Working On Me

Something you can use to breathe a little life into a journal you're bored with is to be your own guest writer. Blogs often feature guest writers who offer a different perspective. You can do the same.

Simply write from someone else's point of view. If your journal is one in which you describe the events of the day and your reactions to them, then do as you normally do, but pretend you are someone else, possibly one of the people you encountered that day. What did that person notice about you? What impression did you make?

On the other hand, you may have a journal in which you simply write whatever comes into your head, snippets of philosophy, ideas and memories. In that case, consciously try to record ideas which are not yours, imaginary memories another person might have, or views which are different from your own.

When a blog features a guest writer, it can actually revitalise the blog in a big way. The blog owner picks up new themes to write about or acquires new energy, and sometimes it can entirely change the direction of the blog. What could it do for your journal?

Earlier in the week, I posted on the thinking errors we all tend to make in a crisis. Today, I'll look at a technique that can help overcome those errors.

When you are faced with a stressful situation, you probably start making thinking errors straight away. Try to identify which ones you are making; if necessary, write them down. It is only when you have recognised the errors that you make that you will be able to make changes and try to avoid them in the future.

Many thinking errors are related to all or nothing, black or white thinking. It is important when facing a challenging situation to gain a sense of proportion. Try to look at the broader picture, and practice grey thinking. That is to say, realise that the truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes, and appraise it honestly.

When you feel that you are totally responsible for a situation, step back and look at all the other aspects and people involved. Clarify whether you really are 100% to blame. Even if you are, does it mean you will be next time? Your efforts are better spent in meeting the challenge rather than berating yourself for what has already happened.

Do not label yourself or others. Remember, it is the action that may be silly, inappropriate, mistaken or ill-advised, not the person who is silly, stupid or an idiot. This goes for you too!

When faced with a crisis, if you feel your bad thinking habits taking over, ask yourself some questions:

• Will this be important in a week, two months, six months, 2 years?
• Am I spending too much time thinking about how things should be or might have been instead of dealing with things as they stand now?
• Is this the worst that could happen? Is it, for example, as bad a problem as bereavement, or a serious health worry?
• Is it really necessary for me to feel this way?
• Is it really that bad?
• Am I blowing this out of proportion?
• Am I expecting too much of myself and others?

Asking these questions is a trigger for grey thinking, allowing you to regain a sense of proportion and properly appraise the situation. Freeing yourself from thinking errors will allow you to focus on getting things done in an efficient and healthy way. Practising grey thinking is crucial, and will require persistence. But the more you practice, the better you’ll get and the more reward you will derive.

Nobody ever teaches you how to think, which is a pity, really, since the way you think has a massive impact on what you can achieve. In a crisis, your thinking skills can make the difference between triumph and misery.

In a crisis, you will typically make 12 different types of thinking error. These are:

1. False generalisation. ‘This always happens to me.’ Does it really? I doubt it. But thinking this way makes it more likely that it will in the future.

2. All or nothing thinking. Looking at things in extremes, not considering the middle ground; situations are either wonderful or terrible. Your ability to spot good news in a poor situation will disappear. Worse, you might fail to heed subtle warning signs beneath good news.

3. Negative filtering. Ignoring the positives and dwelling on the negatives. ‘A and B are wrong in my life.’ (When D, E, F and G are all right, and far more important) If you don’t acknowledge what’s good, how will you keep it that way?

4. Overlooking the positives. A belief that good things only happen by luck; ‘I only passed the exam because they wanted a lot of people to pass this time.’ Say this sort of thing to other people, and it’s false modesty. Say it to yourself, and you believe you have no power at all.

5. Practising telepathy. ‘She must think I am incompetent for not knowing the answer to her question.’ In a sales environment, this thinking error is probably responsible for more lost sales than anything else.

6. Assumptions. Making assumptions about what another person’s reaction may be and acting upon that assumption. You are probably wrong.

