Same Old, Same Old

It's that time of year again.

Yep. New Year's Day, and the time to make New Year's resolutions.

Lots of people don't make them any more, I'm led to understand. They don't make them any more because they make the same ones every year, and by the first of February (if they're really persistent and serious about their resolutions) the habits are gone by the wayside. (If they're not persistent, the new resolution might last until the 5th of January or so...)

Get fit. Eat more healthy foods and less junk (she says as she's writing this, pop and chips near to hand...). Lose weight. Clean the house. Get the finances under control. Write every day. Finish a book and submit it to publishers.

Yep. If you've been reading this blog for more than one post, you'll know exactly whose resloutions these are.

And those who have known me for years know that they're the same resolutions I have made every year since I can remember making resolutions.

Why do I do it, if I continually fail to acheive my goals?

There are a couple of reasons I do this:

1) I do it to remind me on at least an annual basis (and usually more often) that I do have goals that are worth the time and effort to pursue.

2) I do it because I find that the reminder really does help me. I'm not in the same place finanacially where I was ten years ago, I am eating more health-fully, my house is cleaner.

I'm not where I want to be, but I am closer to my long term goals. I've made such amazing strides in the past month and a half that pretty much everyone who interacts with me on a regular basis has noticed. My daughter is saying, "Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?" My ex is enjoying two home-cooked meals a week at my place, and it's noticably lessened his stress. My parents are visiting now. They haven't seen me since September, and my dad's first words to me (and this from a man who is very quick with the backhanded compliments) were, "You're looking really good! What are you doing?"

Things are changing, and they're changing because I continually resovle and re-resolve to get fit, eat healtfully, lose weight, write more, and so on...

So, once again, I'm making New Year's resolutions. Yes, they're the same old, same old. They're not the kind of goals I can really "fail" at. I can get sidetracked, but if I do, all I need to do to get back on track is to review my goals and figure out how I got off track, and then get back on the wagon.

No guilt, no worry. Just pick myself up out of the mud, wash myself off, and carry on.

Some Tips for Changing Your LIfe

First, a question. Why are we bothering to change our lives anyway?

I can't believe that I would actually quote Ayn Rand, but here it is. Even people I disagree with will say, often on a regular basis, things that can't be argued with. She said, "You can avoid reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of reality."

And if the reality is that you need to change your money-handling habits, you'll be suffering the consequences unless and until you change. To put it another way, if we continue to do what we've always done, we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. Fear, and self-loathing, and out-of-control bank charges.

However, if we change, we can work towards a new life free of the fear and limitations and degredation caused by our poverty. So we're going to change.

But change is hard, and the process can take a long time, and we aren't, as a race, hard-wired for waiting.

Plus, change HURTS. Because we have to face the fact that much of what we learned from our beloved (or maybe not-so-beloved) parents about how to handle money was WRONG. We have to admit we've been making mistakes, mistakes that have cost us dearly. And as humans, it goes against the grain for us to admit we're anything less than almost perfect.

Changing your money habits is not going to be easy right from the get-go. You WILL be knocked off your feet a few times. If you can accept this, and realize that the only way you can truly fail is if you give in, give up, and go back to your old way of life, then you'll be well on your way to succeeding.

Some tips that won't make things easier, but will make it more likely you'll eventually succeed:

1) Don't give up. How many times did you fall down as a toddler when you were learning to walk? Many times, and yet unless you were born with a physical disability, you learned how to walk at some point in your first two or three years.

2) Don't expect perfection right away. When you learned how to walk, first you sat up, then you crawled (or scooted on your bum). Then you stood up, with help. A few steps towards mommy's open arms, and soon you were walking. Within days, maybe even hours, mommy couldn't keep up with you any more. Another image: airplanes navigate by approximation. They head in the general direction of their destination, and it's only as they get close that they get more exact.

3) I'm suggesting things in this blog that have worked for me. If one or more of my suggestions doesn't work for you, try something else. There's nothing "wrong" with you or how you're doing it--you're just different from me, and require different techniques to overcome your difficulties. Read up on learning and personality theory, and identify how you learn and interact with the world. We're all different, and we all approach the subject of money differently. That's okay.

4) Expect resistance. From your family, your friends and acquaintances, co-workers, banker, creditors. They wll resist not because they want and need you to stay the way you are. They will resist because we humans instinctively shy away from big changes. And if one part of an equation (in this case, you) changes, then in order to maintain equilibrium, all of the other parts (them) have to change as well.

Here we have a very important learning: You cannot directly change anything or anyone other than yourself. You cannot change your spouse, your children, your elected officials, your community, your country, the world. You can only ever change you.

But if you change yourself, everything and everyone you have contact with will have to change with you.

Perservere. Make a new, happier life for yourself. You deserve it, and so does everyone else who will choose to remain in your life.