Well you can change. You just have to want to change. And then you have to implement the change slowly and sensibly.  And it’s a good idea to replace bad habits with good ones since leaving a void is tantamount to guaranteeing failure. As Ben Franklin said, “Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.”

Life is a series of routines we play out habitually. We get up at a certain time, shower or brush our teeth, get dressed. Some of us make our beds. Some of us have to make lunch for the kids. Some of us can’t get our eyes open without three cups of coffee.

Once upon a time I rolled out of bed and headed for the shower never looking back. When I moved to my new home and had a beautiful new bedroom all to myself, I decided to form the habit of making my bed. I’ve NEVER made my bed, but I so loved the look of my pretty room that I decided that habit was worth forming. It was almost as if this small change would mark the differentiation between my last life and this new life on which I was embarking. I’ve made my bed every morning since.

So how do you make habit your friend? How do you invite organization and purposefulness in to replace the chaos that is driving you nuts right now?

Start by writing down what it is you want to achieve. If there are things that trigger you to do The Bad Habit, try and identify those too. If after a horrible day at work you just HAVE to have a glass or three of wine, that might be your “trigger.” If you have a glass or three every evening – and always seem to have a trigger, you may simply be looking for an excuse to continue The Bad Habit. Tell yourself the truth. You can’t change as long as you continue to delude yourself.

Having figured out what you want to change, it’s time to find a replacement Good Habit as a substitute so you’re not trying to replace The Bad Habit with Nothing. Instead of that glass of wine, for example, you could go for a 10-minute walk, breathing deeply, and observing the beauty of life around you.

Don’t try to change too many things at once. Changing will be tough enough without piling a whole bunch of changes into the mix at the same time. Pick one thing and focus on that until you’ve got it down pat. You want to be successful so give yourself some time and keep it simple.

And start small. If the first habit you choose to change is a whopper, you won’t have had a series of small successes that you can use to prove to yourself that it can be done. Instead you’ll have a colossal screw-up that proves that you just can’t change.

Motivation is probably the biggest key to making A Good Habit stick. You have to be crystal clear on why you’re taking on A Good Habit. So if you’re planning to track your spending and that means writing down everything you spend every day, you need to be clear on why YOU are doing this. It can’t be because I said to do it. Or because your sister does it and it seems to work for her. It has to be because each time you do it, you get a surge of satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, or a thrill from being in control of your money.

Once upon a time I was a two-pack a day girl and I didn’t smoke wussy cigs either. When I got pregnant with each of my kids I quit smoking immediately — morning sickness did it, not me – and I stayed off the evil weed while I breast fed. But each time I finished breast feeding I took up smoking again. Then, when Alex was about three and a half, she turned to me and said, “Mommy, you’re going to die and Malcolm and I won’t have a mommy anymore.” I never smoked again. I’d found my motivation.

Sometimes it helps to have some people on your team. When I wanted to quit biting my nails as a teenager, I enlisted the help of the kids who sat around me at school. I gave them permission to whack me if they saw my hands near my mouth. They did. I stopped. Maybe you need a mate to whack you, or encourage you, or talk with you, or work with you, as you establish your new habit.

Keep an ear on your self-talk – y’know that hiss in your brain that says things like, “I can’t do this,” or “This is too hard” or “What’s the point?” If you can turn your self-talk around, if you can move it from diminishing your efforts to supporting your efforts, you’re much more likely to succeed. Stay positive about what you’re doing. If you fall off the rails say, “Okay, I fell off the rails and now I’m getting back on again.” Shut down the negative talk when it starts.

I know you can do it if you want to. I know you have the strength, the tenacity, the gumption to change.  When you feel the urge to fall back, acknowledge that you’ve been tempted, but know that you are strong enough – that the urge is temporary and will go away. And make sure you have a strategy for coping: breathing, a two-minute meditation, drinking a glass of water, dropping and doing 5 push-ups – whatever it takes to work through the urge.

And reward yourself regularly. It doesn’t have to be huge or expensive… just a wee treat that shows you how much you appreciate your effort. Works for dogs. It’ll work for you too.

