Day 92 on my journey: Access to month 4..!

I can’t believe I’ve been on this journey for 3 months now. I now have access to month 4 in Joan Sotkin’s BYMM program. This month is all about connecting to others through what Joan calls the field of conciousness.

This month is really important for me, because of my habit of wanting to be alone and feeling alone. I already listened to both the audios and they were just great. I’m definitely going to listen to them again this month.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I am less apprehensive about contacting others. All this BSFF I’ve been doing is starting to pay off.

I found some new financial software, this time online, to be keeping track of my money. I feel quite excited about it and really hope that this time I can keep at it. The advantage with the software I found is that I can keep track of my money in Kuwaiti Dinars. In the other software I had I had to keep switching from euros to dinars, which was very annoying.
I also found another financial site where there’s a whole community of people interacting with each other. Giving each other financial advice and confessing things they’ve done with their money and they aren’t to proud about. The only problem with that site was that I couldn’t add my transactions manually. At least I didn’t see an option to do it. I asked the question so now I’m waiting for their reply.

2009 is going to be a good year for me. I can feel it. I really feel I’ve changed. I can’t exactly say where and how, but I just feel different.

I am so grateful to Joan for this program she set up. It’s just great.

I need to do my best to call in one day. On the December 30th call she said hi to me and told everyone I was sleeping. Which was true.:-)

My goals for 2009:
-Taking better care of myself.
-Finding a way to start repaying or completely paying off my debts.

I wish you all the best for the new year and hope that you’ll achieve all your goals.

Day 79 on my journey: Feeling alone…!

I thought about this feeling alone issue and where it comes from, because I don’t think the only way I’m expressing it, is through my finances.

When I was four my sister was born. I didn’t like her. It took me years to really see her as my sister. I always thought she was fake. That whenever she laughed or cried, she didn’t really mean it.

I know it sounds strange, but that’s how I felt. I even told her so.

I always felt that she had my younger brother as her companion and I didn’t have anyone. Even a friend I had in school wasn’t always available to play with me and she had a lot of brothers and I felt like they didn’t like having me around.

So from a young age I’ve learned to be by myself. I remember being in my room and studying or reading books. I loved doing that and still do.

On the audio Joan said that people may say that they like being by themselves and that that was not a problem. We need some alone time, but it shouldn’t be a way to avoid being around other people. It may be that you’ve learned that others might hurt you. I don’t think that’s the reason I like being alone.

When we were young, our parents never really took us out. They didn’t want other people to be annoyed by us. You know what I mean? They didn’t want to impose us on other people. I think that’s where my aloneness comes from. The thought that I might annoy someone else and I guess the person won’t like me and abandon me. So end of the day I am afraid of being left alone.

Joan is so right!

At the moment I don’t feel like I have anyone to really talk to about the things that interest me. I do know some people on the Internet, but no one in “real” life. So I’m feeling alone! No wonder I feel I don’t have enough money most of the time…:-(

Being alone has become a habit for me from an early age. I have some BSFF statements I am going to try using to overcome this habit.

Day 68 on my journey: Disappointment won’t give!

Like I said on day 67 my MP3 player stopped working. I spoke to a co-worker who bought the same player and her’s was broken as well. So on top of feeling disappointed I felt guilty, because I introduced her to this gadget. Feeling guilty or to blame is another of my habits, I realized.

So I took the player back to the shop, expecting to either get the option to exchange it for a new one or get my money back. Well it didn’t quite go like that. They offered to repair it, which is going to take two weeks. That is if they are able to fix it. If not I’ll get a refund. At least that’s what I understood. The lady that helped me was busy on the phone while attending to me.

They don’t always know the meaning of customer service here in Kuwait. I’m used to it now. In the beginning I could get really upset about the way they treated their customers. Especially in the ministries or customs.

Another disappointment is that Larry has not yet send me the new BSFF protocol. I send him an e-mail as he requested, but have not heard from him. I can imagine he’s very busy. I’m more than willing to wait…

I’ve made a list of the things I would like to treat using BSFF and the 7-step process Joan speaks about in her program. Disappointment is definitely one of them…

Day 67 on my journey: Disappointment kicks in again!

