It’s happened to you. It’s happened to me. You’ve set a goal in your life:
Reduce debt.
Strive toward health.
Quit (insert bad habit).
Improve your relationship with (your spouse, your child, your parents).
Then, life sets in and you fall oh-so-short of your goal and ambition. You overspend at the store. You overindulge on Halloween Candy. You start (again). You yell or fall into unhealthy relationship habits.
We feel guilty . . . like we are never going to be able to master ___________. How could we be so stupid? How is it we find ourselves in the midst of the same problems with the same results and little to no hope for future change?
What’s the point? We’re just going to end up back at the same place where we began, maybe with even more sorrows for our troubles. Why even try again?
In fact, since we already blew it anyway, why not go ahead and blow it really *good.* I mean we’ll start again, on Monday. So a new pair of shoes comes along to “improve” upon the blown grocery budget. An ice cream sandwich marches up to accompany the Halloween Candy. And steely silence partners with the screaming match you had with your child.
All of this makes us get up on Monday morning, set a new goal and repeat the whole pattern all over again.
At its base definition, this is insanity: “Doing the same thing (or worse) and expecting a different outcome.”
Proverbs 26:11 says “As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.” (NIV) I love the way The Message rephrases it – “As a dog eats its own vomit, so fools recycle silliness.” Both versions are high on the icky factor but the visual metaphor hammers home the point that it’s ridiculous to continue a failed habit. You are simply setting yourself up for failure, time and time again.
If your budget . . . nutrition plan . . . method of cessation . . . relationship strategy didn’t work last time, it’s not going to work again, no matter how hard you try or push to make it “work.”
It’s time for a new plan. Don’t beat yourself up or repeat your crazy. Ask for wisdom, seek counsel, and began again.
Do you struggle with cycle of busting your budget, overindulging, feeling guilty, and starting the crazy all over again? How do you cope?
Gain inspiration to pay off debt! Check out Inspiration to Pay Off Debt: 30 Days of Encouragement from the Queen of Free
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You hit the nail on the head, Queen of Free. It’s so easy to blow through a budget if you have a “start over” date already in your head. Planning a vacation has actually helped me not blow through my budget. Right now, every penny is one extra penny we have to spend on gas, food and all the stuff that comes with vacations, so keeping that in mind helps us from over spending.
Focused energy on a goal always brings a great reward. 🙂 Keep repeating, “This is more important than that.”
I needed to hear this today. It’s one of those “feel like I am failing on all fronts” days. Thank you!
You are more than welcome my friend. Beating yourself up is worthless as is repeating the same cray-cray cycle all over again. Time for a new plan. To the whiteboard! 😉
We’ve been budgeting for years, and we still have those months when we fall off. We’ve learned over the years to dust ourselves off and start again. We started have a mini-budget meeting mid-way through the month and it’s helped us so much. Either we celebrate our success or we rally each other to readjust the sails mid-course. It’s definitely helped us improve over our old strategy, which was to give up and just blow through the budget until the next month.