I was listening to Hilary Rushford’s podcast while savoring my morning coffee and I heard her talking with Marie Forleo about this idea that life is a series of spirals. I’ve heard this idea before, this theory that we’re going through life and we keep spiraling up through multiple levels.
If you’ve ever visited the Guggenheim Museum in NYC you’ll have the perfect image in your head of what I’m talking about.
What was hard at first, with time and practice becomes easy until we reach the next level and we’re back to hard again.
Over and over, rinse and repeat.
This isn’t a new concept. If you’ve spent any time in business or sports you’ve heard the term “leveling up”. My Christian friends have a saying they like to use, “New levels, new devils.” And if you’re a parent you get to see this play out over and over again during nightly homework.
Kids are probably the best example of watching a person work their way up that spiral, level by level, challenge by challenge.
We’re climbing these spirals in every area of our life.
We climb them in our work, our marriages, our parenting, and it should come as no surprise that we’re climbing a money spiral as well. I’ve heard so many people (myself included) say things like, “If I just had more money all my money problems would go away!”
Except deep down, we both know that isn’t true.
Sure, some of your money problems would disappear overnight if you just had more money. But if you don’t realize you’re moving up a spiral you might be surprised to find that more money just means that you have new money problems to figure out.
If creating a budget is now easy, your next level could be figuring out how to increase your income.
If you’ve paid off all your debt, the next level up might be understanding ways to invest your extra money.
If basic investing is going smoothly, maybe you’re ready to up your game and learn about real estate.
I don’t know what your next level is but I know that the next level being hard isn’t the problem.
The problem is when you see something being hard as some sort of weakness in you so you give up trying. You’re not the problem, there isn’t something wrong with you, you’re just doing something new.
Doing something new is hard. It was hard when you were a kid and that hasn’t changed.
That my friend is normal.
Say it with me now, “It’s normal.”
It’s normal to grow through periods that challenge you followed by periods of ease… followed by more challenges, and back to ease again.
There won’t be a point in life where you have it all figured out. There isn’t some magical destination to get to where life is easy and you’re confident in everything. So try to enjoy the process.
And when there is absolutely no joy to find in the process, be kind to yourself.
After all, you’re just spiraling up.