Hey friend, welcome to the Rich Living on Less Podcast. I’m Amberlee Rich. Yes. You heard me, right. I’m Mrs. Rich. If you are wanting to have a more intentional life and improve your finances, you’re in the right place. I’ll be giving you my best tips and resources that helped us get out of debt and be more present in. I’m committed to helping you ditch survival mode and walk in the abundance and freedom found in Christ. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in.
Can you believe it’s 2022. I know it blows my mind that we’re this far away from the year 2000. I was just talking with my daughter today about. The transition from 1999 to 2000 and how everyone viewed it as this huge big deal. And now I’m like 2022. This is crazy. So if you’re in the same boat as me, I’m sure you’re feeling like, wow, I can’t believe it’s another year.
I feel like I’m always surprised. Like, I can’t believe we’re living in 2021. And then now, 2022.
But at the beginning of the year, you’re thinking about who you want to become.
You’re normally wanting this like fresh take on life. It feels like a new start, a beginning. And it’s really important to think about like what, what we want to be.
Most of us are looking at being healthier, happier.
We want to be more confident, new, more relaxed, less stressed. I get a hands up for that. More present as one things that I’m really trying to work on. There are a lot of things we want to become. And I know for myself. And I think to those people, we have this vision of what we want to become, but it’s really easy to just not get there.
So, if you’ve had that happen to you, that you want to be this person that you’re not, but you just never seem to be able to reach that. So how do you actually do that?
One of the main things that holds us back is our mindset.
And so today we’re going to be talking about our mindset. Not just when it comes to finances, but just in general. And I think this is a really good way to start off the new year.
So, we all have a way of thinking. And a lot of it goes back to what people have said about us, and we’ve said about ourselves. The opinions we’ve heard throughout the years. And when they’ve compiled together, we start to believe them, even if they’re not true. So it could be from our parents, siblings, friends, romantic relationships or church, all kinds of things. It could be, anything. Could be strangers who knows.
But all of those things start to come together and shape our identity.
And this mindset that we have becomes like this north star where we, we just keep going back to, and it’s because we feel like we need to be in alignment with that view of ourselves.
I’m going to give you some examples just to really like have this hit home.
So one of the beliefs that I have been working on. And it’s been hard. Let me tell you it’s been really hard. The belief that I’m always falling behind. And I think a lot of moms deal with this. I just feel like I’m always behind. I have these super high expectations on myself. And I feel like I never reached them.
I feel like I’m behind in my housework, my business, schooling my kids, my life, like everything, I feel like I’m falling behind. You know, when I feel like that, it makes me feel like I need to rush because I need to get more done because I’m feeling behind. Which then makes me feel like I don’t have enough time in the day. Like, maybe if I just woke up earlier or went to bed later, I could get it all done, but then I’m exhausted.
I’m also, a lot of times down on myself, like, why am I not doing this? How could I not get this all done?
That was an example from my own life. And. It sounds like really down, because I think a lot of times we are so much harder on ourselves than anyone else in the world. Like, I wouldn’t tell anyone else, like, you know, you, you are just, you’re still behind. You just need to get with it.
We’re so much kinder and compassionate to people that are not ourselves.
I’ve been really actively working against this mindset that I am always falling behind. So I’m trying to prove to myself if that actually isn’t true.
I’m going to just go through some of the things that I’ve been doing to help me not believe this as much. It’s not like I fully have arrived, but I’ve gotten a lot better.
And I think it’s just as processed because it’s something that I just tend to go back to.
One of the things that we do every morning in our houses, we have a breakfast benediction, and it is amazing. I got it from Jefferson Bethkey, and I love it.
One of the things it talks about is:
“I’m not what I do. I’m not what I have. I’m not what people say about me. I’m the beloved of God. That’s who I am. No one can take it from me. I don’t have to hurry. I don’t have to worry. I can trust my friend Jesus and share his love with the world.”
Jefferson Bethkey
So that’s what we say every morning. I wasn’t going to say the whole thing, but I thought might as well.
That has helped me in the mornings because it makes me remember and say it out loud that I do not need to hurry and I don’t need to worry and that my worth is not dependent on what I do. Or what people say about me? And those are things that I want to remember and hold onto. And I really want my kids to hold onto that as well. So that’s something that we say as a whole family every day out loud, and then we give each other, we get one M&M from saying that because the word of God is sweet. And so we do that and it’s been a really fun thing that we do each day.
And that has been a great way to slow down and really focus on what I should be focusing on. And that reminds me again, that like my worths not based on what I do.
We also do devotions. I even do devotions with my kids in the morning and at night, but then I also do devotions in the morning with my husband. And then I do devotions on my own reading my Bible.
