nonprofitchapin

31 Day Reset: Day 25 – No Complaining for 24 Hours

December 29, 2011nonprofitchapin

I’m participating in the 31 Days to Reset Your Life program at Happy Black Woman. The program is designed to help you evaluate your goals and priorities and think of them in the context of your life today and how you might be able to refocus on what’s important. Read on to learn about my experience with the challenge!

OK, it’s been more like 14 hours. But I know where this is going. Rosetta has challenged us to take one day, write down every complaint that comes across our mind, and turn it into a gratitude statement.

This was definitely an enlightening exercise. As I mentioned in my gratitude post, I do try to focus on being grateful for the things I have every day. But doing the activity really showed me the complaint feelings I have surrounding the silliest things… and as Rosetta expresses, these feelings really do effect every other aspect of ourselves and our mood in general.

I also noticed that my complaints were frequent in the beginning of the day but as I paid more attention to them, they got fewer and farther between. They have actually tapered off completely in the past few hours. That’s also because I’ve had more control over what I’ve been doing tonight… but I also believe it’s because my complaints have turned more intentional in my mind, which has switched their frequency. Things that felt worthy to complain about before just don’t anymore.

Well, I’m not shy! Here we go with my list, my complaints and my gratitude statements.

8:30 am – I didn’t get good sleep. I’m grateful that I will soon know if I have sleep apnea!
8:30 am – I have to wake up early. I’m grateful that I have the access to the sleep apnea test; they need the machine back at a certain time because there are others like me who want to know.
8:45 am – There is ice on my windows. I’m grateful I have a car to transport me to where I want to go, when I want to go.
8:50 am – Someone cut me off. I’m grateful that my deadline was flexible enough that such a small impact wouldn’t be a problem.
9:30 am – There’s a line at Starbucks. I’m grateful that I can afford occasional small luxuries.
9:45 am – I have to make breakfast for my boyfriend. I’m grateful I am off work this week and have time to do things for him, especially because he does so much for me!
10:30 am – I have to rush while getting ready. I’m grateful that I get to visit with my mom and aunt, who is only in the area twice a year.
12:00 pm – I don’t feel well. I’m grateful that I’m not doing the same boring thing today and putting myself out of my comfort zone, which probably is contributing to feeling different.
1:15 pm – There’s nowhere to sit at the restaurant I wanted to take my mom and aunt to. I’m grateful we can spend more time together, walk around the neighborhood more and come back to the restaurant.
1:30 pm – There’s only a small bench in the corner to sit at. I’m grateful we have somewhere to sit at all and that my mom and aunt can try the restaurant.
3:30 pm – The laundry room is full. I’m grateful that I have easy access to laundry facilities that work so well.
4:15 pm – Someone left the cap off the laundry detergent and it spilled all over. I’m grateful it spilled on clothes I could put in the load I was about to wash and that I have detergent to use.
4:30 pm – A prescription I submitted to be refilled won’t be ready until Tuesday. I’m grateful I can refill my prescriptions at home online and that I put in the request with adequate time before I’ll run out.
4:35 pm – I had to re-address and re-send a holiday card. I’m grateful to still have a valid address for this friend and have her in my life.
4:45 pm – Someone has not taken their clothes out of the dryers that are easier access. I’m grateful that I have clean facilities so close to me.

You get the gist!! Boy, when I write out my complaints like that they seem so silly. But it’s true that these were my thoughts today. It’s important that I identify that this is what I think and figure out how to switch my thinking so that I don’t complain about the little things. Because the big things are going pretty well for me indeed.

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 24 – Make New Friends

December 29, 2011nonprofitchapin

The Day 24 exercise serves to underscore the progress we’ve made the past two days with creating a Reset Project and finding a community to support it. Rosetta has asked us to go one step further and make new friends and connections within these communities who have similar goals. The argument is that with like minded people around us, we’re more likely to continue to act on our Reset Project.

I’m all about this, except with my challenge of even finding a supportive community to help me focus on resetting my finances, finding new friends in the community is even more difficult. So, I did what I could. I went to the Mint.com Facebook page to find these new connections (which I mentioned yesterday).

First I took a look at my current Facebook friends who also are a part of this online community. One of them was Emily Baime, whom I love, but I would hardly say I need to reconnect with her as I did just venture to Sacramento to visit earlier this month. The other one is a friend who I haven’t actually spoken to in probably close to four years. Perfect. So, I messaged him to reconnect, mentioned I saw him there, and asked if he has any advice or tips on improving my financial literacy.

The next two connections were a little more awkward for me. I went onto Mint.com’s Facebook page and looked at who had posted on the page or mentioned Mint.com lately. I took two people, both who mentioned loving the service or involving it in their new year’s resolutions, and sent them messages. Messaging strangers online isn’t exactly something I’ve done in the past fifteen years, so I definitely felt like I put myself out there a bit. But we’ll see what happens!

Again, if you have a better suggestion about a community or peers I could connect with to improve my financial literacy, please send it my way!

