Tiny Buddha

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  • 5 Steps to Lower Your Financial Stress When You’re Drowning in Debt

    5 Steps to Lower Your Financial Stress When You’re Drowning in Debt

    “You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.” ~Timber Hawkeye

    I never anticipated the stress and pressure that come when you are no longer able to pay your bills on time.

    Knowing that you owe money, and that your current income isn’t going to cover it, is a heavy reality to face.

    I found myself starting to envy low-income, salaried employees. Even though they don’t earn a lot, which I’m sure brings its own challenges, they aren’t eligible to receive huge credit. This protects them from ever finding themselves owing millions.

    My husband and I have recently gone through a time when we found ourselves way overextended. Due to a series of bad beats and various twists of fate, we found ourselves in over our heads. And this is not a good space to be in.

    It’s a sickening feeling that has seemed to overshadow all the other areas of our lives. We’ve felt unable to breathe, knowing that debt is hanging over us. When the phone rings from an unknown number, we’re hesitant to answer it. It could be someone wanting to know when we will pay a bill.

    Small Beginnings

    It didn’t start out like this. Let me backtrack. I grew up on a farm in an average-income-earning household. Although we didn’t lack for anything, we weren’t wealthy.

    My husband and I married early on in life and started out with very little. We set up a small business from home soon after we got married. I was halfway through studies at the time and managed to juggle both. Our expenses were minimal, and even though it felt like hard work, we seemed to prosper.

    Friends would comment and say we had the Midas touch. As the business grew and branched out, money always seemed to be plentiful. We didn’t start out intending to reach a massive bank balance. Our aim had been to reach financial independence sooner than later. Words like “budget” or “frugalness” never seemed to enter our thinking though.

    Over the years, we upgraded our living, our home, our cars. We took overseas holidays and bought properties. As our affordability increased, so did our expenses. In a short space of time, we up-leveled our lifestyle requirements.

    The Storm

    The stress and anxiety of knowing you are unable to catch up on financial commitments is scary. We had some business ventures fail, we bought out a partner, there was a notable economic downturn. We had new competitors enter the market that we could no longer match, as our running costs had become so high.

    Then things came to a boiling point; a perfect storm was in the making. A few clients didn’t pay for larger projects. This meant we had to put out money to complete the work, but nothing was coming in. Our rental property didn’t have a tenant in it for a few months, and major maintenance needed doing. Staff went on strike, and several employees had to get retrenched and paid out.

    The strain on our marriage was palpable. The weightiness of the situation was hard to bear. There wasn’t going to be a quick-fix solution. We had to rally, face this storm head on, and ride it out over the next two years.

    Downsizing

    We took massive action to downscale. It’s very easy to upscale and commit to new financial obligations. Downscaling is hard because it feels like you’re taking a step backward. And in a sense, you are, although you’re going back to go forward.

    The new forward for me looks like being out of debt. The new goal is to have a business buffer of funds available to get through unexpected setbacks. We never want to experience the stranglehold of debt again. No fancy dining or luxury goods are worth the stress and worry of financial pressure.

    And so, we downscaled throughout the business. Everything got cut back down to size. All the unnecessary extras we didn’t need got cut away. We opted to move home. We cut our rental amount by a third.

    I swapped my shiny floors and designer fittings for a modest, old-school, rustic duplex. We no longer have to worry about hiring a gardener or keeping the pool clean. We cut up our credit cards and canceled every debit order we could.

    We Have Everything We Need

    To be honest, we still lived well and had everything we needed. But only just. When our new large screen TV stopped working, a month or so out of warranty, we started to use an old spare one we had in the garage. When winter came around, I took my allocated winter clothes budget and put it toward better use. That year I made do with what I had. Priorities dictated there were more pressing things to spend on.

    My motto became “If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.” Look for cheaper alternatives. This may be obvious to people who earn a set income and aren’t in a position to over-spend. But it seemed I had to re-learn it.

    For a year, my children didn’t get any new toys. In fact, I packed all the old ones away, only took out a few at a time, and tried to think of creative ways we could play with them.

    By the time Christmas rolled around, there was a financial improvement, so we spoiled the children with presents. The funny thing is, the novelty of the new toys wore off quickly. They didn’t seem to play with the new ones any more than they did the old ones. It seemed the more they had, the less they appreciated it.

    If you’re going through something similar—if you’re drowning in debt and need to claw your way out—perhaps my lessons may help.

    5 Steps to Lowering Financial Stress

    1. Know exactly where you stand.

    Get all your financials listed on a spreadsheet. Open communication is key between the role-players involved. List all your debt, liabilities, and expenses, and your income, investments, and assets.

