Focus

December, in the life of a musician, is a hectic time.  My wife and I looked at our schedules, and the next day we have which is completely free is in just over two weeks.  Most days in between we're double and triple booked, and on those days, we're rushing from one thing to the next to the next.  We have an evening here or there with nothing, but those are by far the exception rather than the rule.

My wife also added up how many different pieces of music we'll be playing over the next month, and I think she figured it's somewhere over sixty.  I'm not bothering to count because the total would just depress me.

Now, what does this have to do with paying off debt?  It's times like this -- when there are many evenings when we're home just long enough to feed the cats, do chores, and get to sleep -- when it's easy to forget why we're doing everything we're doing.  We lose focus.  We only look the next step ahead, the next event, the next commute, the next song.  It's very easy to lose sight of the big picture.

It's times like this when it's so important to have goals.  If my wife and I didn't have our goal of paying off our debt in the next forty months, it would be so easy for us to just stop get some fast food, or grab an extra coffee or two at Starbucks.  It would be easy to skip checking the grocery ads in favor of just going and grabbing whatever we felt like -- and, since we'd be going in to the grocery tired, it's more than a little likely that all sorts of extraneous purchases would find their way into the cart and into our home, adding both to our credit card bill and our waistlines.  Just keeping that beacon in our sights -- being debt free before we're 35 -- helps us avoid some of those temptations.  Oh, sure, we're human and we give in now and then -- we did stop at Starbucks tonight, I admit it -- but we give in less often than we would without that star to guide us.

If you want to be debt free, you have to make it a goal.  Just thinking "it'd be nice if it happens" is not enough.  Make the decision to become debt free (if that's your wish) and give yourself a time line -- a goal without a time line is nothing more than a dream -- and you'll be able to keep that focus even when times get tough, when you get tired, when you're weary, when you're worn out.  Keeping that goal in sight becomes a source of comfort, something you can count on in times of trouble.  And as you keep your eyes on that goal, as you draw nearer to it, it will become far easier to ignore those voices trying to get you to stray from the path. 

Just focus on what you really want, and watch your dreams become realities.