Are you feeling stuck; like you’re not going anywhere + that you’re on a path or a virtual treadmill to nowhere? Do you feel like no matter what you do, you cannot move ahead? All of us have been there at one time or another. In fact, we (my husband and I) are just coming out of a place where we have felt stuck. I have been teaching others how to become the best that they can be and how to live their best life, all while feeling somewhat stuck in our own lives. That didn’t happen because this stuff doesn’t work. It happened because we allowed it to happen; however, we have recently become unstuck, and the feeling has been AMAZING!
Everything that I have talked about in this podcast, we believe wholeheartedly and practice in our everyday lives. That doesn’t mean that we are going to avoid trouble or hard times because of these things that we practice and share with you. What it means is that when those troubles or hard times come about, we are prepared to take action and that whatever is thrown at us is manageable because we have prepared ourselves emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, and so on. Because we have done the work that needed to be done, when my husband was hit with unexpectedly being let go from his job, we were fine. We were better than fine. In fact, the moment he came home and told me what happened, I felt like I could fly! I felt so free, and that exact same freedom is what I desire for you to also have, wholeheartedly.
My husband’s first instinct is to take care of his household, as it should be, so when he told me about losing his job, he followed it up with what any loving and responsible husband and father would say. He mentioned that he didn’t know what he was going to do now. To which, I responded with, “Are you kidding me?!? We’re going sailing!” I said this with great enthusiasm because I knew that we had been also working very hard over the years to set ourselves up for success financially, emotionally, physically…well, we can always use a little more help on the physical part, but…you know what I’m saying. And, all these things include the fact that we live MINIMALLY. When the people around us were out buying newer, bigger, and quote-unquote “better” (better is relative by the way), we chose to stay right where we were. We chose to continue the financial path that we had set ourselves on so long ago.
Now, was that an easy choice? HECK NO! Not by ANY means! We would continually visit their houses and come home feeling like we were “STUCK” where we were, and I use the word “stuck” loosely because I know it has totally been our choice, but we knew what our true values were, and we knew that if we wanted to stay debt-free and duty-free, so-to-speak, we had to continue the path of minimal living…continuing to live on less than we made.
When I say “live on less than you make,” I am saying live on less than what your bring-home pay is. It’s easier to live on what you make before paying Uncle Sam; before giving away any amount to your church or charity, before putting money into savings (assuming you actually put money into savings) or investing any in your 401K. The money that you need to be living on is what is left over after all of these things have already taken place.
I am not assuming that everyone listening to this podcast is living paycheck to paycheck. That would be insane. However, studies show that as of January 2019, 80% of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck. That may not be the case with you, and I pray that it’s not, but according to the studies, 8 out of every 10 people listening to this podcast are, and that’s not acceptable! This is NOT sustainable. My biggest desire for you is for you to live in the same freedom that we have found. It’s great on this side of the equation. Life WILL catch up to you, and then you will suddenly realize that it has passed you by. You will not be prepared if you are living this way. You cannot be prepared. There’s no way that you can be prepared while living paycheck-to-paycheck. Actually, that’s basically the definition of not being prepared.
While preparing this podcast, I considered the statistics of people living on more than they make. These are not the same people living paycheck-to-paycheck. These are those who pull out a credit card every time they make a purchase and have no idea how much they are spending on their purchases. You may think that that’s insane and that people don’t actually NOT keep track of their spending. Well, I’m here to tell you that there ARE people like that. They do indeed exist. These are the ones who pay for everything on their credit card and make minimum payments on it every month; all-the-while, acquiring more and more debt every month and never looking at the total that they owe. I’ve had personal encounters and conversations with people like this, and it DOES happen.
I couldn’t find an official statistic just on the percentage of people spending more than they make. It looks like the 8 out of 10 statistics possibly includes these people too, but I did find multiple websites calculating that about 55%-or-so of the 80% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck are living on MORE than they make.
