Today’s task:
Take stock of how far you’ve come and celebrate!
At long last! You made it to the 60th day of the 60-Day Financial Fitness Challenge!
You should be incredibly proud of yourself and all that you have accomplished in the last two months, and all that you will accomplish in the coming days, months, and years.
Something I’d love to share with you today is a note that I had in my phone from 2019 that I came across as I was looking for something else. It’s pretty raw and definitely shows me how far I’ve come in the last 4 years. I share this because I think it’s important to demonstrate even within the same journal post my thoughts about taking stock/accountability for myself and my future. I’ve put in brackets areas where I listed names to protect the privacy of those individuals. But other than that, this is unedited:
“The story that I’m telling myself right now:
That I am incapable of finding work that’s not seasonal and still fulfills all of my needs to be farming, financially sustainable, connected to my Latino roots, and socially wealthy.
That [previous relationship] and I are so different it won’t work out in the long-run
That being connected to the land means accepting the financial risk and mental instability that comes with weather fluctuations.
What have I left out of the story?
What am I not willing to see?
—That I put myself in these situations
—That I have a cycle of immersing myself in things until I get to the breaking point and then I back off
From another person’s perspective, what might my life look like?
—She just wants to do meaningful work
—She doesn’t want to graduate from college with debt
—She’s just trying to be financially independent and make her parents proud
—As much as she works to ‘build community’, she’s not being open to accepting the community’s gifts that might bring her a lot more balance, simplicity, and clarity in her life.
—She doesn’t know how to not fill her time
—She’s afraid of what she would find out about herself if she stopped moving.
—She’s using everything that she does to avoid the clarity that would come if she slowed down.
What would it look like, if in my story, I was willing to accept all the help and support from those around me? Would I ask for help? Would I manifest the assistance? How would I know when it was there? Would it be something I saw in retrospect?
What if I saw my life for all the abundance it holds and let that feeling wash over my body/thoughts throughout the day?
How might the way I engage with others around me shift?
What would a typical interaction look like?
I AM THE HERO OF MY OWN STORY.
What’s the incredible story I’ll get to tell a year from now?
That I worked with [previous supervisor] to design for myself a full-time gig that pays me a consistent paycheck with benefits, allows me to capitalize on all of my skills, supports me as a whole person, and gives me the freedom to pursue what I love in meaningful, strategic ways for those around me, my family, and my community.
That once I let the universe take care of me, everything fell into place. It was effortless. I knew where to go for the information, how to spread the word, and communicate the beauty of the work that we do.
I kissed conflict on the forehead and gave it a big hug, vowing that it was just a barrier in the face of love.
The revisions I will make:
That I deserve to be paid well for my time and expertise.”
Reflecting on what I wrote, some of the things that still cut deep for me are “what I would find out about myself if I slowed down” and “filling my time”. Clearly these are areas in which I still have a lot of growing and healing to do.
But what I find utterly fascinating is how much of what I wrote down is already true!
This one in particular is kind of shockingly wonderful: “full-time gig that pays me a consistent paycheck with benefits, allows me to capitalize on all of my skills, supports me as a whole person, and gives me the freedom to pursue what I love in meaningful, strategic ways for those around me, my family, and my community.” While at the time that I wrote this, I thought that full-time meant a 40-hour work week, full-time for me now means closer to 20-25 hours a week. I feel very supported as a whole person in my work today, I definitely have the freedom to pursue what I love and I do so in meaningful, strategic ways for those who are a part of my community.
Holy. Shit. Crazy, right?!
Kissing conflict on the forehead is a line from a lecture of an agroecologist, Sam Grant, who is doing amazing work both in MN and globally. What I take away from that phrase is this idea of killing something with kindness. Finding your heart space from which to act. Leaning into the tenderness that we all possess deep within ourselves.
Lastly, this was clearly a note unfinished, because the end starts with “Revisions I will make”, and there’s only one item.
How appropriate that it should be related to my finances.
If only more of us could stand with conviction behind this statement: “I deserve to be paid well for my time and expertise.”
And whatdaya know? I feel like I find myself in a position now where my time and expertise is indeed valued, although not always by the people I wish.
Perhaps it would be most appropriate to end this post by highlighting one particular phrase from this passage, which for some reason I felt needed to be written in all caps:
I AM THE HERO OF MY OWN STORY.
I’m going to turn this around, because if you’ve been following this challenge for the last sixty days, you should be able to say this to yourself with a smile on your face while looking in the mirror:
YOU ARE THE HERO OF YOUR OWN STORY.
You are the hero of this story. And you will forever be in control of how you react to the circumstances that throw twists and turns and wrenches into that story. Never forget it. And keep on pushing forward.
I want to congratulate you from the bottom of my heart for all the work and time that you’ve put into this process. Not only for reading each day, but for taking additional time to really dig into your experiences to understand a bit more about personal finance.
I am hopeful that as you find yourself navigating government grant applications, Farm Service Agency Loans, and looking at properties, you remember the skills that you’ve cultivated during this time and don’t give up on yourself. Trust that the flow of resources is working in your favor and will take you down the correct path. I can’t wait to hear about your success!
