How to fill the void and focus on a new direction.
Q. How does a person accustomed to a certain level of spending change their spending habits when misfortune strikes, and their income is significantly reduced?
Let's say, for example, a widow must learn to live on a much lower income, after her husband's death, or a mother with small children must learn to live on less money after a divorce? Or, anyone must learn how to live on a smaller salary, after being laid off and being forced to seek work in a less-well-paid job, or becomes injured or ill, and unable to work fulltime? Or, if they choose to go back to college, and learn new jobskills, while still working parttime?
Facing reality and changing your budget early in this process is hard, but wise.
Whenever possible, change your self-talk from "I HAVE TO" to "I CHOOSE TO".
If using your credit card to get thru hard times, is tempting, and too easy, read this.
If you decide that your credit card debt is already more than you can ever repay, and it just seems like quicksand, the bankruptcy laws are there to help an honest debtor get a fresh start. More on bankruptcy.
It is not an easy choice, and it will
force you
to do what you should have been doing all along:
Save First Then Spend
Not
Spend First Then Slave
Develop zones of privacy, your personal quiet time.
Withdraw into a higher level of yourself, and listen to your intuitive thoughts.
Avoid negative people who distract you from your choice of level-of-consciousness.
Avoid negative people who distract you from your choice of activity to focus on.
Realize that we all live in a dream of our own and call it reality, and that you can rewrite the script of that reality.
Re-write your personal vision, re-organizing your long-term and short-term goals. Work on it until you rise above it, and reach a new synergy about your mission on Earth, and what you want to get done. Imagine that you have a terminal illness, and only one year to live. What is on your ToDo list?
Try doing this in LeftBrained verbal mode, using words, and then in flowchart mode, which uses the RightBrain. I can see the "big picture" better in RightBrain flowchart mode.
Work on your memoirs for your own realizations, whether you could ever "publish" it thru a print book publisher or not. Publish it on the Internet. At least you expressed yourself. Hopefully some others will benefit from your wisdom.
If able, develop some software that helps others by giving them a structure to follow. All software is a metaphor, an interactive storybook focused on some slice of reality.
Develop a self-employment profession for in-between regular assignments, packaging yourself as a Consultant, Free-Lancer, or Independent Contractor, in what you know best.
Practice a hobby or create art, making products from that hobby to sell. Your products are recordings of your thoughts, so think positive.
Learn desktop publishing for self-promotion.
Learn Internet Web Documenting for self-expression and self-promotion.
Take a college course(s). Learning new things not only makes you more marketable when looking for paid work, but it grows new interconnections between the neurons in your brain. The more you learn, the easier it will be to learn.
It gives you a "structure" that can help you to make a new start, a new center of consciousness. Project-oriented courses are better than traditional test-oriented courses.
Also see Sound
Therapy
If classes are full, or free time is a problem, consider distance
learning classes, on the Internet.
The important thing is gaining new knowledge, not necessarily the
grades or credits or degrees. You can be just as effective being "self-taught",
under the "self-directed", "project-oriented" method.
If distractability is a problem, try the amino acid Lysine, which
helps with concentration.
Why
Self Directed?
Work at learning new jobskills that create real value for others, and are better paying than your old job. These skills should be "the right thing to do", not just "doing things right".
Learn marketing and selling skills, to sell yourself and your skills better.
Expect the college placement office or your professor to help you locate work in your new profession. If they don't help, keep on asking. With the new changes in welfare laws, the states will be under more pressure to help people find work. It is more useful to ask the colleges to serve as the new "vortex of the economy", combining teaching with job-finding assistance, because the college is in a position to "teach them how to fish", and not just keep on "handing out the fish". Sell your local college on this idea.
Learn a musical instrument.
This can be relaxing and can help to integrate your thinking. Use
your own personal vocal instrument in a singing group. The sounds affect
your pineal and pituitary glands, and that can help you rise to your full
potential.
Maintain a vegetable garden.
Invest in perennials that bear fruit or nuts. Invest in a freezer
to store the harvest until you have time to can it. If not already a vegetarian,
become one. Then you can grow your own vegetables and fruits, and become
a virtually free person, who is not a slave to the grocery store, and using
dollars to put food on the table.
If you have pruning wood from your trees, saw it up for firewood, in time to dry, instead of hauling it to the dump. Invest in a chainsaw and a tree trimmer. If able, learn to collect your own firewood from the forest.
Sell plants out of the backyard, thru inexpensive ads, or free bulletin board ads.
Use natural herbs instead of expensive pharmaceutical drugs. Buy your most frequently used herbs by the pound, and fill your own capsules.
Learn to go hunting and fishing, in season, for meat for the freezer.
Exercise, take long walks, bicycle, work on taking better care of yourself.
Seek parttime work, even if you have too much else to do, to take on fulltime employment at a much lower pay rate.
Find volunteer work to do. It is good energy for your heart chakra. Don't let your whole existence be defined by money.
Maintain your friendships.
Read Dr. Dean Ornish's Program For Reversing Heart Disease, On Opening Your Heart.
Read The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying, on heart meditations.
Visit the library. Get interested in something, and do research.
Learn public speaking.
Consider taking in a renter or roommate, to share expenses.
Work on a garage sale list. Sell your excess stuff, a few things at a time, thru cheap ads.
Turn off Cable TV. Cancel your newspaper subscription. When magazine subscriptions expire, don't renew them. Cancel all book clubs.
File all new mail order catalogs without reading them.
Put a thick insulation blanket on your hot water heater (R-12). Can't find one? Ask the power company, or use an R-11 batting to make one with duct tape.
Decrease your insurance coverage where possible. Get smaller policies, raise deductibles, cancel unnecessary policies.
Keep your old car longer. After you replace everything, it will go another 100,000 miles.
If you still have car payments, sell that car, and buy one with no payments.
Ride a bicycle.
My solution: try some Slippery Elm bark powder, two large capsules with a glass of water every four hours, if necessary. If this makes you feel better, you know that your digestion needs some help.
Gardening is good exercise, w hich increases oxygenation, and that helps anxiety. It also is a real constructive thing that you can do to put food on the table. You will need a freezer to store the crop until you can can it.