Make-over Monday- Baby Steps

Sorry this is a day late!

This past week I have been working on a mental make-over. One area I have a lot of problems with is anxiety, and this can affect every area of a persons life. It makes me very irritable and I can have a short fuse, especially with my children.

One thing I have done this week is to identify the areas that cause me the most anxiety and find solutions, broken down into baby steps, to ease the anxiety a little.

The main area that I have been focusing on this week is a cluttered house. When my house is cluttered (which is often), I get extremely anxious and overwhelmed. What I have started doing is picking a small area at a time, working on it for about 10-15 minutes, and then walking away and doing something else. If I have a lot of papers in an area, I will stack them all in a box, pick out 3-4 at a time, and either file them, shred them, or organize them.

As I am working on an area for the 10-15 minutes, as I pick up each item I will take it to its appropriate place or room. This probably does take more time than taking everything in one trip, but this makes me feel lessed stressed and overwhelmed ( and the extra walking sure won't hurt me any.)

Another area that causes me major anxiety, is when I have my paperwork from the weekend follow me into the week. For those of you who don't know, I work as a home health care nurse on the weekends. Although it is hard to turn in all the paperwork the very same day (especially if there is a start of care with about and hour's worth of paper work) I have decided if I complete it all in the persons house, it takes more time there, but less in the long run. I also plan on organizing my papers, folders, and supply box with everything I need at the end of the weekend, so the next weekend, I will be completely prepared.

Finances

Another area baby steps can come in handy is your finances. Whether or not you have any savings or a lot of debt, breaking it down into smaller amounts in your mind, can keep you from being as stressed.

For example, my husband and I are major Dave Ramsey fans. I listen to his shows on-line. I have read his books. My husband and I have taken his 13 week Financial Peace University class, and we have seen him live (with free box seats at the Gwinnett Arena, thanks to Katti and Kevin Senior!). His motto is "If you will live like no one else, later you CAN live like no one else."

In his book The Total Money Makeover, he has 7 Baby Steps to help you get out of debt, save, and plan for the future
Step 1: $1,000 in an emergency fund.
Step 2: Pay off all debt except the house utilizing the debt snowball.
Step 3: Three to six months expenses in savings.
Step 4: Invest 15% of your household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement plans.
Step 5: College funding.
Step 6: Pay off your home early.
Step 7: Build wealth and give.

We are just now getting started on Step 2, and even the baby steps can feel overwhelming, which is why I break the baby steps down into smaller baby steps.

For step 1, $1000 in saving, in my mind I broke it up into 4X $250 and focused on $250 at a time. Now that we are on step 2, I am focusing on $500 at a time, until we are out of debt. This really helps me to not feel overwhelmed and feel like I am getting something accomplished.

We still have a long way to go to be debt free, but with the baby steps, focus, determination, and strength from God, one day we will be calling Dave Ramsey and screaming at the top of our lungs "WE ARE DEBT FREE!!!!"