Creating the habit of mindfulness means to learn to control your thoughts and tell your mind where you want to focus your attention. Most of the time it’s best to focus your attention on the present moment in front of you, but sometimes in my meditation I choose to be mindful of situations I want to reflect on and process.
Mindfulness has helped me in so many ways. Obviously I am not perfect at this, but the difference is now I am aware of it and have tools in my tool belt to help me.
Many times we miss the moment right in front of us because our mind is somewhere else entirely. I heard the quote once,
“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.”
This resonated so deeply with me. Most of my stress came from clutter in my mind focused on things in the past I couldn’t control, or things in future I couldn’t control. The more I learn to override those tendencies and focus on the present, the healthier I am.
Now, I am NOT a counselor, therapist or psychologist, so if you are reading this and actually struggling with severe depression or anxiety, as much as mindfulness can help anyone, I’m not trying to be an expert here. Please talk to a professional.
I’m sitting here writing this post on Christmas Eve morning before anyone else in the family wakes up. As many of us begin gathering with our families, let us be mindful of the moments in front of us. Let us leave work, relationship, financial or whatever stressors we are carrying, at the door. Let’s set the phones down and give all of our attention to the moments right in front of us.
This holiday season, take control of where you are giving your mental attention.
Apparently we are too busy being present that I can’t find a single photo of us sitting at our table eating dinner. So this image from my phone of a meal I apparently felt should be Instagramed will have to do.
Day: 22
Spoke: Family
Habits: Dinner Table Conversation
In our family, we prioritize eating dinner together around the kitchen table. Most weeks five out of seven nights it’s all of 4 of us.
At some point during dinner I always ask “What was the best part of your day?” And then I follow it with “What’s something you’re thankful for today?” I heard someone share this habit who has nine children. He said it forces everyone, even on the hardest days, to find something good to focus on.
It’s easy to just sit down and eat a quick meal, but I find a lot of value in intentional conversation. Through this dialogue we learn what each other cherishes most and little details that may not otherwise come up.
My husband and I are both grateful to have been raised by families that placed a high value on sitting around the kitchen table every evening together, and we are making sure to pass that same gift along to our children.
Today I’m changing it up a little bit. Instead of writing about one habit, I’m going to share our story. This week my husband and I made our final payment on our last credit card to officially become debt free.
We set this goal TEN YEARS AGO. It shouldn’t have taken ten years to get out of debt but we made a bunch of mistakes along the way. The last three years we went 100% on Dave Ramsey’s plan and we finally felt like we were moving forward, not backward.
I decided the most helpful way to share this information is through two lists. One is a list of the choices we made that helped us make progress financially. The other is a list of the bad choices that created the hole we had to dig out of. After all, I am a Choose to Win certified coach, so writing about choices makes sense.
Good choices we made:
Listening to Dave Ramsey podcast almost every single day for about two years
Read the book The Total Money Makeover
Using the Every Dollar Budgeting app and all the features it offers
Sitting down to plan our budget for the next month at the end of each month. Usually I would create a first draft of it and then have my husband look it over to see if I forgot anything.
Only making changes to the budget if we agreed on it as a couple
Paying cash for our cars. We both bought older Toyotas with about 95,000 miles on them. People have a fear of the 100,000 mile mark so the prices drop drastically but both our car models are known to get 300,000+ miles so they have tons of life in them. The repairs and maintenance are also reasonable because they’re popular cars so most any shop can work on them. By paying cash we were able to get great deals. We both bought ours private sale off Craigslist for around $4,000 and they’ve both been excellent, safe and reliable vehicles.
Meal planning and avoiding restaurants
Cutting up the credit cards. When there’s no back up plan you figure out how to make it work with cash
Looked for any way to slice the budget we could. One example is I went with my natural hair color and a style I could maintain easily without as frequent trips to the salon
Found ways to increase our income. I chose to turn my business into a side hustle and get a full time job, which doubled the income I was adding to the household.
