Welcome to Under 2, an email series delivering short insights to empower your money life – in 2 minutes or less.
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Perhaps the most insidious impediments to our financial success are the simple mistakes we make with money. Because it’s not usually what appears on the surface that causes the most heartache.
Messing up with our money is a particularly potent source of shame, regret, and frustration… all feelings that aren’t known to be particularly helpful in making level-headed, strategic decisions. So one mistake leads to another bad decision, which leads to a thorny issue, that becomes a neglected, growing problem.
Or even if a particular mistake doesn’t lead to downstream financial complications, every time we catch ourselves goofing up, we let it mean we’re just “bad with money,” another vote for a very unhelpful identity.
Instead of getting down on ourselves, or chalking up a slip-up to our typical “I’m no good at this” financial behavior, it’s important to take an intentional path after a screw up.
First, acknowledge it: the frustration, the regret, whatever yuck is coming up. Feelings are like toddlers and want our attention in order to calm down. But after a little acknowledgement, it’s time to reframe.
It could almost always be worse. Someone else in history has undoubtedly made a bigger fumble than you just did.
Just think how the guy felt who documented the discovery of the Indri indri, the largest of the lemurs, thinking this was the name provided by his native guide through the wilds of Madagascar, when his guide was simply pointing and saying the Malagasy word for “look!” For a globetrotting 18th century naturalist, that was probably pretty embarrassing.
After noting your own frustration and taking a breath, next try to fix it. A few years ago, I bounced a check (longer story, but in a rush, I apparently forgot how mail worked) and was livid with myself. But after the initial frustration, I just called the bank to kindly request they waive the penalty fee, and they did.
Whether you’re able to fix some or most of your financial mess-up, the next step is to learn from it. Get curious, pick apart what happened and why. Every mistake has a lesson inside; make sure yours gets found. Perhaps you needed a reminder that just because it was Prime Day, it doesn’t mean you weren’t wasting money the same as any other day.
Lastly, get over it. Everyone messes up. I do. You do. The thousands of others reading this email do. You’ll find the best way out of it when you successfully feel it, fix it, learn from it, and, maybe most importantly, leave it behind. It’s about not letting a stupid decision or absent-minded slip-up become who you are.
Yes, you messed up. But it doesn’t mean anything about you as a person or a money manager.
It’s just a thing that happened and your attitude about that creates the difference between an expensive mistake here and there and a pattern of destructive behavior that defines your financial life.
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.
Theodore Roosevelt
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey