Get Lucky by Disciplining Yourself
READ: Welcome to Luckortunity! You will only see this once but I invite you to keep coming back and browse through the archives to Help Yourself Get Lucky. To get started, read 40 Ways to Increase Your Luck. You can subscribe to my RSS feed and get lucky all the time. Thanks for visiting!
Another piece of advice from The Richest Man in Babylon is to discipline yourself when it comes to saving your money. They give the example of a man who decides that he is going to throw one pebble in the river each day. It would make sense if this person would miss a day that he could say to himself that he will drop two pebbles the next day. It would make even more sense if his goal was to eventually put as many pebbles in the river as possible, that he would start on the first day by throwing as many as he possibly can at that time.
The book does not agree with what most of us would look at as pure logic. It says that you should only drop one pebble per day and if you forget one day, that you should go back to the river and drop the pebble for that day instead of dropping two the next. The reason being is that if you discipline yourself and continuously do the same thing, it will become natural and you will be able to do it for a long time. If you choose to take shortcuts, you will either burn out or give up at some point.
I find this to be true with many things in my life. For instance, blogging. When I write a few blogs at the same time and then post one per day, I usually end up getting lazy and missing at least a day once all of my posts run out. When I write each and every day, I miss less posting because I am on a schedule and I don’t have time to get lazy.
I noticed the same thing when I work out. Most people that are out of shape that decide to get into shape try and overdo their workout at the gym on their first day. During the workout they are pumped and feel like they can handle everything but when they get home, they are more sore than ever. Each day after that the pain gets worse and worse and does not allow you to work out again for at least a week and by that time you are not motivated anymore.
If you take things one day at a time and start building a routine that you can handle, you will be much more likely to continue for many years. If you are working out, try just going to the gym on the first day for 15-20 minutes and do a light workout. You will leave feeling good and that you can handle more. Take that feeling and come back the next day and the next and so on. Then you will be able to add each day in small increments until you are happy with your workout.
When it comes to saving money, some people feel that it is easier to give a lump payment into their savings once a month or even year (especially when they are saving in a tax free IRA). The only way to make sure that you continue to save is to put money in your savings regularly enough that it becomes a habit. At that point it will be hard to break.
| 2.5 |
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
- Get Lucky by Learning How to Handle Depression
- Get Lucky by Investing Your Time with Compound Interest
- Get Lucky by Preventing a Financial Landslide
- Get Lucky by Helping the Future You
- Kick Yourself in the Pants and Get Motivated
January 30 2008 11:05 pm | Uncategorized
This is exactly the thing that I’m working on.. discipline.. consistency
Slowly but surely I’m building something
so thanks for this posting.. It’s good stuff
40 Ways to Increase Your Luck (100th Post) | GET LUCKY on 26 Aug 2008 at 1:20 pm #
[…] Discipline Yourself – Discipline is very important in reaching any goal. Without it, you will fall of the track somewhere and not know where to get back on. Set up guidelines and goals of what you want to get done and make sure they are reasonable. Then force yourself to do them every single day. If your goal is to put $1 per day into your savings account, put $1 in each day instead of $2 to cover the next 2 days or $100 to cover 100 days. Doing this builds discipline and will help you in the long run. If you force yourself to put exactly $1 per day, you are likely to keep to it forever but if you put $100 at a time to cover the next while, you will eventually give up and stop. […]