"Life's a bitch and then you die." Or rather, there's no real shortcut to anything, no one has all the answers and we're all figuring things out as we go. That said, our brain also does us the disservice of gravitating toward the familiar, the known and what we're comfortable with; it's main job is to keep us alive and safe and novelty is immediately translated as dangerous because it hasn't been encountered before, therefore it must be bad for us. That's why building new habits can be so challenging, your mind wants to do what's easy and familiar, no matter how harmful it actually is for us and our well-being. Staying in the familiar that is harmful in the long-run is hard, just as changing habits is also difficult. Nothing is "easy," so choosing your hard is a crucial aspect in your financial journey and in my opinion, life in general. What does choosing your hard mean? It means setting up financial systems and educating yourself about money and understanding the feelings of anxiety that money may produce is not easy, but neither is constantly worrying about money, spending it frivolously so that you're not able to plan for your future, or being so frugal that you're not able to enjoy the now whatsoever. Once you've chosen your hard, creating habits is the next hurdle in the process.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, defines identity-based habits as the key to building lasting habits and understanding what you believe about yourself and creating new beliefs about yourself. For example, if you just think "I want to be rich," you are merely focused on the outcome and not the identity you want to create. Start with thinking about your world views and how money was discussed growing up, did that impact how you manage money now? If your parents were very frugal, are you constantly anxious about money now in a way that doesn't align with your actual financial situation?
Now that you're challenging some of those engrained beliefs, James also outlines two steps to changing them:
Decide the type of person you want to be.
Prove it to yourself with small wins.
He continues to give examples of what this can look like for different identities based on your beliefs, your values, and principles. If you want to be better with money, your identity is to "become the type of person that is financially literate and responsible" and you can start with a "small win" like listening to a financial podcast of which there are many but below are some of my favorite:
Change is not easy and your mind will constantly try to revert back to your default so be patient and kind with yourself, there's no room or need for judgement but rather focus on your identity and the identity you want to create, stick to your small wins, and the results will come naturally with consistency as you build new pathways and frameworks for yourself and the person you want to become.
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