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Have you ever really struggled with something, and given up because you weren’t sure you could do it? Maybe later you gave it another try and were successful. After that, doing it again was much easier.

Why? Because if you know you can do it, then you CAN do it.

It’s like the man who finally broke the 4 minute mile: people had said it was an impossible feat for years, but as soon as Roger Bannister did it, other people were able to do it.

Knowing it was possible made it so.

What does this have to do with personal finance? Well, if you want to achieve something financially, one of the first steps is actually believing that it’s possible.

Suppose that you want to get out of debt. You might look at your list of debts and not even want to add them up, because you’re sure the number will be larger than you ever wanted to see. Or maybe you know the total amount of your debt, and it’s something like $374,594 including the house. That kind of a number might seem insurmountable.

But it’s not. Especially if you believe that it’s not.

In our case, we are paying off $99,600. That seems like a huge amount to me, but I know it’s entirely possible. We’ve already paid off $5000 of it without really putting any special effort toward it. When we start actually concentrating on paying it off, I believe it will melt away like butter.

That’s what happened with my student loan, and my husband’s car loan. So I know it’s possible with our house as well, and that knowledge is part of what will really make it possible.

For us the knowledge of it being possible comes from having paid off smaller debts successfully. If you’re facing a very large financial goal, try breaking it down until you believe you’ve got a completely doable chunk. Then go to town, and take on bigger chunks until it’s achieved.