The bad choices we made that got us into the mess:
Mistake #1: As business owners we kept thinking we could out-earn our problems in the future. There were so many times we let the balance on the company credit card grow because just around the corner we were going to have a great month and pay it down. Dave Ramsey always says “you can’t out earn stupid.” We had to swallow the reality pill and start living below our means so that on the bigger months it could all go toward savings, not debt payments
Other mistakes:
Buying into the belief that you need a credit card to build credit
Purchasing a custom-ordered brand new Beetle on a 6 year loan. Expensive to maintain and repair. When I sold it four years later for the amount I still owed, I had spent $18,000 on car payments and had nothing to show for it.
Purchasing a 1 year old vehicle. We have since learned that statistically speaking, most depreciation is in the first 4 years. So now we only shop for used vehicles more than 4 years old
Taking out student loans to fund private college tuition
Feeling like we were smart for putting everything on a credit card “for the points.” It didn’t work out well for us. For me, it was the equivalent of saying “I’m giving up sweets” and then on the first day accepting free Publix chocolate chip cookies to sit on the counter because I got free broccoli out of the deal too and now I gotta stare at these things all week. I would have been better off to just pay for my broccoli. If you can have Publix cookies in the house and not eat them, then by all means, take the broccoli. But I gotta say “no thanks.” Because goals.
Believing that business debt is more acceptable than personal debt. Debt is debt, and it’s all the same. Buy what you can afford.
Not planning meals for the week. When you get hungry and you don’t have a food plan you just swipe, swipe, swipe for those convenient options. The first time we did our budget and saw how much we were spending a month on small swipes here and there, we were flabbergasted.
If you haven’t plugged into the Dave Ramsey materials, I highly recommend them. These were the steps we took that we learned from his teachings:
Stop the bleeding. Financing anything is no longer an option. No more borrowing or using credit cards. Figure out how to do everything you want and need to do with cash
Start using a budget. At the end of each month, plan how you are going to spend the next months money. Spend every single penny on paper BEFORE the month begins. Then stick to that plan. Most months, unplanned things will pop up, sit back down with your budget and adjust according to your priorities.
Save up a $1000 initial emergency fund to avoid having to throw something on a credit card if something unexpected comes up
List all your debts smallest to largest. Pay off the debt with the smallest remaining balance first, regardless of interest rates. And then move onto the next. The thing with the largest balance is what you tackle last
Once all your debt is paid off, you build up the 3-6 month emergency fund. Determine how much you need each month to cover all your expenses and stick a few months worth in a checking account to be ready when the storms of life come
Now you begin investing and building wealth for your future, saving for kids college and paying off your mortgage.
Honestly guys, I don’t think anything I’ve written about is my original idea. I am just a great copy cat. I’m a hungry student who has an insatiable appetite for more knowledge, and I find great people to follow. So, this idea is not something I came up with. It’s a habit that Michael Hyatt centers a lot of his teaching around, and I have found it works very, very well for me.
I’ve
only been doing it a couple months so I still haven’t mastered it on the daily,
but the days I use it go so much better.
Each
day, I select my top 3 most important tasks. These are NOT the most urgent.
They are the most important.
My
day is filled to the brim with urgent. People who want me to respond to emails,
return phone calls, answer questions and meet their deadlines. However, my full
time job is managing a long list of projects for a non-profit. If I am not
intentional, I can get behind the 8-ball on my projects because I’m doing the
busy work in front of me (like emails) or doing my piece of the pie on other
people’s projects so they meet their deadlines.
For the third quarter this year, I purchased the Full Focus Planner and part of using this planner requires that each day you select your top 3 priorities of the day. These are things that YOU must move the needle on to keep all your other goals on target.
I
have found that by doing this, other people’s priorities get put on the back
burner but my priorities are getting accomplished. And here’s the funny thing
about the urgent items, they always find a way to get done. Either you figure
out how to squeeze it in or someone realizes you can’t give it the quick
attention and they do it themselves or find someone else to do it.
I’ve
also found that with this habit, I may also push myself that extra little bit
at the end of the day because I see the clock and know my window is closing but
these things are still sitting undone.
Today something urgent and unexpected popped up at the end of the day and consumed my last hour. I was frustrated because only 1 of my 3 priorities was done and it was 5:00. But because I had written these tasks down and committed to getting them done so the ball keeps moving on the projects, I just put in the extra half hour. If I had not clearly defined them already, then they may have just been forgotten.