7. Fortune telling. ‘I am not going to reach my annual target.’ Ever hear of the self-fulfilling prophesy? ‘I am going on a picnic so it will probably rain today.’ Maybe it will, but if it doesn’t you’ll have failed to enjoy the sunshine because you were waiting for the rain. And you’ll be alone on that picnic, because nobody likes a Jonah!

8. Magnification/minimisation. Blowing things out of proportion; ‘If I don’t get that job it will be the worst thing that has ever happened to me.’ Will it really? Is that the kind of pressure you want to take in to the interview with you? Alternatively, you might be ignoring the importance of an issue; ‘The deadline is tomorrow – oh don’t worry, we have plenty of time!’

9. Turning feelings into beliefs. You rationalise from your feelings without challenging them; ‘I made a mistake and feel stupid so I must be stupid.’

10. Blaming. You blame yourself when you are not responsible, or you do not consider your own part in creating a problem. To think and act effectively, you need to know what is and is not within your ability to influence. Blaming always gets in the way of this.

11. Parental tapes. These are tapes of information about our values and beliefs that play constantly in our heads. They carry the information we learned as children about how we should live our lives (‘I should pass all my exams or I will come to nothing.’) We berate ourselves with them, making us strive harder and harder, and also use them on others, such as work colleagues or our children, putting our values onto them. As received dogma, they stop us from rationally assessing the situation we are in.

12. Behaviour vs. Personality. If a child intentionally makes a mess, it is the action that was naughty, not the child. This also applies to adults.

The biggest problem careful budgeters have to battle is the 'buy it now' habit. If we want it, and if can buy it, we generally do. The trick to taming your impulse purchasing habit is to fool it. Carry a notebook whenever you're out of the house. If you see something you're tempted to buy, write it down in your notebook and set a date on whioch you will buy iy. Try to put a date that's a month or more away.

When the date comes around, if you still want it just as much as you did, buy it. Alternatively, you might decide to just set a new date, further in the future. If you no longer want it, just cross it out.

I have found that more often than not, the urge to own an item disappears between seeing the item and the date I set to buy it, saving me a fortune.

Some people seem to accumulate achievements effortlessly. It is true that there is a snowball effect at work; the more you achieve, the more you view yourself as an achiever. The more you believe you are an achiever, the easier you find it to achieve things and the more you achieve.

The converse holds true as well. If you don’t see yourself as an achiever, you’ll find it hard to achieve anything, which feeds your view of yourself as a non-achiever and the cycle continues.

But the fact is that you are an achiever. You are reading this blog, which means you have already accumulated a phenomenal number of achievements. For instance, you have:

• Learned to read
• Learned to use a computer
• Secured some kind of income to allow you web access
• Decided to make your life better

These are achievements not to be sneezed at, and there are hundred like them in your life. You can prove it to yourself quite easily. Take a few sheets of paper, one for each ten years of your life so far. Head each with the appropriate ages (0-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.) If you aren’t yet thirty, then choose five-year periods instead (0-5, 6-10, 11-15, etc.)

Next, focus on each sheet in turn and list all your achievements during the period the sheet covers. These achievements can be big (“Passed 8 GCSEs”, “Learned to walk”, “Was promoted to first management job”) or small (“Passed cycling proficiency test”, “Won 800m race at school sports day”, “Asked to represent office at regional awards day”.) But they must all be positive. When you think you’ve got enough, challenge yourself to double the number recorded on each sheet. Let your mind wander through all ages, and be imaginative.

Then write up your sheets. Many people get a special notebook for this, but you can use loose leaf paper if you like. When you transfer the achievements from the original sheets, try to organise them in chronological order. When you have finished, this will represent the start of your Achievement Log. On the next blank page, draw two columns, headed ‘date’ and ‘achievement’.

Every day, try to write at least one achievement – big or small – in your Achievement Log. It could be an achievement at work or at home, in your relationships, your finances or fitness or in any other area. If you can write several in a day, do so.

