Lessons in Patience & Frugality

Hi all – it’s Tuesday. How was your Monday? Mine was okay – not a painful as expected. However, our evening was spent in the 95-degree laundry mat – so that was not fun. But I suppose our trip to the laundry mat was a perfect example of both patience and frugality–two things I’ve decided to work on.

First, the patience part. In short – I have very little patience. I have heard this from my husband, my co-workers, my family and my friends. It’s never really been one of my strong suits, but with this new leadership program I’m involved in at work, it’s all about improving upon your weaknesses.

So patience is a focus and I happened to buy a book on it last week and have been working my way through it slowly. I wanted to share just a few of the tips that stood out to me and I thought others might like:

• Research today suggests that emotional immunity to negative states of mind may well be linked to physical immunity, even resistance to disease. (I read this to mean: those who don’t sweat the little things, or let others’ negatively get them down are happier and healthier.)
• When someone is making a mistake or acting unkindly, putting up a tender opposition is often a demonstration of just how much we care. (Which to me means – someone might be wrong, but there’s no need to be mean, impatient or unkind when telling them so. Take time to think about how you would want someone to tell you you’ve made a mistake.)
• We try to squeeze so much into our day that we end up with little time for anything — least of all, relationships. Being a good mother or father, brother or sister, friend or colleague, requires a lot of patience, and patience takes time.

Those are just a few of the key highlights of the book I’m reading called “Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength” by Eknath Easwaran. I’m going to share more tips down the road as I continue to read through it…patiently. 🙂

My second focus will be on frugality. I definitely would not consider myself frivolous when it comes to money. My parents instilled in me a strong sense of monetary responsibility. But in these tough times, I could do more -who couldn’t?

I read this article today in the New York Times: “But Will It Make You Happy?” It was really sort of inspiring to read about the woman who stripped away all the excess, unnecessary things in her life and got back to basics. And the basics made her happier than the material stuff in her life.

I’m not saying I’m going to do exactly that. But I do have a few goals in mind:

• Track my expenses in detail for 3 months (I currently keep track of the money going into my savings, but I need to track what I’m spending my money on)
• Limit buying lunch to 1 day a week, and limit buying coffee to 1 day a week (this means bringing my lunch four days a week and that I can drink coffee at home before work if necessary)
• Create a budget for our Ireland trip (I think this would be very helpful for us to have. I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to think normal rules don’t apply when you’re on vacation. A budget would help us stay on track)
• Once I track my expenditures and determine my monthly expenses, I will try cut them significantly. (Hard to say exactly how at this point because my solution will be based on what I spend the most on)

So there are my frugality goals. I’m also going to try to focus less on the “things” in my life and more on the experiences, since according to that article, experiences will keep you happy longer.  

Do you know what your weak spots or areas for improvement are? Do you have any awesome patience or frugality tips to share?

Have a great day all!