Work Harder

I had learned to work harder but not smarter. I was unable to gather the intensity I had in my personality to understand I did not need to work harder. I needed to work smarter. The same remains true today as I run my own business and love doing so. I enjoy the time I get to spend with my clients and I love to do hair. I always have. I just needed to learn the lesson that I was going to have to work much much much more intentionally NOT to just work. I needed to also include in my growing up process that I had to learn not to spend. The spending was what was continually causing me to need to work. YOU can laugh but that's our society today as a whole. We want things so we buy them and then we become victims to not having large sums of money saved to retire on. Now why is it so hard to turn off the desire to buy? That's easy enough to answer. It is what our faith is based on. When we are on a tough journey especially in our 20's we are trying to define ourselves through work and things. It is difficult to turn all of that off to worship a Christ we have never seen. I am not giving myself any excuses. I am just totally aware of what was happening to me back then. I was having a difficult time learning how important it was not to "want" things. I wish I could have applied the same innocent fear of running out of money to myself at an older age. I knew better when I first moved out. I had nothing to compare it to. The minute I stepped outside of my parents rule I had to learn that I had to come with the money to survive. So I didn't NEED so much then. I just needed the basics. I can actually survive on less. I am more content on less. I was coming into an age where those innocent feelings were no longer what was the strongest. In my experience by the time I bought my house I had 3 years under my belt to see I hadn't run out of money and I was always able to work harder and make more. I haven't run out since. I was always able to catch my buying habits with cash. If there is one lesson I could teach my younger self it would be to save half of what I actually spent. I would go back and reason with her and explain to her that even though she felt something, it would have been better to figure out another way to acquire the things I wanted without spending so much money. I am not angry that I was that kind of young woman back then. I am not bitter over the money I have spent even when I shouldn't have. I am not embarrassed about the things I did incorrectly. I am accepting of those things and I have chosen to live differently now. I am very much aware there was so much learning on my end that hadn't happened yet. It was going to take me a few years before I realized my spending was linked to the lessons I wasn't taught as a child or teenager. I was still trying to find out whether or not those "things" really mattered at all. As you will learn spending money is easier than NOT spending money. WHY? I mean if we are really in control of what we are doing then why is it much harder to go without? Here pivots a huge changing point in my life where I learned I was not at a place to go without. I racked up debt on a credit card because not having "things" in my life was more important to me than paying for it with cash. I needed to learn a hard lesson that the only thing I ever truly needed was Jesus.