Cheap Personal Finance

You may be in need of some extra cash so that you can accomplish something, say renovating your home, clearing debts or for a certain business deal. You may find that the money you have with you or in the bank is not enough to fully meet the need. Therefore, you may have the need for personal finance. 

 

The reason why it is known as personal finance is because this is money needed to meet some needs that are somewhat personal in nature as opposed to the other needs like buying a house, purchasing a score of land or setting up a business. There are many personal finance schemes available in the market, but you need to know how to get the best personal finance scheme that will work for you and that will come with the best rates and terms.

 

There are many personal finance schemes out there that are cheap. They come in many shapes, but the most common one is the secured one. In this you give collateral as you take the cash. Personal finance schemes that are secured with collateral are the best and they are the cheapest. The reason why they are cheap is because the lender is confident that the cash will be paid back because they have your item at hand. Therefore, secured personal finance schemes are cheaper than the non-secured ones. 

 

The repayment period also varies in different personal finance schemes. There are those schemes that require that you pay off the whole amount together with interest within a period of five years. However, there are those that give repayment periods that are stretched to over twenty years. Also, the allowed lending amount varies. Some personal finance schemes give only three thousand dollars while others even give up to fifty thousand dollars! 

 

Unsecured personal finance option can also be considered, depending on the nature of your need and your willingness. In this personal finance scheme, you are given the financing without any form of collateral. However, the limitation with this scheme is that the allowed lending amount ranges from five hundred dollars to fifteen thousand dollars. 

 

Also, the interest rate for this unsecured personal finance option is a bit higher, because of the fact that there is no security. The repayment period is also very short, ranging from one to ten years’ time. For the best personal finance schemes, you can go online and make an application.

How Well Do You Manage Your Finances?

Financial management of your personal finances is one of the hardest things you may have to do in your life. It is very hard to know whether or not you manage your personal finances well, unless you ask yourself some questions. 

 

First and foremost, you need to ask yourself is, “how well can you manage without using your credit card?” If you are very dependent on the credit card that you cannot do without it for the month, then your personal finance management has not yet grown to maturity. Doing without your credit card is not something you will learn to do overnight; it needs a lot of patience and sacrifice to break from such a habit. You first need to gradually but steadily pay off all the pending debts in your credit cards. This will call for debt consolidation so that the interest rates you pay will lower.

 

Secondly, the best indicator of how will or badly you manage your finances is your savings account. How much savings do you have? Over what period of time have you made these savings? How much do you dig back into the savings to meet your needs and wants? It is very disastrous when you have absolutely no personal savings. You should ensure that you save at least ten percent of your monthly or daily income. If you use more than ninety percent of what you get, then you should improve your personal finance management skills. There is no way you will get your personal finances in order if you have no savings to fall back to.

 

Thirdly, look at the status of your job or business. How much do you get from it in a month or week? How stable is it? What is the future like for the job or business? Does it meet your expenses? If not, what is your next plan for making more money? Do not rely on your job alone if you want to be in a good position to manage your personal finances. Consider doing business, whether small or big. 

 

Lastly, you need to know the stats of your emergency funds. Do you have sufficient medical emergency funds? Are you in any retirement benefit plan? You should make use of such plans, especially the government ones. This will ensure that your future is secured financially and that you will be prepared in case of any emergencies.

Manage Your Personal Finance

Most people have issues with their personal finances, and they have never come to a point where they have full control over their personal finances. Most people think that management of personal finances will only be possible when they start making millions of dollars every month. However, this is not true. This assumption usually makes people reluctant to take control of their money and they end up in financial crisis. 

 

Others think that taking steps to manage personal finances is a harsh and exaggerated, and they just live each day as it comes. Others live with the dream of becoming financially free one day and they therefore see no need to bother planning for the few peanuts they presently have. This is a very wrong perception, and it is imp0ortant that you take charge of your personal finances. 

 

One simple tip is to make good use of free samples. Why should you buy something when you can get a smaller version of it for free? It sounds funny, but it helps. Also, be a good steward of your plastic money.

 

If you are very extravagant, then avoid having a credit card; go for a debit one. Open a savings account instead of a current account, because your rate of withdrawal will be regulated. Make an effort to save money and reward yourself when your aims are met. It also makes more sense to buy things in bulk. Do a month’s shopping instead of buying what you need every day. 

