Over the last two lessons we’ve been looking at the strange thing about advice. On one hand, the worst thing we can do socially is give unwanted advice while on the other, one of the wisest things we can do is try to gain a healthy amount of advice from those around us. To take this a step further, one of the kindest things we can do for ourselves is to gather a healthy amount of advice about various topics when we don’t need it. When we’re in the thick of a situation, it can be hard to ask advice whether there’s a shortage of time or brain space. This is particularly important since when the pressure is on to make a decision, we can easily get overwhelmed. If we’ve already gathered information we can draw from in a difficult situation, we have jumped ahead of initial struggle. We might not even need to consult others for advice if we’ve already learned what we need from those around us.
Having gathered a variety of knowledge can also lead to our own interesting logical conclusions. For instance, I’ve been talking to a number of young people who have been feeling purposeless and unmotivated. Each of these young people are very likeable, but they’re in a spot where they’re not working or only working very part time hours leaving them a lot of free time. Free time is a gift… if you’re busy. Free time is a curse when you don’t have a lot going on since it typically leaves people feeling blah, which makes it harder to push themselves to get moving. When you’re in this state, it can even be hard to push yourself to see friends or do something you know you enjoy. Some people wake up happy in the morning (you know, weird people), but most of us feel groggy and aren’t excited about shaking the sleep out of our eyes, especially if we have the option of going back to la-la land. I’m a busy-aholic and I learned a long time ago if I don’t have a reason to get up in the morning, it’s even hard for me to get moving. As they teach in physics, an object at rest wants to stay at rest while an object in motion wants to stay in motion.
What was my answer to this problem for the young people I talked to? A piece of advice I heard in a sermon many years ago. The pastor said the first command in the Bible, the first command given by God to humanity, the first words spoken to humanity is be fruitful and multiply. This isn’t just a command; it’s the key to a fulfilled life, which is later reiterated in the wisdom book, Ecclesiastes: “And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.” (3:13) Why are these young people struggling? They’re not being fruitful or multiplying. What does being fruitful mean? It’s doing tasks that give us a sense of accomplishment like building and creating things. It can be as simple as making money in order to eat. And what does multiplying mean? Most people think “multiplying” means making babies, which is funny to think that the second command given to humanity is to have sex and then later staying up all night not getting any sleep for five months until you can sleep-train a baby. Multiplying simply means growing your family, which can include any loved ones we connect to in this journey of life. Multiplying means at our funeral there’ll be a lot of people sad to see us go.
When I came up with this answer, the advice I remembered wasn’t something that I was specifically taught for this particular situation. It just fit. That’s the benefit of learning things along the way and being open to what other people have to say.
This teaching of being fruitful and multiplying to feel purpose I used for people not doing enough, of course, can be flipped on me in the other extreme: (dedicated employee) “If I’ve worked a steady job for many years, why do I feel so blah?” How do I know this is a likely question? Because I’ve also met people in this boat including the guy in the mirror (and by that I mean me and not some creepy guy looking in through my bathroom window). Tonight, during my jog to clear my head and body of the day (a necessary activity after a long day talking to clients), the answer randomly came to my head: When people work out, they need to change up the routine every month or so. These changes don’t have to be major, but little things can make a difference because doing the same thing over and over in our workouts gets stagnant, boring, and doesn’t challenge us to create any growth. If this teaching works for our workouts, doesn’t it make sense that it would be the same for our careers that span years? 14 years ago, I was in Las Vegas with a friend, and we ended up buying tickets to see David Copperfield. I was super excited because I grew up watching his specials on TV. Before the show, I struck up a conversation with the couple beside us and we were all a little giddy because we were so excited to see Copperfield’s brilliance live. When he entered the stage, the audience erupted into cheers because we had all paid good money to see someone and something special. When his performance began, the best way to describe the show was: “Here’s a trick… here’s another… and another… is this almost done yet?” He couldn’t have looked more bored. In his defence, he was doing the same show twice a day six days a week for who knows how many years. What was his main problem? He needed something new to stimulate him. If having screaming fans can get boring, how much more will our jobs if we don’t mix things up in some way?
This idea of being selective with the advice we hear was very in place for a recent experience. No, this wasn’t a renovation or addition situation like most of my stories have been for the past four years (you’re allowed to cheer). One day in the last week of school, my wife left the house around 230pm to pick up the two older girls from school. When she came home at 330pm, the driveway was empty, which was not how she left it. When I came up from my office at 4pm between clients, my wife said, “I didn’t think you were home because the car wasn’t in the driveway,” and I replied, “I guess that means someone stole it.” No, I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was stating a fact because if my wife was driving the other car and had all three kids with her and I was working in the basement, there is no one else in our house who had access to the keys to move the car. Arguably, someone stealing our car was better than any of my girls driving away with it because my two-and-a-half-year-old is cute, but she can’t even drive her babydoll stroller without smashing into walls.
