It's been a month since I started my 2013 Personal Revelation Revolution.
I gave 2013 the theme of learning more about myself and - as Oprah puts it - living my best life. There is lots to discover and to experience and to ponder and with the help of "Simple Abundance" by Sarah Ban Breathnach, "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin and of course Oprah, I set out to do just that.
I started collecting my (sometimes longer and sometimes shorter) ramblings at the end of my blog posts and in my special notebook, where I write down all my story- and blog-ideas and anything writing related.
The first thing I can share with you is that I am a lot more conscious about everything that is going on in my life. I try to pay attention to what makes me happy, what makes me miserable and where I can definitely improve. I take a lot of notes and read them over and over again.
One thing that I kept coming back to again and again throughout the month was the concept of "financial serenity over security", which means that we are happy with what we have, not what we want and we learn to measure our "worth" other than financially.
Yes, the concept is intriguing, I know the change has to start with me and I cannot *make* my family want this as well. I beat myself up the whole month, pondering how I can make this happen, because I was looking for some kind of aha-moment. The truth is that I am not my own entity, living independently of everyone else and can make any changes I want. I am part of a family and in the end I want this to work for all of us.
So rather than making a radical change myself and then being miserable because nobody else wants to be enlightened, I decided on a different approach. Since I'm the one in charge of family financials anyway, I will set some money aside every month for wishes big and small and use it without second-guessing. When it's gone, it's gone and we'll find ways to have fun without spending money until the next month's budget is available.
Another thing I started doing is keeping a daily gratitude journal. Nothing fancy, just a little calendar with one double page per week. I write down two things every day that I'm grateful for and it's been a really good experience. It has made my day on more than one occasion, because no matter how shitty it was, there is always something to be grateful for (like pancake-breakfast with my family or being able to take an afternoon nap to get rid of a headache because of my new flexible work schedule).
For February: onward and upward in the wonderful world of living your best life!
P.S. "Simple Abundance" has been sitting on my bookshelf since 1995 and after I started reading it (again) I remembered why I had not finished it the first time... Compared to Gretchen Rubin's writing it seems a bit cumbersome and antiquated and it has a lot of religious undertone, which I don't like at all. But it holds the same truths as the "Happiness Project" and now that I'm all grown up I just pick out what works for me. Word.