This is a guest post by Free From Broke.
“This is too difficult! How will I ever be any good?!?”
I’ve been studying the Japanese martial art Aikido for a little over ten years. One of the concepts my Sensei taught me was Polishing the Stone.
When a student starts learning an art they are far from smooth and flowing and struggle to do basic moves. Usually they are a bumbling, clumsy mess. It doesn’t take too many bad falls or rolls for a student to get discouraged and wonder if they will ever get any of the techniques down.
This is where Polishing the Stone comes in. Every student starts off as a rough, jagged stone. Sensei pushes the point that we all started off as a rough stone. Every one of us had a first day on the mat. Only with much practice and insight will we ever become a smooth round stone.
Every day of practice our stone is polished a little bit. You don’t even notice that you’ve learned anything. But as time goes on some of those sharp edges get a little smoother. After a few years the stone starts to get round even. After ten+ years, and my black belt test, I can honestly say my rock is noticeably smooth; round even.
My technique has gotten smoother and my insight into the art has grown significantly over the years to the point where I’m able to help teach. I can’t tell you how many falls I’ve taken or how many times I’ve hit the mat awkwardly though! All the scrapes, cuts, bruises, sprains, soreness – all of it was worth it!
Do you know what it took to get there?
- Time
- Patience
- Work
- Practice
- Lots of mistakes
All of these together helped me gain some bit of mastery. But I’m far from done. Learning never ends in this art and you need to continue to practice in order to keep up your technique.
“Wait?!? I thought this was My Super Charged Life? What’s this have to do with anything?!?” you ask.
How many of us were financial geniuses when we got our first paycheck? I’m guessing not many of you are raising your hands? I wasn’t either for sure. See, we all started out in personal finance as a jagged stone. The lessons I learned in Aikido apply to personal finance as well.
Let’s look again:
- Time – You aren’t going to become wealthy overnight (at least for most of us). It takes time to build up savings. It takes time to build up a retirement nest egg. It takes time to advance in your career. What makes compounding so powerful is time!
- Patience – This goes hand in hand with time. You need to understand that not everything is going to happen right now. You want that new car? Without patience you might buy one before you have enough saved finding yourself very tight financially. Who doesn’t want a new house? I know I do! But I know I have to wait until I have enough put away to afford one. Sometimes being able to take a step back and wait a little gives you a better perspective. Relax and take a step back before you make that big purchase. You might realize it was impulse that made you want it. Patience grasshopper!
- Work – You don’t get something for nothing. You have to roll up your sleeves and get sweaty. That career with the great job isn’t going to be handed to you. As well as your career you have to work to learn about your personal finances. There’s reading, there’s research, there’s great blogs such as this…the information doesn’t jump into your head. You have to go out there and learn about personal finance.
- Practice – I’ve heard that you need to do a technique 10,000 times before you get the hang of it. The next 100,000 times your body develops it’s muscle memory so you can do it without thinking. The next 1,000,000 develops mastery. Think about it…do you get wealthy because you saved money once? Can you retire because you contributed to your 401(k) the first time? We have to practice to develop personal finance habits that become a part of us to the point where it’s second nature.
- Lots of mistakes – If I only knew then what I know now…I would have taken what savings I had after high school and invested in this growing company called Microsoft. Or I would have built CD ladders so my money could continue to grow. Or I wouldn’t have spent so much on junk which would drive up credit card debt. I could go on. The point is we make mistakes and move on. As long as we learn from our mistakes we’re ok. Don’t expect to be perfect. Don’t be afraid of mistakes either. Welcome them. That’s how we learn.
Remember we all start out the same way. Don’t get discouraged if you feel overwhelmed or don’t understand every single aspect of personal finance. Welcome to the club! You’re a jagged stone that needs polishing. Keep at it and one day you’ll realize your personal finance skills have developed into a smooth, shiny stone!
FFB writes for Free From Broke, a site dedicated to personal finance and how it affects you and your family. Go check out his site and consider subscribing to his RSS feed if you like his content!
Photo by cobalt123