Time & Money

how-practicing-gratitude-has-given-me-patience-about-money

In this post, I explain how making a daily list of things I’m thankful for has given me a welcome infusion of patience about my financial goals. I encourage everyone to try it.

The winter holidays are coming! You guys, I get so excited about the cooking, the baking, and most of all, the time I’ll get to spend with my family. I can’t wait! Except this is a post about patience, so I guess I’ll have to. Ugh! Come now, holidays!

Tis the Season for Gratitude

In November, many personal finance bloggers will offer great advice about how to cut out some of the costs of hosting parties and entertaining families. There will also be many blog posts about how to stop sabotaging your finances with your hyper-consumerist holiday spending.

Today I want to talk about a different holiday theme: being thankful. This post is about how purposefully practicing daily gratitude has given me the ability to be more patient about my financial goals. And if you’ve spent much time on this blog, you know that patience isn’t really a personal virtue for me.

Gratitude as a Practice

So let’s stop dallying and get to the story of how I started practicing gratitude. Because yes, it’s something I’ve started practicing. I spend time on it. On purpose. The majority of us are not natural wellsprings of gratitude. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be grateful. We just need to be deliberate and purposeful about it. Here’s how I got started.

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dealing-with-the-slow-pace-of-financial-goals

This post is an impatient person’s guide to setting and achieving big financial goals without losing heart. Settle in, friends. We’re in this for the long haul.

We’ve all heard it—patience is a virtue. And if it were your only measure of virtue, you might conclude that I’m not a very virtuous person. When I was little, my nickname was “Demanda”. While I think I can safely say that I’m not nearly as much of a brat as my little kid self was, it’s also a fair assessment to say I am not the world’s most patient person.

When I set goals, I want to go for them. Like now. Why not now?! I like now.

This is not to say I’m rash. I’m actually a pretty adept planner. I always weigh my options carefully. But once I’ve decided on a course of action, I usually choose to act deliberately. There’s no reason to wait. Let’s get things going!

Despite my eager attitude, here’s a truth about money—money is slow. Financial goals—especially big financial goals—don’t happen overnight.

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