These are the words I heard after a 50 min workout together with my sister and Billy Blanks. Yes, I did those at home video exercises that were popular in the 80’s, and it’s actually really good (and only a one time fee buying the dvd). I discovered Billy Blanks on my exchange in Japan where he was very popular at the time and it is difficult not to like this guy filled with positivity. He’s an american fitness star famous for creating his own workout program. 

Obviously these words were said in the context of reaching your exercise goals, but this applies to everything you do in life and can be a source of inspiration for your personal finances as well. Your mind is a powerful tool because it determines everything you do. It is in your mind that all decisions are made. Some might argue “but I follow my heart”, but ultimately it is your mind that interpret what your heart is saying, and your mind is choosing to follow the advice of your heart and not the logic.

Having your mind making all the decisions also means that you have an incredible control over your life since it is you who control your mind. That’s why we have the popular saying “if you set your mind to it you can accomplish anything”.

During one day you are estimated to make an average of 35 000 decisions. Most of them are made automatically, thankfully, otherwise it would be exhausting and we wouldn’t have time to make all the decisions. We also make a lot of important, conscious, decisions throughout one day and we want to make sure that we have an active decision making process for these decisions. That is why it is important to set up goals for ourselves. If we have a clear goal we know where we are going and we can also start to review the decisions from that perspective. If our goal is to save up for a trip to Hawaii we can define this in our decision making process. When standing in the supermarket, instead of thinking “do I feel like eating potato chips today or not?”, it adds on another layer and you’ll ask yourself “are these potato chips worth more than achieving my goal of going to Hawaii on vacation?”. It might sound ridiculous to have potato chips in the example since it’s such an insignificant expense, but actually it isn’t, all these small expenses have a huge impact on your life and there is a lot of money that can be saved there.

Even if we have a clear goal and we make the decisions if we want the potato chips or the trip to Hawaii, it can still be difficult to resist the short term happiness since it’s many times so nice, comfortable and delicious. When we want to achieve something big it does get hard, but remember, it is only in our minds and we are the ones controlling our minds, we can do it!

I am feeling a bit philosophical today after thinking about this quote so let’s finish with a bit of reflection.

• What choices have you made to put where you are today?
• Which choices are you proud?
• Which choices would you have done differently?
• What do you need to do now to reach the tomorrow you want to be in?