I listened to the teleclass of December 9 on this day and they were talking about shame. Some of the participants bring a lot of shame to their money. They spend a certain amount they feel is way too much and then feel ashamed. Joan explained that it’s not what they did with the money that is making them feel ashamed, but that they have a need to feel shame so they create things to feel that feeling.

As I have said before I have an issue with disappointment. On this day I went back to an email that Joan send us with some BSFF statements to help you overcome disappointment. I did the treatment, but I have to add more statements or do the fail safe procedure, because something happened, actually two things, that disappointed me.

I bought an mp3 player about a week ago and I was very happy with it, but it stopped working. I feel very disappointed about this, because as usual (I would say) I thought I bought something nice and cheap that would last me for some time and it has only been a week. I’m not really sure what to do, but I think I’ll contact the shop and see what they say.

The other thing is that I finally sat down and redesigned all of my pages for my website. All but the thank you pages. I really wanted to start uploading those new pages, I was on a roll and then for some reason I can’t get those thank you pages to work. You see I have an free 5 day e-course on my site on How to Love Your Body. Quite some people like it and I want to be able to say “Thank You for signing up” when they subscribe, so I need a thank you page. I also need a few more for other forms I have on my site.

Anyway I asked in the forums for some help. I hope to get some soon so I can finally finish my redesign.

What this teaches me is that I still have some work to do on this disappointment habit. I really need to take some action, because I do not want this to keep haunting me for the rest of my life.

Joan talked about the 7 step process last month. I haven’t tried it yet, but I just need to now…

I’ve had enough of being disappointed.

Day 41 on my journey: Food and disappointment!

I listened to Joan’s blogtalkradio show with Dr. Harold Steinberg. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/JoanSotkin. It was very informative.

I love to eat and I know how important it is to eat healthy. Although I also believe that you shouldn’t deprive yourself of a little joy. I love sweet stuff, but I don’t eat a lot of it and definitely not every day.

Every thing in moderation is my moto.

I particularly loved the coaching Joan did after the interview. This lady was so afraid. And the way Joan showed her that there was another way of looking at her situation was just wonderful.

I think the Universe is trying to tell me something again. Every where I look I hear people  talking about expressing emotions. One of the emotions I’ve noticed that I’m expressing through my money is disappointment.

I was able to remember being disappointed a lot when I was young and in what circumstances, so I think I can do the 7 step process to get rid of this habit.

I said before that I didn’t really know where to start. I guess I have my starting point. I just need to find a quiet time to do it…

Day 19 on my journey: I am disappointed…!

A few weeks ago Joan sent us a newsletter about the habit of disappointment. The moment I read the criteria I knew I had this habit. Every time something nice happens something happens to disappoint me.

Well, it happened again. About two weeks now I have been working extra hours. I didn’t even ask, the extra hours were offered to me and I was very excited and delighted to find that I would be making extra money. So why am I disappointed now…? Let me explain…

This is how my job works. I teach or rather tutor English as a second language to mostly Arabic students who have trouble with English. Every week I get scheduled a certain amount of hours based on my availability. Normally I work every working day and sometimes including Saturdays, for two hours. The only day I normally don’t tutor is on Thursdays, because I do about two hours of assessing students for the same employer, which pays a little less per hour, but I already get this money cash.

So far this extra money has not been enough (of course) because that is the level of my mindset when it comes to money.

Now I’ve noticed that last week and next week they gave me less hours to tutor. The hours went down from 12 to 10 to 8 and next week only 7.

Normally these are the thoughts that would go through my head:
-These people are so stingy, they don’t want me to really make any extra money.
-Maybe I should just let them know that I prefer tutoring to doing this extra work, because now end of the day I’ll have the same amount of money every month or maybe just a little more.

To be honest those thoughts came into my mind, but the moment they did I thought, no, YOU are the one creating this. You still have this less-than-enough, just-enough attitude that you are trying to change. And then I remembered the disappointment thing. I need to do some BSFF on that.

I am writing this offline now, because my husband is online and it’s already pretty late here, so I hope I’ll be able to post this message before I get too sleepy.

This is great though. I love it! I love it, because slowly but surely all of my bad habits are surfacing so I can become aware of them and treat them…

Isn’t that wonderful…

The journey continues…