by admin | Aug 12, 2021 | Declutter
In a recent volunteering week at a countryside youth hostel for walkers and climbers, in the heart of the beautiful English Lake District. I was part of a ten person group who were there to prepare the hostel for the next six months of heavy use by visitors. We all worked together to clear rooms of furniture in advance of commercial carpet cleaners. In small teams of two and three we painted the common room and dining rooms, we painted corridors and stairwells. One day I worked outside and pushed wheelbarrows of gravel to create the paths around the campsite. On another I chopped up small branches and old timber pallets to create the kindling for the open fire in the main common room and bar area.
It was a brilliant week away from home, working at practical tasks each day and then being free in the late afternoon for a walk on the mountains that surrounded us and a chat in the bar and by the log fire each evening. Each day I chatted with whoever I was paired up with for our work and it was fascinating to see a glimpse of the lighter life in action for these other volunteers.
Lisa was on the same week with me. Incredibly she has spent 40 consecutive weeks living at hostels and working or volunteering to have somewhere to stay. She has a small van which she can sleep in when not working at a hostel. It is kitted out with a gas stove, a foam covered bed platform, blankets and a couple of bags of her clothing. I learn that she has a one bedroom flat in a small community on the border between England and Scotland and she goes back to this as and when she is not volunteering. By structuring her volunteering weeks on an often back to back basis, she is often away from her flat for three months at a time.
Having minimal possessions in the flat she has created a lifestyle where she meets new people every week she is away. Her expense money covers all her costs of travel between hostels. Like me and the rest of us, she was fed and given good accommodation during the working week, so her savings increase steadily across the year.
Many of the people who formed my group of volunteers that week have made volunteering and working, in places that provide food and accommodation, a strong part of their lighter lifestyle. Of the other nine I worked alongside, five of them all volunteered regularly and spent between six weeks and twelve weeks each year away from their own homes. So just two of the ten of us were new to this way of living lighter. Half of my new friends were single and half had a partner at home.
My week in their company was a tremendous insight into how you can have more opportunity and greater adventure. Each of the people I spoke with about this lifestyle choice said directly to me or more casually in group conversations, that they had cut back on their possessions at home in order to be able to see a volunteer opportunity they wanted and apply for it. They knew they could lock up the house or apartment and head off to the location to enjoy themselves while contributing to a cause they believed in. In this case the creation of clean and refreshed accommodation for the walkers, climbers and runners who look to stay with like minded people when enjoying the countryside, and being able to return at dusk to such gorgeous locations and good evening company.
Could you manage a week like this somewhere with an organisation who would appreciate your help, support and time?
by admin | Jul 29, 2021 | Declutter
The reasons are many and often complicated and the exploration of these is going to open up that proverbial 'can of worms' as we work through these together. The power of emotions has the greatest hold on us as we delve into this topic and some of the reasons will astound you. At the very least you will be surprised by some of the learning you make in the process. Ask yourself :
"Why do I have Grandpa Tom's hand built coffee table in my life?"
"Does the clock on the wall that was on a mantelpiece in my long-dead Aunty's house need to have a place in my own living room, some twenty years after she passed?"
"Does the team football photograph that showed my Dad as a young man about to leave school seventy years ago need to be on the wall in my hallway?"
"Just because I was given a hand painted teapot and matching cups and saucers by my best man and his wife when we first married twenty-five years ago - and divorced after twelve years - should I still have this on the shelf in my kitchen? Especially when I have not used it in the two years since we took it out of the box it was found in?"
These are random questions that I use from my own example of clutter and accumulated items in the challenge that we set ourselves at home. I am sure you can easily find your own relevant examples of things around you.
Here are a couple of simple questions for you today, intended purely to help you find your place in all of this.
Do you consider that you have all your possessions under control?
When you see the clutter in your house, whether on display in the common areas and daily used rooms of your home, or stuffed awkwardly into the lesser observed areas of cupboards, attics, basements or boxes in the garage, how does that make you feel?
Enough said! Your clutter is personal to you and your lifestyle as well as to your attitude and approach to life. Millions of other people live with everything they own under one roof and they experience no guilt or upset. But this exploration of letting go is not about them. I have confessed my own situation and how I felt that so many material things were draining my energy and time. The things we bring into our home space should be there because they make tasks easier or to bring us happiness. Where our possessions become so many that they are more than we can manage and they start to distract us from living the life we should be enjoying, this is where the trouble begins and the stress begins to wear us down. We work longer hours and spend more of our disposable income just to keep the possessions under control by such things as storage, insurance and taking on bigger and more costly spaces to live in.
