Happy Spouse, Happy House…

It struck me the other day that I’ve been having a tough time over the past year or so. I’m navigating a lot of change:

• Sold our house in CA (I loved that house, and the security it provided)
• Accepted the need to get rid of many belongings with deep sentimental value
• Moved 3 times, one move was to a new country and away from my “community”
• Husband retired and I’m working from home …we’re together a lot
• A lot of travel and home renovations
• And chronologically I must be experiencing some hormonal…flux…(I’m 51) (OK not chronologically alone… if we look at my behavior I’ve been doing some weird stuff…)

I’ve been displaying some undesirable behaviors …Lots of anger, irritability as well as some sleep and weight issues… and through it all I’ve kind of bounced between 2 themes of thought re: solutions:

1. More exercise/meditation will keep me balanced

2. If my husband would do x or stop doing y …things would be easier.

Number 1 is conscious and in the forefront of my mind.

Number 2 was not. It was hidden in snippy remarks and eye rolls about annoyances such as dishes left in the sink or the TV being too loud or socializing.

This of course started leading to arguments and more often than not I would find myself saying things like “well if you would just say blah blah blah or if you would not do blah blah blah we wouldn’t be having this argument.”

After one of those corrective coaching sessions led to my husband saying something to the effect of “I’m tired of always being wrong” a little bell went off in my head and all the sudden I thought “Oh! Wait a minute – how come the rules of our house are dictated by the way I think things should be?”

Why do I care if there are dishes in the sink for a couple of hours? And I’m not talking about a stack of dishes, I’m talking about a coffee cup and a couple of plates. How come paper towels should only be used in certain circumstances and certain quantities? If we don’t have to get up in the morning why can’t we have friends over in the middle of the week? If we do have friends over in the middle of the week and I need to get up earlier than our friends do – why can’t I go to bed?

When I started thinking about it I realized a whole lot of this was driven by a need for stability and security which was being reflected as control.

So much of the above stuff comes also from the same kind of mindset that says “happy wife, happy life” which often is accompanied by a conversation that describes what a wife will or will not “let her husband do”.

I realized I was following rules and scripts that are part of our main stream society; I wasn’t treating myself and my husband is individuals – I was following the pattern that we’ve all been observing since we were little kids.

I don’t want a life that is centered around my husband having to make me happy. I want a life where we both feel loved and appreciated and like we have the space to be who we are.

I believe that if we’re going to have quippy sayings out there to reflect general marriage advice it should be “happy spouse, happy house”! 💞

Update – I drafted this a few months ago and had held off on posting it. I have to say, me taking more responsibility for my point of view is making a difference. Still having “differences of opinion” but fewer and I’m more conscious of when we hit one of my arbitrary rules. Turns out, I have a lot of them. A wonderful side effect is I’m feeling more content and more in control of myself – that’s a very nice feeling 🌻

I lost my voice…

A friend asked me today if I’d posted recently because she hadn’t seen any notifications.

I said “no, because I’ve been wrestling with what to say/write”. I started Wisdom of Friends because I wanted to share “a ha” moments that I, or my connections, experienced with the intent that our “a ha” moments may be beneficial to others.

Lately I haven’t had a ton of those moments and I’ve been working on figuring that out so I could possibly share that learning too!

I’m torn between a) I’m not having them because I’m in a bit of a stagnant period and b) I’m not having as many because I’m in a period of acceptance.

As an example – I’m feeling less (albeit not zero) of a need to analyze (dwell) on the bond to the people in my life, and also less of a need to “chase” connection. That sounds and feels like acceptance.

On the flip side, I find myself a little blah, not highly motivated (driven), pretty much in a “let it ride” mood. That sounds a little bit like mild depression (or what has been an indication of mild depression for me in the past).

But generally I’m not feeling a need to “fix” myself or my life. I’m not feeling like I need to “dig into” anything – which means I’m not finding as many “a ha!” nuggets and I have less angst that I want to offload with writing.

All this means I haven’t had a ton to say, and I’m not sure yet if that’s good of bad, but I’ll let your know when I figure it out 💞

So – if I have a take away to share it’s sometimes I believe it’s alright to drift. I had a chance to float on a drift boat on a river and learned that if you stay out of the weeds and pay gentle attention to what’s around you, you can have a pretty amazing day. Check out these 2 moose calves I saw that day – simply by drifting 🌻🌈

And thank you my friend for asking 😘

I quit my job!