At least the people living paycheck-to-paycheck understand that they shouldn’t expect anything left over at the end of the month. These other people think that they have money left over because, technically, they do…in their bank accounts, but their growing credit card debt shares another story.
So, let’s say that you’re “feeling stuck” right now in your job, and you desperately want or need a change, and you were to go into work today, and for whatever reason, your boss lets you go. Would you suddenly feel unstuck and free like we did, or would that stuck feeling suddenly transfer to extreme panic because you’re now stuck trying to figure out what you’re gonna do about your financial state?
Another thing is that, since, over the years, we have gotten rid of so much stuff in our house, we no longer feel overwhelmed and out of control managing stuff. We no longer feel stuck with our belongings. Over the course of our marriage, we had acquired things that we realized that we didn’t really want. Some of it was things that were passed down to us from previous generations, and a lot of it was just junk and in the way. It didn’t create the environment that we wanted for our home, but we felt obligated to take care of these things because of the sentimental value they carried. You could say that we felt stuck with these items.
Like I have mentioned many times before, we have chosen to stay in a smaller home, and so these items began to make us feel cramped in our own home, so we said “enough is enough,” and we took control of our own environment and began the art of minimizing our belongings in our home. We began to notice that we gained back a bunch of time for ourselves because taking care of all the stuff that used to fill our home, and stuff that we really didn’t want anyway was very time-consuming. Plus, we have been able to set ourselves up for financial success because we no longer buy more stuff to add to our space, which was taking up so much of our money. Even if we weren’t spending a lot on the items, it all adds up to be a lot. We also began to notice that we also gained back our time for doing things that we love to do because we no longer have to take care of all the stuff that was cluttering up our lives – cleaning, dusting, protecting, rearranging…I don’t know about you, but I owned things that I could never find that perfect place for, so I would rearrange my belongings frequently…very frequently, over and over again… and this was taking up space in my home as well as my mind because I was thinking about it all the time, or every time I would pass by it, I would feel anxious because it didn’t work in the space that it was in but I had no idea what to do with it or about it and getting rid of it was never a thought that came to my mind. In fact, when I did start getting rid of stuff, I felt another kind of anxiety, and I realized that my problem with stuff ran a lot deeper than it just being in my way all the time. I plan on unpacking that with you in another podcast.
So, I have gotten a little off track here. I’m sorry, I’m just really passionate ALL of this. But because I knew that we had set ourselves up for success financially, emotionally, physically and so on, I knew that we were going to be ok.
Where you are in life right now, like your age and/or your current circumstances, it can determine the level of intensity that you feel stuck. For instance, if you’re in high school – even though the chances of you being in high school and listening to this podcast are very slim, but work with me here. Maybe even take yourself back to that time and place for yourself – to a time when you felt like you weren’t going anywhere. You may have felt overwhelmed or anxious about not being able to make good grades or even good-enough grades. You may have been going through a tragedy that you didn’t have time to unpack or process because of the demands of high school. No matter what they say, being in school does not prepare you for the real world. And, if you’d like to hear me unpack that a little more, you can listen to two of our previous episodes, “Homeschooling and Cultivating Lifelong Learning,” and “School is Not THAT Important.” School is not something that you can just escape when you’re not feeling it. You have to stick it out. There’s definitely some good learning with persevering through that, but it is definitely different than having a job.
Then, you finally graduate high school and you feel free. I remember that time and feeling! You may have moved on to college feeling some freedom; then that feeling left, and you suddenly felt stuck again and you could hardly wait until you graduated so that you could get married and start a family of your own. Then, finally, you grow up and get a job, you may feel great at first, again. Maybe it’s your dream job, and you feel like you’re on top of the world when you get a job that lines up with what you love to do most.
BUT… that doesn’t mean that you’ll never feel stuck again. The job that’s right for you today may not be the job that’s right for you tomorrow. There can be many reasons for that. It could be that you have grown mentally, emotionally or even spiritually. It could mean that your family has grown. For any reason, your desires have changed. It could be that you’ve learned so much that you need to move on in order to move up. It could be that the people that you work with may not be your people. All of these reasons are ok. I don’t believe that God intends for us to be in the same place for always. It’s not like he’s given you your dream job and then suddenly walked away. He’s not done that at all and never will!