 

This is especially with dry foods and foods that have a long shelve life. Things are much cheaper when they are bought in bulk, and you will find more offers on bulk items than on single ones. It is also cheaper to transport many items at once than to go ton the store everyday or every week. Remember, saving money is not only in the price at which you buy them, but also in the effort, time and money you spend to get them to your house.

 

When going to the convenience store, always have a list and stick to it. This is to avoid impulse buying, because this is what affects many people’s personal finances. Have someone who will keep you accountable, say a spouse or a friend. Practice sticking to the shopping list and it will become natural to you with time. Mark your progress, and give yourself incentives and rewards for every progress you make.

Personal Finance—Make Your Own Budget

When people hear the word “finance” mentioned, their mind goes into business and corporate matters. However, the bare truth is that finances start at your piggy bank at home to your plastic money in the wallet to your bank account. 

 

This is what personal finance is all about. You should be a manager of your own finances, or else you will end up in disaster sooner or later. Finance experts say that if you cannot save at least ten percent of what you are earning, then you are in financial disaster. This means that out of ten thousand dollars, a thousand should go into the savings account. This rule applies regardless of how much money you are earning, and it does not apply to the rich and wealthy, as many people think. 

 

Personal finance management cannot be done verbally, and therefore there is need to write down the plan so that it will be easy to implement it. It is natural for human beings to forget that they swore never to overspend especially when they are looking at an item that is flashy and exciting, and more so when this item has been their dream item. 

 

Therefore, a personal finance budget is the way to go. This will keep you accountable, and if you are strict enough to stick to it, then you can be sure to get to the level where you are financially free. Financial freedom is not a point when you get more cash than your bank account can hold; it is that point when your finances are no longer in control of you – you are the one controlling them. 

 

As you make your personal finance budget, use actual figures. It is wrong to use estimated figures, unless it is quite inevitable. When it is not possible to have the actual prices, make an estimate but ensure that it is on the higher side. 

 

However, even this is not the best way to go, because you may put unnecessary strain on your budget. Find out the current prices of food items, clothing, entertainment, leisure, beauty, health, and every other need that is predictable. 

 

Health needs are not easily predictable, but they can only be accurately predicted when you have a member of the family that has a certain chronic illness that requires a certain amount of money every month. However, the 10% named above that should not be spent is what covers any unexpected needs and it also stands to meet any future expenses like a holiday, a car, long term further education, a new house, etc. 

Protect Your Personal Finances

What is the present status of your personal finances? The best way through which you can review this status is by first checking your personal savings. You should have constant and consistent saving habits. Also, your dependability on plastic money should say a lot about the status of your personal finances. 

 

Your personal finances are okay if you can survive for about three months without even looking at your credit cards. If you have accumulated a lot of credit card debts, you need to strategize a way through which these debts ca be aid in the easiest and cheapest way. Consider consolidating your debts, because this will ensure that you pay the debts using a cheaper rate of interest, and this will save you money in the long run. 

 

The reason why you need to protect your personal finances is because of the insecurity in the people’s financial future. One thing that can make you aware of the need to protect your personal finances early enough is the rate at which jobless people are increasing, the rate at which prices of food and energy are raising and the rate at which inflation is occurring. The interest rates on almost everything are increasing at an alarming rate, and this is very worrying. Therefore, you need to secure the future of you and your family and loved ones by putting in order your personal finances.

 

You should watch how you manage your debts. One thing that really wastes your cash is the interest rates. Most of the times, one usually ends up paying for more than double of what they actually owe, and this is all because of the interest rates. It therefore is very detrimental to the health of your personal finances when you are paying more than five credit card debts. The best way you can manage these debts is by doing consolidation. You can approach any financer, say a bank, and ask for a debt consolidation loan. When they accept, they pay off all your debts and consolidate them into one, and you therefore end up paying only one financer, meaning that the interest will be much lower.

 

Personal finance budgeting is also a must in securing your finances. Budgeting does not only apply to those who earn five hundred dollars every month; it applies to the multibillionaires too. There is absolutely no way your personal finances can be secure if you do not have a good personal finance budget. A budget acts as a guideline to your spending and it ensures that the money is fairly and appropriately distributed among all needs.

7 Points to Remember When Setting Goals

Here are some things that you should keep in mind when you are setting your goals.

 

1.  What purpose will this goal achieve? Do you really want that result? Will it help you in some way? This is a very important point to consider. Oftentimes, we set goals without thinking about its importance in our life. We need to set priorities about the things we want out of life when we are setting goals. It is only when the goal is practical and purposeful will we stay motivated to achieve it.

