Dropping Your Excuses

It’s easy to look around and find dozens of reasons why we’re not where we want to be financially. We can blame inflation, spouses, politics, decisions made years back, and plain bad luck.

But what does that do for us except spend our time on excuses and our attention on factors that can’t be changed?

This distraction feels good because it justifies – to ourselves and others – why we’re stuck. But that feeling is a trick, because it also keeps us in that same stuck place.

When you have a good story for why things are the way they are, and spend time telling and dwelling on that tale, you begin to believe that’s the whole story and subconsciously let go of ever trying to change it.

In psychology, this might be called “learned helplessness,” where a continual stressor eventually just becomes endured and ignored, and the test subject no longer tries to avoid or escape it. You just learn to live that way.

Instead of falling into that default, though, we must be more diligently aware of our own stories. We can acknowledge the circumstances and events that are outside our control, because yes, they’re real. But then we have to let those pieces fall away from our personal narrative. This includes those choices no longer in our control, which requires us to forgive ourselves for past mistakes.

We must always work within the world and our personal circumstances as they are today; this isn’t about gaslighting ourselves into a fantasy life. We simply must know which are the factors we can meaningfully affect and choose to keep our attention and effort there.

This is the only hand of cards that matters.

When you force yourself to drop the excuses, let the circumstances and old problems fall away, you’re finally left with some open space to find what you do have influence over.

What piece of your financial equation do you have leverage over that you’re not currently leveraging? What strengths are working for you that you can capitalize on further? What new skills do you need to develop to get to the next level? What risks do you need to take?

Sometimes getting unstuck is just about finding that one little place to start leveraging and build momentum from that one small place, instead of overhauling everything.

Because once you get started, the game of financial success is simply about persistence and time.

By focusing on what you do have control over, where you do have leverage, instead of spending precious mental energy on the elements you don’t control, you create your own opportunity to get to the next level.

What are you wallowing in? What are you making excuses about?

Now what are you going to let go of and finally do about it?