Hello dear friends and thank you for joining me in this new episode of Marchez Avec Johan. And today, we're going to talk about a quote, a concept rather that I read in a book, and we're going to try to think together about how we can apply it in our lives, because that's kind of the purpose of this podcast Marchez Avec Johan on Wednesday , in which I share things that I read, that I learn, so that we can think together. And it allows you to listen to French, therefore, to improve your level of French, and I hope, sometimes to think to improve your life. That's kind of the ambition that I have in this podcast.
And today, this is an idea that I read in my journal actually. It's something that I had written while reading the book by Harry Brown, who was an author, an investment advisor, but who wrote several books, including the book How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World? So, this is the French translation. I don't know if it exists in French. I had read it in the original version. But in fact, Harry Brown, he emphasized personal responsibility and ultimately paying the price of freedom up front to avoid higher costs in the long term. And you'll see, we'll give concrete examples, but it touches on areas that are both financial, since that's what he taught, but also emotional, practical. And that aligns with his philosophy of a free, intentional, and actually chosen life, because he was… Harry Brown was very much focused, oriented toward a free life.
So one of the ideas is to say to yourself, "It's often easier and less costly to address problems or invest, to put efforts in place as soon as they arise, as soon as possible, rather than to ignore indonesia whatsapp number data problems or to postpone them." And again, this applies to all aspects of life. And you see, we're going to talk about it, we're going to take examples that are related to health, to work, to happiness, to social relationships. Well, it's true for everything in fact.
And in fact, he gives several reasons for this. One of the reasons is that inaction, doing nothing, has a cost. Sometimes we neglect it, but doing nothing, not acting, has a cost. If we ignore a problem, the problem does not go away. On the contrary, the consequences, in general, of a problem, they will worsen over time. And the longer we wait, the longer we will leave the problem without solving it, well, the more complicated it will be to solve it.
You see, imagine, you have a wall in your house with a tiny little crack, and you leave that crack, well as it goes on, it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it's going to become a huge repair. It's going to be more of a quick fix. Your house... well, or a wall in the house can collapse. If you have a small physical problem and you neglect it, you ignore it, well it can turn into a big problem, a big disease that's much more serious. So, it's never a good idea to ignore a problem and not do anything.
There is also what is called the domino effect. A problem that you do not solve can lead to another problem, create another problem, sometimes bigger. For example, if you neglect a conflict in a relationship… you see, you have a conflict with someone, you neglect that, well that can deteriorate communication and trust in the long term. So, a first problem will create others. It will chain together and create what is called a domino effect.
So, you see, one of the reasons why it's important to act early is that inaction has a cost. And so, his idea is to say, since inaction has a cost, well we're going to do what we call preventive investment, that is to say we're going to try to do prevention, that if we do prevention, it means we're doing something before we need it.
For example, you can do sports to be healthy before you need to fight an illness, for example. So, you do sports, you eat well, you sleep well, to be in a physical condition that allows you to resist illnesses, for example. So, that's preventive.
And the more you anticipate, the earlier you do something, the easier it is to manage. For example, if you invest in a good education or if you train continuously, whether at school or even by reading books, etc., well that opens doors for you and avoids the frustration of lacking qualifications later. And besides, as parents, we are constantly telling our children: "Work hard to have a good job later". So, here, we are literally in the preventive, in things that we do in advance. We will do it before we need it, quite simply. If we really work in advance, we also take care of our emotions, because it is much more difficult to solve problems that are unexpected and for which we are not prepared.
So, once again, investing, reading a lot. If I take the example of resisting life dramas, negative emotions that come after serious problems that happen to all of us, unfortunately, reading, thinking about one's spirituality, working on one's morality, taking time every day to be more resilient, well that helps us precisely when the problems in question happen to us. So, once again, having worked in advance, that helps us when we need it on D-Day.
And for that, the big key, as is often the case, is discipline, because acting early and acting before it is necessary, requires great discipline. Many people prefer to say to themselves: "Well, we'll see later". For the moment, there is no problem, so I'm not going to work on it now. Because the immediate effects, we don't see them yet in fact. So, the fact of being able to anticipate and resolve problems, either as soon as they arrive or before they arrive, requires discipline.