Recently, I experienced something slightly unnerving. In the period of 3 days my vision seemed to change drastically. One day I was driving and I noticed that my right eye seemed to see everything much less clearly than my left eye. Up close everything still seemed ok, but once I started looking off into the distance I couldn’t understand why my vision had changed so suddenly.
Later that day, I called the eye doctor and scheduled an appointment for an eye exam. It had been a couple of years since my last one as I had gone from being employed by a big company with great benefits to being self-employed with limited benefits. Knowing that I would have to pay out of pocket for most of the vision exam, I’d procrastinated in scheduling one.
This, however, was certainly a triggering event. I called the eye doctor and explained to them what I’d experienced which prompted their initial question, “Do you have diabetes?”. I responded, “Not that I know of…” with my voice trailing as my mind began to race. Is this how it starts? Has my health changed this drastically over the course of a few days, or has it just been changing slowly over the past 2 years and am I just now noticing the physical reactions to internal problems?
Heading to the restroom, my current eyesight began to give me a headache. While washing my hands I gazed intently into the mirror above the sink, pondering what I could change in my life. Then a thought popped into my head – over the last few days I’d been moving, dealing with a death in the family, hosting family in town, and getting very little sleep. What if…what if I happened to accidentally switch my contact lenses in the cleaning container before going to bed? Was I simply seeing out of the wrong lense in each eye? It would explain why my left eye’s vision was incredibly crispy and my right eye had suddenly gone blurry. I rushed to get some eye drops, quickly swapped the contacts, and…breathed a sigh of relief. Vision back to normal.
Sometimes financial problems are a lot like the above scenario. Seemingly big issues caused by small mistakes that cause the mind to go to some crazy places. Perhaps there are some simple fixes that could help refocus your pursuit of financial peace of mind, or decisions that, though they seem small, could dramatically change your vision and have a positive ripple effect for years to come.