 

2.  Whose help can you enlist? For most goals we set, we need a collective effort to fulfill them. That is the reason we should be clear in our minds about the people who can help us to achieve our goals. 

 

3.  What constraints and difficulties will you have when you are setting your goal? Your goal achievement is not going to be a simple process. You will have to exert yourself to some extent. You will have to do things that you won’t ordinarily do. But, it really helps if you know beforehand what kinds of difficulties you might have when you are trying to achieve your goals. Think about these difficulties and how you will surmount them.

 

4.  Of all the constraints, you will find that there is one constraint, which you can term as the primary constraint. In most cases, this primary constraint is money. It could be something else for you, like a mindset that you have developed and you need to fight with in order to reach towards your goal. Analyze this primary constraint.

 

5.  Make your plans to fight this primary constraint. You need to move on ahead, and overcoming this chief difficulty is going to take you several notches ahead towards fulfilling your goals. So, focus your energies on this one primary constraint and the remainder of your path will smoothen itself out.

 

6.  Enjoy the process. You have to always stay motivated and inspired. Read self-help books that can help you. Do things that you like to do, even as you are inching towards your goals. Do not forget your family and friends. Love yourself too. Treat yourself in the way you like, or your body is going to rebel against you and you will find goal accomplishment difficult.

 

7.    Look forward to the results. You should always want your goals to be fulfilled so bad that you can almost taste it. You want to make it happen. It is only when you are so relentless about it can you make a good deal out of your goal setting and, thus, your life.

 

These are the things you have to keep in mind about your goal setting. Try them out and you will find that things always work for you. 

Set Your Goals in an Ascending Order

There are many ways to set goals, but one of the ways that really works is to set your goals in a stepwise, ascending manner. Let us see what this means in greater detail.

 

Suppose you have to accomplish a goal of buying a new house. This is a huge goal, a life-changing thing, and definitely you are going to go all out when you are planning it.

 

However, is this going to be possible with just a single goal — “I want to have a house”? That’s quite unlikely. That is why you need to follow the stepwise manner.

 

The secret is to set your goals in such a manner that they go in an ascending manner. So, instead of one big lofty goal, you could have mini goals like “I will gather money for the down payment”, “I will start looking for a house”, “I will approach banks for a home mortgage”, etc. You could actually make a checklist of these goals and then keep checking them as you accomplish them one after the other.

 

This method of setting goals helps you in many ways than one. The most important benefit is that your confidence is boosted in more ways than you think. Firstly, when you see that your goal is a small, chewable nugget, then you are not intimidated by it. You feel that you can accomplish it, and therein builds your confidence. And, when you actually achieve that goal, your confidence is boosted to no end.

 

The other aspect—the subtler one—is that you can easily enlist support when your goals are smaller. Your family and friends won’t be scared of you because of huge goals. They will see the small goals that you may show them, and then they will even agree to contribute to it in whatever way they can. But, if you have huge loans, then people are just going to be too scared to even give it a try.

 

Also, it is an easier and much more practical process to set a small goal first, and then go on increasing as the earlier goals are accomplished. It is practical because the goal setting process hardly takes any time. You just have to think about a mini goal rather than get into the process of making a scary huge goal at the outset. This makes things easier and eventually you begin to feel that your life itself is headed in the right direction. 

Setting Goals—Things That Can Help You Achieve Them

What are the things that can enable you to set satisfying, achievable goals? Here are some points that can help you.

 

Lucidity of Your Goals

 

Be very clear in your mind about the purpose of your goal. Why are you trying to achieve it? What will be the consequences? When you can see ahead and realize how the goals can help you, you become more focused on them. Also, chalk out a plan to achieve the goal. This plan should be crystal clear. It should be a step-by-step process. You should know what exactly you will do after you have achieved one particular step towards goal fulfillment. When you work with clear objectives such as these, you find that achieving the goal becomes much easier.

 

The Challenge Factor

 

We all love challenges. Not all of us will want challenges that break our backs, but we do want small challenges that we can fulfill. Hence, when you are setting goals, you should see to it that your goals challenge you. That helps you retain your interest in your goal fulfillment, and once you have achieved a goal which challenged you in some way or the other, you will find yourself much more exhilarated. You will want to do more; you will plan more. This helps you grow as a person.