People spend a lot of time daydreaming about how their lives could be different. They wish they could escape from whatever trap they feel caught in, be it debt, a crappy job or a miserable home life. Their minds wonder. They wish. Sometimes they get angry at themselves, at their partners, at their bosses, at their friends, at their children, at life. Sometimes they get sad.

If you’ve experienced this sense of not moving forward, this sense of drifting through your life, you’re going to have to decide if this is what you want the rest of your life to be like or NOT.

Young people often experience this sense of not heading where they want because they’ve done a lot of what they’ve done simply to meet the expectations of their parents, teachers, or other influencers. There are the people who get married early because how it’s done in their family or in their culture. There are the people who head into careers they have little interest in because someone else thought it was a good idea. And there are the people who buy a home, taking on debt they’re not psychologically prepared to deal with, simply because “only losers rent.”

While approval from the people you love and admire may be important to you, it’s not enough to keep you happy. For that, you actually have to figure out what YOU want. And then you have to get focused to GET what you want.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned on my life journey is that I can only be happy when I am being Gail. After years of trying to meet other people’s expectations – and failing miserably – I figured out that I’d rather be disliked for the person I am than for the person I’m pretending to be. So I got real. And now if a body doesn’t like me, she’s free to find another place to be.

The tendency to be fuzzy about who we are goes for just about everything else in life. If you drifted into a marriage, drifted into a job or career, drifted into a new home, all because it was what came your way, it may be time to take your life back. That means getting in touch with your real self.

• What are you passionate about?
• What do you love?
• What do you hate?
• What makes you happy?
• What makes you sad?
• Who inspires you, and why?
• What do you wish was different about your life?

Very often we send ourselves signals that can help us decide what it is we really want so we can get focused. It may be a book you read that strikes a cord. Or a conversation you have with a friend. Or a moment of total clarity in which you suddenly realize what’s really important. Just as often we push those signals aside without paying enough attention and we miss our cue.

Take heart. Another will come along. It may be a touch of envy that makes you sit up and pay attention to what you think is missing in your life.  It may be a day-dream, an “I just wish I could” moment, that you can catch and study.  Or you may find yourself getting really P.O.’d because what you’re doing is pointless and unsatisfying and you really hate Monday mornings.

Sometimes we fall into the fuzzies simply because whatever we’re doing used to work for us, but we’ve changed and it no longer does.  Or we’ve already invested so much energy in a particular direction changing course now would be “a waste.” We’ve become so settled, so habitual about our lives. And now, while we know how we got here, we feel caught in the honey of a life we really don’t want.

If that’s not good enough, then it’s time to be brave. Figure out what you really want and then drum up the courage to make it so. Try. And try again. Read books like Martha Beck’s Finding Your North Star. Talk about your dreams with your friends and family. Set a goal. Set another goal. Make the life you want.

It’s often easier – if much less fulfilling – to stay fuzzy on what you want from life. Drifting is always about going with the current and it takes less effort than heading in a defined direction. Sure, if you’re drifting you’ll keep moving, but you’ll also be dependant on the direction of the current, and susceptible to the tides and eddies of life.  If you’re ready to pick up the paddles, you can go anywhere you want.

The Gail Club Message Boards are up! Click on Gail Clubs from the home page, or down the right side of this page to connect. 

I meet and hear from a lot of people who are making big changes to their lives. They’ve decided to take control of their money. They’ve decided to take control of their lives. When I talk to them about how they’re going about making changes, they seem to share some characteristics. Whether they’re trying to get to Debt Free Forever, establishing an emergency fund for the first time, or making a commitment to live on a budget, their approach is what makes them successful.

They analyze their weaknesses. If you love to shop, and you acknowledge that fact, you can also see that hanging out at the mall isn’t exactly conducive to your No Shop Plan. If you love to eat out and you always agree to meet friends in a restaurant, you’re simply reinforcing your weakness. One of the best ways to fight an old habit is to recognize the underlying pleasure you derive and then change your environment so you aren’t tempted.  

They do one thing at a time. If you get so caught up in making things better that you try to do too much, you’ll split your energy and focus, and wear yourself out. Successful changers pick something they’re going to do differently TODAY, and they do that thing. Once that new pattern is established, they pick the next thing they are going to do. This stops them from going off in all directions and achieving nothing.