I’m gonna try and do that every day, but there’s days that I don’t, but taking time to slow down and read the Bible. Like a lot of times I feel like, ah, I have so many other things to do. There’s so much.
And then I catch myself like, oh, there’s better things for me to do than read the Bible and like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, slow down. I know, way off on this. Like that’s not, that’s awful perspective. No, I need to make room for what is important and not feel like, you know, making sure my shower was perfectly clean is more important than being in God’s Word.
So making time for things that are important to me is really important.
Another thing we’ve started doing is practicing the Sabbath.
I have two episodes on that. I’ll put it in the show notes. I can’t recall what numbers they are, but it’s really taking 24 hours each week of really slowing down, focusing on our family and spending time with God. And just shutting down from social media, from my phone and all the other work. It’s a time to be the rest and rest well.
And so that has been a really good practice that has helped me to slow down and it, it just rewires how you live the rest of your week and it’s been completely amazing. And our kids like that is their favorite day of the week. And it’s been so good and it’s been so rich. And so that’s something that we do each week.
That’s been really helpful.
Another thing that I do to help me not feel so overwhelmed because when I write the whole list of all the things that I need to do it is really overwhelming.
I just go through and I have just a little calendar and I write down just bullet points of all the things I need to work on each day. And I just mark them off.
And that has helped me to just know what I need to work on. And when I had that done, I’m like, Ooh, anything extra that I can get done. Like that’s, that’s awesome. But it’s not necessary.
That has helped me just on a daily basis. Not feel like, oh my goodness. I’m so behind. And having a plan has helped me.
I used to never use a planner. I’ve just like, I don’t know, just free spirit it. And then I just felt like I was behind.
Another thing that I do to really help me combat this belief that I’m always behind is taking time to read.
That fills me up and it refreshes me in ways that like, it sounds crazy like reading, like is like salve to my soul, which sounds like insane. It really is like, it just fills me up so much. And so when I read, I am just a better mom. I’m a better person in general. And that’s something I want to make time for. So I read to my kids daily. I also read on my own daily and that’s been something I’ve been making sure doesn’t fall to the wayside.
So those are some examples just to kind of give you an idea of what it looks like in my own life.
But there’s a lot of things that maybe you think about yourself right now that really bugs you, something that you would love to change, but you’re not really sure how to do it.
I created a list of things that I know some of these I’ve thought about myself, that people have said to me, that I have believed.
Things that I think are pretty common for a lot of people to just hold on to. And so I want to just go through them and I want you to think about what resonates with you.
Do you feel like this is you. This is not a comprehensive list. So. There’s a lot more that I could say.
Just use this as a, as a framework and a guide to help you start to think about the things that you believe about yourself right now that maybe aren’t really working for you.
One is I am unathletic. That’s totally something I believed my whole life. and that’s held me back from going and doing a lot of Team sports and things like that. When really, I don’t want to have anything to that really even gives me any obvious example that I am unathletic. So like I’m unathletic.
Maybe you feel like you’re bad with money. You’re always busy. You’re overwhelmed. And you feel like you’re just not a good cook.
You feel like your, your children’s chauffeur. This is something that a lot of parents feel like, I just chauffeur my kids from one place to the other and that’s all I do.
I’m the strict parent.
I’m a bad reader.
I’m just a messy person.
I have no backbone.
I’m unorganized.
I’m a spender.
I am terrible about calling and texting people back.
I’m always running late.
I’m a hot mess mom.
This is something a lot of women believe. That’s something that our culture is telling us this is something that’s okay. When really it’s just making us feel like, oh, it’s okay to just be completely overwhelmed and live in survival mode.
I’m always sick.
We’re always sick.
I never have enough time.
I overeat.
I’m too sensitive.
I’m never good enough.
I’m always behind.
What things resonated with you?
Because a lot of times we start our New Years trying to figure out, like, I want to lose three pounds of whatever it is.
But what if you start looking at what belief about yourself, do you want to say goodbye to this year? What are you wanting to say? I don’t want to believe this anymore. This is a technique that will help you really make a real shift in your life. Unlike a typical New Year’s resolution.
I’m going to give you another example and it’s one of them from the list. I just talked about that. I believe for a very long time.
And it’s that I’m just a messy person.
And the people who know me, they probably would be, especially early on in my life. they’d be like, yes, this is Amberlee to the T.
I look back at my childhood I can’t even remember, like, doing chores or like have any cleanup I’m sure I probably did. It’s not something I felt like I knew how to do, or like knew ways of making my house clean. It was just always messy.
I remember in college. I left cups all around the house that we lived in. And apparently my roommates were, got really frustrated instead of confronting me. They like put all of the cups on my bed to just show like, this is how big of a mess you make for everyone else. And I had no idea, I was just completely oblivious to it. And that just was like, whoa, okay. I’m a lot messier than I thought. I didn’t even notice that I have cups all over the house. I just thought there was someone else’s.
