Gazelle Intensity

There is no getting rich quick; getting out of debt, however...depends on you

I’m a storyteller at heart, so it’s not a surprise that stories tend to stick with me.

When I was taking the Financial Peace University course, the concept of gazelle intensity was explained by Dave Ramsey based on a nature show clip that most people can remember seeing. It usually plays out like this:

A peaceful herd of animals are grazing, in this case it’s gazelle. Unbeknowst to them a cheetah lurks in the high grasses, eyeing which of them would be lunch. Finally making a decision, and leaping forward, the cheetah takes action.

What’s chasing you? More importantly, can you outrun and outlast it?

The herd is suddenly whirled into chaos, scattering in a fight or flight response. As a viewer, you’re likely routing for the gazelle. As the cheetah, considered one of the fastest mammals on earth at 70 miles per hour, selects and chases one in the herd, it starts to become clear that the need to survive is far more powerful, and effective. Darting and dashing for its life, the gazelle starts to exhaust the cheetah, which ends up slowing to a trot, panting and dejected. He wanted lunch, but the gazelle wanted to live far more. (At least on this day.)

It should be noted, the cheetah’s speed cannot be sustained for very long; just for a few hundred yards, in fact. And it needs at least 30 minutes to rest before it can hunt again. By this time the entire herd has moved on. Which is why cheetahs don’t hunt every day, and are successful about 50 percent of the time.

In this scenario, picture you as the gazelle. If you have longstanding debt, which maybe you have been managing juuuuust enough to stay afloat and continue to graze, unaware, what would happen if even a minor emergency like a fender bender came emerging from the grass?

The decision to take action is the first step and often people do so with the best of intentions. Over even just a little time, though, the enthusiasm to eliminate your debt can flag. Yet the idea is to keep that picture in your mind, to outpace what could consume you, until you’ve reached a point where it’s vanquished, and you emerge victorious.

When I coach people, we start with building an emergency fund as quickly as possible. It’s not the first step to pay down debt, it may be surprising to find out. Yet the average person who commits to this can reach their first goal in just two or three months. This does a few really important things:

• It provides you with a small buffer to absorb truly unexpected expenses.

• It takes the drama and stress out of facing such expenses

• It gives you a mental boost knowing you have reached a goal

After this, some people may feel they can relax, but as step two is a longer duration — paying off your debt on everything except your mortgage — it can be easy to be more like the cheetah. Realize, however, that that IS your life and future. Whose do you want it to be? Stay intense.

Personally, I don’t know that I will ever relax even having 3-6 months expenses socked away. Call it bad financial decision-making PTSD.

With a recent accident and a sudden job loss that preceded it, it still was tough for me to part with emergency funds. But I did, and now I have to become gazelle intense again. I want to restore my place in the “baby steps” as they are called. I realized I was becoming complacent up until a couple of months ago, so this really was a good lesson for me that I need to stay intense as I regain stability, but focus it beyond being debt free.

The memory of how it felt to be in a vulnerable financial place is all too real, and I don’t ever want to repeat it. That is my proverbial cheetah. So, I set in front of me what I want life to be again, and start sprinting. The funny thing about taking such serious and intentional action, is that things start to fall into place. Call it the Universe responding to your “frequency” or Divine Providence, but I generally find when I set an intention and start taking action, I find opportunities and resources along the way that I didn’t see coming.

The bottom line is that no one is meant to struggle (that includes you), just get by, or live desperately. If you believe in a higher power, it’s not what you were created to be. So if that’s a mindset you are carrying, it has no place in your new journey, and will cause you to tire far more quickly. So much of our money decisions are mindset and not math, and resetting your thinking is going to give you a much bigger head start.

So, begin and imagine the chase has begun, that you have the ability and stamina to last, and will live to look back at that cheetah and toss your head.