You’ve probably heard at one point or another how important it is to have confidence in yourself, or in your abilities. Yet we are all faced with times in our life when we are less than confident. In fact, we can sometimes be quite critical of ourselves (at least I can) which increases the pressure of the situation, can make us more nervous and potentially sets us up to fail.
I’m reading a book right now called Performance Intelligence at Work: The 5 Essentials to Achieving The Mind of a Champion
. Written by Christian authors (one is a friend of mine), it is a book that is geared to helping you perform your best when it matters most.
Specifically, the book is about performing better at work, but you may have guessed by now that I think the guidance from this book can help us perform better at managing our personal finances. And personal finance matters!
Performance intelligence involves 5 different areas (focus, confidence, self discipline, winning game plan and competitiveness), but I’m going to focus on the area of confidence in this post.
How do we develop more confidence in our ability to manage money wisely? Isn’t that really what everyone wants who is striving to be a better steward of their finances? Wouldn’t it be great to have confidence knowing that you’re doing your job in this important area of life? But how do we get there?
Two mistakes in describing confidence in money management
One of the authors made a profound statement in describing two mistakes people make in regards to people describing their level of confidence. Here are the mistakes: “being confident in the outcome rather than in the process of creating the outcome and having all-or-nothing confidence.”
I think some of the problems people have with money reside inside of these two common mistakes in defining confidence. First, if we are less than 100% confident in things we can control, which may include budgeting, tracking expenses, creating a plan to get out of debt and making wise spending decisions, we should strive to improve these skills.
Second, we can’t tie our level of confidence to what are many variables that we simply don’t have control over. A great example is the fluctuation of the American economy. Yet another example might be an unexpected expense that may drain our emergency fund dry. Being overly concerned with external variables impacts peoples’ ability to manage money wisely and can often put them into a state of fear. Again, you have to be focused and confident in the actions and skills that create the outcome you want.
The responsibility that God has given us
The interesting thing about these points related to confidence is I think God is telling us the same thing through His word. It’s basic financial stewardship that perhaps we sometimes lose sight of. God tells us that he is the owner of everything (Psalms 24:1) and the provider. We can certainly have confidence that He will do His part as long as we are pursuing Him first (Matthew 6:33). He also tells us it is our responsibility to manage what he has entrusted to us (1 Corinthians 4: 1-2).
Our responsibility is the management part. We have to focus on the skills that are essential for performing management and not put our level of confidence in our financial situation on the variables in which we have absolutely no control.
God doesn’t tell us it’s our responsibility to manage the economy or other external factors. We cannot set our level of confidence in the state of the economy. Let me repeat. We cannot set our level of confidence in our personal financial journey and in our ability to get out of debt and manage money based on the state of the economy.
Another thing we can’t control, which we try to do often, is God’s will for our lives. God’s plan is God’s plan and there is no changing it. Try as we might to steer our own ships, we are ultimately in the creator’s hands. When it’s all said and done, it’s up to God to help us overcome external hurdles on our respective financial journeys.
Final thoughts
If your confidence level in any one area of money management is less than 100%, you have to do what is within your ability to change that. If you don’t have a plan to get out of debt; you must change that today. If you don’t have a spending plan to guide you each month to your larger goals; you have to change that today.
Do what it takes within your ability to bring your money management confidence level up. Then, have faith and confidence in God to do His part in handing the rest.