 

Know Your Limits

 

It is also very important that you set goals within your limitations. This does not mean that your goals should just be what you have already done. As said before, set goals that are challenging, but you should have a very practical view of yourself too. You should know what you can do and what you cannot. If you set a very lofty goal, it will only sap your energies and you will not be able to accomplish you. This can disillusion you forever from setting further goals.

 

Stay Committed

 

You cannot achieve anything without the right amount of dedication towards it, and your goals are no exception. You have to spend some time and effort; you have to plan and you have to stay committed towards your goals. You cannot just set something for yourself to achieve and then forget about it completely. You have to keep moving in that direction. When you have set a goal, you have to realize that this is just one rung in the ladder of success. You have to climb that, and then you have to move towards the next rung. This is a continuous process that you have to keep at for the rest of your life.

The SMART Theory of Goal Setting

We like to abide by theories; they put a concrete spin on things. They make difficult tasks seem achievable. Even for your goal setting practices, there is a wonderful theory that you can use. This theory, popularly known as SMART, is a strategy you can implement to set goals that you can easily achieve. There are five aspects to this theory; each of the letters of SMART stands for one aspect of it.

 

S for Specific

 

The first aspect of goal setting is that you should be specific. Do not set something ambiguous which can be easily misconstrued. For example, “I want to become rich” is a very vague goal which can never be objective. For someone, earning $5,000 a month means they are rich, while another person may not think they are rich even they have earned a million dollars. Instead, the goal should have been more specific like, “I will earn a million dollars this year.” That’s just an example; you get the point.

 

 M for Measurable

 

You should be able to measure the success of your goals. In the above example, you can easily measure the success of your goal, because you have revolved it around a number. Other examples are “I will shed 5 pounds this month”, “I will read 2 chapters of this book every day”, “I will add to my wardrobe by 1 new dress each fortnight” and so on.

 

A for Attainable

 

Though it is all right to aim for the moon, you should be practical about your goals. You should stay within attainable limits. It is important that your goals should not go beyond your individual capacity too much. It is all right to challenge yourself a bit, but if you go too far, you are only going to lose your motivation and give up.

 

R for Realistic

 

If you aim for something like being the first person to live on Mars, your goal achievement won’t be too easy. And if you set something like you want to meet an alien today, it is probably not going to happen. Be realistic when you are setting goals. They should be something that can be achieved, but are just out of your reach for the moment.

 

T for Time-Sensitive

 

Give time great importance when you are setting a goal. Everything revolves around the time factor. If you achieve in a year what you needed in a month, the goal is probably not going to help you much.

 

Keep this theory in mind when you are setting your goals the next time. You will find that you are not only able to achieve your goals, but you can get greater satisfaction out of such achievement. 

What to Think about When You Are Setting Goals

Goal setting is an essential activity for a successful life. It won’t be wrong to say that people without goals in their life, merely exist. People who have goals are the ones who discover the real value in their life.

 

It so often happens that you decide to set some goals but then things do not go the way you want them to. Your goals falter and fumble, and you aren’t able to achieve the things that you expect. 

 

People would give anything if they knew how to set goals that they can achieve; goals that can add real meaning to their lives. Now, though the achievement of goals depends on several things, here are some points that you should consider.

 

1.  Do not aim too high too soon. Frankly speaking, there is no limitation to the goals you set, but if you are new to goal setting, then start with smaller goals first. Like, if you are trying to lose weight, just plan on losing one pound at the end of the week. This is not too difficult, and the best part is that when you achieve this smaller goal, you get motivated to chase bigger goals.

 

2.  Never cross the boundaries of your capacity. All right, you like to challenge yourself all the time, but that does not mean that you should become impractical. You should not set a goal that’s not your forte, or at least you should not be too rigid about it. Of course, you can learn a totally new thing, but there are things like determination, time, the willingness to put in effort, etc. that matter a lot.

 

3.  When you are setting a goal, remember to give it a reasonable timeframe. For example, if you have set a goal to learn Chinese, you must give it a reasonable amount of time, like say 4 months. Rushing too much with your goals means that you will not be able to achieve the things that you want and that will make you disillusioned from planning further.

 

4.  An important thing to consider when setting goals is the result that you will get from it. That’s your incentive. If the result is something that you badly want, then you will find that following the goal becomes much easier. That’s why, a very safe way to fashion a goal is to weave it around something you really want.

 

Keep these points in mind when you are setting goals. Though goal setting depends on so many different points, these are the ones that you cannot afford to miss out on.

