The calendar rolling to a new year provides a great opportunity for reflection. Perhaps this is the year you finally quit your job and start your own business. Maybe you’re ready to lose the extra pounds you’ve been carrying around by eating better and exercising more often. That idea for a novel may become more than a fantasy in your head as your laptop becomes a vessel to the fulfillment of a dream.
Whatever it is you want to do this year, everything can be boiled down to one thing: having a routine.
As the holidays approach each year, I become overwhelmed with excitement for what’s ahead. Great food and gatherings with friends and family are an excuse to remove the mundane shackles of daily life. The excitement dissipates as the new year draws closer. I become tired (literally) of sitting around, over eating and generally doing nothing. The very thing I had longed for becomes my own personal prison, locked in a cycle of breakfast pastry and lethargy.
I’m going to assume this sounds familiar to many of you. Regardless of what you do everyday, it’s difficult to stop our routine. It’s even harder to get started again once we’ve stopped. Rather than set a series of New Year’s resolutions, our first resolution should be to settle back into our routines (providing they’re healthy, good choices, etc).
The idea that you can begin anew each year is comforting for sure, but it also sets us up for failure. This is the equivalent of starting a diet as you pull away from the Golden Corral. Making healthy changes is great, doing so just because the calendar moved one day forward isn’t a recipe for sustained success.
If you’ve gotten out of your routine, working your way back to what was working prior to the holidays should be your first step. Once this is accomplished, adding little things into your day or week should be your next goal.
This same concept can work with your money as well. If you ate out multiple times a week over the holidays due to general laziness and/or convenience, dial it back to what you would normally spend eating out each week. Once you’ve established your normal routine, begin scaling back further until you’ve reached your goal.
Rather than using the “cold turkey” method of stopping immediately, make deliberate and steady changes. Put another way, someone who smokes 3 packs a day will be hard pressed to quit all at once. Substantive changes take time, effort and resolve.
Setting a new routine starts with following our old routine. By making minor changes each day, we can slowly transition out of the life we’re living to the life we want. Let’s say you placed thousands of dollars on a credit card over the holidays. The thought of this debt has consumed your every thought resulting in sleepless nights and multiple bouts of heartburn.
Believe it or not, this is a good sign. It not only shows that you recognize the problem, but that you also care about taking care of it. Develop a plan to chip away at the debt and do your best to avoid making the same mistake in the future. The relief and pride you’ll feel once you’ve been able to pay it off will far outweigh anything you may have purchased over the holiday season. In wiping out your debt, you’ve inadvertently developed a new routine of setting money aside that can now be used for the things you actually want to do.
Voila, your money is now yours again.
It’s not magic but the results are magical.
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