The Hole
"What if I should fall right through the center of the earth.. oh, and come out the other side where people walk upside down?" - Alice
Today we're going to talk about (pun intended) falling down into the rabbit hole.
Sometimes life presents circumstances which send us tumbling down off of our feet. My divorce, being my example, created financially crippling conditions to cope with. It created a state of confusion as I struggled to do what was necessary to survive while staying connected to myself and to the people around me.
One thing was for sure- I was in debt.
The first part of getting out of the financial hole was to get a job that would pay the bills (and the debts), that I could fulfill the hours for considering mother's hours (a schedule that heeded daycare availability).
Part of your monthly budget should be debt payment. There are different methods that can be used to pay off debts- such as the snowball method. Decide what works best for you and schedule the payments.
A really fantastic budgeting tool with goal planning and support is LearnVest. Absolutely check it out. And, if you are anything like me, you will also love the Intuit Mint Bills app, which links your bank accounts and your bills so schedule and make your payments. Even if you have to pay a family member a debt- you can do it through this app with their account and routing number.
Once we successfully secure a job that fulfills our wage and schedule necessities, which in all honesty may be by means of a job we don't per se "love", in our free time we should think about the things that fulfill us emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Financial stability is absolutely the first thing to accomplish, but not the only important component to happiness.
A vision board is a well known and really fantastic thing to do to keep you motivated, positive, and envisioning daily what you desire to have/do/feel. Before we determine though what our vision is, sometimes we need to rediscover our passions and values or evalute very many that cause making decisions to be difficult.
A wonderful tool that that is on Oprah's page, O's 4-Step Guide to Discovering Who You're Meant to Be, is a system to determine hobbies and strengths, and even to imagine how they might be used in a career.
I have a lot of fun doing a lot of different activities from creative to intellectual to highly active hobbies. Something that helped me whittle down my vast interests was to choose one hobby for each of the following.
1. A hobby that helps you stay healthy
2. A hobby that keeps you creative
3. A hobby that makes you money
4. A hobby that impacts the community (a form of volunteer work)
5) A hobby that impacts your family
6) A hobby that is educational
More than one of these can be fulfilled by the same hobby s some cases.
One really great suggestion I have is to consider doing volunteer work to gain licensing and experience that would otherwise be very expensive. For example, I have earned many certifications through my volunteer work while training myself and my dog for Search and Rescue. If I were interested in getting into the medical field, I have all of the basic requirements to work on an ambulance for a fire station. College for a single mom is not an easy thing to fit into our budget or our schedules, so volunteer work is a great tool to use for professional advancement in some cases.
End point- pay your debt, achieve security, then dream and chase, my friends. We all know that, but it's helpful to have tools. So use these! Anything more you can suggest, leave a comment!
Happy Easter to you all, I hope it was filled to the brim with blessings.
Until next time,
Alyssa
