There is a song that includes the lines “I will learn to let go what I cannot change… but I will change whatever I can.”
I think this is a good lesson for life. People always say “If you don’t like something, change it.” But that’s not always possible. You change what you can and you learn to accept what you can’t and work around it.
I have a coworker who is currently very stressed about a situation here at work. The situation affects our whole team, but this particular coworker is taking it very personally. It’s causing her a great deal of stress, and she complains about it quite a bit. I understand her frustrations – but this is one of those things that we can’t change. No amount of work or complaining or effort will have an ounce of difference.
My method of dealing with it was to vent for a few minutes, then shrug and move on. I can’t change it. I have to deal with it. And I’ve learned to not let it bother me. On the other hand, I found out that it’s causing her to lose sleep at night because she’s so stressed.
There are things you can change and things you can’t change. If you don’t like your job, you can look for a new job. But that doesn’t mean you will get a new job – the job market is tough. So you do what you can – you improve your skills and you look for a job and you try to find every option out there. But at some point, there isn’t anymore you can do. So rather than stress, you just have to keep doing what you are doing and trust that it will all work out.
Sometimes you just have to learn to let go.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
I have a hard time letting go also, but I am getting better at this. I think age brings wisdom, in fact I know it does. I which I cold go back and unworry a lot of my younger years. I have a saying, in 10 years will this matter? If no then forget it and move on.