Old patterns are hard to get rid of. For the past few months I’ve been working in a position that was fraught with politics and dysfunctional toxic behavior.

I’ve been sticking it out because we had expenses to manage and because although I’m working on a plan B, I don’t have all the pieces in place yet

One particularly stressful day I finally made it a priority to look at our household budget as opposed to trying to wrestle the problems of my current project into submission

Doing the math I realized that with the side gig I was working which is a corner stone of Plan B – I didn’t need to keep working at the job that had all issues the I’ve been trying to get away from.

It struck me as I felt this giant sense of relief once I decided to leave that without even realizing it up for the past several months I’ve been living in my old reality versus my new reality.

It just goes to show that the old saying wherever you go, there you are totally applies.

My stress behaviors of being short tempered and irritable, not paying attention to diet and exercise and talking in terms of being trapped or not having a choice have all been showing up.

I realized a couple of pretty cool learnings because I was thinking about all of this.

One – this time I realized in a couple of months that I had choices as opposed to a couple of years!

Two – the reason I had the choice to quit is because I have been actively focused for the past several years on building stability and flexibility into my life that left me room to make better choices for myself.

So … if you’re in a less than optimal situation, take a breath and evaluate.

Do you have options? If so, act on them. If not, start building the foundation to give yourself options. You can pave your own way 🌈💞🌻

Dwell on the good stuff…

 I am absolutely a dweller. It’s so easy at – least for me and I know from conversations with some of the people in my life – for a lot of us, to get caught up in remembering past mistakes and old hurts.

If we’re so good at remembering things then why don’t we challenge ourselves to dwell on prior triumphs and thoughtful gestures.

I was looking at a digital photo frame this evening that some dear friends gave me when I moved from the city where we all lived.

At first I found myself thinking a little bit critically about myself and some of the pictures because they’re of horseback riding and my form wasn’t perfect.

But then I found myself remembering the first horse show I went to and the love and support that my husband showed, taking special effort to share the memory of my recently passed father.

And that got me thinking about all the other really neat things he’s done for me and then that got me thinking about all the amazing people I’m lucky enough to know period.

Then of course my thoughts started going all over the place and I wondered how come it’s easier to bring those positive thoughts to mind than it used to be and how I can build that habit?

I guess it ties into the whole concept of remembering the things that we can be grateful for and there’s lots of people out there that recommend things like “every morning think of three things you’re grateful for” or “journal every night and think of things you’re grateful for”.

I’m not very good at establishing new daily habits, but I think I could train myself when replace negative dwelling by digging a little deeper and find a positive memory to replace whatever hurt or embarrassment is currently on my mind.

So while I’ll probably never stop being a dweller, I believe that we can learn to dwell on the good stuff! 💞🌻🌈

Wrestling financial demons…

Money makes me nauseous. Paying bills, committing to large expenses, paying the higher price for quality, all of these things freak me out. I make better than average money – at least right now, when/if I quit my day job….eeek!!! – and even though I have this financial security, I stress. Writing this post is knotting my stomach!

Due to my discomfort I pendulum; sometimes I’m frugal to the point of bad decisions (avoiding investing, not buying the best house in the best neighborhood I can afford, buying inexpensive clothes that look like crap and I hate so don’t wear…) and other times silly spendy (sure, “let’s spend $200 on golf, that’s not really much different than going to dinner” – but then we go to dinner too, and all the sudden a few “sure why nots” hit the card and I’m going “how the heck did our bill get to $4K?”).

For years my approach to managing money has been to chase higher pay. That is starting to come to an end because we’re planning for retirement – and I don’t know many people who get raises or bonuses in retirement. This means I need to get a handle on my finances and I know others who are going through similar challenges right now. They’ve changed careers/jobs; taken (received) the Corona virus pay cut, had major health issues that lead to debt, or just decided they’d like to figure out their financial future.

Getting a budget figured out is not much different than going on a diet or committing to an exercise plan – it’s all about getting honest / real now in order to reap future benefit – so I thought – let’s do it together!

