Jana Says

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Why do we keep doing what’s bad for us?

by Jana 13 Comments

someecards.com - I was going to quit all my bad habits but then it occured to me that no one likes a quitter
Ah, the new year. Time for fresh starts, new habits, prosperity, building good habits and overall, making our lives better.

For January anyway.

Then February rolls around and for many of us, the enthusiasm that we had in January slowly begins to die. And by April, we’re back to our old ways, telling ourselves that we had to give up on our goals (or resolutions) for whatever reason that we use to justify that quitting is okay.

I know I’ve done this on a number of occasions. But I’ve started to ask myself why. Why do we keep doing what’s bad for us? I’m sure there are plenty of psychology experts who can give you real answers but I’ve come up with a few of my own:

It’s easy. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s just easier to fall back into old habits. I know that before my husband and I got serious about paying off our debt and managing our money this was definitely true. We would commit to not using our credit cards but then, we’d be out or see something that we wanted and, instead of sticking to our commitment, it was easier just to blow it off and swipe the credit card. We wanted whatever it was NOW! And using the credit card made it possible. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s good (note: this does not apply to cooking). If you are not one of the lucky people who can control her credit card usage, then using that credit card is not easy. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do because in the end, it’ll just cause you more problems.

It’s comfortable. Using a credit card was like wearing a comfy pair of pajama pants.  It was relaxing, it felt good and damn, was it comfortable. I felt warm and fuzzy and calm every time I made a purchase with a credit card. I didn’t feel constrained by the limitations of our income and the sense of swiping the card was familiar. And I liked it. I like feeling comfortable. What I didn’t realize was that that instantaneous comfort was setting me up for years of awkwardness and feeling more uncomfortable than I’ve ever been in my life. So, before you do something that feels comfortable and familiar, ask yourself if you can live with the potential consequences of that action. If the answer is no, don’t it.

It feels good. While I can delay purchases now, it wasn’t always possible. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it that minute. Having the credit card made it so I could have whatever it was at that moment. And it felt good to walk out of a store with makeup or new shoes or books. I had the satisfaction of bringing home new things and being able to use them immediately. I liked going to work and getting compliments. I liked being able to have a big library of books I’d only read once. Surrounding myself with those things made me feel better (we’ll deal with the fact that I have low self esteem another day).

It’s possible to rationalize that it’s not so bad or we can live with the consequences. I spent years in denial of exactly how high our consumer debt was.  Every time we added to it, I told myself “Meh. What’s a few more dollars?” or “We’ll pay it off eventually” or “In comparison to others, our debt is pretty low”. They were lies. All lies. And they were just rationalizations for my poor behavior. Really, thought, that got me nowhere. If you truly want to change, you have to stop rationalizing the end result. You need to confront the reality of your situation and stop making excuses.

Breaking a bad habit is hard work. I’ll never forget the day my husband and I realized we had to fix our finances and get out of debt. That day sucked. We had to confront our poor habits and acknowledge how bad our situation had become. But we did and from that day forward, we did whatever we could to break the habits that had put us in debt. The 5 years we spent paying off that debt sucked. I’ve never worked so hard at anything in my life (including finishing my Master’s thesis). It would have been so much easier to quit and go back to what we were doing. However, in order to break the bad habit, you have to put in the time, effort and energy to reshaping that habit.

While I used my credit card problem as an example, these excuses work in so many other areas: going to the gym, losing weight, building relationships, finding a new job…the list goes on. There are so many facets of my life that remained stagnant because of all the reasons I’ve listed above. And now that I know why I keep doing what’s bad for me, I can pause, reflect, and start asking myself more questions. Because the only way I’ll affect change in my life is to accept that these excuses aren’t good enough.

Readers, how about you? What are some reasons you think we keep doing what’s bad for us?

It’s all in the words we choose

by Jana 11 Comments

Shameless plug: When you’re done reading this post, check out the program description (if you haven’t already) for Bloggers Helping Bloggers, the mentoring program I founded a few months ago. The pilot phase just finished earlier this week and, with the help of J. Money at Budgets Are Sexy, I’m revamping the program for the next round (scheduled to begin in January 2013). We’ve got a lot of fun things planned and I hope you’ll join us, along with the other mentors and mentees already on board!  

Every night, before I go to bed, I take a 20 mg pill of Celexa. I do it so I can function as a normal, non-depressed, slightly less anxious, and productive person. Deciding that I needed medication was not easy; I didn’t want to become dependent on it and I really wanted to overcome my depression without the aid of pills. But, when several months of therapy and only part-time work, failed to show improvement, I knew I needed to do something else. Even if that method was my last, and completely undesirable, resort. So I went to my doctor (my therapist cannot prescribe medication) and obtained my prescription.