Realistically, I’m probably doing this two or three days a week. However, I’ll get to five or six eventually. This is how all my habits form. I would love to just make a decision and then do the new thing every single day but I don’t. It’s outside the comfort zone. It’s not in the rhythm. I have to spend a period of time in the development stage where I’m remembering sometimes and forgetting other times until the habit sticks long enough that it’s effortless.
There will come a time in the future where there is no trying. I will just not even think about it and will effortlessly jot my three things at the top of the page every morning. It will be as simple as remembering to brush my teeth. But right now, I’m in the messy middle. I’m loving the habit and trying to practice it as much as I can remember to while I stretch outside my comfort zone.
I don’t watch the news. Nope. Not ever. If I’m out somewhere else and it comes on, I can’t even tolerate five minutes of it before I have to walk out of the room.
This habit allows me to maintain peace in my life. It keeps my stress levels low and helps me concentrate my energy on the things I can control, verses having my mind worrying about things I can’t do anything about. Not to mention, the news tends to focus on the 5% that’s wrong with the world, and I’m more interested in the 95% of the world that is beautiful and good.
You see, I majored in mass communications. I have a bachelors degree in it. I have many, many friends deeply engrossed in the industry. The industry is broken and deeply disturbing. I know that they pay their bills by viewership statistics. The more eyeballs they capture, the higher dollar value their ads can sell for. They depend on you staying glued to your TV to make payroll.
However, Americans tend to watch the most news when there is drama. So the news has become what is called “sensationalized.” The more outrageous the headline, the more likely you are to click on it. The more dramatic the story, the more likely you are to leave the TV on to hear updates. They more sensational they keep the news, the more money they make.
I
make a very intentional effort to not have drama in my life. I’m not going to
invite it into my home.
Some of you may be tempted to think that I would just prefer to bury my head in the sand and deny reality. I beg to differ with you. When you compare us to the scope of history we are living in one of the most peaceful times in the history of humanity. But where are the headlines blasting that? It doesn’t make as great click bates as the latest tragedy or political disagreement.
Despite popular belief, things keep getting better. Now granted, if we want to keep it this way we need to take some drastic measures to repair our relationship with the earth and counteract climate change, but regarding the role of violence, we’re okay guys. Statistically speaking, more than any other time on earth, you and your kids are probably going to be fine.
When
I keep the news out of my life, I am happier. I am able to give all my
attention to the things I can control and influence. I still remain an informed
member of society, but I don’t need the 24 news cycle to help me with that.
To put it simply, there’s too much information. Between TV, social media and other online platforms, we are being bombarded with more than we can take in. My recommendation is to become an expert on your own life and your own community and focus your energy on what you can do to make it better.
Think
global. Act local.
I chose to turn off the TV and take an active role in improving my life, improving my family and improving the community where I live. Everybody wins.
I
believe we are all spiritual beings having a human experience. There is
something about the human soul that transcends vocabulary words and science.
It’s an encounter with the Divine that cannot be explained.
I love the Albert Einstein quote, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
I choose the latter. There are miracles every single day all around us if we slow down enough to appreciate them.
If
you’re struggling to see any right in front of you then how about the fact that
we’re floating around on a giant ball that is orbiting at precisely the right
measurement because if it were slightly off we would either freeze or burn.
Have you ever sliced your finger open and then witnessed over the coming days and weeks how it proceeds to heal itself. It wows me every time.
My husband and I created these children. It’s absolutely insane. My body knew how to create a heart, lungs and a brain.
The cells that once made an ocean, a tree, or a bird are now the cells that make me. All of it is always moving and recreating. We are all connected at the source. It’s stunningly beautiful. I am humbled and in awe of creation anything I get out of my head and pause to recognize that everything happening around me is spiritual. And it’s stunning.
Just as it is beautiful, it can also be painful. That guy yelling at you in traffic because he struggles with road rage, he’s not mad at you. He’s hurting and you are the easiest target to blame right now. The person rude to you in the grocery store, most likely, is hurting at a deeply, painful spiritual level and doesn’t know how to heal. When you see that it’s all spiritual, it’s so much easier to extend grace.