Note: if you’re like me, and this stuff stresses you out, start your budgeting exercise when you don’t have a heavy day the next day. I wrote this over 2 days, and the night between I was awake from 1-4 AM! Oh well, I read a good book with my unexpected quiet/alone time… 😐

Step 1 – What do you need?

Yes, you can start with “how much do you have” but that doesn’t tell you if that’s enough, so first thing is, what are your expenses?

Don’t forget the non-monthly but big items (car insurance, taxes)

I’d encourage a line item for savings (I do my via auto withdrawal so it’s taken from my check in advance, I don’t count it as an expense, or income – it’s just “gone”)

Google “household budget template”, here are a few:

• Kiplinger: Household Budget Worksheet (kinda fancy!)
• 10 Free Household Budget Spreadsheets for 2020 (So many choices!)
• The Best Personal Finance and Budgeting Spreadsheets (Tools and templates!)

Or build your own – here’s a sample you can copy / paste into Google Sheets:

Item –  Primary	Amount	Frequency
Housing (Rent/Mortage)	$2,000.00	Monthly
Groceries	$800.00	Monthly
Water	$50.00	Monthly
Electric	$50.00	Monthly
Phone	$100.00	Monthly
Gas	$50.00	Monthly
Internet	$50.00	Monthly
Fuel	$100.00	Monthly
TV (Cable, Netflix, etc…)	$100.00	Monthly
Insurance (renters, home owners)	$100.00	Monthly
Savings?	$100.00	Monthly
Monthly	$3,500.00
Annual	$40,800.00
Item – Discretionary	Amount	Frequency
Eating out	$800.00	Monthly
Entertainment	$500.00	Monthly
Monthly	$1,300.00
Annual	$15,600.00

Step 2 – What do you have?

This is your current income, any savings (401k, piggy bank, HSA, FSA, under the mattress…) Create a similar spreadsheet to the one above, or Google it (try: “personal assets and liabilities template”), there are a ton of samples online.

Step 3 – Compare what you need with what you have.

Pour a glass of wine, meditate, get a bowl of ice cream – whatever your “soothe” is – do that first. This step is scary, but it’s critical to getting your arms around your finances. If you have more than you need, excellent! Next post we’ll discuss some ideas of what to do with it. If you have less than you need, that’s okay – now you can start figuring out why and we’ll look at that more next post, in the meantime, a few things to consider:

• Do you truly track you’re spending? I swear, I “flush” $20/day. That’s $600/month!!! That’s a car payment (a nice car!)
• Are you mixing needs and wants? Do you need 4 streaming services?
• Are you paying a lot of interest? More than one card, student loans, other debt?
• Are you leaving money on the table? I know folks who think “I can’t afford to contribute to my 401K” Well, after the tax savings, maybe you can? (And ALWAYS take the match!!!!!)
• Are you monitoring your subscriptions? Can you ask your cable company for a discount? Phone company? Do you have old magazines on auto-pay?

To be fair, realistically many of us are truly tight for money, and also have some spending habits that are not helping us. Once you’ve done this exercise, figure out your true gap between need and have. That’s the hole we need to bridge. Now – if you’ve completed 1-3 and feel like you’ve got a bit of a handle on that, the next thing to tackle is:

Step 4 – What will you need?

This is challenging, it’s basically Step 1, but it’s all the things you’ll have to pay (or not pay) when you retire (or have a baby or get married, etc..) – and there’s no crystal ball so you’ll have to estimate.

People struggle with this because it feels completely unknown, but you know more than you think, and there are a gazillion examples out there. Trying Googling “how much do I need to retire”. Or – do it yourself. Here are a few things to consider:

Will your income be going up, down, staying flat? (Retirement, having babies, likely down (at least for a while), working on a Masters, probably up (eventually).

Where will you be living? Is housing more or less expensive? How about car insurance? Will you have medical or need to pay out of pocket.

Okay – if you’ve even read this far you’ve done a lot! Simply deciding to start thinking about managing your money is a big accomplishment. Go for a walk, do some yoga, eat some chocolate – some little treat/reward, and brainstorm your next actions.

Next post we’ll explore stuff like investment resources and debt management techniques.  Here’s to our financial adventure 🙂

 

Self-Promotion! Get good at it!

A few years ago a writer friend helped me with my resume, she gave me this list of verbs that offer alternatives to the terms we all use, over and over and over.

