What feels good to you?
A couple of weeks ago, I did a four-mile run. Just a few months earlier I could barely run one minute without stopping to catch my breath. But now I can run four miles in forty minutes. After finishing my run, I felt strong and powerful. I felt confident. I felt really good.
And then, at the same time of having those great feelings, I felt the need to Google whether running four miles in forty minutes was “good”. I wanted validation, despite how good I felt about having done it. I do this a lot. I look to others to tell me how I should feel about things.
I value the opinions of others, and I recognize that our friends often provide essential perspective when we feel directionless. But this experience was a reminder to me that I need to trust my own gut. I want my own intuition to be the north star in guiding me. I want to know that what I want is for me and when I feel good, it’s because I feel good.
Most of us weren’t taught to handle our finances in any particular way, so we look to the outside world to tell us what to do. What the outside world tells us though, doesn’t always align with our own experience, values, and beliefs.
If I Googled what a good running pace was, I probably would have read something saying that my ten-minute mile was slow, and I should only feel proud if I were able to run a seven-minute mile pace. I would have felt bad about myself, and I probably would have had feelings of giving up all together. What I realized, and what stopped me from Googling, was that a “good” running pace is someone else’s opinion, and it’s based on their own experience, values, and beliefs. After my run, I felt great, and I was proud I accomplished it. That feeling was independent of anyone else’s opinion – it was my feeling. I didn’t need to know if someone else thought it was good.
We see those around us buying expensive cars, clothing, and houses. Our social media reels are often curated vacations. We might see advice insisting on investing, but at the same time, we’re not sure we have enough money in the bank for groceries. Our interest in looking like what we see around us is often to the detriment of what we need. And, for a lot of us, we’ve lost the ability to get in touch with what we actually want because we’ve spent so much of our lives looking outside for validation.
If I started running a few months ago believing that my efforts would only be good if I could run a seven-minute mile pace for 13 miles, I would have failed within the first 30 seconds. I wasn’t ready for that yet and it’s not what I needed or wanted. I needed to gradually build up to somewhere I had not been, and I needed to feel comfortable knowing that it felt right to me.
The same is true of finances. You might not be ready to invest, even if that’s what’s “good” to be doing. If your spending isn’t under control, start there. Look at what you’re spending and create a plan to control it. If your spending is under control but you have a lot of debt, work on paying off your debt. If you don’t have any debt, but also don’t have any savings, build up savings. When you’re ready, and it feels right to you, then start investing.
I want to encourage you, with your finances, to ask yourself whether what you see others doing makes sense to you. If what you’re seeing others do doesn’t feel right, don’t do it. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, don’t do it. If what you’re doing doesn’t make you feel safe, don’t do it. When you really ask yourself if it feels good, the answer should be coming from you, not what someone else tells you.