Lawyers often put so much pressure on ourselves to always be striving for the next thing and to get there faster.

But when you’re always so focused on what’s next and how far you are from your goal, you make your present experience more difficult than it has to be.

In this episode, let’s talk about what happens when we’re always focused on getting to the next thing in our finances and the importance of focusing on one day at a time.

Topics Discussed

    • a recent conversation with a law student who wants to manage her money better
    • my experience with putting pressure on myself to pay off debt faster
    • what happens when you focus more on the future than the present
    • living in the grace of one day only
    • what happens when you approach your finances one day at a time

Listen to the Episode 

Resources mentioned

Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call.

Recent Episodes 

197 | Don’t Be a Victim of Your Finances

Sometimes it can feel like your finances are just happening to you. But they're not. You have authority over your finances, and you can change your financial circumstances. All it takes is a decision to do so. In this episode, let's talk about how not recognizing your...

196 | Thoughts About the Future

The way you think about your future is critical to achieving the goals you have for your future. The issue is many of us go to the negative and believe our goals are impossible or that things won't work out for us. You have to believe that the things you want can and...

195 | Growing Your Capacity to Have Money

Learning to have money is critical to making progress on your financial goals. Many lawyers are used to not having money, so keeping money feels hard at first. But when you get this down, you can create stability in your finances, pay down debt, and save more. In this...

Transcript

You’re listening to Wealthyesque. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about living in the present moment and not wanting to jump ahead to some future point and putting pressure on yourself to get to that future point faster. I had a conversation the other day with a law student who wants to learn to manage your money better. She is working while she’s in law school and she has some financial goals she wants to accomplish and she just generally wants to make sure she knows how to manage money before she starts making more with her associate salary. And let me say this, I think it’s so great that she’s already thinking about this and I’m always so impressed with the law students and early career attorneys who reach out to me and want to get their finances in order because most lawyers are not thinking anything about this kind of stuff that early on. But one thing that stood out to me in our conversation was this student was talking about her finances as if she were a second or third year associate rather than a second or third year law student. She has great goals like saving for a house and paying off debt. But she is feeling so worried about her finances and she’s putting a lot of pressure on herself to accomplish all these things before she’s even finished with school. And I told her I can absolutely help her right I can absolutely teach her how to manage your money better. I can teach anyone. But I asked her what if she just focused on getting through school and enjoying the time she has left right all the other stuff will still be there on the other side and she’ll have more income to be able to achieve her goals at that point. Because one thing I know from experience is while she’s putting all this focus on the future and getting to her goals and paying off her debt and saving for a house, she’s probably not having a great experience in the present. I have told you before about my own similar experience when my husband and I first started our debt journey back in 2016. And if you’re not familiar with that story, basically we added up all our debt and realize we owed over 670,000 Most of which was student loans. And I just wanted to go on right I thought about it all the time. I was thinking of ways we could cut more expenses and bring in more money so we could pay it down faster. I was obsessed and in my mind I was thinking that life would be better when it was all paid off. But the issue was I was ruining my present experience. financial situation felt very heavy to me. I felt very overwhelmed by it. I felt hopeless. And I mean, it just sucks right when you’re just focusing on how much debt you have all the time and how much you owe and how far you are from where you want to be. So my conversation with that law student reminded me so much of my own experience and the importance of living in the present moment. And to be clear, I’m not saying she should just YOLO her way through the rest of law school. But I am saying that she doesn’t have to be so focused on the future things that she wants to do financially. I read this book recently called Grace over grind. It’s by an author named Shea vines, and it’s actually a business book about doing business and God’s grace rather than hustling and grinding. And I know that not everyone who listens to this podcast is an entrepreneur and not everyone who listens to this podcast is a Christian, but there was one part in that book that I think is particularly applicable to our conversation today. At one point the author was talking about living in the grace of one day only and I just really liked the way she put that right living in the grace of one day only because we often want to look to the future all the points that we haven’t gotten to yet all these goals that we have just like me just like that law student I was talking to, and we forget about right now. Yes, you want to plan for the future. You want to decide the things that you want to do you want to set the goals you want to accomplish all that stuff. But what if you focus on only what you need to focus on today? All those other things you will get to them when it’s time. But what if you just worry about what you need to worry about today. And when you do that, when you live in the grace of one day only and take things one day at a time you create a much better experience of your life. You’re living in the now and enjoying what’s happening now you’re focusing on the things you can do today and not getting overwhelmed with all the things you need to do down the line. It’s similar to a concept that we talked about in the conversation about feeling overwhelmed with your finances. That was episode 85. So go back and listen to that one if you haven’t, but when you’re feeling overwhelmed with your finances, often it’s because you’re looking at the whole picture all at once and all the things that it will take to get to the goals you have and not thinking about just one thing at a time. Right that one thing you can do or that one step you can take right now. So if you are like the student or like I was back in the day, take a step back from all the things you think you need to be doing to achieve your goals and focus on the present moment. What do you need to worry about right now today? What’s one step you can take? When you keep your focus there I promise you things will feel so much easier, so much lighter. And once you have a plan for achieving your goals. It’s just a matter of working that plan, just living that plan one day at a time. And the culmination of all those days are living the plan each day making decisions that align with the goals that you have each day moving forward and the goals that you have and the things you want to do. All of that culminates in you achieving those goals you have for yourself, but you do so with much more grace with much more ease with much less stress and anxiety and worry. It’s just an overall better experience. The only thing we have is the present. The past only exists in our memory. The future hasn’t happened yet. All we have is the present. So that’s what we’re gonna focus on. Set the goals make the plans, but when you’re living day to day focus on one day at a time, that will lead to a much better experience of your finances and your life. And listen, I will teach you how to manage your money with the grace of one day only. We create your goals we create the plan to get you there and then we focus on what you can do in the present from week to week and day to day to get there. So get on the waitlist at rho thomas.com/waitlist so you will know as soon as I’m taking on new clients all right, that is it for this week’s episode connect with me over on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn rho Thomas and Instagram I am rho Thomas. Subscribe to the show and leave a review both of which help more people to find it. And please take a second think of a friend or two who could use this information and share this episode with them. As we close out friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently. Week after week. You’ll continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live a life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.