They take small steps. Hand in hand with the one-thing-at-a-time philosophy is the “baby steps” strategy. If you’ve always been comfortable doing things in a certain way, it’s hard to change. Always buy whatever you want whenever you want? It can be hard to quit cold-turkey. Establishing a no-shop day is one way to start slowly. No Shop Saturday can grow into No Shop Friday and Saturday. The change doesn’t have to be drastic to be profound. Small steps get you to where you’re going without the risk of sliding back.

They demonstrate Stick-to-it-ness. Yup, if you don’t have the persistence to stay the course, it’s pretty hard to succeed. The only barrier between you and what you want to achieve is gumption. You’ve got to be a hard-headed hard-ass and demonstrate determination. Put inertia on your side, and each step you take will create the momentum for the next step.

They set milestones. If you want to maintain momentum, you’ve got to create a map for where you’re going, and you have to take pleasure from each milestone you achieve. Change is hard. Rewarding yourself with a pat on the back each time you achieve a goal is the best way to keep moving forward.

They accept their mistakes. There are a lot of people who say they won’t do something because they can’t do it perfectly. If I can’t be completely debt free by Tuesday, then I’m not even going to bother to try. This is an excuse. It’s a sign of weakness that you can’t get past your idea of perfect so you can achieve some small glimmer of change. When learning anything new, mistakes are part of the process. Accept them. Learn from them. And move forward.

They do their best. It’s hard getting from one place to another if you’re always beating yourself up because of what you haven’t done right. People who are successful at changing promise to do their best and accept that sometimes they’ll miss. But it’s the effort that counts. They don’t whine and moan about how hard the change is. They do whatever they can to make the change a new part of their lives. And they don’t resort to self-pity when things hit a wall. They say, “I’ve done my best today. Tomorrow I’ll try again, and I’ll do my best.”

How long have you been thinking about what you want to change in your life? How much daydreaming have you done about how life would be if only…? How afraid are you that you will fail?

Boys and girls, it’s time to feel the fear and do it anyway.  Take a step forward. Use your energy to reach your goals, rather than just dreaming, or worrying, or fighting, or crying, or moaning, or whining. A little less “thinking” and a little more “doing” is what will get you from where you are now, to where you want to be.

Alex was saying yesterday how jealous she is of her friends. She’s a little sour on “family” right now, but is still wistful for the days when it was all clicking along peacefully and we knew where we stood, when there was a turkey on the table and home-made cranberry jelly. Life is full of changes, and this is one more with which we have to cope. 

I’ve always taken time to express my gratitude for the things I have: healthy children, a beautiful place to live, a happy family. When some of the very core things I’ve always held as sacred — like my children’s sense of security — are threatened, it’s hard to work up the gratitude. But because I have these children who count on me, I must.

So here’s what I’m grateful for on Thanksgiving day, 2008:

1. My kids, and all the laughter and learning they bring to my life.
2. My friends, who are coming out of the woodwork to hug me. My girlfriend Brownie is going to drive for hours to hug me tomorrow night, and I am so grateful to her and all the others who just listen without trying to stir up my indignation or resentment. I’m perfectly capable of those on my own.
3. My work mates who are showing the kindness and love that will help me stay focused so I can continue to help my families. Tasha and PJ have been rocks for me, and I can’t begin to say how grateful I am for the care they are taking with me.
4. My work. It is amazing having a job where you love to go to work. And now that I’m not sleeping much, I’m happy to have lots to keep my mind active.
5. My web-community. I’m writing tons of great stuff right now because that outward focus helps me stay balanced and not become filled with misery, loathing, and a sense of failure.
6. My soon-to-be-ex for the life we’ve had together. Of 18 years, only the last 2 sucked donkeys. Not everyone gets a run like that!
7. I’m leaving my beautiful home in the bush. It has been my heaven. I must find a new home now and I’m grateful that I have the means to do so. It’ll be much smaller than we’ve been used to in our big country home, but it’ll be full of love and peace and happiness.
8. I’m grateful to my children’s schools for being so open and willing to help with the difficult transitions they must go through. 
9. I’m grateful to The Energy for giving me the strength, the fortitude and the positive view that will make this transition as smooth as it can be.