Every week, set aside some time to review your Achievement Log. When you face a challenge, review it again. The aim is to create the belief that you are an achiever. This should be easy to believe, because it is true, and you will have plenty of evidence right in front of you.

Once you believe that you are an achiever, you will find it comparatively easy to achieve more and more in all aspects of your life.

Debt is what helps most people buy their home, but debt also keeps many tens of thousands of people from enjoying the benefits of financial security. Debt helps you afford the comfortable car you deserve, rather than the slightly less comfortable car you could afford with cash only. But debt in the way of credit card bills consigns a growing number of people to an endless cycle of running to stand still. Debt is what makes the economy boom in good times, but debt is what makes the bad times longer and more painful. Debt buys us things we could never normally afford, and yet it makes us pay for them many times over.

Here’s a familiar scenario. You have a credit card, probably more than one. There’s maybe £5,000 outstanding at the moment. On payday, you’ll repay about £500 of that debt and feel good, but you’ll find yourself putting purchases on the cards again as next payday approaches and the money runs out. Lo and behold, when the statements arrive, you’re right back where you started the month. Even if you manage to spend less on the cards than you paid off, the monthly interest on the outstanding balance makes sure you don’t really put a dent in the amount owed.

If you don’t recognise that picture, I’m genuinely pleased for you. But please believe me when I say that it represents a way of life for a large proportion of people, particularly the supposedly “affluent” or “high income” ones. And it’s a very difficult rut to get out of. You make a repayment, which reduces your available income, which forces you to borrow, so you make another repayment … and here we go again.

But there is a way out of the cycle. It is perfectly possible to wipe out that debt, establish savings and regain financial security. Although it may take a little while, it can start tomorrow. And because it will happen in a planned and consistent way, you can start feeling better from day one, secure in the knowledge that the problem is solved. Do I have your interest? OK, here we go…

STEP 1: Calculate your monthly spending. Add up everything you spend each month. Include all your bills and direct debits, plus one twelfth of annual costs like car tax and holidays. Do include discretionary spending on leisure as well. However, don’t include your repayments on this debt you are seeking to clear.

STEP 2: Calculate your net disposable income (NDI). This is the difference between your net monthly income and the figure you derived from Step 1. If you have a negative NDI, then go back to Step 1 and try to eliminate some of the discretionary spending, such as eating out or some (but not all) of your leisure activities.

STEP 3: Apply an 80/20 split to your NDI. 80% of it you should allocate to debt repayment and 20% to savings. If you can, set up standing orders to your credit card or loan account and to a savings account.

Before we go to Step 4, let’s see an example. You have £4,000 of debt and a net disposable income of £200 per month. So each month, £160 goes to debt repayment and £40 to savings.

After one month, here is the position:

After two months, things look like this:

After six and twelve months, you can see the effect.

To keep the arithmetic simple, I've ignored credit card interest, which will diminish in effect as you operate this plan, but will in reality add two or three months to the process.

Something interesting happens after 20 months in this example:

Savings have now reached the level of the remaining debt. Are you tempted just to clear it? Of course you are, but here is where Step 4 comes in.

STEP 4: Continue with the plan. Zero debt may look attractive, but zero savings is how you got into this debt in the first place. As well as repaying the debt, this plan seeks to regain you some financial security, so keep going.

Finally (in this case after 25 months), the job is done:

You now have zero debt, plus £1,000 in savings. You also have a standing order to save £40 a month, which can obviously continue. Furthermore, the £160 a month you were using in repaying the debt is now freed. Some of this you’ll want to spend and enjoy, but why not use part of it to increase your savings, perhaps in a longer-term plan?

Today you’re busy, too busy to develop a professional network, to pick up the phone or talk to people face to face, to make connections that could be useful to you in the future. You might be busy tomorrow, too, and the day after. But you might not be. You might suddenly have no client orders or be facing layoff. Would that be the time to start building a network? Or would you prefer to have a network of people you could already call on in your hour of need?

Or, to put it another way, perhaps you should dig a well before you get thirsty.