How Falling Into This Trap Will Limit Your Financial Progress | HMM 110

HMM 110: How Falling Into This Trap Will Limit Your Financial Progress

Have you ever found yourself reading a debt payoff story and cringing?  This episode was inspired by a thread I was reading with reactions to a family’s debt payoff story.  Most of the commentators’ reactions were negative, had a lack of hope and had already decided they couldn’t do the same thing.  

In this episode, I am going to talk about how falling into the trap of allowing your current situation to determine your future will place a HUGE limit with your financial progress.  I’m also going to share with you 6 Challenge Actions you can take to help you not feel bleak when you see these headlines.  

What you’ll learn about in today’s episode:

  • What happens when you accept your current situation as-is when you aren’t happy about it
  • The real danger that results from comparing
  • Why you should stop looking for excuses and what you should look for instead
  • The 2 key components you need to help you jump over those fears

How This Episode Came to Be

A few weeks ago a post from a Facebook group I’m a part of came up on my newsfeed.  It was reactions to a blog post where the story was about a family that paid off $52k of debt in 7 months.  The reactions were mixed, but mostly negative and filled with a lot of fear, with a lack of hope, with a decision made already that this was not possible for them.  

If you recall a while back in Episode 28, I shared the big message that these debt payoff stories were missing.

In this episode, I am going to talk about how falling into the trap of allowing your current situation to determine your future, will place a HUGE limit on your financial progress.  This is what I observed from reading this thread that inspired this episode.  I’m also going to share with you 6 challenge steps you can take to help you not feel bleak when you see these headlines.  

Challenge Action #1:  Don’t allow your current situation determine what your future can look like.  

Your current situation can only change if you allow it to.     

In this thread, there was a lot of discussion around the fact that the family in this story made a lot of money – more than many of the readers, so of course, it was easier for them to get out of debt.  While it is true that having more available funds makes it easier to pay off debt sooner, it does not consider the most significant factor.  That factor?  YOU.  

YOU are in control of you, and YOU have the power to determine where your life can take you.  Of course, life gets in the way but again the way you deal with those barriers is all reliant on YOU.  

If you accept your current situation and choose to do nothing about it, NOTHING WILL CHANGE.

If you decide despite what appears to be bleak conditions for your financial situation, that you want to do something about it even though you don’t know how you’ll make it happen… THINGS WILL CHANGE.  Don’t let the details of the HOW stop you.  The most important part is making the decision and having an open mind to allow the how to flow in.  

A great example was last week’s chat with Melanie Lockert.  Financially, getting out of debt as fast as she wanted to seemed impossible, but she made it happen.  Her income alone wasn’t enough so she set out to bring in more income and that she did!

Challenge Action #2:  Know the real danger of comparing

Comparing – we all do it it from time to time.  It is so easy to do.

By comparing you are judging, by judging you are just judging yourself more and limiting yourself to the possibilities.  

I mentioned how many commentators on this FB thread were comparing themselves with the family in the story, stating that they didn’t make as much money as them, so of course it would harder, if not impossible to pay off that much debt in such a short time.  In so doing, they were literally limiting the possibilities for themselves.  

Your money story is yours and yours only.  Own it, take pride in it no matter how messy it looks at this particular moment. Stories evolve and yours will too, but you have to allow it to move forward and not comparing will help you do this.  

Challenge Action #3:  Stop looking for excuses to justify what you are thinking  

When you look for excuses there is no doubt that you will find them!  So stop looking for them.  Instead look for the possibilities.  

You can look at your current income, at your debt, and your life situation, and everything that has been happening to you and you can easily justify that this is why you can’t move forward.  

Remember Melanie’s story – her income alone could have been an excuse that she could justify not being able to get out of that debt as quickly as she wanted too.  Instead, she chose to look at the possibilities.   

What if you were to look for those possibilities for yourself.  What would that look like?  For Melanie it meant bringing in more income.  By looking for that possibility she was able to generate not only extra income, but was able to pay off the debt much quicker than she had set out to do.   

Allow that powerful mind of yours to help.  Your mind is going to help you no matter what, so let it be to your benefit, not your detriment.   

Challenge Action #4:  Train yourself to jump over the fear hurdle

You can’t avoid fears, they are going to come for a visit on the regular. You can learn how to jump over them with the next 2 challenge actions.  

I’m sure you had a fear recently and it could be you just had one in the last hour, or this morning or just yesterday.  I get them all the time especially with running this business.  “Am I good enough, will you hire me, will you buy my digital products?”  

I could let these fears hold me back and honestly sometimes I have.  These next two challenge actions have helped me and will help you too.  

Challenge Action #5:   Believe in yourself like nobody’s watching

No matter how much belief others have in you, if you don’t believe in yourself, “you can hang that one up” as my husband says. The belief in yourself is what is going to move things forward.  

Just like when we dance like nobody’s watching, we are doing it because we feel good doing it, because we feel confident, because we are happy with life, and so many more reasons we could list here.  

What is important here is that our beliefs have to be so deep to make a difference in our financial lives.  That is why financial confidence is so important and one of the reasons for this podcast.  Acquiring that belief comes from continuous action no matter if you fail or succeed.  We fear failing, but if we let let that fear hold us back, we are literally failing anyways if you think about it because we aren’t moving forward.  

Belief is important, but by itself is not enough.  This is why challenge action #6 is so important.  

Challenge Action #6:  Decide you CAN (figure out the how later)

Don’t let the details of the “how” hold you back.  That is the mistake many people make. Remember your story, and that your journey is yours and only yours. How you get there and when you get there isn’t as important as believe you CAN get there.   If you worry about the how and when but haven’t decided that you CAN it will be harder to get there.  

Decide FIRST that you can get out of debt and then focus on the “how” and it will be much easier.    

LISTENER SHOUT OUT:

Today I would like to send a Shout-Out to Danielle B.  Danielle is relatively new to the group.  She jumped into the conversation right away, and was not afraid to ask questions and offer suggestions.  I encourage that from you.  Keeping quiet isn’t going to help you move the needle.  Don’t be afraid to jump in and ask questions, post your successes, share your feedback etc, will get you moving forward.   

Links and Resources:

HMM Episode 28    

HMM Episode 109

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Abrazos + Much Love,

Jen

Today’s episode of the podcast is brought to you by Bari Tessler Linden and The Art of Money.  Check out her free e-course: A Pocket Map for Your Money Road Trip by CLICKING HERE

P.S. THANK YOU for listening!

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