Check it out, see where you can be more impactful when you are communicating how amazing you are!

While you’re at it, here are a few other nuggets I’ve collected.

• Keep the history to the last 10 years
• Tailor your resume to the job you’re applying for
• Either keep your resume in plain text, or have a plain text version. The automated processes on the back end will skip over important pieces, or just skip your whole resume if the formatting is too complicated or a non-importable format such as .pdf
• Develop, and maintain, a list of your skills and accomplishments. This makes the tailored resume thing a bit less daunting.

I’ll add more as I think of it but for now, wanted to put this together to share the verb list 🙂

You Led a Project	You Envisioned and Brought to Life a Project	You Saved the Company Time or Money	You Increased Efficiency, Sales, Revenue, or Customer Satisfaction
1. Chaired	13. Administered	34. Conserved	43. Accelerated
2. Controlled	14. Built	35. Consolidated	44. Achieved
3. Coordinated	15. Charted	36. Decreased	45. Advanced
4. Executed	16. Created	37. Deducted	46. Amplified
5. Headed	17. Designed	38. Diagnosed	47. Boosted
6. Operated	18. Developed	39. Lessened	48. Capitalized
7. Orchestrated	19. Devised	40. Reconciled	49. Delivered
8. Organized	20. Founded	41. Reduced	50. Enhanced
9. Oversaw	21. Engineered	42. Yielded	51. Expanded
10. Planned	22. Established		52. Expedited
11. Produced	23. Formalized		53. Furthered
12. Programmed	24. Formed		54. Gained
	25. Formulated		55. Generated
	26. Implemented		56. Improved
	27. Incorporated		57. Lifted
	28. Initiated		58. Maximized
	29. Instituted		59. Outpaced
	30. Introduced		60. Stimulated
	31. Launched		61. Sustained
	32. Pioneered
	33. Spearheaded

You Changed or Improved Something	You Managed a Team	You Brought in Partners, Funding, or Resources	You Supported Customers
62. Centralized	88. Aligned	108. Acquired	114. Advised
63. Clarified	89. Cultivated	109. Forged	115. Advocated
64. Converted	90. Directed	110. Navigated	116. Arbitrated
65. Customized	91. Enabled	111. Negotiated	117. Coached
66. Influenced	92. Facilitated	112. Partnered	118. Consulted
67. Integrated	93. Fostered	113. Secured	119. Educated
68. Merged	94. Guided		120. Fielded
69. Modified	95. Hired		121. Informed
70. Overhauled	96. Inspired		122. Resolved
71. Redesigned	97. Mentored
72. Refined	98. Mobilized
73. Refocused	99. Motivated
74. Rehabilitated	100. Recruited
75. Remodeled	101. Regulated
76. Reorganized	102. Shaped
77. Replaced	103. Supervised
78. Restructured	104. Taught
79. Revamped	105. Trained
80. Revitalized	106. Unified
81. Simplified	107. United
82. Standardized
83. Streamlined
84. Strengthened
85. Updated
86. Upgraded
87. Transformed

You Were a Research Machine	You Wrote or Communicated	You Oversaw or Regulated	You Achieved Something
123. Analyzed	143. Authored	162. Authorized	174. Attained
124. Assembled	144. Briefed	163. Blocked	175. Awarded
125. Assessed	145. Campaigned	164. Delegated	176. Completed
126. Audited	146. Co-authored	165. Dispatched	177. Demonstrated
127. Calculated	147. Composed	166. Enforced	178. Earned
128. Discovered	148. Conveyed	167. Ensured	179. Exceeded
129. Evaluated	149. Convinced	168. Inspected	180. Outperformed
130. Examined	150. Corresponded	169. Itemized	181. Reached
131. Explored	151. Counseled	170. Monitored	182. Showcased
132. Forecasted	152. Critiqued	171. Screened	183. Succeeded
133. Identified	153. Defined	172. Scrutinized	184. Surpassed
134. Interpreted	154. Documented	173. Verified	185. Targeted
135. Investigated	155. Edited
136. Mapped	156. Illustrated
137. Measured	157. Lobbied
138. Qualified	158. Persuaded
139. Quantified	159. Promoted
140. Surveyed	160. Publicized
141. Tested	161. Reviewed
142. Tracked