And I’ll tell you what. It’s made all the difference. Within a few days, I started feeling like myself again. Everyone close to me could see it, too, because many of them commented on the change in my personality. I could see, mainly in my ability to write and work and function as a wife and mother and friend. Eventually I had to admit, that yes, the medication did help and I had to admit that I needed it (for the record, this is the third time I’ve been on medication for depression. The other two times, the medication made my depression worse so I stopped taking it. I know now I was on the wrong meds).

It is for this reason that blog posts encouraging people to “choose happiness” bother me. It’s not like picking a breakfast cereal or a car; for many of us, it’s not that easy to just choose, no matter how much we may want it. We can follow all the advice in those posts and books perfectly yet something doesn’t click. And, believe it or not, when you’re trying to choose happiness and it doesn’t work, it just makes the depression worse. No one wants to be depressed (well, maybe some people do. I don’t know) and when we dispense advice that essentially dismisses the fact that there’s something chemically wrong with a person, telling them that they’re just making bad choices, it doesn’t help their situation.

Please trust me on that one.

But what the hell does this have to do with money?

As personal finance bloggers, we tend to overlook the fact that people might not have the skills to just get a job or create a budget or even open a bank account. We take for granted the knowledge we’ve acquired and assume that everyone has that same foundation. They don’t. I worked for years with people who barely knew how to pay their bills, obtain a non-driver’s license ID, or even how to dress properly for court, let alone a job interview. It was frustrating, exhausting, and even maddening to see their lack of skills. But sadly, it’s just a fact.

We have a responsibility to those people, to those who don’t have our knowledge and experience, to give them information they can use without assuming they have even an inkling about where to start. We can’t just tell them “create a budget” or “get a part-time job” or “pay your bills on time”. We have to tell them how and, if we can’t explain it, we need to point them to resources that can. It’s also important that remind them that at one point, we didn’t have that information either. But we learned it through hard work and asking questions and researching and learning. And we must encourage them to do the same.

So, before you dispense generic advice and commands, remember the people who might not have an easy time following them for whatever reason. It might not make a difference in what you say but it might make a difference in how you say it.

And that can be just as impactful.

The year I made a difference (reposted)

by Jana 11 Comments

This post was originally published on November 30, 2011. But I felt that it needed sharing again, just as a reminder that we all have the ability to make a small impact on someone’s life. 

Now that holiday season is in full swing, there’s no shortage of people asking for money. I’ve already discussed how I manage the holiday creep. But this story is a little different. This is a story about how I, along with 3 friends, changed Christmas for one family. We didn’t do it because we wanted anything in return. We didn’t do it because we felt overwhelmed with the holiday spirit. We didn’t do it because we needed a year-end tax break. No, we did it because this was a hardworking, kind family with 2 parents doing all they could to provide for their kids and Christmas wasn’t in the budget. There was no way we were going to allow this family to forgo Christmas. So we changed it.

First, a little background about the family. At this time, they were a married couple with 4 children (they’ve since added one more). For years, she was a stay at home mom and he worked in a hospital as an X-ray tech I believe. They owned a modest house in rural Indiana and were doing fine. Then he lost his job. The family had to obtain food stamps and Medicaid (if I remember correctly). They worked themselves into debt trying to pay bills on his new salary as a fast food worker. She gave up being a SAHM and went to work in a school cafeteria. The money was enough to keep them afloat but it didn’t leave a lot of room for extras.

She took to a money forum to learn how to control her spending, pay down debt and manage their finances. Watching her progress in her thought process and money management skills was incredible. She came so far in such a short time that it broke my heart reading the desperation in her words when she would talk about Christmas. She wanted to so much to provide for her kids but in her heart of hearts, she knew she couldn’t. Enter me.

Having been in a situation where I didn’t know how I was going to provide Christmas and/or Hanukkah gifts for my child, I couldn’t bear the thought of someone else being in that position. So I got the idea that I would adopt her family. Except I couldn’t do it myself. I enlisted 3 other women from our forum and together, the 4 of us adopted this family. Since there were 4 kids, we each became Santa’s little helper for 1 of them. And because the parents worked so damn hard, we gifted the couple with something. I also snuck a little gift for the mom into my package.

At first it seemed like it would be a daunting task. I wasn’t sure that the other women would agree to do it but sure enough, they did. Once I had the crew assembled, I contacted the mom to let her know what was going on. I didn’t want to insult her and I was so worried that I might. To my sheer delight, she was not only not insulted, she tried to convince me that they didn’t deserve it (guess who won that debate?). From there, we were able to collect a list of the children’s likes and interests and clothing sizes. We each used our own judgment and budget guidelines when selecting the gifts, and we tried to stagger the arrival of the packages so nothing seemed conspicuous to the kids (2 of them were roughly preteen age at the time).

