Be Obsessed or Be Average

with my dad. He had suffered from the physical stress of a heart condition. My mother had now found herself a widow at 48 years old with five kids, a little bit of life insurance money, or death insurance, and a big house in the country that required constant attention. My mother had no professional skills she could use in the marketplace to bring in new income. She had dedicated her life to being a wife and a mother. That's what they did back then. And now she needed to figure out how to conserve this much money my dad had left, stretch it out as long and as far as possible to get five kids through school. This was a huge challenge, particularly with no idea about how to create new income, without a college degree, without education, without ever holding a job. My mother had to figure out how to make money stretch. She had grown up in a very poor, a great depression time. She actually stood in food lines when she was a young child, and she remembered the poverty that comes with that. She didn't want to see her family have to struggle that way. So my mom became obsessed. She became obsessed, if you will, with making sure the little bit that we had, the little bit of money that my dad had left, would be enough to get us by. She saw everything. Everything to my mother was a threat. Everything was a future expense. So what she did was quickly downside. She went into massive conservation retreat that I talk about in 10x. The world had delivered her a blow. The provider is dead. A little bit of insurance money, no real knowledge of how far it could stretch, how long it would stretch. She immediately put my father's dream house on the market. We sold it. We were forced back into the city to a tiny brick house on a tiny lot, surrounded by other houses that all looked exactly the same. The lake was gone. There was no more boating, no more fishing, no more crabbing, no more going outside and shooting guns. I was crushed. Ten years old, I've lost my dad. I'm in grief. I'm angry. We all missed our father. My mother's terrified every day, every single day. On top of all that, my mom, I would watch her literally go from grief to fear and fear back to grief, and I could feel it. There was a constant fear around my mother, and it started to infect me. While other boys at my age were out with their dads playing sports, they were going hunting. I grew up in Louisiana where you fish and you hunt and you run and you play. It was back in the day where you could go outside and you would only come home when the street lights turned on. I was at home watching my mother day after day, week after week, month after month, worried about money, clipping coupons, focused on basic necessities, worried about how far this little bit of money could go. My mom could make pennies bleed. Her scarcity mindset was part of everything we did and became part of the way I thought. At the same time, my mom was constantly reminding me of how very, very lucky, how grateful I should be for all that I had. She would claim, your father got us into the middle class. We have more than most people. I would hear her say over and over, never take anything for granted. You have a bike. We have a car. You have school. You have clothes. You have food. Constant reminders, trying to make sense of the fear, trying to make sense of the grief. I tried being grateful for what we had. I tried to be appreciative, but I saw my mom scared and I couldn't do anything about it. And none of it ever sat right with me. The whole thing seemed screwed up to me. I was 10 years old. My dad was dead. The dream house was gone. Mom was living in constant fear and I was supposed to be grateful. I wasn't grateful. I was angry. I was pissed. I didn't know it then, but this time, this moment in my life would seed what would later drive me in my life. As much as I love, admire, and appreciate my mother, then and now, for what she was willing to do, for what she sacrificed in making sure that we had clothes, she managed the money, that we had food on our plates, that we had a roof over my head, for all that, that I was grateful for. The truth is I didn't want to live my life in the same constant state of worry that I saw my mom experience every day. At the age of 16, I vowed to my mother, when I grow up, I told her, when I grow up one day, like a rebellious teenager would say, when I grow up, I'm going to get rich so that I never have to worry about money again. I will never have to worry about having enough. I want affluence and abundance and prosperity. I don't want to worry like you do every day. And when I do, mother, I'm going to help a lot of people. See, this middle class thing, I told her, if it's what I'm supposed to be grateful for, something's wrong. I think it sucks. I'm going to get mine.