Fill All The Cups Pt. 2

An interesting statistic I heard yesterday put me into some deep reflection…

It was based on how much money a man would need to make a year to fund a family of three children and two adults.

For a major city like Houston, Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta the answer is $300,000.

For a more upscale city like Los Angeles, Miami, or New York the answer is $400,000.

And I’m talking about comfortable living…

Nice big house, you have a nice car, wife has a nice car, child care, private school, you can buy practically whatever you want, etc.

Obviously, you can bootstrap things, I mean hillbillys have 6 kids and live out of a trailer, but that’s not something I’d really want to do.

Once I heard that statistic I really started to think about what I really want from life.

Without a doubt, I want kids and I want a lot more than 3, I’m thinking more in the range of 5 or 6.

And there’s a reason for that too…

My sister doesn’t want to have kids and she’s my only other sibling, so the responsibility of growing my family tree is on me.

While my relationship with my father isn’t too pretty as you may have seen in the last substack post I put up…

I still have a massive amount of respect for what my ancestors had to go through for me to be where I am.

Cold, harsh, brutal Russian winters…

A constant wave of famines…

The terrors of communism in the USSR and everything before that…

I refuse to let all that go to waste over some selfish bullshit.

I believe part of a man’s duty and purpose in this world is to make sure we honor our bloodline and heritage.

Call me old-fashioned, but I want to make sure all of their struggle and suffering doesn’t go to waste and that I create the strongest, smartest, and most emotionally intelligent part of my family tree.

Deep down to my core, that’s what I want more than anything in my life.

Older people will try and tell me how I’ll feel different once I have kids, and maybe I will, but right now I know that when I sit and ponder all of the possibilities of my life…

If I accomplished having a nice big family with strong sons and beautiful daughters, I would die a very happy man.

So if that’s true…

And comfortable living for 3 kids is $300,000…

Let’s say for 5-6 is about $500,000…

But then that also doesn’t really include business ventures, investments, passion projects, or toys…

So let’s realistically say that the income range for comfortable living for 5-6 kids with plenty of abundance cherries on top is about $750,000 a year.

That’s just based on my own personal way of spending money and also accounting for the fact that my wife is probably going to be just as boujee as I am.

The reason I said this statistic put me into deep reflection is that I had to admit to myself I’m messing around with dating a bit too much…

And lately haven’t been putting nearly as much attention as I should on the business cup because my priority has shifted a bit more towards dating.

But if I’m going to live out the principle that my guy Cody talks about, which is asking myself, “What needs to die in me to become the man I said I would be”…

And if I’m serious about being able to create this vision of having a big family…

Then I have to be honest, I should be putting more of my attention into my business cup right now, especially since I’m in my 20s and can wait until I’m in my 30s to have kids.

I’ve touched on the principle of life’s cups before, but let me expand on it a bit further because this red bull is kicking…

We have 7 cups:

• Spirituality (Your relationship with god and the energies of this world)
• Personal Development (Working out your mind and your body)
• Your Money (Business, Career, Finance Management)
• Your Love Life (Dating, Relationships, Marriage)
• Your Tribe (Network, Friend Group, Being Well Known Around Town)
• New Things (New Hobbies, Activites, And Ventures)
• The Material World (Cars, Clothes, Physical Things)

The poor logic most people have is I have to fill one of these cups AND AFTER THAT I can fill the others.

For example, I’m going to fill my money cup AND AFTER THAT I can go meet a girl, create a friend group, start hitting the gym, etc.

But truth is, this linear form of thinking will just keep you stuck, and I’ll explain why here in a moment.

The proper way to think about it is in a simulataneous approach which is just removing the word after from your thought pattern.

I’m going to fill my money cup…AND THAT allows me access to better events where I’ll find more attractive women, access to masterminds where I’ll be able to meet better guys to add to my network, the ability to hire a personal trainer who can help me get in better shape by pushing me harder in the gym, etc.

Filling one cup fills all the other cups, even if the other ones don’t get as much time and attention.

You drink from a cup, and you may keep drinking from the business cup while you allow the other ones to fill so when you feel like going to go drink from them, they’re actually filled, not as dry as a desert.

My friend, you have to remember, we become what we think about.

You may not think this is that much of a difference, but I promise you this form of thinking leads to drastically different results in life.

Thinking about how you have to fill one cup before you can fill all the others will lead to all the other cups being empty and one cup being filled.

But thinking about how filling one cup fills all the other cups at the same time, will lead to…

Drum roll please…

All cups being filled, and you can choose when you want to drink from them.

Think about it like this, if we have an airplane flying straight…

Turning the airplane 1 degree to the left and continuing with the same velocity will end up with the airplane in an entirely different location given sufficient time and distance.

Same thing goes for your way of thinking.

Slightly different form, massively different results.

Anyways, I guess this is a long winded approach of saying that I was drinking a bit too much from the dating cup recently.

And in order to really get the love life I want, I should pour more of my time into the business cup so I can really be set up in a proper position to enjoy my love life cup.

That doesn’t mean I’m going monk mode and not talking to any women at all…

If an opportunity presents itself, I go for it.

What it means is that I’m not going to let it occupy my day to day focus as much.