Quite naturally, we need to place much of our focus on our home, on our living space and the things within it. But a full approach to letting go requires that we don't just limit ourselves only to mess and chaos, to clutter and junk as they appear in your physical world. We will also explore the damage that comes from being connected with toxic people, the distraction of digital clutter and the overwhelm that can come from addiction to gathering more around you than you need.
To answer the question of "Why do we gather clutter?" we do this because we are human. We do it because we feel we need to collect things around us so that we can make statements such as these:
"I am safe now".
"They are not making this quality any more, so let's get one now".
"I can provide for my family".
"I deserve to have this because I have gone through so much".
"Do you know how much I had to work this month?"
"This was a bargain, so I had to get it".
"We've been struggling recently so I figured we deserved this".
Being human gives us a sense that we have to carve out our own identity in a world that is so often homogenised, identical, similar brand - different perspective, must-have, latest trend, special item, but really very much the same. We think that by surrounding ourselves with the things which reflect who we believe ourselves to be in the world, we will then create a space which feels unique to us. And when you first do this, starting to accumulate the things around you which make you feel good, it does seem like you are achieving the goal of originality. But at what cost, or better said, at what price?
What price have you paid to fill your home with the things that you have purchased in order to bring home and use to say "This coat is me" or "These books and this desk are me" or "This car is me". Some of that is your own voice and heart talking. However, there will be a proportion of 'stuff' in your dwelling space which has got in there, easily or by pushing it's way in, because of advertising, because of the cultural influence of your neighbourhood or peer group, of social media and what is or is not 'on-trend' this week. Letting go of this stuff will emotionally and physically open up space in your home. While it can seem like a push to make the decision to look at each thing we have and bag or box it for discarding or donating, the value of doing so is beyond measure.
As we go on this declutter journey together, there will be opportunities to work through various exercises and activities. All voluntary of course. One very probable realisation is likely to be that your early dreams and aspirations for what home should look like, but also feel like, will make themselves very clear to you. Some of these will have been completely forgotten over previous years, others will whisper gently and kindly to you and ask to be let back into your living space to reflect all those good aspects of you, your character and your values. Welcome them when you see them, as you surely will when you reduce the distraction that has been overwhelming your personal space.
by admin | Jul 15, 2021 | Simple Self Help
The best money you can ever spend is money invested in your own mind, expanding the quality of your knowledge and increasing your ability to take control of your circumstances or make new ones that work better for you.
Whether it is attending an evening class, going on a weekend seminar, listening to podcasts, learning via the internet or simply browsing in your local library or used book store, you are giving yourself new information and creating new neural pathways in your brain. Once you have exposed yourself to new information your mind cannot go back to how it was before.
My friend Ian once said to me that
"If you read for one hour a day on a topic where you are a novice, within a year you will become incredibly competent in that topic and within two years become an expert."
Imagine what a great place you will be in by doing this!
Pick something you want to know more about:
- Painting with Oils;
- Building your own Home;
- Cooking with Pasta;
- Investing in Property;
- Creating Games for your Kids;
- Home Budgeting;
- Do it Yourself Car Repair;
- Growing Roses.
You choose the topic and do the work, and your mind will take care of absorbing the learning. Place the new information in front of yourself and enjoy what happens.
Join a class, get into a discussion group, contribute your thoughts to a book club, and meet with the people who can teach you new skills and insights. You will be astounded at the power of your mind to expand to new learning.
Start your self-learning with something you are curious to learn more about. Once you have enjoyed the fruits of this learning, pick a topic that might help you in a work related skill, in your home life, or in building your skills with other people and watch your progress.
Get down to the art gallery. Book yourself on a course in archaeology or ancient history. Buy yourself a session in a life drawing class or a series of flying lessons. But do any of these things because you want to follow your curiosity and satisfy an urge to learn more about something.
Remember this piece of information from a wise one:
"A skill once learned can never be taken away, and your mind can never revert to the time before you gained the new knowledge."
by admin | Mar 25, 2021 | Debt
This is too complicated for me!
Is it the role of someone else to help you? Do you trust believe that you can't manage your money on your own? You need to find help, but you don't know where to turn and you can't be bothered to make it a priority to go out and find a solution to the problems you are expressing.
"I can't be expected to balance my accounts on my own."
"It's OK for them. They are better educated and understand this stuff better than me."
"She can manage her money. She's more savvy than I am."
"I can't do this number stuff. I did bad at mathematics when I was at school."
