FB Reminder: I am away on vacation right now. This post has been scheduled ahead of time.
I won’t be moderating comments until end of August 2009. Thanks for your patience!
I don’t think I have an extremist kind of personality (I waffle back and forth a lot… mmm.. waffles), but when I am intent on a goal, I turn really serious which some people take as being an extremist.
The key with me, is I have to go slowly.
You can’t change me over night from being a girl who loves eating cookies and chocolate, to switching to fruit instead.
It has to be gradual. You have to phase out the cookies, interspersed with pieces of fruit here and there so that my brain relaxes, and thinks that eating the fruit is just as enjoyable as a raspberry creme cookie.
(Which it is. Now.)
I also cannot just.. STOP. When I shopped a lot at sales, and just spent anything I wanted on everything I saw without thinking if I really wanted it, or if I turned into a crow thinking: OOO SHINY!!! … you can’t just tell me to cut up my credit cards and make me stop shopping altogether.
Sure, I never paid a red cent in credit card interest (no really!), but getting rid of an addiction, any addiction, takes time.
BF and my dad are not like that. They can stop cold turkey. They just.. make a decision, and stop. To them, it’s a state of mind to want cookies for example.
But for me, I need to be gradually led into the right decision and slowly coaxed — not forced, even though it was self-imposed.
I am a bit of a waffler. I want to do whatever it is I set my mind to, with the best intentions, but even those are sometimes bent, or waylaid in favour of other things.
I think that’s the same for a lot of people. It’s why diets fail. It’s why budgets fail.
It’s why saying to yourself: I am not going to shop for ONE WHOLE YEAR to teach myself a lesson and to save money!... makes you crave shopping even more than before.
You have to take it slow, and start with one step at a time, namely tracking your expenses to figure out what you do currently spend and where you can cut back.
And you have to almost trick yourself into realizing or believing that the other way (saving) is better than spending money that won’t bring anything back to your pocket.
I don’t believe or like the concept of just quitting, because to me, it took years to build up that habit or that behaviour and it’ll take the same amount of time (at least) to eradicate or change it.
TWO FB GIVEAWAYS THIS MONTH!
- Major Holiday Busters Part 1
- "But you told me I could splurge!!"
- How to make saving money less painful
- How we chopped our grocery bill down by 57%
- Fabulously Unrealistic Pt. 2
