I’ve always been someone that other people come to with their problems. The one thing that comes up as a recurring theme is how someone is trying to achieve something but is falling short of success. When someone tells me how hard they are working on something and how much they hope they reach their goal, I think it’s important to ask them what they are doing to reach that goal. It’s easy to look at someone else’s concerns and see that they haven’t made any changes and yet are expecting different results. Most people aren’t ready to hear that if you want change, you have to create change.
Even writing this, I feel like a hypocrite because I know I am probably guiltier of this than anyone I know. I stayed in an unhappy relationship for years because I was afraid to do something different. I spent years feeling sick and gaining weight because talking about what I needed to change in order to be healthy, didn’t mean that I was making those changes. And worse, I’ve gotten myself into a debt that I don’t even truly believe I can get myself out of, because I can’t see the changes I need to make in order to turn my financial situation around. And instead of looking at these different aspects of my life and considering what I might do differently, I’ve blindly wandered forward with my life, hoping that one day my fairy godmother would find me and turn my pumpkin of a life, into a chariot.
The past year has been an awakening for me. I finally put on my big girl panties and have been trying to make the changes that I know I need to make.
I started by really thinking about my relationship, what it was and where I saw it going. It was through this examination that I realized that I couldn’t be happy in that particular relationship. I knew I had to end it, but it’s extremely difficult to walk away when you have a shared history with someone and hopes and dreams for your future with them. It took me a year of knowing that if I didn’t do something different (by ending the relationship), I was always going to get the same result (feeling stuck in an unhappy situation).
After I got the courage to end my relationship, it became easier for me to see that by actively making changes in my life, I was going to be able to achieve different results.
I realized right away that I needed to address my health. I was constantly feeling sick and worn out. I had gained a lot of weight while feeling unhappy in my relationship and had developed unhealthy eating and exercise habits. I decided that instead of sitting around thinking about how I wanted to get back in shape and lose weight that I needed to make concrete changes that would help me achieve that goal. One of the first changes I made was to begin walking to and from work every day. It was an easy change that I knew I could maintain because I live fairly close and it would also help me save money on transportation (therefore providing me with more motivation to continue). Right away I felt more energetic, and happy. I’d always loved walking but had forgotten in the day-to-day rush. The next change I made was the most difficult for me. I committed myself to making changes to the way I ate in order to lose weight and I joined a weight loss program that helped keep me accountable. It was one of the biggest changes I made because it involved making a commitment to putting myself first. No matter happened in my week, at work, or with family or friends; I made it my priority to complete my program. The final change I made was actually the easiest for me. I decided to cut myself some slack and workout when it felt right to me. I don’t have some harsh regimen, I don’t do the same thing every day and I don’t have a personal trainer. What I do I have is; a gym I can work out in whenever I feel like it, a favourite cardio machine, a beautiful hiking trail by a pond, a list of fitness classes I’d like to try, some friends that are always willing to bust their own butts along with me, and a close network of people that know what I’ve been up to and shower me with encouragement.
Recently I’ve begun to realize that there is another area in my life where I need to apply this principle; my finances. I think there has always been a part of me that has hoped if my fairy godmother was going to help me with anything, it’d be this. I’d either win the lottery, fall in love with a very rich man, or get hired with a ridiculously high salary. It’s not that I have an incredible amount of debt. I have a very average student loan, and small amount of consumer debt (that unlike many other people, I can actually tell you what it was spent on). I know how to budget, I’ve done it before. I know about saving. I’ve seen all the shows, read all the books and made a million plans to save more money. It’s more that I have a picture in my mind of where I’d like to be financially and I haven’t made the changes necessary to get there. I always do what I’ve always done, which is to get by day-to-day and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. I am starting to be able to admit to myself that there is very good chance, my fairy godmother can’t help me with this and I am going to have to help myself. So instead talking about how I want to be successful financially, I think it’s finally time for me to look at my financial situation and stop doing what I’ve always done.
Is there anything that you’ve been trying to be successful at and are finding it hard to achieve results?
