You have to sell out before you can buy in. You can’t buy into something if you’re already invested in something else. In order to fill a cup, it must first be empty. You cannot start with a full cup, then make it more fuller. It – being our time, focus, and attention – has finite capacity.
This might be in relationships – buying into one group of friends means selling out another. It could be in your career – there’s only so many hours in a day and you (with few exceptions) can’t work full time in two places. It could be a big commitment – selling out a lover to buy into another. Or it could be relatively minor – selling out a gym membership so you can commit to another.
Selling out isn’t a bad thing, it’s showing commitment. You can’t commit to one thing unless you de-commit from everything else. Wherever you’re thinking about buying in, remember that you’ll first have to sell out somewhere else. Selling out is a fundamental part of the process of buying in.
And nobody says you have to buy in immediately after you sell out. In fact, I’d argue that you shouldn’t. Just like it’s good to be single for a while to figure out who you are, sometimes we need to search for something to buy into. It makes us evaluate why, exactly, we want to buy in in the first place. And when you know your why, your commitment is made stronger.
