Wasted

No, not the drinking and partying "Wasted". This is a very different kind but maybe has some of the same similarities in the consequences. About 3 years or so ago my husband got a major pay cut. We went to see a financial advisor at the church we attended. Now, I use the program "Money" to balance my checking account and that is about it.

One of the first things he had me do was go through that program and figure out how much money we had been spending in every catagory such as groceries, gas, entertainment, etc. I didn't even realize you could do this! Being the detailed person that I am, I was so excited. Excited until I pulled up the "Dining Out" category. I looked at what we had spent over the last 12 months in this area and thought to myself that there just had to be a mistake. I ran the report several times and still came up with the same figure. I was down right embarrassed. I was in shock! I was in utter disbelief.

I thought back to the situations that had come up over the past year. People who I know needed help financially but I thought we couldn't afford to help them. People who were hurting, who could have used a little boost in their lives. It was humbling to say the very least. Since then, we don't go out to eat much. Don't get me wrong, we do go out to eat. But it is in the budget!

I have been pondering on this for the past couple of weeks. I wonder if we had some kind of program that kept up with the hours, days, weeks, months that we have spent over the last 12 months worrying, doubting, fretting, gossiping, living in fear, what would the tally be? Even scarier, what if we could calculate that for our entire life time?

I know for a fact that I have wasted a HUGE amount of time on being stressed about things and worrying. I just don't want to get to the end and look back and see how many awesome things I missed. How many precious moments have I missed with my daughters? Better yet, how many precious moments have been totally WASTED because of my own junk!! I don't know about you but I think that if we were to consciously pay close attention to this our lives would be drastically changed.

Remember, "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change"

So if we could just change the way we look at these things in particular, we could enjoy so much more of our lives and I bet we would even be more of a joy to be around. SO, join me in committing to STOP WASTING TIME on things that don't matter!!