The following article appeared in the Toronto Star on Monday, July 4th and when I read the article I sat alone in my office repeating the words "yes, yes, yes".  Mr. Stobbs was putting in print, in the national media, what I have been telling clients for years.  Have a goal, take baby steps forward to achieve it, have rewards for goals reached and be kind to yourself every step of the way.  Love who you are right now, right this very minute, and vow to make healthy changes in your lifestyle to improve your life both physically and financially.

I hope you enjoy the article and I look forward to hearing from you with your thoughts and better still, your success stories!  I will print them with your permission as they come in.

Blessings as always
Barb

 Here's How to Make a Financial Diet Work

                                                                        by  Tim Stobbs

I sucked in my gut as I put on my pants — I refused to buy a pair with a 36-inch waist. I typically don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but when my 34-inch pants were getting tight after Christmas I decided to make an exception. I was going to lose some weight.

But I had a problem. I had never been on a diet so I didn’t have any experience on that score. I did, however, have a lot of experience saving money, so I thought transferring the principles couldn’t be that hard. I was wrong — and struggled for a few months before finding the secret to success when it comes to losing weight or a budget: you need a plan to avoid failing.

So here are five ways to avoid failing at your budget or your diet.

1) Have a specific goal.

Far too often people have vague goals like I want to lose weight or save more money. This is often doomed to fail because you didn’t put any conditions on the goal, like how much, by what date and what are you going to do after you reach it? You can’t get somewhere if you don’t know where it is on the map. So try putting some more specific details on your goals, like I want to pay off $1,000 on my credit card in the next four months. Or I want to put on my size 34 pants without sucking in my waist in the next three months. Afterward, have a second goal lined up, like I’m then going to contribute $1,000 to my RRSP in the following six months or go buy a belt to hold up my size 34 pants by the start of September.

2) Be reasonable about what you can do.

After you’ve made a specific goal you need to do a little test on it before you start. Is it reasonable? It doesn’t pay to set a goal you can never achieve. For example, if you want to save $1,000 in four months, do you know where you can find $250 a month in your current spending? Can you eat out less often for lunch? Can you do some free activities like going for a run in the park rather than going to a gym? In my case, I started walking up six flights of stairs every day to my office. Find what will work for you and make sure it isn’t impossible before you start.

3) Make success easy and failing hard.

Here is where you are going to win the battle of your budget or your diet. You need to make doing the right thing easy and make doing the wrong thing hard. I removed almost all the junk food from my house and instead kept healthier snacks around. The point isn’t to stop eating, but change what you eat. So when I craved a snack I was much more likely to eat an apple than walk to the corner store for a bag of chips. The same idea applies to saving more. Use cash more, leave your credit card at home and then set up automatic savings transfers on your payday. Don’t forget to have a prize at the end of your goal for doing the right thing and perhaps a punishment if you fail. That way you are encouraging the right behaviours, while making the wrong behaviours significantly less attractive.

4) Accept small failures.

I guarantee you will have at least one small failure. It may be a piece of cheesecake after supper like me, or buying that new shirt or a DVD you didn’t need. The point is it will happen, so don’t beat yourself up about it. Guilt is a useless emotion most of the time, so accept the responsibility of the failure and move on. Better yet, plan for that failure by building a little slack into your plan. If you think you can reach your goal in four months, perhaps give yourself five. That way something unexpected won’t ruin your plan and you might even get there early.

5) Make the change permanent.

Perhaps one of the worst things that can happen with both diets and budgets is people think of them as temporary. This is the wrong way to approach it. You need to plan to make your change permanent. Yes, I’ve accepted I really should eat less junk food and more fruits and vegetables. That way you never need to diet again because you won’t get fat in the first place or you will never need to pay down your credit card debt because you will have money in a savings account. If you plan to make it permanent, you won’t resent your actions since you know what the pay off will be. This is also why I suggest having a follow-up goal. That way you are motivated to keep going down the path until your eating or savings habits have changed for the better.

I won’t deny making these changes is hard, but in the end having a great-looking body or big savings account does wonders for your self esteem. So next time you want to make a change in your life make sure you have a good process to get you there, as it can make all the difference to being successful.

  

                                                       Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind
                                                         a mental picture of yourself as succeeding.
                                                          Hold this picture tenanciously and never
                                                                            permit it to fade. 
                                                         Your mind will seek to develop this picture.

                                                                                               Dr. Norman Vincent Peale