Hating your Debt is Counter-Productive

As I discussed in my last post, debt comes in several different forms and guises and each person takes on debt for different reasons and in different ways. Each person's debt story is different and because of that there is no one universal approach to debt management that can be prescribed.

One thing however that should never be part of your debt repayment strategy is nurturing a feeling of hatred towards the debt. Many times I have seen people get very passionate about debt, often expressing emotions which vary from despair to disgust.

All emotions in this spectrum are natural, especially when you are first waking up to the magnitude of the hole which you have dug with bad financial practices. In some cases, you were doing well until an emergency or job loss caused you to fall behind on your payments. However you come to that place when you feel the heavy burden of your debts, stop yourself from giving into the emotions of hate and disgust. These emotions are counter-productive and can be quite damaging to your self-worth.

In all cases, the debt which you carry is a representation of the choices which you made in the past. To hate the debt, is to in part hate yourself for making those decisions. While there is a benefit to looking back at these decisions and being able to admit that they were not the best you could have made in the circumstances, beating yourself up does not assist you to move forward.

Making peace with your past decisions without casting blame heavily on yourself, allows you to have a clear mind. With this clear mind you are able to see the lessons in your past and make a plan for the future that would allow you to improve your situation.

Forgiving yourself for the debt, is a key step in separating your bad decisions from your innate ability to handle your finances efficiently and effectively. Often persons consider themselves to be bad with money although they simply lack the basic tools to turn their financial story around,

It is important to give yourself a clean slate to start with which allows to create a fresh paradigm for your money story.

Consider working some of these positive money affirmations into your self-care routine.