Facing Life Challenges—Accepting Them or Changing Them

Do you sometimes feel that your life is going in the wrong direction and it is out of control? You know that things are happening you have no control over. When we face these types of situations, we have two choices. We can either accept that there are things in our life we cannot change, and there are things in life we can. 

 

When there are things in our life we can change, then we must not wait for things to change, but we must work at changing them. Many people know what needs to be done to change a situation but for reasons sometimes known only to them they procrastinate doing the things that can change their situation and improve it. 

 

Other things in our life we cannot change and these are the things that often cause us pain and distress. They often create a feeling of hopelessness and if we let them, they can control our life. Francis of Assisi once asked for the “courage to change the things that can be changed and to accept the things that can’t be changed and the ability to tell the difference.” 

 

Sometimes when things are happening in our life we can’t change, we need to deal with them by accepting them and learning to live with them with patience and not just surviving but thriving as we accept them. 

 

The prayer of Francis asked for the ability to tell the difference between the things we can change and the things we can’t change and for many people this is the first step towards finding the solution to a bad situation. We need to ask if the situation can change and if it can, what practical steps do we need to take to bring about the change.

 

Sometimes we can answer this question our self, sometimes we need the help of a professional counselor or advisor. Having determined the answer to that question we need to put steps into place to help us make the change, and the counselor may be able to help us give us advice in the best way to make the change. 

 

If we decide the change can’t be made, we need to try to see the situation in the bigger picture so we don’t focus on it. We need to accept the problem is here to stay and our goals must be on how to relegate the problem to the background and value the life we have apart from the problem. 

 

This maybe the more difficult path of the two choices, but which ever path we choose, we have taken steps that will ensure us a better life and personal growth. 

Feeling Down—What Is Your Diet Like?

For a long time, the effect of diet on children’s moods has been the subject of debate. Child Psychologists suggest that diet modification may be an effective way of helping to improve children’s behavior. The effect of diet on an adult’s well-being is being increasingly understood. 

 

Many adults feel depressed or have no energy to do the things they want to do. People blame their children, their heavy workload, and their lack of sleep. Most people don’t consider their diet as either a cause of their feelings of negativity or a way to reduce stress and understanding this can help many people find some relief from the stress related negative feelings. If you are struggling with negative thoughts and feeling tired and stressed try these diet changes and see if they help you.

 

1.  Green tea has been identified as an extremely effective stress relieving drink. Drinking green tea in preference to drinking caffeine may help to reduce the effects of caffeine as a stimulant. Reducing Caffeine intake and drinking green tea are both useful strategies to reduce feelings of stress and tension.

2.  One of the reasons why people instinctively reach for sweet and savory foods when they are feeling down is due to low serotonin levels in the body. Sweet and savory foods can create a sharp sudden spike in feelings of well being and then drop suddenly. They stimulate the production of a hormone called serotonin, which reduce stress and create a feeling of contentment and well-being. 

3.  A better option is food high in good carbohydrates eaten with a protein source. Eating adequate quantities of both carbohydrates and proteins provide the body with optimum opportunity to produce adequate sustained serotonin levels. Some of the best foods to produce high serration levels are flaxseed, turkey, dark chocolate, fish and seafood, flax seeds, cherries and bananas. 

4.  Restrict the amount of sweet foods in your diet and don’t go follow a low carbohydrate diet. Easting sweet foods and certain starchy foods create and immediate feeling of well-being that quickly disappears and leaves a feeling of fatigue and tiredness. 

 

Taking control of your diet and choosing to exercise regularly helps you regain a sense of control in your life. This can reverse the negative feelings that are associated with poor eating choices. Positive thinking can be the result of feeling in control, even as feeling out of control can create negative thinking. When a person feels in control, anxiety and stress levels and negative self-talk and thinking usually decreases.

If You Could Zoom in on Your Life

If you could take a photo of your life today and then zoom in on something special or important which part of your life would you choose? Would it be something that is causing you distress or something that is an exciting memory or a special relationship?

 

If your still picture was a movie, what title would you give it? Would you like the experience to continue or do you wish it had never happened? If you could relive this part of your life again, would you? If not, why wouldn’t you? 

 

Imagining our life as a movie or a photograph is a good way of examining our life and the things in it we like and the things in it we would like to see changed. When we give important life experiences a name, we can focus on the important events in our life and especially on those ones that continue to influence us today. 