Change happens everywhere. It’s been my experience that the circle of life insists that things go down just as it insists things go up. Like the economy, my life is sliding along the downside of the circle. I guess I won’t know where the bottom is until I’ve passed it and started heading up the other side again.

It’s easy to look into people’s lives and think everything is perfect. There’s no such thing as perfect. But there’s always something to be grateful for. And now my test is to focus on that for which I can be grateful and keep moving forward.

When I was going through school, I was not a good student. My report cards said things like, “Gail could do much better with more focus,” or “Gail does not apply herself,” or “Gail is not working up to her full potential.” I was never put off by crappy marks — though my Mom had yearly conniptions – because I knew I was smart. And when a course mattered, when I got really sold on doing well, I soared.

I was an academic underachiever for a whole bunch of reasons. The biggest one, I think, was that I couldn’t see how I was going to use the information they were trying to pour into my head. There was a lot of rote learning. There was a lot of drilling. I was bored and used my creativity to come up with great excuses for why I hadn’t done my homework. Without a sense of what the end purpose was, I couldn’t “buy” the value of the slog-work. And I didn’t have the discipline to Just Do It. Nope. I was the Princess of Procrastination. I don’t know when I changed, but change I did. Maturity, maybe? Necessity, could be? 

Having had a negative experience with rote learning you’d think I would have rebelled against the whole idea of rote learning and drilling for my kids. I did not. Nope. When it came time to teach, I saw the value in getting the basics into their heads and used rote learning and drilling to build their knowledge bases and create a solid foundation for school.  I guess, by then, I was aware of how the information I’d learned had paid off. It wasn’t the technique that was wrong; it was the arbitrary way it had been used.

Alex knew her times tables to 12 by the time she was 9. She knew ‘em cold. I knew that the multiplication tables were the “alphabet” of math, and if she had them down everything else would be that much easier. And I told her so while I used a bunch of different resources to put those math facts into her head: Multiplication Rock put the tables to music; daily pen and pencil drilling, along with verbal drilling kept the drilling short and fun. She learned quickly and once she had the rhythm of a table down, I’d mix up the numbers. She’d earn rewards for getting them right. She earned cudos for her efforts. She loved it, particularly when she met kids twice her age that still couldn’t come up with the answer to 8 X 7.  Malcolm had the multiplication tables down by the time he was 6. He’d been watching what I was doing with Alex closely and just stacked it into his brain.

There were times when Alex whined when I was teaching her. But we persisted. And for years later when she watched her peers struggling with the math basics, she’d thank me for getting her so well prepared. We did the same thing with grammar, geography, history, Greek and Latin roots, and a whole bunch of other stuff. When it came time to learn the table of elements in science, she had no trouble. She knew how to pour stuff into her brain.

Not everything comes easily. Some things take effort, lots of effort. Sometimes the actions we have to take seem boring, tedious, a mega-waste-of-time. And when you’ve been doing something the wrong way for a long time (like buying whatever you want whenever you want regardless of how much money you have in the bank) and have to break the cycle, it can seem impossible. But it’s not. What it takes is a change in your mindset. It requires that you recognize you have the potential to grow. And it requires that you MOVE… do something different.

Filling in your spreadsheet to track your budget takes discipline. But the rewards are huge when you find you’ve paid off your debt, have money set aside for the future, and have a sense of peace when it comes to your financial life.

We all have the potential to be debt free. More and more people who are watching my show and following the plan are seeing their potential. And the couples with whom I work are always flabbergasted to have money in the bank when I leave.

I believe in them. And by the time I leave, they believe in themselves. And you know what? When you believe in your own potential, miraculously you can learn to be better at managing your money.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes. I could tell you dozens of things I’ve done wrong with my money. But I could also tell you that when I make a mistake, I don’t whine about it (for too long), and I don’t make the same mistake again. I learn from it. I don’t beat myself up (for too long) for being stupid. I put my logical brain in control as opposed to letting my emotional brain make me feel like a fool. And I decided to figure out what I’d done wrong, and why, so I wouldn’t do it again.

I’m living up to my potential.

How do I know?

I’m happy.

How are you doing, and how do you know?

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