    The starting point is to gain clarity on where you stand. You need to know how far you have fallen behind so you can plan to rectify your situation as soon as possible.

    It’s easy to start blaming or regretting or going around in “if only I had done this” circles. We had made one bad judgment call, and that may have changed everything. In hindsight it seems so obvious, but at the time we did what we thought was best.

    We had to stop hypothesizing and going back over bad decisions. We needed to work as a team, and now more than ever, we had to support each other, and not go back to “we should’ve.”

    2. Make a plan.

    After getting a realistic view on where exactly you stand, you can start working on a plan.

    Although we felt like throwing in the towel, we had to get our mindset right.

    There are usually more options than you think to get things back on track. Under stress we tend to go into survival mode, and this isn’t conducive to creative problem solving.

    Try to take the emotion of the situation away when you start to problem solve. Imagine this scenario is happening to someone else, and you’re there to help figure it out with them. You will need to research various options.

    Try to make a plan, even if your initial plan changes along the way. It’s important to gain back your sense of control.

    Communicate with the role-players. If you owe the bank or your credit providers, call them and meet up to discuss options. Ask for extensions. Get advice from people who have gone through similar experiences.

    3. Live within your means.

    Cut everything back to what is manageable. Yes, you will feel like you have lost some of your status. We moved from a prestigious housing estate to a random lower end suburb. It was a major personal downgrade, but I’ve come to learn that we are so much more adaptable than we realize. We actually need very little to live comfortably.

    We cut back on luxury items and learned the art of patience. Instead of buying on demand, if I wanted something, I would wait until I could afford it. I found that by doing this, it also eliminated impulse purchases. After waiting and giving it more thought, often I decided I didn’t need that item anyway.

    We had to get in touch what is most important. When you have only a limited supply to work with, you have to focus on what’s a priority. You need to weigh up the options and decide where you will get the most value for money.

    We implemented a budget, where we allocated amounts for the month, so we could plan to get through.

    4. Get back to your intrinsic values.

    Both my husband and I have never been particularly materialistic. We love quality products, but we’ve never been into flashy status items, although we’ve certainly grown accustomed to the finer things in life.

    During our financial crisis, we had to come back to our core values and to the intrinsic value of things. I got to a point when I realized, it doesn’t matter if we lose everything; our health and well-being are most important. We can start over again if we have to.

    I stopped fearing the worst and worrying and stressing. Instead I became fascinated by how the whole experience unfolded. I tried to learn and glean from this what I could.

    A few key lessons from my experience:

    • I never want to be in this situation again, so I’ll need to maintain these changes.
    • I only need to get through one day at a time.
    • Laughing through tough times is much better than crying through them.
    • To be a strong team, you can’t have internal conflict.
    • We had to accept the situation and make the best of it.

    A few things we did to get back to our values:

    • We started to value every penny again.
    • We focused on all we did have, not on all we didn’t have.
    • We forgave and moved on.
    • We left karma to deal with our wrongdoers.
    • We tried to cultivate a long-term vision, and this was merely a glitch in the road.

    5. Practice gratitude and generosity.

    Not your typical response when the financial pressure is on. But when you have little, it’s easier to be grateful for the small things in life. If you have a lot, it’s more difficult to be mindful of and value the small things. You tend to develop bigger and better expectations when you have much.

    We stopped expecting and taking things for granted. We started for be more thankful for everyday things.

    I tried to remain generous, if not with monetary resources, with what I could be generous with. A smile, a text message of encouragement to someone. A flower picked out the garden and given with a hand-written note. Or a listening ear might be what someone else needs. Too often we are so caught up in our own drama, we fail to consider what others are going through.

    As we give to those less fortunate, we start to appreciate our great wealth. It puts things back into perspective.

    6. Calm yourself while you get through the storm.

    This experience has definitely taught me that we can’t control life. We can plan and set goals, but ultimately a lot of things are out of our hands. Life happens, and it doesn’t always unfold how we imagined it would.

    During these times you have to find your inner grit. Your character gets tested and refined. You start to move way out your comfort zones and you land up somehow expanding but not breaking.

    And just when you think you can’t take withstand the storm anymore, you look back and notice how far you’ve come. You realize how much you’ve grown, and you’re stronger than ever.

    Things that helped me get through:

    • Find my composure daily through meditating, deep breathing, consciously releasing muscle tensions when I notice it, practicing self-compassion, celebrating small wins, and staying focused on the bigger picture
    • Remember “This too shall pass”
    • Don’t give in to self-pity or start whining to others
    • Take responsibility for my part in getting here
    • Remember that there is always more money to be made
    • Don’t give way to scarcity thinking
    • Sell or offload what I don’t need
    • Think out the box how to re-structure
    • Keep my life simple

    —

    I’m glad to report we are well on our way to righting our finances. I honestly wouldn’t trade this experience or go back in time and change things. It hasn’t been pleasant, but I’ve learned so many valuable lessons that I will take with me going forward.