My husband was in that exact place that I just talked about. He did unexpectedly lose what was once his dream job, but God had other plans for this part of his life, and it’s been very evident that it’s time to chase a new dream.
Chances are you’re not going to be in one career for all your life. Society tells us and pressures us to figure out what we like to do as early as possible and work toward doing that one thing for the rest of our life. Schools now give tests to students as early as 3rd grade and encourage them at that age to start figuring out what they want to do for the rest of their life. I don’t know about you, but when I was in 3rd grade, all I wanted to do was to marry Kirk Cameron and work at the skating rink. I thought that the people who got to choose what music to play on the loudspeakers as people skated around the rink were the coolest, quote-unquote, adults there were. Thank God for unanswered prayers! Right?
We may feel that we have only one “calling” in our lives, and that’s fine. But, it will take us many avenues to complete that calling by the end of our life. At one part of our life, we may do one thing that points us toward that calling then find that at another point of our life, there’s something else that we can do in order to fulfill our calling, and every experience builds on the previous experience. You cannot suddenly jump to the end. You have to take the proper steps, or in this case, jobs, to get you there. The career choice that my husband is doing now could have never happened without the steps taken from his last job. It prepared him for everything that he is doing now. In fact, every job that he has ever had, even the ones he had in high school, are paying off right now. With what he is doing now, he is able to use ALL the talents that he has acquired since being a teenager and even learn some new ones. Every talent, experience, and every bit of knowledge has built upon each other to prepare him for this moment. It’s amazing how we have seen everything come together as it has. Nothing has gone in vain. I’m SO excited to see where this end up taking him.
Sometimes, in order to get a change, you just need to change your habits. The meaning of insanity is doing the same thing over and over every day. We were never meant to do that. We were meant for change…growth…and progress.
What would you do right now if you could do anything? What do you think it would take to get you there? Courage? Support from family? Financial security? And, when I say financial security, I don’t mean being a millionaire. I don’t mean making more money. I’ve heard it said that the key to financial success is “20% behavior and 80% head knowledge.” Notice that the key to financial success has nothing to do with how much you make? It all boils down to behavior and head knowledge. I once heard Dave Ramsey say, “If you are a generous person, having more money will make you more generous. If you are a jerk, having more money will make you a bigger jerk,” and I have personally witnessed this to be very true.
When my husband and I first got married, he was a drummer in a Christian Music Band, and for the first 4-½ years of our marriage, we made $14,500 a year. Yes… You heard me correctly. We make only $14,500 a year, and nobody knew it! We lived completely debt-free. We rented a one bedroom condo in a small more inexpensive town, and we had minimal expenses. We had a lot of stuff crammed into that condo, but we didn’t continue to buy stuff. Most all of it was stuff that we had brought into our marriage that we thought we couldn’t live without. We had a couch and kitchen table that we had bought at a garage sale. My husband brought in all the electronics, like computers, TV, and equipment that goes along with that. I had the bedroom suite that I had saved up and paid cash for when I was 16, and we had two rocking chairs on our front porch that someone gave us for a wedding gift. We both had paid for cars, and that was all we needed. We were happy as can be.