Then I got married and we didn’t have kids right away. We had five years of us just being DINKs. So double income, no kids. And I could not keep our house clean to save my life. There were always dirty dishes in the same. I never made my bed.
We had a bigger home for the two of us. I couldn’t keep up. Even without kids, it just wasn’t happening.
And I realized, I didn’t have techniques. I didn’t have any habits that helped make this easier. It was just hard. No, I didn’t even know like how to attempt to make this work out.
I cook a lot and I cook from scratch. And I used to never clean up until after I cooked. And typically by the time I was finished cooking there would be like everything else. And then I’d be so tired at the end that I didn’t want put anything away. So it was just like this disaster zone all the time.
This is just giving you an idea of like, I am not a naturally organized person.
I’m messy by nature. If you can relate to this, it’s hard. And then when you add kids into the mix, I’m like, I’ve got to figure this out because I just am cleaning up messes. And I feel like I’m just beating my head against the wall. It’s just not working.
These are some of the things that I’ve done to try to change this. I realize, for one, there was a big problem. I need to change and not be a messy person. And so I had to start creating habits that would prove to myself that I actually am a person that is tidy and keeps a house looking well and in good order.
Not to say that you walk into my house at any given moment that is perfectly clean. We live here.
But one of the things that I started doing at the very beginning was starting to make our bed. My husband, I was starting to do that. And we’re like, normally before I just felt like it was a waste of time to make your bed because you just go back in and it’s going to be messy anyways.
But I was starting to realize that we were having to make the bed to get into the bed at night. Which then I’m thinking, well, what if I just, we made the bed in the morning. And then the bed looks nice all day and then we come into it and it’s just so much more peaceful. So it’s more relaxing.
And doing that one little thing starting off my day started to change things. And then I started my decluttering journey and I’ve got blog posts and some episodes on that as well on minimalism that I realized that all my stuff was just making it harder for me to keep the house clean and orderly because I had too much stuff and clutter attracts clutter. So if you have clutter in one place, it just becomes a place where you had more clutter to it and it just grows and grows until it becomes just overwhelming. Clutter is really just unmade decisions.
So, I started going through and figuring out ways to make cooking work.
So instead of taking something out and leaving it until after the meal was made and we’ve eaten dinner, I start putting things away as I go, I do dishes as like, when I have a little break between making the meal, when something is sautéing and I don’t have to be stirring it constantly, whatever it is.
I do a lot of these little things throughout so when. Dinner is finished. Everything is put away and I just have to serve it onto the table. I’ve also been working on ways to make sure that the dishwasher is unloaded right away so that when we can load everything that’s dirty directly into the dishwasher.
Like those kinds of little things make a big difference. And so that way I don’t have a pile of dirty dishes in the sink because when I have a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, I don’t wash the hand wash stuff because I don’t have enough room for like pots and pans. So it just becomes this bigger mess. So I try to figure out, like, what is the big domino that is making it harder for me to be successful in this area.
I just tried a lot of different things and a lot of them didn’t work.
I researched different laundry methods, ways to just make things work because I didn’t feel like I was equipped and knew how to do this from the get go.
I don’t know. I didn’t feel like I was trained. To know how to do this. And so I just, I did a lot of research. I read books, I listened to podcasts. I read blogs. I was just trying to do things. I tried like a chore chart, which did not work well. but I tried things to figure out like how I can actually make this work.
Try to figure out what are the things that make you a messy person makes you believe that? Like, how can you actually change the view you have on yourself? Because it is an identity level thing.
Once I started making my bed, and then doing all these other things, like making sure there aren’t dirty dishes in the sink on a regular basis and putting things away right after I’m done with them. I started realizing, oh, I am not a messy person. I’m a tidy person. And I have a different expectation of myself. It has really helped me to be more relaxed to my home. And it’s not like I am perfect in this by any, any sense.
But I just want to give you that example to show you that, like, you can be one extreme and you can change. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, but those little things like making your bed takes, you know, like two minutes maybe in the morning. Probably less than that. Especially, my husband and I do it together and it’s like 30 seconds, whatever it is like that one little change shifts things.
There’s a lot of little things you can do that really make big changes in your life, even though it seems kind of ridiculous.
What I want you to do is just think about what do you want to change about yourself, and how can you actually change your mindset and start figuring out a plan.
You might have some mindsets that are just not okay when it comes to your finances. That’s something that we talk about a lot on this podcast. And I think it’s really important because the way we spend money and interact with money is something we do on a daily basis. It matters. It’s a big deal.
And when we have a mindset about ourselves, when it’s negative towards money. It really is hard.
