Category Archives for Featured
It’s Time to Believe That You Can Change
The prevailing cultural belief about change is that it comes when people are “ready” or it comes only to those who are “worthy” or “special.”
That’s not true, and it’s time to let it go.
You can be better tomorrow, even though you’re weak, imperfect, and only partially (if at all) “ready.” The only thing special about people who change is that they are willing to change.
You can be special like that, too.
How To Overcome Your Fear By Thinking Bigger In 2018
There are a lot of haters on the internet when it comes to New Year Resolutions. I, on the other hand, am on the record declaring my love for the timeless tradition of the New Year Resolution, and urging you to ignore the cynics.
The statistics about “only 8% of resolutions coming true” encompass EVERYONE. But don’t forget, there are those who never meant their resolutions- they just wanted to have something to say when asked. Obviously, these people will NOT keep their resolutions. Then there are those who make miracle wishes that they have no faith in, and that’s obviously not going to work.
Here’s how to get some rest, even when things are crazy
This was originally published on Quartz under the title “Contemporary society is tired and stressed because we’ve abandoned two ancient traditions“
It’s exhausting trying to make it in the middle class. Like a lot of people, I work outside my full-time job in the gig economy. This means that in addition to being a college professor, I do small, one-off jobs like writing articles and providing professional development to teachers.
The appeal of the gig economy is its flexibility: you can work anytime, anywhere. But for me, this often means that I fall into the trap of working all the time, everywhere. And that makes me really, really tired.
Psychology has identified three mindsets shared by people who actually follow through on their goals
This post was originally published on Quartz, on August 5, 2016.
I’ve never been an athletic or active person. My entire history of sports involved one season of track in high school and a brief flirtation with what I thought was a yoga studio but turned out to be more of a cult. But then, in my mid-30s, I had two children and gained 30 pounds. I was suffering from chronic back pain, and I knew something needed to change.
There was just one problem: When it came down to it, I didn’t really want to exercise. When my husband suggested I take up running, I said I’d do it if—and only if—a bear was chasing me. And yet, last fall, I did both a half marathon and a triathlon for the first time. How did I evolve from a self-proclaimed couch potato to endurance athletics enthusiast? I learned how to change my attitude.
Psychology Suggests the Best Way to Change Your Life is Through a Series of Small Experiments
Initially published on Quartz, September 21.
During my 20s, I didn’t give much thought to money. I was in grad school for a long time—seven years total between my masters and PhD—and I assumed my finances would straighten out once I graduated and got a job in the real world.
Shortly after I settled into my new job, my student loans came due, and I realized that I was really no less broke then I’d been in grad school. It was a wake-up call. My family needed a budget, and we needed one now.
How to have productive and calm conversations across the political divide
Originally published on Quartz on 10/24/2016 with the title: Yes, it is possible for Trump and Clinton supporters to have productive (and calm) conversations. Though the focus is on the election, the need to understand how our brain sabotages our discourse has only heightened since the inauguration of our 45th president.
The other day, a man I love and respect posted a note on his Facebook page: “Be a real American. Vote for Trump.” An instant social-media war broke out. His sisters and other women in his life rose up in retaliation, demanding that he explain how he could support someone who so clearly and maliciously objectifies women. Somewhere deep in the thread, a liberal friend-of-a-friend commented, “You can’t worry about people who are so clearly broken. Trump supporters like this man just don’t care about women.”
Becoming activist
I’ve been politically aware for years and years. And if you had asked me back in 2012 whether I was politically active, I probably would have said yes. I posted on Facebook and I talked to my friends about politics, so that made me politically active, right?
In 2016, like so many others, I learned that real political activism is something much more involved. When Donald Trump defeated all the odds and became the 45th president of the United States, I was shocked. Dismayed. And very, very worried. Though I am not wholly again populist policies, and I agree that the plight of the Midwest factory worker has been ignored.. these didn’t seem like justification for Donald Trump.
Why You Should Talk to Your Friends About Money, Even if You Think They Will Judge You
One of the most frustrating things about trying to change your money habits is how hard it is! It’s not only hard, it’s mysterious.
How many times have you experienced this scenario:
Sunday night: “I am going to pack my lunch every single day this week!”
Monday at lunch: “I forgot to pack my lunch. How about Chipotle?”
Tuesday morning, en route to work: “Oh, I didn’t pack a lunch! Oh well, I’ll just grab a quick salad.”
Friday night: “I didn’t pack a lunch at all this week. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do what I say I will do?!”
There are a lot of ways to interpret this kind of (very common) failure. Some will point out that you didn’t really have a process or a plan. Others may argue that you need systems and structures to support you in your lunch making. I wholeheartedly agree with both of them, but when I hear a story like that, an alarm bell goes off in my mind:
This Person Has a Money Mindset Problem
How to take the stress out of meal planning and save money at the same time
About two years ago, my husband and I had a real argument at least once a week that started with one of these three questions:
- What do you want for dinner?
- Did you start dinner?
- Why don’t we have anything to eat?
At the time we had a 4-year-old and 2-year-old, we both had full time jobs, and we each felt like we were barely keeping our head above water. No one ever felt like making decisions about food, and yet everyone needed something to eat ALL THE TIME. Snack, breakfast, dinner- every time we turned, around it was time to find someone something to eat.
Before we had kids things were easier, for sure. My husband is happy to eat cereal for dinner every night and I can exist on peanut butter sandwiches and salsa. And if we wanted “real” food, well, we just went out.
