights ago. With my feet kicked up and my back in the sand - I watched the sun slowly disappear behind the ocean.
Birds were singing, waves were crashing, music was playing in the distance. It was just me and an empty beach. Less than three weeks ago I touched down in a little coastal town of tropical Queensland, Australia, and I haven’t slowed down since.
Between partying with backpackers from all around the world, training Muay Thai and getting to know the area that’s now my home - I’ve been a little busy, I guess you could say. The humidity of this new climate knocked me around at first, but I am adapting to it at a steady pace.
Driving around each day I feel like I have moved to a new country because everything is bright green and glowing with life. And as for the girls, don’t get me started.
Women from all over the world come here to holiday and they are all very friendly. Just before Christmas last year, I published an article stating that I would be heading to Canada this year, but I changed my mind and decided on the beaches of tropical Australia instead.
So here I am.
Now most people who live in places like this take the ability to lay on the beach at night and gaze at the stars for granted. To them it’s normal. It’s normal to dig their hands and feet into sand, normal to hear waves crashing against the shore. To them it’s normal - but to me it isn’t.
So the other night while I was laying on the sand and breathing in the fresh ocean air, I felt nothing but bliss.
What more could you want? I thought to myself.
But then another thought came to mind and I only just caught it, as two people and a dog trotted along the footpath above the spot where I was hiding. My thought was along the lines of the same thoughts that the people who live on the beach have every evening as they watch the sun set over the ocean - which is to say it was a pointless thought with no purpose.
Funny that, ain’t it?
Even in moments of great wonder, our stupid minds find a way to become filled with bullshit, preventing us from being present. So I sat quietly for a moment, waiting for my mind to quiet itself.
Like Alan Watts said:
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
Once my mind was clear, I had another thought. And this thought was the thought that gave birth to this article.
What was it?
It was a thought about prices.
More specifically - it was about how you and I pay prices every single day, in one hundred million different ways. You see, those people who live where I was relaxing the other night, the ones who were locked away in their fancy houses, watching television and paying no attention to the gorgeous view right next to them.
They pay a price for choosing to live where they have chosen to live, and that price is becoming desensitised to the beauty of their location. Instead of joining me on the beach and listening to the waves, I watched them sit on their couches in their luxury apartments, playing on their smartphones and watching television.
So I wondered:
“If I lived here, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting on the couch watching television. Or would I?”
Then I got thinking**, and my thinking led me to a little something** that turned out to be more than just a little something. In the following article, I am going share what I have realised as a product of my thinking. I will attempt to break it down to it’s simplest form, provide various examples and give you the greatest understanding possible, because it’s important that you understand prices.
Understanding this concept of prices and how they apply to everything you do, will transform how you look at the world in a positive way. You will think before you make decisions. You will know that sacrifice is an inevitable fact of life. And you will be much better equipped to achieve success in whatever you desire to succeed within.
Without an understanding of this simple yet important concept – you will be just like I was, before I understood it. Always looking for something that does not exist, always trying to have your cake and eat it, always spinning your wheels.
So let’s begin.
Nothing Comes Without A Price.
Everything in this life comes with a price attached to it and absolutely nothing is free; jobs, relationships, material objects and above all – choices.
Whatever you decide, or don’t decide to do, will come with a price that must be paid. And there is no escaping this, no matter how smart or wealthy or powerful you are, for both wealth and poverty come with their own unique prices.
This is the most obvious price paid by them, and when their situation is looked at by most people, this may seem to be the only price paid by them. But it isn’t the only price; for prices come in numerous forms. They also pay the price of becoming desensitised to the beautiful location in which they live.
As a result they have removed from their life the ability to experience the experience that I experience when I spend an evening on the beach. Every single morning they wake up, make some coffee and watch the sun rise over the ocean, which at first would be pretty fucking cool. But because they’re human, they get bored after a week and it becomes the same old shit – until eventually they don’t bother watching the sun rise at all. Instead they sit on the couch eating Oreo’s.
The people who chose to live on the beautiful beach where I spent my evening last week, pay multiple prices for choosing to live where they have chosen to live. Obviously they paid a price in the form of money for their home, which would have been substantially higher than a house in a less appealing location. So their choice to live on the beach has removed their ability to enjoy an evening on the beach.
Just like eating lobster every night will remove your ability to enjoy lobster, just like indulging in sex eventually makes it boring, just like doing anything too much causes it to stop producing the same reaction within you that it produced initially.
This is the price that you must pay if you choose to live on the beach, or indulge in specific experiences. Unlike people who don’t live on the beach, you will inevitably switch off to the beauty of your location and it will stop being a great experience, until it eventually has no effect on you at all.
Understand?
The above is one example of the lesson I am trying to teach you. Every choice you make will come with prices attached to it, and sometimes those prices are hard to see, unless you are consciously looking for them. Every interaction, every transaction, every single action in this world, comes with a price attached to it.