When we became pregnant with our first child, my husband decided to come off the road and find a job that could support a family. Obviously, making $14,500 a year was working for us, but we didn’t want to have a child while living on that little of an income. Plus, he was traveling a lot, and he wanted to be home with his new baby, so he found a full-time job, which was a sudden increase in pay…a huge increase in pay, but we were already used to living on little, so it should have not been a big change for us, right? Wrong! We started making more money, so what else is there to do than to start acting like it? So, we bought a house (because everyone knows that you cannot live in a one bedroom condo with a baby. ha-ha) However, our house-buying story is also a really cool story. I’ve shared that before, and I’m sure that I’ll share it again. But, in addition to the house, we financed a minivan because, obviously, a family of 3 needs a 7 passenger vehicle, and we got a dog. So, in literally one year’s time, my husband came off the road, got a new job, bought a house, had a baby, financed a minivan, got a dog, and OH! We got our first credit card as a married couple! This was 5 years into our marriage. We were 29 and 30, and we finally felt grown up. I mean, we had a credit card! So, what did we do with that credit card? We used it! Duh? What good is a credit card if you don’t use it? Then, finally, about 4 years later, we woke up from all the madness and said that enough-is-enough! We paid off everything…our minivan and another car that we had purchased along the way and our credit card. It took us about a year, but we were finally debt-free again, and it felt amazing, and we’ve been debt-free ever since!
Just getting out into the community can allow you to feel better about where you are. You can help people and they can help you. Sometimes, this can lead to you exploring a more meaningful career or career path. Some say that the path to happiness is helping others. Maybe you feel stuck because you are too focused on yourself, and you need to be more “others” focused. Just because you choose a career that helps other people doesn’t always mean that you have to sacrifice wages. There are careers out there that can provide good incomes to those who help others, but, going back to the head knowledge and behavior…remember that making more money will not solve your problems. Sometimes, making more money can add to your problems.
There’s an old Chinese saying that says, “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” Sometimes getting past the feeling of being stuck can be achieved just by helping someone else get past the feeling of being stuck. There are so many opportunities in the community that you live in that will allow you to help others. What are your strengths? What are you good at that can help someone else? It doesn’t have to have anything to do with your current job or maybe it does. Maybe you’re already good with your finances in your personal life, and you have a passion for helping others with theirs. Instead of searching for a job that allows you to do that, start by volunteering to help people figure out how to navigate their finances or help them figure out how to get on a budget. Take an hour out of your week to volunteer to help one person get on a path to success. You never know where this can lead you down the road. Are you good with animals? Go to your local animal shelter and volunteer some time helping them out. The gift of time can be more valuable than the gift of money.
If there’s something that you’re passionate about, and there’s an opportunity for you to get out in the community to volunteer to do that, make some time during your week or even your month to go do it. I’ve known people who have volunteered with their dream organization or even their dream corporation and have actually landed jobs with them because when an opening came up in that place; because they were already there and known by the organization, they were the first one to be offered the job. It also gives you the chance to see if it really is your dream. You may get in there and find out that this organization or corporation is not what you thought it was in the beginning or maybe find out that it doesn’t line up with your values after all, so at that point, all you need to do is stop volunteering. It’s not like you shifted your entire life around getting a job that you later find out is not what you thought it was and now you have to quit and find something else to do. You would just quit the volunteer work and move on to something else.
There’s a really cool organization called VolunteerMatch that matches your desires and qualifications with the perfect volunteer organization. I also found other websites focused on helping others find ways to give back to their community. I will put a link to those websites in my show notes for this episode. Just go to teaoflifepodcast.com/feelingstuck.
So, the bottom line of today’s episode is If you’re feeling stuck in your job or even in your life, reevaluate what really matters most to you. Become financially secure by getting out of debt and creating an atmosphere to where there would be no stress if you were to suddenly lose your job. Sometimes, just changing our habits can make a world of difference. Also, if you could do anything, what would it be? Think about that, and begin taking small steps toward that in order to create the life that YOU love to live. What’s the first thing that popped into your brain when I asked that question? Also, get out into the community and love on those around you. You may be surprised by the results of doing just that. You never know where it can lead.
If you need help with your monthly budgeting and/or getting out of debt or if you just have a question that you’d like to ask regarding this or any previous episode, email me at tiffany@teaoflifepodcast.com. I will try my best to answer any question that you may have or point you in the right direction. You can also start by visiting daveramsey.com.
Additional links:
12 Ways to Volunteer Your Time and Give Back to the Community
20 Easy Ways to Volunteer in Your Community Right Now
Volunteer Match: Find out what organization is a perfect match for you.
