Is there something in your life that you continually (and/or repeatedly) run up against?

Maybe you get irritated at the same type of thing, with a variety of different people. Maybe you’re constantly bouncing checks or being charged late fees. Or maybe you spend your days at work wishing you could do something else with your life.

Well, your struggles are trying to tell you something.

Most of us spend time complaining, dealing with repeat problems, or daydreaming without ever taking the time to think about what those things mean — or about what we’re actually doing.

It’s often only when a situation becomes completely intolerable — or when we’re forced into a corner by an outside source — that we make a change.

As a minor example, my computer had been slow lately. Sooo slow. I’d whined about it, leapt up from my chair in exasperation, and given up and gotten out a book. But it wasn’t until the day it took me 20 minutes to enter one deposit into Quicken that I decided to DO something about it. The slowness had become intolerable, so I finally took action.

I could have saved myself a whole lot of time and irritation if I had only done that sooner instead of hoping it would magically fix itself.

Things don’t usually magically fix themselves, unless there wasn’t much of a problem to begin with. Instead, we have to take action by identifying the problem and then doing something about it.

And if the first thing we try doesn’t work, we need to try again. We may need help, too — and that’s normal. Not only was Rome not built in a day, it wasn’t built alone.

So if there’s something (financial or otherwise) that you’ve been struggling with, complaining about, or explaining to others why their suggestions just won’t work, try being proactive instead. Identify the issues and start on the path to change.