    As we build up again, we are going to keep our expenses under control. We are going to be a lot more cautious, and never over-extend ourselves again. We will never enter into bad debt again.

    This time has made me respect the beauty and harsh reality of life and tread a little lighter as I move through it.

  • If Your Life Has No Ups and Downs

    If Your Life Has No Ups and Downs

    If Your Life Has No Ups and Downs

    Source: Spirit Science

  • When the People We Love No Longer Exist

    When the People We Love No Longer Exist

    “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” ~Steve Jobs

    A week ago a woman I loved died. She was a member of my family and had been dying for a while from bone cancer, so her death did not come as a surprise.

    I was traveling when I got the email, and I sat in Abu Dhabi airport surrounded by the banging and steps of people and grieved.

    Yes, I knew her death was imminent, but at a deeper level I found the news confusing. When I last visited her in her hospital room, her eyes were open and her breath constant; we chatted, she laughed, and we talked about seeing each other again.

    What was deeply confusing, and still is, is the fact that she will never exist again—not in the same form. Some believe she has gone to another world, some believe she now exists as particles, but the reality is that her shape, the twinkle in her eyes, the way she held my hand will never exist again.

    All of us who have gone through loss will understand this deep confusion. How can something no longer exist? How can one not call or talk to or hug a person anymore within the space of a day?

    My husband and I sat on the pews in the small suburban church and listened to beautiful things said about her.

    People spoke of her struggles with self-doubt and loss, as well as her ability to inspire and support women to find their own path. She could be conflicted and generous at the same time—she was human.

    A friend of mine once said that light on fractured glass is more arresting than glass that is robust and flat. I couldn’t have agreed more, as the words in the church about the woman we had lost recreated her and we could feel her living, just for that moment, in all her light and shade.

    From everything I’ve read coping with grief, it’s all about letting it out, about not having expectations about when the grief will end, about communicating about it with family and friends who understand.

    I let it out yesterday; I couldn’t help myself. The real rain came, though, when I looked over at the coffin and knew there was a woman inside, and her lack of life, of existence, overwhelmed me.

    So, how do we process the confusion that occurs when people that are special to us are no longer in our lives? Death is just one way these people can disappear; they can also disappear through relationship breakups, geographical separation, or they can simply vanish.

    The overwhelming feeling I get is one of too much space. It becomes very obvious that that person occupied some space within my existence and the vacuum is very hard to bear.

    In practical terms, it may be that I saw that person once a week, once a month, once a year, and now my dance card is not as full because they are no longer on the floor. Even if they had a negative impact on my life, I miss them, some parts of them.

    I guess the comforting thing I’ve learned from experience is that eventually others will come onto the floor, that the vacuum is not permanent, that each person who comes and goes brings more and more to my life and my understanding of existence.

    As Salman Rushdie writes in Midnight’s Children, “I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”

    When the people I care about no longer exist, I have the perfect opportunity to reflect on how I can integrate the best parts of them into my life.

    The woman I loved and lost was passionate about empowering women. I have carried the same flame, and her death inspires me to work even harder to encapsulate women’s voices into my writing.

    As a counselor, teacher, and friend, she also cared a lot about people and always wanted to help. When she spent the last year in and out of hospital, the love that she gave came back in spades with the constant stream of visitors and helpers by her bedside.

    Watching this really taught me the value of giving, not only to help others but also to develop relationships that were more about creation than destruction.

    We also have a choice to address the question of existence more broadly when people we were close to no longer exist in our lives.

    The older I get, the more I understand that existence really is very temporary. It makes sense, then, that the temporary nature of existence means that existence is, in itself, quite extraordinary.

    As science writer Lewis Thomas wrote, “Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement.”

    We can choose to ignore just how temporary our lives are, or, we can choose to say, “Well, I’m only here for a bit so I’d better get on with it and work out how I want to live and give.”

    Steve Jobs said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

    Steve’s understanding of the temporary nature of existence motivated him to create an extraordinary life, and, ironically enough, he will live on through his creations for years to come.

    It’s the day following the funeral. There’s a bunch of bright purple, pink, white, and yellow flowers on my desk. Someone left them at the front of the church because they wanted to do something tangible that indicated just how much they appreciated the woman’s life.

    In writing this I’m also doing the same. My gift of flowers, of words, for the woman who no longer exists, but who is now a part of this temporary life that is extraordinary just because it is.

