The reason I can guarantee it, is that we are all subject to two other tendencies:

• We only do what we think is possible to do. The possibility of some actions is simply so out of reach of our imagination, that we will not even consider it. Before laser assisted eye surgery to correct short-sightedness and other refractive eye defects, I am sure that many thought they would have to wear glasses or contact lenses for the rest of their lives.
• We only truly believe it is possible to do what we have sucessfully done before. Those who call themselves risk-takers are those who take a leap of faith and try something new in spite of this tendency. It is important though, to remember that until one acutally succeeds, it will not seem nearly as real in your mind as afterwards.

These two tendencies combined cause us to repeat using the same strategies we have used in the past, and to never even consider that they would need to be improved.
We need to counter these tendencies if we are to improve our lives. The best way to counter them, is to educate yourself about what it possible for others, and then simply “turn off” thinking and take massive action towards achieving the same for yourself.

When you do this, you will probably find that it does not work out for you at first. It is new to you and you will make mistakes, but if you struggle through the hardships at some point it becomes much easier and one day you have totally forgotten that the activity was once thought of as impossible for you.

So don’t get discouraged, this is a struggle that affects all of us, even those with a lot of succes will have a doubting voice within:

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. - Vincent Van Gogh

You probably have a similar voice inside your head - do not let it rule your life, or you will end up old and bitter, wondering what might have been (for an illustration see Morgenthaler). I do not want that to happen to you, and I am pretty sure that I have your support in this matter

Human beings are all full of desires that makes us want this and that; due to this fact being frugal is actually pretty hard for most people. The desires are the remnants of strategies that have worked very well for human beings in the past, so evolutionally speaking the desires have been immensely important but at the same time they have also played out their role. You can see the results of this in most developed countries, even though there is no shortage of food people are still eating like a famine is just around the corner - and scientist have actually discovered that if you start to eat less the body responds instinctively by lowering your metabolism and increasing the desire for food through chemical changes in the hypothalamus, effectively making it very difficult to loose weight. And this is not only a principle you see regarding food, but also a general psychological principle.

I am reminded of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer watches one of the home shopping-channels on TV, one of the products gets him really excited (I do not remember what it was though) and when the speaker mentions that the stock of the product is limited Homer gasps “Limited!!?” and immediately gets on the phone to order. Homer then asks the salesclerk whether they have any left, to which he responds “yeah, we’ve got a few” and the view changes so you can see that they have a whole storage facility full of them.

In the episode of The Simpsons it was clear that the “limited” supply was simply a marketing-trick and in fact it is one of the most common tricks in the trade. How often have you seen the phrase “WHILE SUPPLIES LAST “? While it also has a practical meaning, I suspect it is also used so often because it makes the product seem more rare, and rare things automatically rises in (perceived) value. A good example that rare things automatically increases in value can be seen in the coin and stamp collecting communities - in those communities the assumed value is a direct function of how rare the stamp or the coin is and a normally uninteresting stamp can suddenly be worth a lot if it happens to have a rare fault in the print. It is simply a psychological principle that people want more what is rare and do not care much for what is ubiquitous.

Another principle your brain works by, is that you can not decide to not think about a specific thing, let me show you : do not think about a pink elephant! Do not think about a pink elephant! See? You had to think about a pink elephant in order for your brain to know what it was you were not supposed to think about. As long as you consciously triy not to think of a pink elephant the thoughts of pink elephants will haunt you

Applying the two principles above to the concept of frugality, it is easy to conclude that in order to live a frugal live you have to focus on living frugally (to battle your natural desires) and when you focus on living a frugal life you must feel like there is a shortage in the world of all the things you would like to spend your money on (because you are artificially creating this shortage). When there is a shortage the natural way to cope is to focus on getting the basics working, and if the shortage never ends you will spend your life worrying about the small and unimportant stuff like how to decrease your electricity-bill.

Let me get one thing straight though, I am not advocating that abstinence from sloth is flawed - decreasing your electricity bill is a good thing both financially and environmentally - what I am specifically saying is flawed is the lifestyle of never spending money on anything you do not need to. You should not throw away your money, but at the same time you should not make money and abstinence from the pleasures they can give you a holy mantra.

Personal development is all about your development, and even though it will be different for all people, it is safe to say that harmony and balance should be a guiding principle. Typically there are two ways of increasing your wealth, by decreasing your expenses (being frugal) and increasing your income - you should find a balance between them but in my opinion it should be biased towards increasing your income as that is where the really big improvements come from, regarding both your finances and your personal development.

