I’ve been working on figuring out why I didn’t make more progress towards my money goal last year so that I can do better this year.
I was listening to the Scholar Success Stories podcast, and when you were talking with Jeff about how drinking takes away all motivation to change your life because it makes it so your life is tolerable, that got me wondering if maybe I was doing that same thing in a less obvious way. Even though my business has had negative growth in terms of revenue and my take-home $ amount is less (and my husband’s the same), my husband and I have pretty much maintained our same lifestyle which has been made possible by credit cards.
I know that we could have downgraded our home, moved to a small apartment and penny pinched to not spend more than we were earning, but the idea I had in my mind all last year is that my success is inevitable and that it’s ok that some debt is building up, because I’m going to for sure be able to pay it off. Downgrading would have felt like I was saying to myself “you’re not going to be successful, so you better cut down on expenses before this situation gets worse”
But I’m wondering now if maybe we should have downgraded so that we could really feel uncomfortable and be more motivated and driven to really double down. Since life felt pretty comfortable on a day to day basis, I didn’t commit 100% to change it and of course didn’t get the result I wanted. It wasn’t in the forefront of my mind that it was artificial because the money we were using the pay for that comfortable life was not paid for by money we had earned.
I know I can’t go back and change my past actions but I do want to correct them going forward.
I do notice that I feel more driven to change my actions when I see the reality of my circumstances. I know the circumstance itself is neutral and that I feel negatively about it because I want to think of it negatively. I know I am capable of more.
I’m thinking that what I need to do is take a look everyday at our $ numbers, peel back the curtain and look at the raw truth, even though it’s uncomfortable.
My model when I’m not bringing awareness to the reality of our C:
C – No money in bank + $ credit card debt
T – It’s not that bad
F – content
A – moderate action to change
R – no $$ growth
My model when I DO bring awareness to the reality of our C:
C – No money in bank + $ credit card debt
T – we are capable of having a lot more
F – motivated
A – massive action
R – more $
In both models the C is the same but in the first one I avoid it by not looking and my bank and credit card accounts and by using fake money (credit cards) that feels like real money to pay for our expenses.
Would love your feedback on this.