So you’ve set some financial goals for yourself, congrats! Whether your goal is to save $100 this month or to pay and extra $100 on the student loans, I commend you! You’ve taken the first few steps to improving your own financial situation, first by admitting that there’s a financial problem in your life and secondly, creating a plan to improve your mess. Unfortunately as with most new habits, it takes time to get in a groove and we’ll often fail a couple of times before we succeed. Thankfully Thomas Edison didn’t give up for his first 9,999 times he tried to create the lightbulb and neither will you!

I know it can be tough and demoralizing when you don’t meet your goal, especially a financial goal. Finances are tough as they require a great deal of self-control, some head knowledge and some planning (gotta go to the grocery store and buy PB&J if you’re going to pack your lunch)

Think about where you could have been

Just because you fell a little short on your goal, I’m guessing you still made some progress. At the very least, you set a goal and failed at it, but you still set a goal and probably feel a bit of remorse for failing. Even though you fail, what you’ve got is progress. Progress isn’t necessarily succeeding and achieving your goal, but you won’t succeed without progress. Without progress, you’d be stuck in the same situation that got you into this financial mess; no plan, no budget, no goals. You’d be overspending and undersaving, going into debt and digging yourself a bigger financial mess.

Give yourself some grace

There’s plenty of savings I could use here; “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, something about Edison’s plethora of attempts to create the lightbulb or “the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time”, but they all illustrate the point that success often is preceded by a number of failures. Creating a new habit isn’t easy and learning to practice self discipline is hard. It isn’t easy packing your lunch, buying a cheaper less cool car, or even walking out of Target with just things that were on your list. Cut yourself some slack and remind yourself that you’ve already taken the first step by making a decision. There’s plenty of time ahead of us and messing up here and there won’t derail our train heading towards financial freedom. Take a deep breathe, tell yourself it’s going to be ok and pick yourself back up and get at it another time.

Think about where you’re going

You’ve clearly set a goal of achieving financial freedom, and it often helps to keep the final destination in mind when we hit a speed bump or a traffic jam. It’s so easy to get off track and distracted when we fail to meet a goal or when this thing we call life gets in the way. Remind yourself that all this hard work will certainly pay off. Month by month things will slowly get better, we’ll get a little further out of debt, save a little more in our emergency fund and even continue saving for retirement. Keep that image of yourself, debt free and with a nice nest egg in your mind. One day in the future we’ll be able to say ‘yes’ to so many more things, and we won’t get scared every time a bill comes or we log into our bank account. I know it’s not easy but financial freedom is worth the journey.

Inevitably there will be times we slip up on our quest towards improving our finances. The secret to achieving our financial goals is to keep at it, not beat ourselves up and focus on what it’ll be like to achieve the goal!