After taking a break from updating my blog I checked the statistics today and was amazed by the number of hits while I was gone - even without updates I beat my previous monthly record by more than 100%. This was even more of a surprise to me since I remember thinking before the break that the increase in number of hits was very slow. So even for a dynamic and steadily increasing thing like the monthly number of pages people read on my blog, the real increase is only perceived properly by the human brain if considered as a larger chunk of time.

Even though the objective time it takes for a bowl of water to boil is always the same, subjectively it feels very different when you are just waiting for it to boil compared to when you are engaged in reading a good book and completely forget about the water. It is the same effect Einstein used to describe relativity :

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours.

Albert Einstein

So from this we can learn that it is important not to trust your own sense of time if you are feeling impatient by a slow process, as your feeling of how long something takes is most probably completely out of proportion to the amount of time one can reasonably expect the process to take. You must remind yourself that success comes in chunks, and that you can only judge time after you have put your best effort into the project and are looking back on a completed part of the project. I guarantee you that most of the time you will think “that was not so bad” when you are finished, so ignoring the “this thing takes forever!” thoughts along the way is the right thing to do.

Not only should you remind yourself that success comes in chunks, you should also put your faith and trust into it. A lot of processes are hidden from sight, and you will only see the result of such a process when it reaches the “tipping point”. The tipping point is when the process is suddenly revealed to you through a surprising event. This is mostly seen within the social context; suddenly you find that your boss have been less than impressed with your work lately and you get fired, or with a positive outcome : all the extra hours you put into the latest project is miraculously rewarded with a promotion. So it becomes very important not to judge the results of your actions prematurely and instead trust that when you put in the effort and do things right, you will be guaranteed a reward at some point. You can not be sure that the reward is exactly what you expect, it might be less or it might be better than what you expected, but when looking at the difference between what you expect and what you get, you will find a valuable clue as to how precisely you have understood the situation. If there is a big difference, take it as a hint that there is a very important lesson to be learned. Every time I write an article for this blog I trust that the nontrivial effort will be worth it in added value for my visitors. I could produce a lot more articles with less effort if I wanted to, but the quality would suffer and I am sure that the overall value of my blog as perceived by my visitors would decrease.

Although I am a firm believer in the saying “You only live once”, those of us with a natural inclination towards impatience should be careful not to take it as an excuse for being impatient. That we only live once should not be taken as “you only live 10 more minutes”, regardless of your age you will most likely have many more years to live, and it is just plain counterproductive only to plan 1 hour,1 month or 1 year ahead. So do not let your desire for consumption trick you into thinking that for example a large credit card debt is a good thing, it may enable you to experience the objects of your desires sooner - but it will always be at a higher total cost as seen during your lifetime.

These shoulds also lead to stress and frustration and if you feel stressed on a regular basis I am willing to bet you have a lot of shoulds in your life. In the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Steven Covey explains a system for lessening the amount of stress you experience and getting more done :

The idea is that you should spend most of your time dealing with things in quadrant 1 and 4, less in quadrant 2 and preferably never in quadrant 3. It is not a bad system, but did you notice the shoulds? In my opinion no such system is complete unless it also deals with transforming shoulds into woulds.

With all of the desires we experience constantly : I want to be rich, I want to be loved, I want pleasureable experiences, I want to eat great tasting food, I want to have sex, I want to be significant, etc. They are bound to clash at times with all the shoulds we are confronted with and create for ourselves (out of other desires) and since you can only do one action at any moment in time, either the “I would like to” or the “I really should” will win. If you have a habit of letting your in-the-moment desires win, no system of shoulds will work for you.

In the article “Trading In Your Freedom” I explained one way of turning a should into a would : from “I really should go to work” to “I want to go to work so I can earn money for my own place to live” by remembering what the original desire was that created the should. There are many other ways to do it : positive reinforcement, change of perspective, developing a habit to name a few. The point I really want to drive through though is this : If you do not transform shoulds into woulds you will not be completely happy no matter what action you choose to take. The reason is that engaging in a tug-of-war between a should and a would will always end with a loss on your part.

If you have a conflict between a should and a would one of them will win in the moment. If the should wins you will probably feel good about being “a good boy” (or girl) and doing what you are supposed to but at the same time you have a unfulfilled desire that nags you. If the would wins you will satisfy your desire and this will in turn make you feel good but at the same time you will feel guilty about not doing what you know you should. Of course in the moment you will think of all sorts of rationalizations for the should or would that you chose but ultimately it will always be about deferring one action to later and choosing the other now.

Instead, if you transform all your shoulds into woulds, there will be more of a competition between desires(as there always is) than a conflict and no matter what action you choose, you can be sure that you satisfy one of your desires. And as you satisfy your desire you will experience the passion and drive that satisfying a desire can give you, but being a good boy (or girl) can not. So do not settle for living a life of shoulds, instead transform them and live a life of passion and drive.