So I’m going to talk a little bit about your mindset especially with getting out of debt.
- Maybe you feel like you are just bad with money.
- Maybe you feel like you’re never going to get out of debt.
- Maybe you feel like you weren’t just overwhelmed by your finances and you don’t know how to even deal with it.
- Maybe you feel like you are just a failure when it comes to money, but there’s just no way of turning things around.
I want to give you hope we have created the Debt Dump Challenge.
It is coming up next week it starts. Okay. January 10th, to the 14th. This is going to be amazing. And I really want to see you in there. It’s a five day challenge, it’s absolutely free. And I’m going to go through and give you information every day to help set you up so you will be successful in paying off your debt this year.
Go to debtdumpchallenge.com and sign up. It’s not too late. Invite friends, family, anyone, you know, that really could use some help in this area.
I think all of us need some encouragement and getting out of debt and we talk about mindset and helping you really figure out why you want to get out of debt and make those reasons so strong that it really propels you to have the momentum to do it.
That is something that I really want to, to help you in.
That mindset that we have with our finances and in every area of her life really matters because what we think about ourselves becomes our reality.
And it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Like if you say, “I’m bad with money.” You’re going to make bad financial decisions because that’s what you believe about yourself. If you feel like you were a messy person in the core of you, you were going to leave messes and be okay with it because that’s who you are. If you do something different, you feel like you are not actually true to yourself. You’re not being authentic.
It’s really important that your identity is not something that’s fixed. It’s not something that like, You will always be messy and there’s no way of changing it. I am a great example of how that can absolutely change. You can change your identity. You can change your view of yourself.
And the thing is when it comes to an identity level, it is hard to change. It’s not something you can just switch on and off.
And I want to give you an example. I’ve talked last week about James Clear in the book Atomic Habits. He has some amazing ideas and one of them talks about how to create good habits and he talks about your identity.
So I’m going to read this quote from James Clear it should resonate. I think it’s just, it’s so good.
“So over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that yourself image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs and to upgrade and expand your identity.”
James Clear
That is a lot in four sentences.
But I think it’s really important that when we look at our past that we see that our identity has shifted. When you look back at what you were like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, whatever it is, you are not the same person, your identity shifts.
It might be slow. It might be quick.
But you do have identity changes throughout that time. And a lot of it might not have been intentional. It might’ve just kind of happened on its own, but if you really want to see some big changes that go in an intentional direction, you need to look at the identity you want to have and figure out how to get there.
So how do you change your identity?
The first thing is to pray about it.
We can’t do everything on our own. Like, that is why we need God. We need to pray about it.
Ask God, why we are believing the things that we are believing about ourselves. What is the root of it? Why do you believe that you are so messy or you, or whatever? What is that?
So pray about it, ask God why you believe it. And then you need to prove to yourself that you are not what you believe.
This is your homework for this week. I want you to think about one thing that you believe about yourself, that you want to change. Just one. If you want to go all in, you can do more than one, but if you just focus on one, it will make a big difference.
Think about one thing that you believe about yourself that you want to change.
Maybe it’s I’m, I’m just bad with money.
That’s a belief you want to change about yourself? How can you set yourself up so you don’t believe that anymore? How can you be good with money? How can you be financially wise? What are some of the things financially wise people do?
And then start doing it.
Figure it out, brainstorm. Think about how you are proving to yourself that you’re bad with money. How can you change those things?
Okay, maybe you’re going into debt every month. Maybe you’re not investing. What are those things that you need to change?
Figure those things out, write them down, do whatever you need to do to make it happen.
So I have created a resource for you to really help you because a lot of the perspectives we have about ourselves are deep. The perspective that we need is not just from our eyes, but how does God view us? How has he created us to be. Maybe you feel like you’re not enough.
There’s a lot of things that you need to really view ourselves through God’s eyes. And I’ve created a mini- workbook. It’s called who I am in Christ and it really helps you, if you are struggling with some core identities and want to get a Biblical perspective about who you are, this is a free workbook and it’s really, really good. And so I would just recommend going to that. It’s just amberleerich.com/ identity and you’ll find it right there.
[mailerlite_form form_id=2]You can also, if you just go to amberleerich.com/ and just go to the end of the page, you can sign up for that free workbook and you just get it instantly. That has so much information and tools to help you really have a new perspective of yourself. And that is so important.
Your homework today is to think about one belief you have about yourself that you want to change.
And then really dive deep on how you can make some changes this week, this year to change your identity and get to the place you really want to be.
And don’t forget the debt debt challenge is starting on Monday.
It is going to be an amazing time where we’re going to really go deep and get ourselves set up to get out of debt. So if you have not joined, go do that. It’ll also be in the show notes, just go to debtdumpchallenge.com, and I will see you next week. Have a good one.