If we start watching the world with our hearts instead of our eyes, we can see that everything is spiritual.
If you have been my friend on social media for the last 8 years, then you know I have been very vocal about food choices and ingredients. It’s for a simple reason. When I cut out processed foods and just eat whole foods, I feel so much better. And newsflash, this happens to everyone.
After eight years of this lifestyle, I have discovered what does and doesn’t work for me. Here’s what has failed miserably for me: food shaming.
Oh,
I’ve done LOTS of it over the years. Food shaming is where you place heavy
judgement on a particular food and then feel guilt or shame if you consume it.
What I have found works best for me is to follow the joy. I feel so much better when I eat whole foods. I define that as things the earth grows: fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, oats, rice, meats (though I only buy certain quality), etc.
When it comes to processed foods, I ask myself “how will this make me feel?” Sometimes it’s empty calories I’m eating out of boredom or stress. It will offer me no nutritional value and increase my likelihood of feeling lethargic. Other times, it will bring me joy.
I work hard at saying no when the craving is out of boredom or emotional eating. And I work hard at not shaming myself when saying yes is out of pleasure.
Tiramisu
at the end of a date night brings me joy. A martini and great conversation with
a friend is such a pleasure for me in life. Enjoying ice cream with my daughter
makes me smile.
I’ve
tried living in a world of extremes where I cut out the foods that aren’t healthy
and it ends up not going well for me. I end up treating food like a light
switch where I turn on healthy habits to lose some weight, burn out my ability
to deprive myself of pleasure, and then indulge a few weeks later and put it
all back on in five days.
I had to find something more sustainable for me, and this habit works very well. I choose whole foods every chance I get. I intentionally seek out opportunities to add more vegetables to my plates and snacks. I pass on unhealthy choices when eating them is just because. And I gladly say yes when eating the treats will bring joy to an experience. This has become a sustainable lifestyle for me.
Today’s habit is going to be pretty short and
sweet.
Several
years ago I started writing down quotes that directly addressed a habit I was
working to change. Most of the time, the change happens by changing a
perspective or belief in the mind. So every morning and night while I brush my
teeth I read my quotes. They help keep me focused, grounded and moving towards
the life I want to create.
Photo from April 2019, taken at the Achieve Plant City Wine Tasting, raising funds to help empower families with literacy
Day: 15
Spoke:
Bonus (Philanthropy)
Habit: Aligning Strengths and Service
The Ziglar Wheel of Life has 7 spokes. Over the last two weeks I have written about habits in my life I’ve created for each of these spokes. However, following Michael Hyatt’s Living Forward book, I realized I have an eighth spoke that when neglected, my wheel doesn’t spin. That spoke is philanthropy.
I have had seasons of my life where I turned everything inward and just focused on my personal well being, my family and my career. During those times I felt a void that I couldn’t define. Eventually, I realized that in order for me to thrive, I needed to be actively giving back in my community.
Having community is an essential part of life. Whether you find your community through church, organizations, a club, a sport, a hobby or something else, we have an innate desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Over the years, I have been involved in many different communities and filled my calendar with saying yes to anything someone asked me to do that I had a skill set to help…until I reached total burn out.
What I learned was that if I am going to give back to my community, it needs to be on my terms. I needed to find sustainable ways to contribute that were going to fit my family’s needs, my work schedule, and catered to my strengths. My top 5 strengths (using results from the Strengths Finder test) are Activator, Arranger, Connectedness, Futuristic, and Strategic. Ya know how some people despise meetings and just want to get to the front line and get the work done? Yeah, not me. Haha! I love the meetings. My brain is constantly spinning with ideas of how to make the future better. I love figuring out how to get the right people in the room together to make it happen.
So, let’s apply that to the non-profit space. I’ll use a hypothetical example. Rather than volunteering for a shift to work in a soup kitchen, my hour of time will benefit the homeless 100-fold if I use it to sit in a room and discuss ideas of how to make sure the organization is still here serving soup and growing in 5 years, making valuable connections in the community to help get resources, and brainstorming how to make the operations more streamlined. In the past, if someone asked me to help in the soup kitchen on the front line I would say yes because I could. Why not? Anyone could do that and it sounds like a great way to give back. However, just because it’s great doesn’t mean it’s the best place for me.
