If you need to turn your financial situation around, you may be depressed about what you don’t currently have. Instead of focusing on the negatives, you can help yourself learn how to save and begin improving your finances immediately. Before you can even think about changing how you manage your finances, you need to manage your attitude so that you don’t get too wrapped up in financial considerations and neglect other important areas of your life.

Your physical and mental health are important considerations when you’re trying to improve your finances. Many people get stressed out looking at the number of bills they have to pay. They push themselves harder than they are physically capable of in order to resolve financial problems. For example, some people may take a second–or even a third–job, leaving little time for family, while others exhaust themselves trying to get credit so that they can use it to pay off other loans. Other people may spend all their spare time going over their accounts, reading about financial management or looking into options for saving money.

Getting out of balance in this manner is both physically and mentally unhealthy. Physically, you’ll tire yourself out and make yourself sick–and if you end up in the hospital you’ll have more financial problems on top of your health problems. Mentally, focusing too much on finances, especially if you focus on how much money you need and don’t have, can leave you feeling depressed and powerless. You won’t be able to make very many positive changes if you’re feeling down, angry or upset about your current financial situation.

Try to schedule time for your financial management activities. Limit your study of your finances to the scheduled times so that you aren’t thinking about finances 24 hours a day. Doing this can really help you stay in balance and avoid feeling overwhelmed or depressed.

Approach financial management in a way that you enjoy. The more you focus on negatives, the more you’ll dread your financial management sessions, and that will interfere with being able to resolve financial problems and move on. Instead, you need to make financial management fun. Allow yourself time to dream every day. Think about your financial goals and what you will do with the extra money you’re going to save.

On a more practical level, the best way to keep yourself motivated to improve your finances is to set up a rewards account for yourself. Reward yourself every time you get a paycheck by depositing $5 to $25 in this account. Do this before you do anything else so that you can keep yourself motivated. You may want to use your rewards money to buy yourself a small present once in a while instead of saving for larger rewards all the time.

There’s plenty of practical things you can do to improve your finances, but none of them will help you until you change your attitude. Approach your finances with a relaxed, open-minded attitude and you will soon be eager to try new ideas and create more prosperity for yourself.