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 23 – Finding Support

December 28, 2011nonprofitchapin1 Comment

The Day 23 challenge was to find a community of people who would support you and your goals from the 31 Day Reset program or specifically your Reset Project. As my Reset Project focused on finances, this was tough for me. I knew that a step in the right direction would be to sign up on Mint.com, a website I had heard about from several people. The program pulls information from all your financial sites (checking, savings, credit cards, etc) to compile it all, create budgets, help with spending alerts, and the list goes on and on. I know, it sounds scary to give that kind of access, but I haven’t heard anything about it not being secure from anyone I know.

I signed up on the site and forgot for a minute about today’s exercise. I was amazed at the budgeting and organizing I could do on the site. Of course, as it is December, two of my largest expenses besides rent were $650 on gifts and $120 on donations to nonprofits… it will be interesting to take a closer look next month. I remembered today’s assignment and looked for an online community on the site and couldn’t find much. But I did Like them on Facebook and found a lot of activity there, and followed them (and many other similar organizations) on Twitter. I hope through these avenues I can get connected.

Please, if you know of any communities where people in their late twenties might be discussing similar issues, send them my way! I would love to get plugged in and educate myself about becoming more financially literate and secure.

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 22 – Reset Project

December 28, 2011nonprofitchapin3 Comments

Did you miss me? I’m sorry to say that the holidays just swallowed me up and I didn’t have one second to breathe let alone work on the 31 Day Reset. But I’m back! I’m really going to try hard to get caught up. And I promise I’m going to complete and blog about all 31 days… even if it’s a few days after December 31!

This was a big activity, which is also why I didn’t just do it quickly between latkes and Christmas tree decorating. Rosetta asked us to take a look at our Life Map and identify one area which we wanted to make progress on in the next month. She then outlined a few questions for us to answer about this – our Reset Project.

The hardest part about this for me was identifying which of the seven areas to focus on. I was very torn between Finances and Health. In the end I decided to focus on Finances. Both areas are extremely important, but I figured if this was supposed to be a project I work on in the next couple of years, Finances was frankly an easier and smaller project to take on. With work, school, friends and family, I don’t necessarily have a lot of time to dedicate to outside projects… unfortunately that means health for now.

So here’s what I’ve come up with for Finances!

I feel out of control of my finances. I don’t feel like I completely understand what I’m spending money on. I need to address the fact that I’m not paying off my debts the way I should (and probably could) and the fact that I’m not saving the way I want to. My future depends on my financial security – I can’t do any of the things I envision for my ideal list without money to support it. I want to feel more in control of my money. I want to pay off my debts at a faster rate and feel secure with the amount I have saved.

I hope future days can be spent working on this project! In case we don’t have another dedicated exercise to it, I’ve done one of those emails in the future to myself a month from now to check in. Hopefully I can take some time to outline a plan. Because I feel if I dedicate some time to outlining a plan for it, it could actually happen! And that would be great!

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 21 – The Power of Unfriending

December 21, 2011nonprofitchapin

Today’s activity was to cut the negative people out of your life. This is something I spent a lot of time focusing on around eight years ago, and I would say looking at my friend base now, I did a pretty good job of it. I always make a conscious effort to spend time only with people who invigorate me, give me hope, and simply make me happy.

One area I’m not so good with is on the internet. I’ve friended people on Facebook simply because they sent a request and followed people on Twitter because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well there’s no denying that I spend a good amount of time on Facebook and Twitter, so I decided to take that piece of advice from Rosetta and work on that today.

Facebook has a feature that I haven’t paid much attention to until now, and it was perfect for today’s exercise. For each of your friends, there are three levels of “subscription” you can have – you can opt to view only important activity, most activity, or all activity. You can also unsubscribe to see updates from someone altogether. Even within that, you can choose which type of updates you want to see (about life, etc), but I didn’t go that far.

I simply went down my news feed and for about 80% of people I switched the setting from most updates to only important updates. For people I don’t feel a strong connection to, or who I was close with in the past but don’t necessarily want to dwell on memories about, I either unsubscribed to their updates or unfriended them altogether. And my close friends I subscribed to all updates.

Now all this Facebook speak really has me sounding kind of silly. Even my boyfriend and accountability partner was skeptical. But I feel strongly that the time I put in to this will make me happier. I have removed the reminders of things about my past I don’t want to dwell on. And I have highlighted friends who I love and give me life. A byproduct of this is also that I will have less updates, so hopefully I won’t waste so much time online.

Next will be to unfollow people on Twitter. I hope to do this soon. But I wanted to focus on Facebook first because there are more emotions attached to it. Whether we like it or not, our emotions are wrapped up in the online world. We might as well take control.

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 20 – Steps Toward Minimalism

December 20, 2011nonprofitchapin

OK, I definitely cheated on this one. Rosetta asked us to get rid of everything we don’t need. Yes, I said EVERYTHING. Well. I know for a fact that would take hours to complete! As many of you know from my most popular post on this blog, What I Learned From My Garage Sale, I took some time to do this in May, gearing up for my move across California. I spent a ton of time going through stuff I hadn’t touched for years and putting it in the garage sale pile. I definitely did not get through everything, but I made a pretty good dent. Our stuff FILLED my poor station wagon to the brim (we were doing the sale in a friend’s front yard)! But it was wonderful to get rid of so much stuff!

