Nothing Happens Until Something Moves

Have you ever thought about what life might be like if you were completely debt free? What would you do?  How would you act? Where would you go?

Most people would think about “me.” How would it affect me? Then, if you have a family, how would it affect them? But how many of us have thought about how becoming free from debt affects the rest of the world?

I think we all have a vague understanding that everything we do somehow affects the world at large, but it’s just so big picture that most of us don’t really think much about it. Not to get all “Avatar” on you or anything, but we’re all connected in one way or another.

I’ll demonstrate using a concept I teach in my Celebrating Financial Freedom course called the “Precessional Effect.”

The Precessional Effect was developed by the famous scientist Buckminster Fuller, who used it when talking about the movement of planets. It’s simply the concept that one moving system affects another. Every planet in a system affects the movement of every other planet in the system. If you take one away, then the movement of all the others changes, sometimes in very surprising ways.

And so it is with people as well. The decisions you make financially can affect the rest of the world, sometimes in ways you’d never expect. Let’s take a look at an example of precession at work that I use in my Celebrating Financial Freedom course.

Let’s say you’ve decided you want to get out of debt. You made a plan, stuck to it, and over time you got it done. So far, your life and your family’s life has changed.

But it goes farther.

You’re so happy about being debt free that you tell others, and a few get inspired to do the same. So now you’ve directly affected a few lives by the action you took to change your financial situation.

But there are also indirect effects.

For instance, your friend Stacy gets out of debt because you inspired her with your experience. Stacy has always wanted to feed hungry kids in poor countries because she grew up poor as well. When she was in debt she didn’t do this because she was living paycheck to paycheck.

Now she sponsors a couple of kids in Central America. One of those kids, Tomas, is very intelligent, and now that he has enough to eat he can concentrate on his schoolwork and excel academically. Because of this he earns a scholarship for college and eventually graduates with a degree in Science and grows up to be a medical researcher, performing research that saves literally thousands of lives.

It all happened because YOU made the decision and took action to rid yourself of debt. It would never have happened if not for your actions that preceded the entire chain of events.

As Einstein once said about this concept, “Nothing happens until something moves.”

The point is this, we are all connected, and your good decisions and actions have far reaching effects that you can never imagine. When you decide to change your financial life for the better, or any part of your life for that matter, you change the world for the better, every single time.

Action Step: Take a class, read a book, ask someone for help to start your journey toward debt freedom.

Did you ever do something that had a totally unexpected effect?  Let’s talk about it, leave a comment.

Dr. Jason Cabler is a Christian personal finance blogger, author, and speaker. He teaches how to get out of debt and live a debt free lifestyle through his Celebrating Financial Freedom blog and self study course. His new book How to Budget:The Quick and Easy Guide to Making a Budget That Works is now available (more info here). He can be reached for interviews or  speaking engagements by email, and can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and Google +.

Publication date: March 13, 2013