My oldest daughter was thrilled to get her ears pierced this summer. It's a special moment that most kids will always remember. As parents, we’ve proudly watched her diligently take care of her newly pierced ears, cleaning them every night before bed without many reminders from us. So it was especially heart breaking – for all of us – when one of her ears became infected and she had to remove her earrings and start the process all over again.

As you might have guessed, my 8-year-old did not fully appreciate or understand that sometimes we can do everything right and things still don’t work out as we want them to. And yet, this is an important concept and reminder that we can all work on improving ourselves.

We control our actions but not our outcomes.

Our own actions can help us stack the deck in our favor and help us move forward when we don’t get the outcome we had hoped for. Our own actions can also serve as an example for those watching us closely (i.e. our children) on how to handle the adversity – financial and otherwise – that life throws our way.

So as we start to wrap up and reflect on another calendar year, keep the concept of actions over outcomes in mind before sitting down to evaluate your past year.

Rather than only evaluating your outcomes, review the actions you’ve taken, as that’s all we truly control. Our outcomes might not be what we expected. But when we commit our time and attention to our own actions, life has a funny way of putting us right where we are meant to be.

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