IT'S NOT A RACE BUT A FIGHT!
Many people believe that when they decide to start their journey to becoming financially free, they started or joined a race. What they don't realize is that they didn't join or start a race but instead they started a fight.
Now, I know you might be a little confused to why I say a fight and not a race, but it will soon make sense to you too.
Let's start with the "race". A race is a competition between you and others to see who finish the course first. Therefore, automatically when starting a race people's mentality and focus is on how fast they want to achieve the goal and wanting to do it as fast or faster than others. This mentality can drive people to put an unrealistic timeline to become debt free. The foundation of their journey is set on best case scenarios. Although being aware and having the drive to achieve the goal as fast as possible is not a horrible thing, on the other hand it can be the top reason for discouragement or burn out. Now, discouragement and burn out is the last thing we want to fall into. So how do we prevent falling into this?
By having a different view and that is to fight!
Fighting requires you to engage or manage a battle against your opponent. Who is your opponent? Definitely not others! Because others didn't get you to where you find yourself, you did. But you do have two main opponents that you're going to have to fight against and that is your mental hurdles and your debt.
Mental hurdles are indeed the biggest opponent that everyone tends to have and what separates them from success and achieving their dreams. Mental hurdles can be procrastination, fears, overwhelm, pride, etc. Not everyone has the same ones but many share some of these mental hurdles which can even end up paralyzing them from trying to start to make changes or from continuing. If a person is faced with mental hurdles starting a race won't be helpful. It might push them to start especially for those who are competitive but because their focus is on reaching their goal as fast as possible the possibility of burn out is much greater due to the unawareness of their mental capability. They are not really focusing or acknowledging their mental battles.
Debt is the result of lacking discipline. When we are in debt, we lack the discipline it takes to know where our money is going, we lack the discipline it takes to wait for a later time to purchase something etc. Paying debt off as fast as possible won't truly teach you the discipline you need in order to stay debt free. If we were to focus ourselves more into becoming disciplined and overcoming any mental hurdles, we will be able to successfully achieve our dreams and stay there or move on to bigger dreams.
So, how do we fight in order to overcome these things?
Here are 5 simple things to do.
Learn: take some time every day to learn, to read, and to see what your options are. Investigate what have people done to become debt free and achieve their dreams. Now you don't have to become an expert in every method out there but have a general sense of different ways you can achieve your dream.
Put things into perspective: Be real with yourself! Can you be extreme and succeed without feeling overwhelmed or giving up. Do you want to take what seems forever to others in order to feel comfortable enough to reach your dream? Do you want to mix and match different methods? Putting things into perspective will allow you to figure out what will work best for you. You know your strengths and your weaknesses; you know how much you can push without breaking. Therefore, figure out what will work best for you.
Create a plan: Break down your dreams into goals and your goals into mini goals. Creating a plan, trying to see how it will all work out in best- and worst-case scenarios will take away worry, the feeling of failure, of insecurity. Now we all know that everything doesn't always goes as planned but a plan tends to put everybody at ease because there is an idea of what needs to be done and how it'll get done to the best of our knowledge.
Start: create a budget and put everything into practice. Give yourself grace and time to adjust, to learn hands on but simply start.
Ask for help! If everything else is failing after trying or if even that makes you feel overwhelmed, then push yourself enough to ask for help. There is nothing wrong with saying I'm not good at this money thing. Heck, I wasn't good with money for a long time before I got to where I am at, and I still have to go through these steps from time to time. Overcome the mental hurdles of shame or pride and simply reach out to someone who you believe will be able to walk through it with you.
It's time to start your fight and reach your dreams! Let me know if this has encouraged you by liking it or leaving me a comment. Also, feel free to let me know in the comments if there's anything you would like for me to talk about here in the blog.
Besos, talk to you next week.