The Entertainment Center That Would Not Die

Music / Intro:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money and change the world.

Tracey:

Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Got a quote for you. “Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spend a lot of time making it”.

I ran across that quote on Facebook and, of course, author unknown. We don’t know. But you and I both have probably heard a lot of people who’ve said something like that.

Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spend a lot of time or money or energy making it. Well, what this made me think of is an entertainment center.

Now, if you don’t have one, if you haven’t had one in your house, your parents or your grandparents probably have. So you could be picturing it right now. I am picturing the entertainment center that my in-laws bought decades ago. It was beautiful oak. It’s this big piece of furniture that’s made to hold your TV and your stereo system. So that kind of dates it too, right. Had some drawers to hold odds and ends, and probably your VCR tapes(laughs).

Anyway, my in-law’s entertainment center. It was a nice piece of furniture, and it served them well over the years. This was before flat screen TVs were around where we just mount them up on the wall. And my father in law, he talked for years about getting a bigger TV, but he’d never do it. Why? Because the bigger TV wasn’t going to fit in the entertainment center, and they paid a bunch of money for it. It’s a nice piece of furniture in their living room. And the thinking was, well, we’ve got it. We’ve got to use it. And I totally get this kind of thinking because I like to be thrifty and not wasteful and make the most of what I’ve got. So I get it.

But now both of my in-laws have passed and we’ve sold their house. And in this process, we’ve had to get rid of all the furniture.

So we had a yard sale.
The entertainment center didn’t sell.

So I called Habitat for Humanity’s Restore and they said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll come pick up all the furniture and household items, anything you want to donate, we’ll pick it up”. So I made the appointment. He came to the house and they took everything.
Except the entertainment center.

They said, “People just don’t buy them anymore so we can’t take it because we’re not going to be able to move it off the floor”.

So next we had a family member who does woodworking and likes to repurpose stuff. So he said, “I’ll come and take a look at it”. So he comes by. Yeah. Maybe I’ll be able to do something with it then he starts looking at it. Turns out it’s not even completely made of real wood. A lot of it is pressed wood, which makes a strong entertainment center, but it’s not any good to a woodworker.

So he said, “Well, I hope you move it out to the curb”.
So that’s what we did. We moved it out to the curb.

Now the curb is where we have put out so much junk. Okay, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. We have seen it played out repeatedly with all the stuff that we put out, people who are thrifters, people who like to scavenge and resell and repurpose and take scrap stuff and just either do something with it themselves or sell it off or whatever. We have seen so much stuff that we thought, ”Really? You wanted that mop handle?”
Okay, so move it out to the curb.
The entertainment center sat out on the curb for days.
Still no takers.

So finally, the town is coming to pick it up because that’s what they do, and they’re just going to take it to the dump.

So there’s the story of the entertainment center.

Now, I am not saying at all that my in-laws shouldn’t have bought the entertainment center or that it was a mistake. It did exactly what they wanted. It was a beautiful piece of furniture. It looked good in their living room. It had their TV, their stereo, they got their money’s worth of function and pleasure from the entertainment center.

But that brings us to the point of how do you know when to let go?

We never pressed it with my father-in-law because one, it was not our decision to make at the time then and two, he wanted to think about and dream about a bigger TV, but he just wasn’t ready to make the decisions needed to let that entertainment center go and replace a smaller TV. And that’s perfectly okay.

But this is good encouragement for us to think about.

What are we holding on to that doesn’t serve us the best anymore?

Knowing when to quit- that is a skill. It’s valuable information.
It’s important to be able to come to those decisions about when do I quit? When do I stop?

You’re probably familiar with what’s called sunk cost fallacy. Now, you might not know it by that name, but you understand it. You hold on to things even when the cost outweighs the benefits, because we’ve already put time or energy or money into it. So take a few minutes and think about- what is YOUR entertainment center? What’s the equivalent?

What are you holding on to that isn’t really serving you best these days?
Is it a way of thinking? Is it a relationship? Is it a job? What is it?

Because stopping to take a look and evaluate and be aware of what’s going on in our life- that’s how we improve.

That’s how we really become the life owners and the life livers that we want to be.

So think about it, friends.

What are you holding on to that’s not serving you the best?
Maybe it did. Maybe it served you beautifully before, and you just need to tweak it a little bit. Maybe you’re going to wind up putting it out on the curb, and ain’t nobody going to take it. Wherever you fall in this. Think about what you’re holding on to that doesn’t serve you and fix it. It’s up to you because you are the owner of your life.

Now let’s go live, love, make some money and change the world.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.