Perfect is the enemy of the good – Voltaire
There’s something so alluring about perfection. It shimmers like an oasis in the desert. Clearly visible, yet somehow also eternally unattainable. It’s something our culture seems to focus on (especially in the age of social media). Some people earn a living promoting their image. Here are my perfect family and job and house and holiday. But it’s bullshit. Like the Great and Powerful Oz, the image of perfection is just smoke and mirrors designed to impress people, while the truth is most of us have wonderful things happen to us and terrible things, and there are lots of mundane bits in the middle.
Perfection in your finances is also a bit of a furphy. We can all do better, and the problem with aiming for perfection is that sometimes it seems like such an overwhelming task that instead of doing something, people do nothing.
Change is hard, it takes time and commitment. So instead of perfection, let’s aim for iterative change,
Below are some tips to help us all get where we want to go:
- Don’t try to change everything at once. Choose one area of your finances and tackle that bit first. Whether it is paying off your car loan or credit cards or saving for a house deposit. Set one area that you are going to make a difference in.
- Once you have chosen the area to focus on, make some goals around the change you want to see. Make sure they are small goals to start with. Don’t make your goal ‘paying off my $10,00 credit card’. Start with ‘making $200 extra payments on the card this month.’
- Once your small goals have added up top your big goal, celebrate. Do something nice for yourself, maybe a long bath or a sleep-in or a walk in the park in the sun. It doesn’t have to cost money, but do that thing that refreshes you. For me, it’s reading a good book on my deck on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
- Then make another goal and tackle the next thing.
Throughout the process, always remember to be kind to yourself. Change takes time and is not always a straight line. You can want to change something and still flick back to old behaviours that got you into trouble in the first place. But making a mistake is not the end, dust yourself off and make better decisions tomorrow.
Reality check
This is why it’s essential to focus on the small changes and not perfection. Being perfect is not the goal, changing and growing and being in a better financial position than you were this time last year, is the goal.
The truth is I gave up on perfection years ago. I know deep down that I have good intentions, but honestly, everything I do can be improved upon. My life is messy and chaotic and full of laughing at the most inappropriate times. And honestly, that’s the way I like it now. My finances aren’t perfect either, but I have gotten so much joy out of the process of changing and getting better at this stuff, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m proud of the growth in myself as I tackled my finances and that’s what I want for you too.
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