Money management skills

"Excellence is an art gained through training and habit. We do not act rightly because we have excellent virtues, but we are virtuous because we act rightly. We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence then is not an event but a habit."

 Aristotle

Many of us wonder what is the secret behind successful people. Success is not a matter of luck or chance: behind a successful person there is a great effort achieved over the years and cultivating habits that make them be in the place they deserve. And this is true in all areas of life, both professional and personal, as well as financial.

Confucius said that "the will to win, the desire to succeed, the desire to reach your full potential... These are the keys that will open the door to personal excellence". We should all seek personal excellence, follow a process of continuous improvement in all facets of life and, being a process, it never ends. We can always improve, grow... and I would say that we should always do it, that we are obliged to do it.

To be excellent is to do things to the best of one's ability, to devote all one's effort and energy to each task and each relationship, according to the possibilities and aptitudes that each person possesses To be excellent is to continuously improve in order to banish negative habits and acquire positive ones. And it is not only necessary to develop good habits, but also competencies, defining these not as skills, but as excellent performance. Being competent can be achieved by striving for excellence in each of the facets that we want to develop. In this way, if we manage to be competent from an economic point of view, we will be able to say that we have achieved financial excellence. And this does not only depend on earning a lot of money, but also on saving, choosing our expenses, enjoying, sharing and evolving.

The Royal Spanish Academy defines competence as "expertise, aptitude or suitability to do something or to intervene in a given matter". In the context in which we are, this definition falls short, as we seek to endow competence with a higher level of perfection and skill. For Goleman, the ability to understand and work with feelings depends on different emotional competencies and he talked about how if someone had a high emotional intelligence it was because he or she was considered excellent in the totality of these emotional competencies. For him, emotional competence was an "acquired ability, based on emotional intelligence, that results in outstanding performance".

That is why in emotional intelligence we do not focus on a single capacity, but on several, which feed back and influence each other. That is why having one brain preference is not enough, but it is necessary to work on all four brains and internalise the strengths of each of them.

Knowing our preferred brain is key to improving our financial situation, as it will not only help us to develop our strengths, but especially to be aware of our weaknesses and work on them. Polishing the areas of risk and developing the good in the other brains is what will build in us the character necessary to achieve solid and lasting prosperity.

It is not enough to possess the skills of our preferred brain if we do not develop the character to control it. If we grow as people, we will grow in all areas of our lives, including, of course, financially. Self-criticism is a healthy practice if you are aware of your own failures or shortcomings, accept them and set out to correct or mitigate them as far as possible. It is a self-assessment through which you learn and adjust your behaviour and improve where there is room for improvement.

It is of no use to be a people person if we spend to please others. Nor will it do us any good to have great leadership skills or to earn a lot of money if the decisions we take lead us to financial bankruptcy. Nor will it do us any good to have great analytical skills if everything remains in plans.

If we use the action of the reptilian brain, together with the joy and gentleness of the limbic brain, the analysis of the neocortex and the commitment and utility-seeking of the pre-frontal brain, we will have everything we need to achieve success. Discipline, empathy, reflection and usefulness are the basic elements to achieve our goals.

Self-knowledge dignifies us and connects us with who we are, with our essence. When we understand what our strengths are, we can help our will to generate habits of excellence from which to face adversities as opportunities. We will lead our lives when we manage the gifts that our genetics have given us and, through them, commit ourselves to achieving our purpose.

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