"My own expenses are so different from my neighbor / workmate / brother ..."
"I could do this if only my parents had explained all this to me when I was a kid."
"It's difficult for me on my low income in this job."
These are just a few of the reasons I have heard people give for being out of control when it comes to money and their dealing poorly with money. It doesn't matter what the reason is that they give. The one that you like to use or have latched on to when explaining your difficulties around money is just an excuse. It is an excuse for pushing the responsibility away and either giving it to someone else who should have helped you or taught you or shown you how to do this "money stuff." They didn't. So get over it.
Any of these items are the warning signs of your debting behavior. When it comes to sorting out your debts and dealing with your money in a way that works, then you have to recognize that you need to let go of the excuses. Only you know your numbers. Only you can make the changes in the way that you deal with money in your life.
We all deal with money differently. None of us are the same. My experience of debt is unique to me. Yours is personal to you. If you see yourself in any one or more of the warning signs then it's time to start to adopt a few new habits. There is a quote that says:
"The definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result."
I do like the truth of the words. If you are doing the same things with your money month after month - and you are still unable to pay all your bills then something needs to change this month if you are going to make some positive progress. You are what needs to change. You have created the situation you are in by the small actions and consistent behaviours you have made to reach this miserable place. The lack of control, the fear, the embarrassment you feel are all real. The good news though, is that you have all the resources you need to become debt free and the first step along the way is to recognise that the mistakes have been made.
If you are continuing to ignore the post, telephone calls from creditors, and are still experiencing the fear of a 'decline' message when you put your bank card in a shop or caf card machine, then let's start to do some things differently.
You don't want to continue your debting. We all want to deny that the problem is here, or we want to pretend that we are not affected by debt. This is natural behavior to protect ourselves, to defend against the suggestion that we are out of control financially. Going forward from here, your solutions lie in changing your debting behaviour and adopting new practices around money. Not just about earning money, though increasing your income is an important place to focus your attention. At the same time you need to recognise the need to change the way you shop, adapt the current poor saving behaviour, and to cut your costs in every single place you can.
by admin | Feb 25, 2021 | Debt
What value do you place on your own peace of mind? Practical changes here are less simple to determine and to define, but I would like to suggest that one practical step you can take is to become more conscious in your thinking about money, debt and savings. You have an income from a job and hopefully you have created one or more incomes from a side hustle or part-time business that you run alongside your main work. Being reliant on just the one income is a potential problem waiting to happen in the event of a layoff, reduced hours, or the change to the structure of your workplace.
Being consciously aware of your money in and out, taking the time to track and monitor the flow of monies around you is crucial to success in achieving the necessary changes to reaching debt freedom. Success in reducing debt is like success in every sphere of your life - it requires you to work at it diligently and with focus. So build time into your schedule to be aware of the money, to look at the bills and the statements associated with your debt, with your earning, your tax and your savings activities. You must not think that you will become debt free just by setting aside some of your income, or only by requesting the stopping of interest from your creditors, or even through the act of setting up some envelopes for separate household expenditures. No, you need to get yourself actively involved in each practical area of your money and how it functions in your day to day life.
Make time on a set day each week to look at your numbers in detail. This is your income for the past seven days and the predicted income for the next seven. Let me be as bold as to say that if you only have one job and you are paid monthly, that you should look at some other activities to create revenue for the other weeks of the month when you are not receiving money. As a private landlord, as a writer and as a networker, I love the fact that I get a monthly income from my writing, but that I get daily rental income from the rooms we rent and manage. This happens because I have more than 31 tenants, enough literally for there to be someone paying their rent each day of the month. I know there really is some money coming in every day and this gives me great confidence in planning my finances.
But it was not always like this and I hold a clear picture of how difficult it was to climb out of debt myself. With our networking business we also get a monthly bonus as well as a weekly payment for activity. When I had a job with a monthly salary I got paid one day a month and felt like I was holding my breath for the other thirty days and dreading a large bill coming in.
When will you look at your diary and set aside that time to focus on your money flow?
* Can you get a simple filing system ready for the paper bills and some online tracking notes or software to record the movement of your money?
* Do you need to clear anything from your diary that is costing you time and money and not bringing a return worth having?
* Can you make enquiries about a part-time job that brings in additional money?
* What business opportunities can you explore locally or online to create another income stream?
Make an appointment with yourself to sit down and look at your diary, at each of your bank and savings accounts and at your thoughtfully filed debt paperwork.
Create new results by thinking in a different way about these important aspects of your life and see yourself getting closely involved in your journey to debt freedom.