The moral of the story is that from that instance I’ve made a pact that we need to do sales either once or twice a year to continue to prompt ourselves to get rid of our things. We keep a pile at all times of things to sell. Right now the corner is pretty full! I am hoping we can do something around March/April time.

So, as far as this exercise goes – I’m all for it. But I know it would take a HUGE amount of time. And I’m sick today (still hanging on to a fever that started Sunday!). I simply don’t have the time or energy to take it on. I did fill a bag of clothes to add to the pile at least. And I acknowledge the fact that this is a really useful thing to do.

Sorry I cheated! But you just gotta do what you gotta do (or not do) sometimes!!

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 19 – Roses & German Chocolate Cake

December 19, 2011nonprofitchapin1 Comment

This exercise was fun and sweet! Rosetta pointed out that most of us mentioned love, marriage and/or kids on our bucket list. So, today she challenged us to revive our love lives. For those of us in a committed relationship, this means doing something romantic or out of the ordinary for our partner.

My boyfriend and my four year anniversary was on Friday so we had made a point to celebrate our love just a few days ago. But that made today even nicer because it was that much more unexpected. I’m also sick today, so a date night out was out of the picture. Instead, I snuck out of the house under the guise that I was getting ginger, chard and a sweet potato for dinner. In fact, I also picked up some roses, a slice of German chocolate cake (his favorite that we never eat because I’m not a big fan), and I spent some time writing some of the things I love about him in a card.

When I came back home he asked me if I had brought home a snack for him (he had been bugging me for one before I left!). I said sort of… with a smile… and brought him everything. He smiled and said, what’s this for? and I told him it was 1) because I love him and 2) because it was today’s 31 Day Reset prompt (he’s my accountability partner so he is well aware of the program). She told you to get someone flowers? he asked. The smile on his face was enough.

When we were first together I used to do surprising sweet gestures all the time. I would pick up flowers or wine to bring home. Sometimes I would plan out a whole day of activities for us. I have to admit that those things have dropped off recently, especially since we’ve moved and I’ve started school. It’s definitely something I’d like to make time for!

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 18 – Make a Bucket List

December 19, 2011nonprofitchapin4 Comments

I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept of a bucket list. It’s a list of things you want to do before you die, especially if you were told you’d die within six months. This challenge was simply to write up this list.

This was so much more difficult than I thought it would be! And I still have a list of only 12 things. Plus, I think some of them might not count, because it’s not necessarily something that could happen in six months… anyway I chose to still include them because they are important to me.

But the thing that stuck out to me the most is that nothing on my bucket list has to do with my career or making a difference in the lives of others. This might sound a little crazy, but I feel like with my involvement in Alternative Breaks at UCSD, I have made a tremendous difference in the lives of many and left an amazing legacy already. While I would love to make that kind of impact on another level, I don’t feel the need to. I feel the need to take care of myself and those around me.

Anyway, here’s what I came up with.

1. have children
2. get married
3. buy a house
4. pay off all my debts
5. run a marathon
6. advocate for awareness and research for my medical condition, become a spokeswoman for it
7. complete the USF MNA program (currently in)
8. see my sister get married and have kids
9. see my kids get married and have kids
10. go to Spain
11. visit the East Coast, especially New York and Washington, D.C.
12. go on a hot air balloon

Rosetta talks about being told you only have six months to live, and using that as inspiration. Actually about a year and a half ago I was given a diagnosis that is not nearly as dire as just six months to live but definitely means that my future is more uncertain than if I were totally healthy, and that I may not have all the physical capabilities I do now in thirty years from now. Perhaps that’s why my mindset has changed in a lot of ways… things I thought were very important before no longer are so dire.

-N.C.

31 Day Reset: Day 17 – No Facebook, Twitter or Blogging for 24 Hours

December 18, 2011nonprofitchapin

Well, well. Isn’t this challenge timely after Day 16’s response! The exercise is really to not watch TV for 24 hours, but since I don’t have TV, I translated this exercise to non-social media activity.

My first instinct was to cheat. I told my boyfriend and accountability partner that I was going to start my 24 hours on Friday at 5:00, even though it was Saturday at 11:00. Friday was our four year anniversary so I had spent all evening cooking and away from the computer, anyway. No way, he said. Do an actual day, from wake up to bedtime.

So, I didn’t Facebook, tweet, or blog all of Saturday. I did read some emails because some family stuff was happening but I didn’t respond to anything. One of the hardest things to ignore was that I had a blog comment that was waiting to be approved. I know how I feel when I’m on the other side of that situation, so I felt bad.

Overall, it wasn’t too bad. I often use these sites to fill empty gaps in time; I definitely wanted to check it when I was waiting for my mom and sister in the car. But overall I was fine.

I did cheat once. We watched a movie. But we had been sitting within it for two weeks and hadn’t had time until then to watch it! I justified it by saying it had a pre-determined set of time, so it wasn’t necessarily wasting time.

-N.C.