Meaningful change starts with you.
I meet a lot of people who are not happy with their current situation. They complain about it and moan in their agony. But I’ve noticed an interesting trend about miserable people. They seem to like the misery. It gives them something to complain about. Having something to complain about keeps them busy and keeping busy seems to lessen the misery a little. What ends up happening is miserable people keep complaining, but complaining doesn’t change the misery. If you want your situation to get better, you’d better be ready to do something about it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re unhappy with your finances, your career, your marriage, or your physical fitness. The person responsible for making things better is the person in the mirror. YOU are the only one who has the ability to make things better. Unhappy with your marriage? Take a look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. Chances are, the problems are being caused by you. You can change the way you react to situations. You can change the way you talk to people. You can change the things you do around the house. All these things have an impact on your life, and all of them start with you.
The same holds true with your financial situation. Your income is not your employer’s responsibility. You get paid for your performance. Time to make sure you’re performing so your income continues to come in and grow. Your spending is also nobody else’s fault but your own. Yes, there are some things that happen that are out of your control, but how you react to the situations rests squarely on your shoulders. What does that mean? Well, when the roof leaks, you don’t always need to replace the whole roof. When your car needs repairs, you don’t need to go buy a new car with a loan just so you can have something “dependable”.
It’s your decisions and your behaviors that determine your success in anything you do. If you’ve shown a pattern and history of poor decisions, you need to get some help making better decisions. If you’ve displayed poor money habits over time, it’s time to do something different. The bottom line is if you want different results in your life, you need to take different actions. Unhappy with your situation? Get ready to change!