If you choose to pursue something in life, you are choosing not to pursue something else – and there is no way around this. You cannot do everything at once and you cannot have everything at once; you must instead make bargains with reality and deal with the prices that come with what you want.
A person who chooses to not workout will pay the price of not working out – which is a weaker body, a weaker mind and a weaker immune system than a person who chooses to work out. A person who decides to go into debt for a new car so they can appear wealthy to other people will pay the price of doing this – which is less freedom, less peace of mind and the added stress of owing money. A person who decides to invest all of their time into a business to achieve great wealth will pay the price of doing this – which is missing out on the things he or she could do if they were not trying to get rich.
You pay a price for everything you do; nothing is free, and there is no way around this.
When you set goals, you must think carefully about the prices that must be paid in order to achieve and maintain the outcome of those goals; don’t commit to pursuing or achieving anything until you have accepted the prices that you must pay to achieve what you want.
If you don’t consider the prices, you will be forced to consider them when they demand to be paid – and if you are not willing to pay them, the time you have already invested will go to waste because you will not succeed if you cannot pay the price.
Now let’s talk about entitlement for a moment because these days you hear a lot of talk about how young people are entitled. This talk isn’t wrong, it’s on the money - but young people are not the only people who are entitled.
Anyone who drives a car they cannot afford is entitled.
Anyone who has debt for depreciating assets is entitled.
Why?
The act of buying something you cannot afford states the following truth:
I have not earnt what I want, and I cannot afford it, but I want it and I will have it now.
And due to smart people who like making money, if you want something you can’t afford you can have it right now, but that choice has a price and that price is called interest. Many people of the modern world including my former self, seem to think they can acquire something for nothing, they seem to think they deserve what they want, when they do not.
And this is entitlement; wanting something in life but refusing to pay the price for it.
You can’t walk into a supermarket, fill your cart with food and simply leave – you must pay for what you want because it has a price. The world is no different than a supermarket, you can’t walk in and take whatever you want without paying for it.
If you want something, you must pay for it.
If you can’t pay for it, shut the fuck up.
Capisce?
Here is another example of paying prices:
My decision to become a professional writer and make a living online came with numerous prices that I was initially unaware of. Being unable to pursue other business ideas that can produce money faster is a price, spending hours in front of a computer writing or editing is a price, and working for years without any reward or guarantee of success, to create something valuable, is a price.
Until I understood and accepted those prices, I wanted to quit most of the time – but once I understood and accepted those prices I came to terms with what was required for me to succeed as a writer (ten times more work than I initially assumed).
Once I came to terms with what was required for me to succeed, I submitted to the process and life became a little easier for me. From what I can see when I look at the world, most people don’t succeed in life because they choose to pursue things without considering the prices attached to those things and when they come up against those prices, they fold.
Instead of considering the cost of what they want to achieve, all they do is visualise their goal and think positive thoughts because that is what modern self-help promotes, but when things go wrong and when the prices demand to be paid – they quit because they’re not willing to pay up.
There is no point in visualising your goal if you are not willing to pay the price of achieving your goal. So to the best of your ability, try to understand the price of what you want BEFORE you decide to pursue it because then you will have more accurate expectations. And know that no matter what you do, there will be a price.
Business partnerships come with a price, intimate relationships come with a price, the job that seems too good to be true comes with a price, the success you want comes with a price. You won’t be able to see every price when assessing opportunities, but if you just take some time to look for them, you will be better equipped to deal with the prices when they turn up and request to be paid.
If you want to get rich, you should know that there is a price tag attached to it and almost nobody is willing to pay it in full – they might pay a little, have a go, try for a few years, but they will quit because they don’t want to pay the full price.
If you want a great body, be willing to pay for it with time and pain.
If you want anything in this world, be willing to give up something to get it because there is no other way.
Supposing you actually have a worthwhile goal, whenever you are feeling like shit, doing things that you don’t really enjoy, grinding, or really struggling to get through – you are slowly paying off the price of what you want. Feeling like shit and grinding for no productive reason is just fucking pointless.
Why would you waste half of your life in an office, working for somebody else, when you know that you want to travel the world or work as a diving instructor?
That’s what most people do, and the price of doing that is dying full of regret.
Regret is the price of wasting time.
You remember that.
Conclusion
Decide what you want and do your best to know the price of what you want, because no matter what you do, there will be something you must give up in order to get what you want. Once you can understand and accept the prices required of the things that you want, you will be better equipped to acquire them.
You won’t build momentum, then get sat on your ass when met with the prices.
You will instead hand over what you must hand over – time, money, energy, effort, sacrifice – and you will continue to move forward towards what you want without losing your momentum due to disappointment.
Know the price, pay the price, get what you want.
Simple?
Yes.
Easy?
Well, that depends on what you want.
Your Man,
Maverick Brenton
Filed under · Motivation