To make sure that the parents didn’t feel totally left out, we made sure to leave all the gifts unwrapped. By letting them wrap the gifts, it gave them that sense that they could still do something for the kids (also, it let them preview the gifts so that they were not totally surprised and they could screen for anything they might not approve of). When she sent me the email that all of the packages had arrived, I breathed a sigh of relief that everything had gone smoothly and as planned.

The words of gratitude that I received after Christmas reinforced to me that not only had we done a good thing, but that we had picked a very deserving family. Working in the field that I work in, it’s easy to see families fail to appreciate what it done for them. They feel almost entitled to it. But not this family. To this day, she still feels that they weren’t deserving of what we did. Let me put that to rest. They were. They absolutely were. And she still tells me what a difference we made to their family that year and how that gesture continued to give them hope and reassurance that things were bound to get better.

I know what we did was not a grand gesture or elaborate or even that expensive. But knowing it made a difference to that family, even for just one year, was absolutely worth it. And, if given the chance, I’d do it all over again.

6 ways to handle being overwhelmed

by Jana 18 Comments

Confession: Other bloggers intimidate me.

Within the personal finance blogosphere, as well as the other niches, there exists a tremendous amount of talented, smart, witty, and ambitious bloggers. These bloggers consistently write quality content, and engage with their readers on a daily basis. With quality interactions, too, not just half-assed ones! They can be found supporting other bloggers, big and small, have legions of dedicated fans, see their posts mentioned on major sites, and yet they remain painfully humble. And, on top of that, they are always creating something new–podcasts, YouTube videos, courses, eBooks. They are some of the most productive people I have ever encountered.

What I look like when I’m overwhelmed. Except not a man.

And that intimidates the shit out of me. Because no matter how hard I try, I cannot keep up. Even at my best, I’m about half as productive as so many other bloggers despite the fact that I have a host of projects I’d like to complete. I have the ambition, I have the drive. I’m just terrible at maximizing my time to the best of my ability. When I sit down to work, I’m extremely productive. I get shit done. But I also have a problem of getting sidetracked very easily. Mainly because when I think about all that I want to do, I get overwhelmed. And when I’m overwhelmed, I become paralyzed. And when I’m paralyzed, I stop being productive and decide that I’m not going to get anything done anyway and I’ll never be as good as the bloggers I admire so why bother even trying.

So that’s healthy.

However, I’ve been trying to overcome the paralyzed sensation I get when overwhelmed. When I get like that, it’s easy to cycle back into my depression which would be terrible because we know that I won this round. Since I don’t want that to happen again, I’ve had to employ some strategies that, when I get overwhelmed, I can use to refocus and start working again.

  • Ignore the “be everywhere” philosophy. I know that many disagree, but for me, being everywhere isn’t for me. I can’t do it, and part of what was overwhelming me was seeing how many bloggers are, in fact, everywhere. I admire and respect them for that but trying to do that was too difficult. I would get frustrated that I couldn’t be everywhere for whatever reason and that frustration would lead me to throw my hands up and utter “fuck this. I can’t do it”. So, I stopped trying to do it all. I accepted the fact that I can only be in one or two places and I’m fine with that. 
  • Determine priorities. Once I ignored the “be everywhere” philosophy, I needed to decide what is important to me and what isn’t. I decided I had no interest in creating my own podcast (although being a guest is fun) nor do I have an interest in creating YouTube videos. But I like writing. That’s what I’m good at and it’s what I want to do. So I’ve made writing my primary focus and my priority. 
  • Establish long term goals. I made a list of all the projects I would like start and/or finish. Then I narrowed the list down to the 4 projects that I thought were the most doable and realistic. I wrote them down in my notebook, and now, when I find myself getting off track or becoming consumed with something that’s not related to those 4 goals, I revisit the list and focus myself.  
  • Establish short term goals. I broke this down into two categories: blogging goals and project related goals. My blogging goals include tasks like guest posting more, reaching a certain number of Facebook likes, creating a master list of topics, creating a queue of posts, and some behind the scenes work that I need to finish. My project related goals are more tasks and/or objectives I need to complete in order to achieve the long term goal. For instance, I need to design a website for Bloggers Helping Bloggers, I need to copy and paste posts for an eBook and I’m participating in NaNoWriMo. 
  • Have a to-do list. But make it manageable. I know what my time constraints are; with a kindergartner at home, my life gets really hectic at times. To manage myself, I’ve always had a to-do list. But I realized that I was being unreasonable in the expectations I laid out of myself. I would put more on the list than was practical to get done in a day and then I would get pissed that I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. And sometimes I’d look at the list in the beginning of the day, see there was too much and take a nap instead. I am masterful at avoidance. But that starts the cycle all over again, which isn’t good. As a remedy I now make a weekly to-do list, taking into account my priorities, goals, and time constraints for the week.  
  • Forgive myself. I spent beaucoup time being angry at myself for not being able to keep up with other bloggers. But I know myself and my limitations and I know that no matter how hard I try, I just can’t do it. And I had to tell myself that it’s okay. I had to remind myself that I’m doing the best I can and that’s all I can do. I gave myself permission to stop being so hard on me. 
The other thing I’ve done is follow my own advice. I wrote a post over the summer about just starting somewhere. If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, just do one thing. So I do that. When I get really overwhelmed, I start by reading a few blog posts. Or writing a few paragraphs. Or going on Twitter or Facebook. Or looking at my to-do list. I just do something. Because once I start one task, it’s easier to move on to the next and the next one after that. Kind of like a task snowball.
And eventually, that task snowball starts to tumble down the mountain and knock me out of my paralysis. That’s when the real fun begins.
Readers, when you get overwhelmed, what do you do to break yourself out of it? 

