Are These Three Mental Barriers Blocking Your Breakthrough Budget?

In all areas of life, mindset matters. Your attitude can be an ally or an adversary. And in the fight for financial freedom... 

You’ll want the former.

When waging war for wealth, a budget is essential. It’s a battle plan to keep you on track. Yet for many, making a budget is a war of its own.

But fear not, freedom seeker!

Once we understand our problems, we can create solutions. Here’s a list of mental barriers that may be blocking your budgetary breakthrough.

1. Budgeting Involves Specificity, And We Avoid Specificity. 

In sports, athletes aim in a specific direction. It may be a hoop, finish line, or endzone. But they’re guided by a location-based target. Once reached properly, they succeed. 

But they don’t always reach it…

A basketball can bounce off the rim. And a soccer ball can ricochet off the crossbar. In these cases, the athletes failed to hit their targets. This is a foundational lesson of any planning process…

When you set parameters for success, you’re also setting ones for failure.

We don’t like to fail. In fact, we dislike it so much we’ll avoid planning altogether. By staying vague about your finances, you're attempting to dodge failure. But realize you’re also avoiding an opportunity to succeed.

For a budget to work, you have to use specified numbers. Otherwise, you won’t hit your targets or even know what they are. This means getting comfortable with defining what success or failure looks like.

But remember, even the pros make mistakes…

You’re not going to hit everything perfectly. Like a golfer taking shots at the hole, you’ll need to keep recalibrating as you approach your target. But eventually, you’ll get there!

This brings us to the next major barrier...

2. Budgeting Involves Unknowns, And We Fear Unknowns. 

Human beings by their very nature are wired to fear the unknown. And from a survival standpoint, this makes a lot of sense. 

If you were hiking in the woods and heard something in the leaves, it’d be safer to assume it’s a snake rather than just the wind. If you think it’s a snake, but it’s really the wind, you’re fine. But if you think it’s the wind, and it's really a snake…

It may literally come back to bite you.

To combat this, we sometimes overcorrect. We become obsessed with preparing for every possible danger before embarking on a new journey. This can leave us stuck and trapped in the endless loops of analysis paralysis. 

When you first start budgeting, you're going to come across things you’re unsure of. Your mind might start to scramble with questions. 

There are so many methods, what if I pick one that doesn’t work?

My salary isn’t much, can I afford to budget any savings? 

I don’t know my exact expenses, can I even start budgeting?

Questions like these are perfectly normal. It’s your brain looking for “snakes.” But notice they all get you out of making a budget. After all, you won’t encounter any danger if you never adventure. 

But don’t let possible danger prevent you from definite growth...

It can be scary to encounter the financially unknown. Your fear of doing so may be causing you to procrastinate. But have the courage to look at your finances. Over time, you’ll see that your worries might be as fleeting as the wind. 

But don’t get caught up in the fantasy that it’ll all be easy...

3. Budgeting Involves Reality, And We Don’t Always Like Reality. 

It’s probably safe to say the vast majority of people have fantasized about having more money. I mean a lot more money. Like mansion, sports car, never-having-to-work-again type money. 

But keep a close eye on your fantasies...

Ironically enough, turning a dream into reality means dealing exclusively with reality. And reality can be a lot less appealing.

Reality has limitations. Reality deals with uncomfortable truths. Reality demands effort. The focused, consistent, and measured kind of effort. 

And who wants to do that?

By default, our brains seek out the path of least resistance. It’s always looking for the shortcut. For wealth, your mind might jump to a winning lottery ticket. That’s because winning the lottery requires virtually no effort.

Like a placebo effect, fantasies give us imagined benefits. But they don’t help cure the underlying problem. A lottery fantasy is a placebo. But devising an actual wealth plan is the medicine. 

And a wealth plan begins with a budget. 

Having a vision for your future is important. But the vision itself can become addicting and serve as an excuse to avoid reality. Excessive focus on the end result may be sabotaging your efforts to get started. 

With all that said...

What’s the Bottom Line? And How Can I Keep Making Progress?

When it comes to getting ourselves squared away financially, we can be our own worst enemies. Particularly in the mental department. Creating a budget for the first time can trigger all kinds of resistance. 

A lot of which we may not even be consciously aware of…

It turns out defining success also means defining failure. And these new definitions will bring unknowns to our attention. Naturally, we seek the comfort of a fantasy where all is perfect and certain. But doing so can be detrimental to our financial well-being.

We need to budget. And becoming aware of what’s stopping us is vital. But it doesn’t end there. Continuing to educate ourselves is crucial to development in all areas of financial well-being.