Tiger on Life...Apply it to Everything

"I view my life in a way … I'll explain it to you, OK?" he told his small audience in Florida. "The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today [emphasis mine]. And that's how I look at my life. I will be better as a golfer, I will be better as a person, I will be better as a father, I will be a better husband, I will be better as a friend. That's the beauty of tomorrow. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better."

That's from this article on ESPN.com about Tiger.

I think the trick it having the discipline to learn from your mistakes. I know there has been plenty of times in the past that I have made a mistake, known fully well that it was a mistake, was presented an opportunity to make that mistake again in the future and done so.

Happy Friday.

Cheers,
TMac

Slow Progress? Get on the Bike and Pedal!

After posting my debt allocation last night I sat up in bed for a couple hours staring at the ceiling feeling a little depressed about the tortoise like progress I made on my debt this month. Realizing and not being able to refute the numbers or dress them up made me actually realize that cataloguing my personal finance ups and downs is going to be a painful endeavor.

After firing up the feed reader this morning I came across a quote from Dick Costello, CEO of Feedburner on Brad Feld's Blog (Colorado Venture Capitalist) that put the tiny progress in perspective.

“The key is to just get on the bike, and the key to getting on the bike is not the confidence in knowing you will be successful if you do x,y,z. The key to getting on the bike is to stop thinking about "there are a bunch of reasons i might fall off" and just hop on and peddle the damned thing. You can pick up a map, a tire pump, and better footwear along the way.”

Costello was not talking about personal finance or biking, but the quote rings true for me because we just need to take action. So many times I get into my head that everything needs to be perfect and set up before I can actually get out of this hole. I get things in my head like - I need to set up MS Money to track my finances, I need to figure out how I am going to track my progress on my blog, I need to spread out my credit card debt to a bunch of 0% cards, ad infinitum.

What I really need to do is focus more on the day to day choices that I make. More than anything else I need to make better day to day decisions. I need to just get on the damned bike and pedal.

Cheers to all you out there that have mastered your ability to make the right decisions on a day to day basis.