October 14

To make a long story short, after a while Andrew wore me down. I was convinced that he was right; I’d never make my vision of a thriving private practice come true without debting. So, I started charging business expenses. Furniture. Seminars. Buying lunch for potential referral sources. Spiffing up my wardrobe.

Once I got going, all of these purchases were easy to justify. These were all legitimate business expenses. “I’ll get a return on the investment,” I thought, “as soon as the clients started rolling in.” Looking back, my heart was in the right place. It’s just that my thinking process was a bit naïve. I had no spiritual guidance. I wasn’t taking the time to reflect, to use my head or my heart. I wasn’t strategizing effectively. I was “winging it,” throwing caution to the wind. I was forcing the issue, trying to take a shortcut, trying to make things come together more quickly than they naturally could.

That’s the allure of credit cards: you don’t have to plan, or be patient, or let things come to their natural fruition. You can have whatever you want, right now. Living the debtor’s lifestyle can be invigorating, because you don’t have to wait for what you want. It’s easy to fall in love with yourself, and start to think you’re a big-shot. It’s very addictive, because you have what everyone wants: money, power, and easy access to whatever your heart desires.

That’s the appeal, but it’s also the downfall, because once you start living this way, it’s very, very hard to stop. The problem is that the bills eventually come due, and then the lifestyle becomes a living hell. I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s exactly where my life was headed, the moment I gave in to Andrew and started using credit cards.