Over the last few years I have looked for holes in the community that were not being met and used my strengths to fill them. In my previous post on the career spoke I mentioned the strengths finder test. This is another great way to use those results. If you understand your unique abilities then you can not only use them to discover the best fit for you at work, but you can also use it to discover how you can best serve others.
In
our family, Sundays are sacred. You will very rarely see us posting on
Instagram with #sundayfunday. In our world, Sundays are for being at home.
We are a family of two full time working parents and small children in full time school and childcare. We have found the rhythm of the week works best when we have one day where we are home. For mom and dad, it’s filled with laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and meal prepping. For the kids, it’s time to play with their toys and time to be bored.
That last one is actually really important to me. My five year old is allowed to play on her tablet using the approved apps before we wake up (this is how we sleep in) and then it has to be put away for breakfast. That’s it for screen time for the day. We want her to have time to be bored and be forced to get creative. Her defaults are swinging on her swing set, playing in her art station and dressing up to put performances on for us.
Most weeks my husband does the grocery pickup right after breakfast and then cooks two or three large meals that we eat off the rest of the week. On the week days, we pull in the driveway around 5:30, which is also the same time we have to eat dinner to keep the kids on the schedule that works best for their sleep cycles. So for us, dinner is a quick reheating of leftovers.
If
we do not prioritize these sacred Sundays, then the rest of the week is chaos.
That 5:30 arrival means we are just beginning dinner or possibly having to
swing by the grocery store in between work and home. It means we may not have
the clean clothes we need for work or school when we go to get ready.
We
used to live that way and it was constant stress. Everyday at 4pm the
discussion was:
“what
are we going to eat for dinner tonight?”
“I
don’t know. What do you want?”
“I
don’t know. I just want food and a plan.”
“How
about ______?”
“No….I
was hoping for something healthy. How about _____?”
“We
don’t have [insert ingredients] so we can’t make that”
And
so on. You get the point. Every. Single. Day. We had this same conversation
leaving both of us frustrated.
Fast forward to now, we have that conversation one time. On Saturday evenings. We put in the grocery pick up order and all the meals are set for the week. And because I know someone will ask, no, we can’t find all our ingredients on Wal-Mart pick up so there’s usually another store he has to pop into. When Brandon is gone, I’m not a Wal-Mart fan so I just load the kids into the car and spend a couple hours at Target. It’s more expensive but it’s usually the only place where I can one-stop shop for everything on my list. Ours is next door to a Bulk Nation, which also has a lot of great options.
For
years I would fill Sundays with plans and commitments. I saw a blank spot on my
calendar and I would say yes and fill it.
Now
when I get an invite for something on a Sunday, I get a pit in my stomach, and
I try to figure out the best way to politely say no. It’s not that I don’t
deeply love the opportunities in front of me, it’s that I know my entire family
will pay for it the rest of the week if I say yes.
Are
there exceptions? Of course. Just last weekend my husband and I said yes to an
invitation that involved us both being gone four hours on a Sunday afternoon.
But the yes was very calculated and only chosen because he happened to have a
work schedule that would allow him on Monday to do all the things while we were
gone. We just had to have enough food and laundry to make it through Sunday
night and Monday morning and then we would be reset.
I’m
writing this post on a Sunday and he had to work today. I had to navigate
through four no’s. It’s the holiday season. There were two Christmas parties, a
dear friends birthday celebration, a special event at church, a friend had a
baby I want to visit and another friend is in from out of town. I want so badly
to say yes to it all. But with Brandon working, I’m the only hope for the
family to have food and clothes tomorrow. So here I am, typing up my blog on
the couch in my pajamas while the baby naps, and I listen to the background
noise of my daughter singing karaoke, the washer refilling, the dryer spinning
and the dishwasher rinsing. After my short break on this comfy couch it will be
right back to cleaning up the lunch mess and solving small child crises.
