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Let’s talk about a recipe for disaster that has waylaid many of my best intentions to stay committed to goals (financial, health, personal): STRESS!
I don’t mean the “good” stress of a challenging deadline for an exciting project. Or the preparations for a positively anticipated event. I mean the life-sucking stress: external pressure from a variety of sources that have a significant, negative, emotional component to them. Usually it is the emotional component that makes me weaken my resolve.
In the past, stress would become an excuse to self-destruct.
When I was trying to lose weight, a fight with my mom became an excuse to blow my meal plan and order pizza. When I was trying to establish a fitness routine, my children coming down with colds that caused me to miss one planned gym session was enough to keep me out of the gym for another three months. One unexpected bill blew up my entire budget, so I would throw the budget out with the bathwater (so to speak) and buy sushi for three meals.
This never helped me feel any better about my stress or my ability to accomplish goals. Here is what I learned from my weight loss journey (~50lbs lost over three years in a healthy way that I have maintained for about 6 months now) that ultimately helped me manage stress without abandoning my goals, and how I can apply them to my current debt-reduction goals:
- Stress is inevitable. Notice it and learn from it. DO NOT JUDGE. It will happen. You have to make a plan for how you will cope with it when it happens. Your plan for coping should be based on observing how you react to stress and how that relates to your goals. So in the beginning, don’t beat yourself up if you spent more money at the grocery store than you meant to. Notice it. Why did it happen? For example, I shopped with my daughter when she was too tired to be in the store, so I made several impulse purchases I would not have made. Plan: go earlier or after her nap or sans children.
- You can plan for stress. Take care of your needs when entering stressful times/situations. If you know a usually-stressful event will happen, do self-care in advance. To prepare for J’s project this week, we have been talking about the steps needed to accomplish the project and “previewing” the work before even starting. To prepare for my family interactions, I did a couple extra gym classes over the weekend and read a book just for me.
- Take a step back and look at the whole picture. See the good. Generally, stress triggers the flight-or-fight, short-term thinking that is the opposite of your well-planned, long-term goals. Try to look at the situation that is causing you stress through the lens of your bigger picture goals. For example, the $60 Min spent on gardening supplies will be a valuable, entertaining, educational family project and possibly net us some vegetables in summer/fall that will reduce some of our grocery costs. It is in line with our core values, and he was very careful about the money he spent on the supplies. I can choose to see the good in this spending and the care he made, rather than seeing the immediate conflict with our plan to get out of debt and cut unnecessary spending.
I did ok this weekend. I did overspend on groceries, but I didn’t let that kill my whole budget. I went to the gym, but I did spend too much time playing a video game (not calming, addictive) at night rather than reading (calming, educational). I am developing strategies to manage stress that don’t involve spending money or unhealthy eating.
I can and will do this. Stress is not an excuse to spend!
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