Stop wishing and just do

by Jana 5 Comments

When I decided to quit my (very) stable full-time job, it was not done on a whim. The decision involved a series of very calculated steps, thoughts, plans, and sacrifices. I had to make sure that my choice would not affect my daughter in any way (read: not impact the ability to provide her with any of her needs) and that the people I needed in my corner were, in fact, in my corner. And I’ve been very fortunate because, although it’s not very lucrative at this point, it feels good to wake up every day and know that everything I do puts me one step closer towards achieving the goals I’ve set for myself. As I’ve said before, I’d rather fail at something I love than succeed at something I hate.

Because, if I’m being honest, that’s the kind of example I want to set for my daughter.

But there’s been an unintended side effect to my choice. When I tell some of my friends that I did quit and that I am pursuing my dream of being a writer, this is the comment I get:

“I wish I could do that.”

I loathe that statement. And I loathe that statement for a number of reasons, of which I will share the top 2 (because if I shared all of them, this would be an insanely long post and I don’t want to bore you). The first reason it bothers me is that it implies that my husband and I are rolling in cash and that my income was insignificant. I can assure you that is not the case at all. While we’re doing fine financially at this point, it’s because we’ve sacrificed and compromised on certain things. We’ve learned how to balance wants and needs, and we know how to live on a budget. Also, we’re not keeping up with the Joneses kind of people and we’ve worked our asses off to pay off our debt. All of this affords us many more options. Like giving up my income.

The second reason it bothers me is that it shows a hugely defeatist attitude. It demonstrates that the person saying it has decided that it’s better to forgo a passion and live a life of unhappiness and obligation rather than doing something that makes him or her happy. Please don’t misunderstand. There is nothing wrong with working full-time and maintaining your passion as a hobby (I have a friend who does this and she is wildly successful at her passion, and she is one of the happiest people I have ever met. Ever).  But when someone makes a statement like “I wish I could do that”, that tells me that person wishes for a lot more.

And I get that. Because for a long time, I would say the same thing when I would learn of someone quitting their full-time job in favor of something more exciting or more aligned with his or her long-term goals.  It made me horribly jealous and angry and sad. And then I would retreat into my thoughts and remind myself of all the reasons I could never, ever do that. For instance, I thought I wasn’t good enough. Or smart enough. Or creative enough. Or original enough. Or any form of good enough to get even the slightest bit of recognition.  Not only that, I felt like if I wasn’t following the traditional path I was told to, I would be ostracized by both family and friends.

But then I realized what an absolute ass I was being. Oh, all the negative self-talk is still there and I fight against it daily, but I also figured out that I have something that many of my wistful friends don’t have: determination. I am determined to make whatever I’m doing successful. I don’t want to wish I could do that (whatever “that” may be); I want to know I can do that. If anything is going to beat me, it’s not going to be the fact that I didn’t try.

And it needs to be the same for you. If you have a dream or a wish or even moderately lofty goal, go for it. Do whatever you need to do to make it happen. If you have a dream of being a singer, find an open mic night or audition for local theater. If you want to be a painter or photographer and have your own art show, research how do to that. If you want to write a book, do it. If you want to open a bakery, why not start a small catering business. Whatever your dream may be, there’s a way to accomplish it without sacrificing everything. And if you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way.

Remember that it’s okay to start small. As long as you’re persistent and keep at it, good things will happen, even if you have to redefine what “good things” may mean.  And if your plans don’t work out, that’s okay, too. You’ll still have the story to tell about the time you went after your dream.

Because sometimes? The story is the best part.

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