What about that space between...?

Personal finance advice is always focused on either controlling a stimulus or fighting our response.

Let's just use spending as an example. In order to get control of your spending, you're told to cut up your credit cards, avoid the internet, never go out, and hide under a rock. Forever!

In other words, remove all temptation to spend. Eliminate the stimulus.

OR...

If you dare leave the house, you better be ready to grit your teeth and fight off the impulse to spend. Fight the response.

And those strategies work...until they don't.

I humbly suggest that you'll be better off by focusing on the space between the stimulus and the response.

The reality is you can't hide from suggestions that you spend money, and any strategy that focuses on that will fail. But you can use some simple tricks to get more space between the stimulus and the response.

Focus on space, not the stimulus or the response.

For those of you that have done this type of work, share your stories with me? I'd love to hear what you've done to give yourself space between the urge/impulse/stimulus AND your reaction/response?