What’s confusing to me is we had a 2012 Toyota Rav4, which means it’s a 14-year-old car. It had 212,000km on it. How could it be worth that much? Turns out… it’s still worth a fair bit. We bought that car in 2018 for $12k. That was the most expensive car I’ve ever purchased, and it was the nicest and newest car I’ve ever owned… well, “owned”. It was my wife’s car. She had grownup in a Toyota family and insisted on her car being Toyota. I recently found our same car, same model and colour, with 100,000 more kilometers on it then what I bought ours in 2018, which was about the same number we currently had on our stolen one, selling for $11k. We’ve owned the car eight years. How is it still worth that much? On top of COVID’s screwiness, Toyotas and Hondas are about $5k more than their North American counterparts. I know they have a good reputation, but the week before the car was stolen, I spent $1100 on a silly repair, and since I drive it maybe 10,000km a year (working from home is a dream that way), I had asked the mechanic if I should be updating my vehicle. He said, “It’s a Toyota. It’ll go forever.” Sure, it’ll run forever because it has a good engine, but what about the rest of it? A 14-year-old air conditioner isn’t what it used to be. Maybe if I was good at fixing cars the age wouldn’t be so bad, but this doesn’t seem like a safe gamble for me. And yes, if you noticed, I had just spent $1100 on a car a few days before it was stolen. The thieves had impressive timing. At least it put the idea of updating the car in my head – a small bonus… a very expensive small bonus.
The great news for me was our car was still worth a good amount compared to what we had originally paid (only losing $1000 in value over eight years owning the car is unheard of). Naturally, the insurance didn’t want to pay what a replacement would actually cost, but my wife had been told you never take the first amount the insurance offers. You want to prove its true worth. That was great advice because after I sent them five similar Toyota Rav4s for sale, they offered us more money. Overall, the insurance, Intact, has been very good to work with just like they were a few years ago, when a drunk schizophrenic rammed our parked car (that’s a story I share in my book coming out this fall). The same week my car was stolen, my friend who lives two blocks away had a drunk 19-year-old driving a corvette smash his parked car (and two others). His experience with insurance was brutal. I had originally been with that company on his recommendation. Fortunately, I switched companies after meeting a mortgage broker in a business group I was once part of. My friend might have had a slightly better rate since he was under a university alumni plan, but it hasn’t been worth it. Conclusion? Be careful who’s advice you follow.
Funny Note: When I told my mom I was looking at cars, her advice was “Don’t buy a junker.” It’s like she knows I’m cheap, and she was afraid I’d let my cheap side go overboard and set me up for failure.
My dad was a Ford man… even though he mostly drove Hondas. In my twenties, I had a Ford Focus and a Fusion that died around 270,000km when the timing belt/chain broke, but that’s more on my mechanic at the time for not doing proper maintenance updates. I had another Fusion I sold to a friend because my wife made me buy a minivan when we had a third kid, and it’s still running strong surpassing my 270k mark. My wife being very Toyota biased, naturally wanted another Toyota, but since she drives the minivan, this car was for me. I had a choice between a 2018 Ford Escape for $10k or a Toyota Rav4 for $15, but it’d either have a lot higher age or kilometers on top of the extra $5k. Guess what I chose… I chose to convince my wife that my dad’s brand was the way to go this time. Her original choice to buy the Rav4 worked out because of our insurance return, but I chose to have a nicer, newer car, at a much lower price because it seemed like the wiser choice (I guess we’ll see). Taking the collective information I’ve gathered over my life, I made the best choice I could, and it looks like it was the right choice. Even my mechanic was impressed with how clean and in good shape it is for an eight-year-old car at the price I paid. Toyotas might be more expensive, but Fords make a much nicer interior, and I feel spoiled driving the new car.
Bonus Lessons I Learned Buying This Car:
- You have to filter the advice you hear from others, especially when it comes to cars because there will always be someone who hates the brand of car you drive.
- Listen to your spouse, but accept you’ll have different opinions. My wife was very against my first choice, which was another Fusion, but listening to her preference of an SUV, she felt heard that I did something she wanted thereby making the purchase easier for her to accept.
- Autotrader.ca helps make looking for a specific car so easy. It was actually a lot of fun.
- Be careful of pride. I could’ve spent $2k more on a similar version of my car with a sunroof, which looks awesome from the backseat of an Escape. I had, however, once heard if a sunroof isn’t sealed properly, a slow leak into your car you don’t notice will lead to mold that can ruin a perfectly good car, so I fought the temptation to spend the extra.
- Know your limits, but be flexible. There were a number of really cheap cars that were being sold “As is”. I’m not good with cars, so this would not be a wise choice for me. There was even a Fusion for $4k private sale that the owner was upfront about saying it needed a $3k repair. The car was worth $10k or more with the repair, but I fortunately found a safer option… and by safer, I mean it was safer for me not to buy a car my wife might kill me for buying if it didn’t work out.
Bonus to the Bonus: Our car being stolen has turned into a major blessing. The insurance ended up offering us exactly enough to buy the Ford with a $150 to spare. Coincidentally, that was the exact amount it cost me to have the oil changed and checked over by my mechanic. As He often does, God took a bad moment, and gave us a blessing out of it.
This week may you consider how you can gather good advice you don’t need right now.
Rev. Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people (like me)
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