Once we had kids, though, things changed.
- We had to be “role models” and eat vegetables at dinner.
- Eating at restaurants with little kids is about as much fun as taking a monkey to the Met.
- Kids are EXPENSIVE. Daycare for 2 kids cost us more money than our rent! We simply couldn’t afford to get restaurant food all the time.
When our story begins we had realized that we needed to start cooking and eating “real” meals at home, but all that really meant was that we argued all the time about what to eat and who would cook it. It wasn’t great.
As you may know, one of the pillars of the Powerful Peony change method is to take small actions as soon, and as often, as possible. The story that follows is an example of how a series of tiny tests led to a complete reversal of fortunes.
The little experiments that I’m about to describe completely solved our problem. We never argue about meals, we always have the food we need, and we’ve saved a lot of money.
Step 1: Identify the worst corner of your problem
For us, the worst corner of the problem, by far, was dinner. We were really tired by the end of the day and had no bandwidth left to make decisions. We needed to remove any and all mystery about what we were having and who was making it.
Step 2: Make a simple plan
We decided that on Saturday we would sit down with cook books and make a plan for every night for the upcoming week:
- What are we having?
- Who is cooking it?
- What do we need from the store?
We wrote the dinner plan, assigned a chef, and wrote the cookbook page number into our calendar.
We’ve used this one for years!
This simple solution was REVOLUTIONARY for our family. We stopped arguing about what to have and the chef was mentally prepared to cook dinner. There were some unexpected benefits, as well- it was decided that whoever wasn’t cooking would play with the kids somewhere that was NOT the kitchen. This means that the chef gets some peace and quiet and the non-chef gets to engage with the kids. Win-win.
There were some problems, too, don’t get me wrong. It took us a few weeks to find a way to regularly take out the frozen meat that we would need, and there were a few times where we had to eat something that no one was in the mood for… but overall, this first experiment was a big victory.
Step 3: What else can you solve with the same solution?
The dinner plan was working out so well that we decided to make a similar list for the kids lunches and snacks. They even got their own little rows on the calendar.
I can’t even properly express how much better my mornings have been since we made this plan! Not only are there no decisions to make (which are no easier at 6am, then 6pm, I can tell you) but pre-grocery shopping planning means that we actually have the fruit cups and pirate’s booty we need!
Step 4: What else sucks about this? Let’s fix it.
By this time, we were feeling pretty boss. We knew what we were having for lunch and dinner and we generally had what needed on hand. Things were tons better. But then- one day, this happened:
Me, whining to my husband: “I really don’t want to go to the grocery store. It’s so stressful!”
To my surprise, he whole-heartedly agreed! “I know! The kids are running all over, we’re constantly going backwards because we forgot something back in produce, and because we’re so distracted we end up with things we don’t need and forget things we do need.”
So, we sat down and made a plan. He made a grocery store list in excel that was organized in the same order as the layout of our grocery store. He pre-populated it with items we often buy, and made special entries for things we get at Trader Joes, rather than our usual grocery store. Then he attached it to the actual meal planning boxes, so we can plan on one page, then cut off the grocery store list* and take it with us. A brilliant innovation!
*this was a tweak. We just took the whole thing with us for about 2 weeks… and lost the meal plan every time. Then we cut it off, and all was well!
A portion of the grocery store planner. Want the whole thing? Click the image.
That list has made the whole grocery shopping endeavor so much less complicated.
- Because the grocery store list is organized in the same order of the grocery store itself we don’t have to double back.
- Having a very complete list saves us money because if it’s not on the list we’re not allowed to get it. And the kids know this, so they don’t even ask! In fact, my daughter chastised me the other day “Mommy, that’s not on the LIST!”
- Because we’ve checked on everything before we leave the house, we don’t end up with 16 apples (because we forgot that we got 8 of them last week and then didn’t eat them) and this keeps us from throwing away science experiment produce that has gone bad.
Want to see the whole planner? Click here.
Step 5: Tiny tweaks
Once you find something that works for you, don’t be afraid to tweak it! You can add your own prompts anywhere you want to be reminded of your food-related goals, whether nutritional or budgetary. Then try it out- if it doesn’t work, you just put it back to how it was!
Here are some tweaks that we’ve introduced:
- I was trying to eat more vegetables, so you’ll see a “veggies:” prompt in my lunch box.
- We’ve been trying so, so hard to save money. One thing that worked really well was to plan dinners in a particular order. You’ll see on the meal planner some directions in the dinner box that reminds me to start thinking about things we have that are frozen (pasta sauce, chicken broth for noodle soup, etc) and then choose the two cheap dinners– tacos, hot dogs, slow cooker chilli, Make Your Own Pizza (MYOP), etc– and THEN we are allowed to think about more exciting things.
Saving money by being cheap!
This has saved us a TON of money, taking our grocery budget down by 20%.
A gift for you: Free Meal Planner!
I share this story in my workshops all the time and people keep asking me for the grocery store planner. Then, last week, one of my readers asked me if I had any suggestions for meal planning, saying: “My meal planning is a disaster and it’s affecting my morale.” And, obviously, I felt her pain deep in my heart.
So here it is, yours for the taking!
But please, please, take the time to make it your own! Re-order the grocery list so it matches your own store; add your own commonly bought items (Be honest- if you buy Oreos and Pop Tarts every week, stick them on there! I did!), and add your own prompts to meet your budgetary or nutritional goals. And then, come back and tell me how it went!!
