When I think of debt, I think of paying it off, avoiding it, or being debt-free. I never consider what my debt can teach me. As our No Spend year has continued, my financial state is always in the forefront of my mind and my goals. As a result, I have done a lot of strategizing when it comes to how we spend our money, and most of all, how to get out of debt. There is one thing that frustrates me every time: the fact that our get-out-of-debt plan is a long-term journey.

With my goal-oriented personality, I prefer to set a goal and reach it as quickly as possible. I have a really hard time taking a long-view of time and projects. In short, I don’t want to wait. I want to see an immediate return on my investment, fruit from my labor. I want it now, or at least soon.

Plans that are long-term seem too uncertain, after all, a lot can happen in 10 years, 20 years, or more. What if I put a plan in place and I can’t make it work? What if the plan works for a while, then circumstances change and the plan is derailed before it reaches the finish line? What if my priorities change and I abandon the plan in favor of a new one? These questions make me nervous. The reality is that any of these scenarios is not only possible but likely.

Life will change significantly in the next 10-20 years. Just like it is vastly different now than it was just 10 years ago. What a difference a decade makes! So when I try to plan for a future 10 years or more down the road, I just can’t wrap my head around it. Instead I focus on short-term goals. If I can get it done in 1-2 years, I feel more confident that I can actually make it happen. The problem is, without a surprise inheritance from a long-lost relative or an act of God growing money on trees, my debt is too big to pay off in a year or two. So I am being forced to take the long-view. And I hate it, but it’s good for me.

Not everything worth doing in life can be contained in short-term strategies. Sometimes we have to plan for a future we can’t see, a future so far away we can’t properly anticipate what it’s like. For me, coming up with strategies to pay off my debt is taking me into a future I can’t fathom. I have lived long enough to know that the time will pass whether I work toward a goal or not. Still, I wonder if the road fades beyond the horizon and there is nothing really there.

Like the horizon, the future is not a fixed point in front of me. It is a moving target that continues to stretch out in the distance as I move toward it. It is uncertain, but also full of fresh opportunities to realize new dreams and reach big goals. Putting my financial strategy to work now to pay off debt requires me to walk toward the future, with all its promise and uncertainty, hoping that what I do today will pay off many tomorrows from now. The magnitude of my debt is teaching me to take a long-term approach to a goal that is bigger than my short-term mind can fathom. It is taking me outside my comfort zone and beyond my limited view of what can be. Plus, it is developing in me three traits I will need along the way: patience, discipline, and diligence.

I need patience to counteract my insistence that I need “it” now. I need discipline to take each step along the way, one after the other. Finally, I need diligence when I get distracted from my goal or get tired of waiting to reach the finish line (there’s my need for patience again too).

My debt is the schoolmaster that is enabling growth in these areas. The lessons my debt is teaching me are not easy, but they are good and necessary for my success. I’ve never set a goal I couldn’t manage in the short-term until I set the goal of paying off my debt. Although this goal makes me uncomfortable, I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn how to move forward in the long-term.

Please share your thoughts in the comments below! What long-term goals have you set?