The Ledger Guidelines
The important base underneath all ledgers
Before we get into specific ledgers, I want to drop some general guidelines about ledger. I will reference these in every ledger we talk about.
Oh man, enough with boring things…
I know, I know. Just bare with me for a hot minute.
Here are the current 4 guidelines of ledgers.
Yes, I reserve the right to add more or change as we go through this journey. As mentioned, I am getting this out of my head for the first time. If a new guideline comes into focus or something doesn’t hold… we adapt!
Side note: In life, it’s acceptable to change views based on new information. People suck and say otherwise. If someone calls you out, blame me, it’s cool, I support you!
If you want to go full nerd, read up on Bayesian inference. It’s a statistics thing mostly and can be used in general probability life thinking. If you think your actions everyday are not probability and bets… think again.
Yeah yeah, I’ll get more into all that later too… I love you all are so curious!
And by you all, I mean the 3-5 people that read this.
Ok, Guidelines!
They are not the same for everyone
If you are in debt, you don’t know when your tab will be called in
Being balanced is still probably a bad position to be in
You have impact over others ledgers
They are not the same for everyone
This one should not be a surprise. We are all very different people. We all have different genetics and therefore different body styles, types, etc. Even your own ledger changes over time. If you are in your mid 30s+ you know you can’t eat or drink the way you used to.
All it takes to feel hung over now is a late night of binge watching Ted Lasso. No need to enjoy drinks to feel like I was hit by a train, it just happens now.
If you are in debt, you don’t know when your tab will be called in
We all go into debt for some reason in our lives. The reason could be school, housing, cars, midlife crisis (nice motorcycle), or keeping up with the joneses. Some of these are good reasons and others are questionable.
If you are responsible with your debt (e.g. buying a house you have budgeted for) debt is not a bad thing. However, if you can’t make payments and get too far in debt, you will pay for it.
Being balanced is still probably a bad position to be in
John Gottman is a world renowned relationship expert. He claims to be able to tell if a couple is in trouble by how they talk to each other. He has a 5:1 magical ratio. Basically, healthy couples have 5 positive interactions for ever negative one.
Same concept I think applies here. It may not be 5:1 however, it is greater than 1:1. It’s almost like a positive ledger item needs to be 1 + interest for every negative. I say “+ interest” because in general positive and negative ledger entries are not created equal. Letting someone in your lane while driving then ramming them off the road. One was good and one was bad; definitely not even actions.
“But wait!” you say, “You can have positive actions that are much bigger than negative ones!”
You are correct and glad you are paying attention!
Positive actions can be larger than the negative, unfortunately, negative events have more staying power in our minds. Therefore, a grander positive may actually equal a minor negative.
Bummer, I know!
You have impact over others ledgers
We may think our own ledgers are mainly isolated and only occasionally interact with others. I will come back to this and here is one quick example.
You, unaware, cut someone off in traffic and that action snowballs. It puts the other person in a bad mood. They go to work, maybe yell at someone, make a big mistake, and get fired. Whoops.
Another example, you wave at someone who really needed it and it turns their day around. They pay it forward (music video tangent) and improve the lives of other people because the day was going their way.
This was kind of a boring post… sorry, and also…
You have never seen Bluey?!? The best kids show on TV!?! Well, here is the full episode to end on a less boring note. If you have, congrats! Joy has already graced your life!
… that was a lot of exclamation points…
Anyway…
See you next time!