  • Make Sure You’ll Smile When You Look Back on Your Life

    Make Sure You’ll Smile When You Look Back on Your Life

    Looking Back

    “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” ~Carl Rogers

    I had just gotten settled into my hospital bed after two hours of preparation. I had 32 electrodes taped to my bandage-wrapped skull, plugged into a machine that monitored my brainwaves, with just enough room to go from the bed to the bathroom.

    After two ambulance rides and multiple seizures, I needed to find out what was going on with my brain.

    The full diagnosis of my disease was still unknown then. The doctors told me it could be serious and to prepare for the worst.

    The worst?

    “Yes, they said. Your time on this earth could be seriously limited.”

    Weeks? Months? A year? Years? They said “yes.” In other words, they didn’t know yet.

    When the nurse left my room, I was there by myself with nothing but my thoughts about my life and death.

    It quickly dawned on me that at some point, most people would be in hospital beds, facing their mortality and asking themselves the hardest question they will be forced to ask: Did I live a fulfilled life?

    I began to audit my life and smiled.

    If the worst news came, I knew I’d be leaving this earth walking the path of fulfillment. Granted, I wanted several more decades to walk the path, but my brain condition forced me to answer that question of all questions.

    The phrase “the path of fulfillment” was a revelation I’d had nearly 20 years ago on the plane ride home from my mother’s funeral.

    Fulfillment is a constantly moving energy. It’s a path, not a place. You’re either walking on it or away from it. That’s why you have to work at it everyday to stay on the path.

    Back then I wasn’t doing what, in my heart, I knew I always wanted. I wanted to make movies and music, to influence others, to make the world a better place. There were so many things I always wanted to do.

    But they were huge endeavors, and fear superseded these dreams.

    I had to face the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of rejection, the fear of what people would think.

    So I acted. I wanted to make a movie. It was 1999, so the first thing I did when I landed at home in Austin, Texas was buy a computer, Final Cut pro editing software, and a digital camera.

    I had never used a camera or editing software, but that didn’t matter. I took one small step at a time, and in two years my wife and I were travelling to New York, Los Angeles, and Muskogee, Oklahoma to view my documentary at film festivals.

    Guess what the documentary was about? That’s right—fulfillment!

    As a part of the documentary, I produced two of my own songs. Those songs played all over the world. That’s when there were 25,000 Internet Radio stations begging for music, so radio play over the web was accessible as long as you had a radio-ready produced song worth the airwaves.

    Again, one small step at a time, and I had a movie and music under my belt.

    I wanted to run a marathon. I was overweight and never really ran long distance before. But, all it took was a start, commitment, and follow-through. It took three years to accomplish, but I took small steps to make the big run.

    I started by running one mile, then two, then a 10K, then a ten miler, then running a marathon in four hours and forty-seven minutes. Not a record setting pace, eh? Didn’t matter. To me, I had won the gold medal.

    Fulfillment transcended again on March 5, 2007. That’s when I held my beautiful daughter in my arms, looking at all of her beauty, as she was perfect on that day she was to born. But she was dead. And it was tragic, no doubt about it, but if reinforced that life is fragile, and we need to honor it.

    So I’m not going into the darkness that lay ahead, just the light that came from her death.

    The revelation of fulfillment had elevated to the connections in our lives. Through all of this hardship, I was glad I’d married my best friend, as I don’t know how we could have survived otherwise.

    All of our friends and family stood with us and were there for whatever we needed. I had made it a commitment and priority for my 40-something years on this planet to nurture true and deep friendships.

    Those deep relationships paid off when I needed them the most. And still do.

    I am close friends with those that I connected with in first grade, sixth grade, high school, and college—those relationships where you can peel off all of the layers and just be yourself and laugh and cry all in the same breath.

    Again, it was a commitment I made to be a true friend for all of those decades. You have to be a friend to have friends.

    You have to make time to call them, Skype them, have a drink with them. In the end when you’re in your hospital bed facing your mortality, it is those connections that will truly matter.

    To build those connections, first and foremost, you have to connect with yourself.

    You have to know who you are, what you stand for, and how you want to connect with people and the society we live in.

    When you connect with yourself, you can face your fears. You can build the confidence to act on your passions, to commit to them and follow through. And in doing this with deep connections, you can walk the path of fulfillment.

    We now have a beautiful four-year-old daughter who is the brightest connection in our lives. My brain condition is in check as long as I take my handful of pills each day.

    I make sure I cherish every moment with my daughter, my wife and best friend, my friends, and my family.

    And I make damn sure that I honor my commitments to connect with myself, my loved ones, and the world where we all live.

    Remember, one day, you will be in your hospital bed auditing your life. When you do look back on your life, you want to make sure you smile.

    Photo by SilentMind8