I finished listening to the audiobook “Peace and Plenty: Finding Your Path to Financial Serenity” by Sarah Ban Breathnach the day before yesterday. I really enjoyed it. SBB (a moniker that Sarah Ban Breathnach uses for herself) talks about going from no commas in her bank account to having more than one comma in her bank account, seemingly overnight, due to the success of her book, Simple Abundance, then finding herself in financial distress, again, because of not understanding what she calls her internal relationship with money. Through sharing her own experiences with having plenty and having a lot less, pulling ideas, quotes, traditional concepts, and reminding us of the simplicity and benefit of having gratitude for what you do have, especially in times of distress, she provides guidance and advice for women to learn what our internal relationship with money is (as learned through our family while growing up) and how to get ourselves on track with handling the money we have, regardless of how big or how little the dollar signs are.
Though much of her advice are things that I already knew but have not been good at implementing, I found the way she provides the information gave me a renewed belief in my ability to follow through with the ideas she presents, especially those concerning setting up and managing a budget, which includes savings. I have used alternative methods of doing some of the ideas she gives to a great lesser degree of success, and she explains why those methods don’t work as well as the ones she has provided by explaining the relationship with money that is common to women and how best to utilize some of our more natural impulses to reach our financial serenity with money. I would recommend this book to every woman, whether they have a bank account with multiple commas or no commas at all.
The next book lined up is The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong. This is a long one (19 cds). The author discusses the development of Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, monotheism, and philosophical rationalism and takes a look at how these religious traditions began and why. It should prove to be quite interesting, I believe, and I am looking forward to what I might discover within the ‘book’ that may expand my perceptions in different areas.
As I am writing this morning, I am working on downloading another 7 audiobooks. I am so grateful that I thought of doing this. I’m absolutely loving listening to these audiobook on different topics. I have temporarily put the languages aside, without having thought about it. The audiobook topics have pulled me from the language interest for right now.
Well, ok. The interest and desire to learn other languages is still right where it was. I’ve just been distracted by the learning of other things. I will filter in the language learning, again. In fact, I have been thinking that maybe I should be listening to a language learner first thing in the morning and then moving on to the topic books. I’ll let you know if I change what I’ve been doing to this other method of brain entertainment. I get so enthralled by whatever book I’m currently listening to that I am excited to get back to it and have as yet to discipline myself into an alternative method of approach.
I took the day off yesterday. We rescheduled the clean that had been scheduled to Wednesday. After the meltdown Saturday night, I needed to take a day. Though no nap happened yesterday, it was still a lackadaisical day, low in stress and somewhat restoring. I’m back at it today, but today is one of my less stressful work days. We have the condo common areas to do today and much of that will be spent replacing light bulbs. I’ll be home before dinner time and get to relax a bit, play with the dogs, connect with my kids – the things that refuel me and help keep me sane(r).
My husband and I are going through something right now. We seem to be on different wavelengths and communication has become less than stellar. I think we are just going through different growth rates. I don’t know if he is at a faster growth rate or I am but we don’t seem to be appreciating each other a whole lot right now. It’s a strain on the relationship, though I wish it weren’t.
I don’t know how to talk to him, anymore. It’s like we are speaking different languages and neither of us have a translation book to utilize. We seem to have different priorities now. This is really difficult because we have almost always seemed to be on the same page, or if we weren’t, we were close enough to it to make it work. Lately, it seems we are arguing about most everything and not hearing what the other is actually saying or what they mean. I know this can happen in any relationship but it leaves me feeling quite alone. How we deal with our differences at this point is important. We need to be able to just let each other be at the point each of us are at without it having any bearing on the core of our relationship. I feel I can do this, for the most part, but feel like my husband is having a harder time of it. Maybe this is how he is feeling about me. He has said some things that have hurt me to my core and I am trying to find the place where I can just let them go or, at the very least, talk to him about them.
The fact that I haven’t even talked with him about the things that have been said that hurt me says a lot about how I’m feeling in this relationship at the moment. I know all married couples go through their ebbs and flows (at least this is what I’ve been told), and it takes work to get back to good, again, but it is hard when I’m coming to the table with feelings of hurt and feeling vulnerable. It makes me want to protect myself, which isn’t very conducive to hearing him, being open to what he has to say and how he means the words that come out of his mouth. I try but find myself being quick to throw up the walls and retract the draw bridge. We will figure it out, I hope, and move on down the path. Well, either way, we will both move on down the path, I’m just hoping we figure out how to stay on adjoining paths as opposed to the alternative. It’s where we are at.
Ok. I really need to get out the door to work. Yes, there is that part of me that just wants to crawl back in bed for just a little longer, but I will face my day knowing I get to come home and refuel. Have a great day everyone and may you never lose sight of your dreams. 🙂
Dragonfly Gypsy USA 