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Jun

14

Success is Perseverance

Success!

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I’ve made the triumphs in my life thus far. What keeps coming back to me is perseverance. It’s not that I was always the best, or always the smartest… or even the one with the most “luck;” I had perseverance and it took me through to the end.

When you reflect on how you’re doing on your debt, remember: perseverance is key. There will be times when you don’t know how you’ll make it another month living so frugally, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. You know that if you stick with it, you will succeed. Believe me, in my fourth month of using hotel shampoo and eating at home, I was sick to death of all this depriving myself of expensive things. But in the end, here I am… debt free, and loving it!
When you find your desire to stick with it exhausted, you must find some way to keep yourself in check, keep yourself in line - so that you can persevere and eventually win. I find three things to help with perseverance: motivation, accountability, and distraction.

Motivation

I found motivation through so many different places, which was a good thing. Radio, books, blogs, and other people are all great ways to motivate yourself. Some days I just didn’t want to listen to Dave Ramsey, but on those days I could turn to the blogs I loved and read up some motivation. Or I’d talk to a friend that was pursuing debt-freedom just as I was. Find your motivation anywhere you can get it. Sometimes a movie about someone following their dream would fire me up just as much as a debt-reduction blog would, even though it had nothing to do with debt.

Accountability

We all want to be accountable to ourselves, but sometimes we slip up. Without someone else to nag us when we fall, or help us back up, we lose the support system that we sometimes honestly really need. Many people start a blog, or start vlogging on YouTube. You could have a friend or family member who you report to weekly or monthly. I had all of these things, and my ability to keep going skyrocketed as I gained each kind of accountability - as did my success. Having to report weekly - nay, DAILY - to hundreds of readers on my blog was incentive enough for me to stay on track. But having to report to my mom, who was working through her own debt at the time, sealed the deal. Who wants to disappoint their mother?

I am fortunate that my mom and I are so close, and that we can motivate each other all the time as friends do. If that’s not your case, find a friend who you can bounce your emotions and finances off of. Just make sure that friend has the same financial values as you do!

Distraction

Sometimes distraction is all we need to keep going I know I personally would put money out of my mind for weeks at a time, just to get a rest from the ever-constant money pressures. I would pay my bills like clockwork; let the snowball do it’s thing while I did mine. Friends, movies, and hobbies provide great distraction. But I found the best distraction to be other life projects.

When working on debt-reduction, we sometimes begin to think that getting rid of debt is all we’re about. Other aspects of our lives can take a serious back-burner to our debt-reduction goals, because we’re so intensely focused. If this is you (and I know for certain it was me), it would behoove you to take a step back and think about other parts of your life that could use your attention.

During my debt reduction, I took mental breaks to re-evaluate my career and eventually to change jobs. Later my focus shifted to my relationship with Sean, and we spend months working on “us” while the debt was being paid off in the background. Even when my attention shifted to snowflake businesses, which are an aspect of debt reduction, my focus was on the businesses: cultivating, bettering, and promoting them.

Shifting your attention around allows you to grow in all parts of your life - emotional, spiritual, physical, familial, relational, mental - while you keep going with your financial pursuits.

If nothing else, lolcats do a good job with distracting you for a few minutes and giving you a laugh
Perseverance brings success. Only those who keep at it hard enough and long enough will win. Keep motivated, keep yourself accountable; I think you’ll find that if you shift gears every now and again but keep going on with the debt-reduction at all costs, you’ll be the one who persevered and got what you wanted: debt freedom
Photo by Swami Stream.

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Filed Under Frugal Living, Just My Life - Stories, Etc., Self-Help and Personal Progress, money and finance

Comments

3 Responses to “Success is Perseverance”

Foxie on June 16th, 2008 2:08 pm

Oh yes, power to the lolcats! They always provide me with a good laugh and a quick pick me up on a bad day.

Anyhow, great article, thanks for some extra motivation! I’m very much looking forward to the end of my consumer debt, and the big celebration should be a rather nice trip to Germany next year. All paid for with available funds, not a drop of credit! (That and some nice upgrades for our one car which should quiet hubby’s wants for a while. I’m looking forward to that even more I think. ;))
Tight Fisted Miser on June 17th, 2008 8:41 am

Glad to see you posting again. It definitely is difficult to persevere sometimes.
Mrs. Micah on June 17th, 2008 8:27 pm

Gotta heart the lolcats. I need to find/make one that says something like “I can has debt snowball?”

I find my motivation for a lot of things ebbs and flows. Sometimes I force myself to stick with it, sometimes I go with the ebb and flow. Too often I give up. But no failure is complete, I think, because you can always pick it up again.