One emotion I am excellent at showing is guilt. I feel guilty all the time. If I’m watching TV, I feel guilty that I’m not cleaning my house. If I’m cleaning my house, I feel guilty that I’m not working on my book. If I’m working on my book, I feel guilty that I’m not working on the blog. If I’m spending time with my daughter, I feel guilty that I’m ignoring the dogs. If I suggest doing something that I want to do, I feel guilty that I’m not taking anyone else’s feelings into consideration.  And on and on and on. It’s kind of disgusting, actually.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize guilt is kind of a wasted emotion. It’s paralyzing, it’s not productive, it’s not helpful and quite frankly, it causes a lot of my anxiety. There is nothing about guilt that makes me feel good (except maybe the guilt caused by eating a cupcake that makes me go to the gym. Then again, should I really feel guilty that I ate a cupcake?). As such, I’m working on eliminating this extreme guilt from my life. The first thing to go? Financial guilt.

For way too many years, I’ve felt guilty about so many aspects of my financial life. I don’t give myself permission to be proud of what I’ve done; instead, I feel guilty and berate myself for things I didn’t do. I don’t allow myself to feel okay with spending money on myself; instead, I tell myself that I’m taking money away from my family for frivolous things. But no more! From now on, I absolve myself from feeling guilt for the following things:

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As part of my non-medicated therapy, I’ve been required to start exercising. Apparently there’s some link between depression and exercise (and sleep, which is essential and I definitely don’t get enough of that either) and my therapist ordered me to start exercising. Fortunately, we have a membership to the YMCA that I can use to fulfill this order.

When I first started exercising, I was using the cardio equipment exclusively. It was easy and a great way to get back into the routine of sweating on purpose.  There were no combinations to remember, no other people around (well, except the other people on the equipment), no instructor. Just me, the elliptical machine, my iPod and my sweat. It was blissful. Until I got bored.

There are only so many days in a row you can use the elliptical machine without wanting to tear your hair out. It was making me remember why I gave up exercising in the first place (oh, right. And I’m kind of lazy, too). Then it dawned on me that the Y also has group exercise classes, which, up until 3 weeks ago, I’d actively avoided for a number of reasons. The main reason? I was completely and utterly embarrassed.

I was embarrassed because I have absolutely no coordination. At all. I routinely walk into walls and fall down stairs and drop things for no good reason. I spill food on my clothes every day and if a day goes by that I don’t trip over my own giant feet, it’s a good day. I can’t dance, am not flexible and sometimes, right and left confuse me. I am absolutely the last person you want to stand next to in an exercise class (or near on a flight of stairs or in a hallway, but I digress). Then I had another revelation.

I didn’t care.

Although I experienced a tremendous amount of trepidation the day I stepped foot in my first class, I reminded myself that I was not going to attend those classes to impress anyone. I was going to those classes because I wanted to exercise in a manner that was fun and didn’t make me feel like I was on a hamster wheel. Attending those classes was intended to make me feel good about myself, and if other people were better than me, so what? Most of them have been doing it a lot longer and, at one point, they were just like me. A complete noob. A bumbling, uncoordinated buffoon just trying to make it to the end of class without passing out. But as time went on and they went to more and more classes, they became better.

And I’m 98% sure that they don’t care what I look like doing the routines.  Because they’re focused on themselves, making sure they get the most out of the class and they don’t have the time or energy to worry about me.

I think we need to apply this attitude to our finances. No matter where we are in our financial journey, there will always be someone who’s ahead of us. There’s always going to be someone we’re looking at and thinking “Wow, if I only had her income (or his savings account or their house or whatever), I’d be set”.  But most times, what we fail to look at is the hard work it took to get there. Almost no one becomes financially successful without starting at zero and putting in the hard work. They all had to start somewhere, and for most of them, the decision to be in control of their finance is that somewhere. There’s no reason you can’t make that decision, too.

To those who are paying off debt, please know this.  Anyone who begins a debt repayment journey walks into the metaphorical room feeling like a lumbering oaf. We all think that everyone is staring at us, judging us, making fun of us.  I can assure you that they’re not. They’re most likely looking at you with admiration for trying to gain control of your situation. And for a lot of them, they’re remembering how it felt to be in your sneakers.  But don’t let your fear of what others may think prevent you from doing it.

Because even if you fall flat on your face, you’ve tried. And then you get back up and keep trying.  And rest assured, no matter how awkward you think you look, you look better than I do when I’m at Zumba.

Trust me on that one.