 

Have you ever noticed when you take a wide angled shot of a scene, you see many pictures but very little detail and when you zoom in on one part of the picture you miss out on the big picture, though you get a very good view of one part of the picture that really interests you? 

 

We often look at life like this. We look at the big picture and forget the details that bring beauty and interest to our lives, or we focus on one thing and forget the bigger picture. Either way, we risk losing our perspective if we only look at life from one or the other perspective. We need both perspectives to understand our life experiences and that is the purpose of giving a name to the scene. 

 

Revisit your photograph memory again and rethink the situation you were thinking of earlier. How different does the picture look close up and how does it look at a distance. If the picture is distressing, close up, try to zoom back and look at the picture from a distance to give you a big picture perspective. Does it change the picture at all?

 

Sometimes when we focus on things in our life, we feel distressed, but when we see it as part of a bigger picture we can deal with it, even gain and learn something important from it. Similarly, if we focus only on our life from a distance, we forget to appreciate the individual and special things that make life unique for us.

Planning Your Day

If you have just woken up and are wondering how to spend your day, you probably know that you may or may not achieve much today. The luxury of waking up and having no plans for the day is something we all dream of and would love to do and probably make it a reality as much as we can on weekends and during the holidays. However, the most effective way to become a productive person is to not waste the day by having no goals or plans for it. 

 

In the current economic environment with its uncertainty and rising costs, economists and financial planners suggest that people take note of every cent they spend so they can see where their money goes each week. People can then use this information to help them plan where they can cut spending out of their budget and use that money to pay for unexpected bills or to save for when it’s needed. 

 

Prizing our time in the same way we do money will help us become effective in our work and our home life as we try to juggle the many responsibilities in our lives and still provide time left over for ourselves. Try to get into the habit of planning your days. Each night before you go to bed, make a mental note of the things you know you need to do and try to create a plan of action. Multi task where possible so you can achieve two or more things at once. Don’t forget to include you time in your plan. Taking care of yourself is as important as taking care of everyone else to achieve life balance. When you have made a mental note of these things, do try taking a few minutes to write them down on paper.

 

All this may seem unnecessarily laborious. There is however nothing more satisfying than to come to the end of the day and see what was on the to do list at the beginning of the day and see that list crossed out or ticked off, either on paper or in your mind. Creating an ordered life will actually give you more chance of free time rather than less time and you won’t find yourself forgetting things you promised to do for people. Taking 10 minutes to exercise when you didn’t think you had time to exercise becomes potentially possible when you have scheduled it into your day. If this is something you have never done before, try it for a few days and you will soon find it becomes a habit you won’t easily want to give up. 

The Lesson of the Tortoise

Do you remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare? One fast and self-assured, the other slow and steady. They set out to have a race and in the beginning, it was the hare that easily bounded ahead of the tortoise and almost made the finish line before the tortoise managed to go very far at all. Yet, the self-assured hare was just a little too self-assured and he decided to sleep before crossing the finishing line and he slept so long and so soundly, that the tortoise eventually crossed the finish line while he was still sleeping. Against all the odds, the tortoise had won the race. 

 

Why did the tortoise win the race? We are often told that “slow and steady wins the race” and there is truth in that. What is interesting about this story is that both the tortoise and the hare were using their natural talents and they used them to the best of their ability. From the point of view of Personal Development maybe we should take a closer look and see what happened in this story.

 

The tortoise, while not fast entered the race with the best of intentions. He knew he probably would not win, but that didn’t stop him participating. No doubt, he went full speed and put his heart and soul in the endeavor. He didn’t just set out on a walk in the park on a sunny day. He full utilized all his abilities and, in the end, it paid off and he won. No one was more surprised than he, to find he crossed the finish line first.

 

The hare likewise used all his abilities, and should have won the race, but he didn’t. He had yet to learn the value of not having too much faith in his own abilities. He became so self-assured that he became arrogant, that caused his downfall, and his ability to win what should have been the easiest of races. 

 

When we compare ourselves to the tortoise and the hare, we can learn some important life lessons that may help us in our endeavors. The tortoise did what he did best, to the best of his ability. He did not let circumstances overwhelm him, but instead he did what was asked of him and he eventually found success. The hare likewise did his best, but he let the circumstances get the better of him and they did overwhelm him and he rested on his laurels rather than continuing to the finish line and he found failure.

 

It is worth asking if in our endeavors we find our successes by having the attitude of the tortoise, or are more like the hare, and rely on our reputation and this explains our failure to succeed.