How to Reduce Grocery Budget Stress

Maybe you know the feeling? You get paid your salary. Breath a sigh of relief, and head out to the grocery store. It is time to replenish the supplies. Your pantry is sad and bare. Picked clean. Empty.

But all of that is about to change. You see, you have a full bank balance and the power is now in your hands. You feel like a king and as you parade around the isles of the store, you certainly shop like one. Trolley filled to the brim, you proceed to the teller. Everything is going great. That is until you see the blinking green light indicating an amount that is ever on the increase.

It feels like your anxiety levels are matching that of the number of the little LCD screen. You swipe your card and tell yourself that using up more than half of the month’s food budget was necessary while you nervously leave the store.

We’ve All Been There.

I didn’t like living like this. For the first two weeks of the month is a feast, while the last part of the month is a famine. It was stressful. It was disheartening. We were over it.

It was time to try something new, but what? Wasn’t this way of life just the way it is? Or was it?

Reduce Budget Stress

I have already gone through a bit of a story on how I got here. Thanks for reading it 🙂

I am not going to go into too much detail of how we got to this strategy, I won’t torture you any longer. It is time to get right into it. This is my active budget stress-reducing strategy. Are you ready? Here it is:

Budget Stress-Reducing Strategy

Write up a budget – There is no way around it. You need to plan where your money is going. Otherwise, your money seeks to rid itself of you by any means necessary.
Divide it up – Once you have the amount you want to spend, it is time to see how many weeks are in the month ahead. If there are 4 weeks in the month, divide your budget by 4, etc.
Take a calculator – This may seem quite restricting, but I have found it to be rather freeing. Take a calculator with you and punch in any amount of an item that you add to your shopping basket.

Bonus Tips

Shop online.
Make a list of what you need.
Think about the meals you plan to prepare for the week before you go to the store.
Buy more than a week’s worth of essentials when they are on special.

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Achievement unlocked – Punisher MTB Challenge

On Saturday, June 3rd, I partook in an urban mountain bike race around Johannesburg which included riding through stormwater drains, climbing man-made scaffold bridges, navigating mountainous rocky patways and blindly cycling through dark underground tunnels.

The course was 72km (45 miles) long and was very tough. I do not think I was fully prepared for what lay ahead (considering I was close to being one of the last to cross the finish line and around 3hrs behind the race leader) but I know I did the best I could with the time and resources I had and you know what? I did it. I finished the race.

Gareth and myself – waiting for the race to begin.

I completed the race in 06:03:27 and couldn’t be happier. This was the furthermost distance and longest time spent on my bike in one sitting. Funny enough, the following day I was a lot less sore than what I thought I would be. The next day I experienced mild discomfort in my shoulders, neck, and traps. This was from being hunched over in one spot for several hours.

It was a long race and would put my body, mind, and training to the test. Going into the race, I kept experiencing nagging thoughts of wanting to ‘know’ that I could ‘definitely’ finish the race. But even when being faced with the “3,2,1” countdown to the race start, I had no evidence that I would be able to conquer the figurative and literal mountain in front of me.

32km Check-in – Feeling great. We just passed through some large stormwater drains.

During the race, there were many times where I had to talk myself down from thoughts of quitting and giving up. Through burning thighs, an aching back and lungs aflame I had to keep going. There was work to be done and no time to complain.

Gareth and I, at the finish line with our Punisher medalsI love moments in life like these. Moments where you do something that should not have been possible. Moments like these are very addictive. We humans, love progress. Defying the odds. Being the underdogs. Sticking it to the ‘man’ etc. Whatever you call it, it is deeply satisfying to conquer these mountains and inevitably move on to the next challenge to overcome (next up – 94.7 Challenge).

Whose with me?!

Trav’s Tips for taking the challenge and completing it.

Don’t give yourself a chance to escape. Register for the event, buy the ticket, say yes!
Do not wait to see if you are ready for it. Decide to do it and then start preparing. You can spend weeks debating whether or not to do the challenge and it could have been spent training and getting ready. Trust me, this was my major downfall with the 2017 Bealieu 45km MTB challenge (which was much harder because I decided to do the race the morning of the event).
Get a Partner to do it with you. Look for someone who can support and push you through it. This was vital for me – thanks Gary!
Physically prepare yourself and get sufficient training. You will honestly stand on the start line feeling like you could have done more. You probably could have, but you’re here now and it’s ‘Go Time’. Forget about the “Maybes” and “What ifs” and go for it.
Get ready – mentally. Build some mental toughness. Be realistic with yourself and the challenge ahead. Even though I diligently trained my body and ate clean, the day before the race I kept repeating “It won’t be easy but you will do it”. I was right.

Personality.

There is a website. You answer a bunch of questions (try to be as honest with yourself as possible – even if you do not like the answer) and the website crunches the numbers and churns out one of sixteen personalities you closely relate to.

Mine was the Architect Personality. Fancy.

Image result for architect personality

I did my test twice so it must be true, right? Anyway, why not give it a spin and let me know what personality you have, down in the comment section below.

https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality

Push Yourself.

This coming weekend (Sunday) I will partake in a 72km Mountain Bike Race. I have been Mountain Biking on and off for about a year now but I have never ridden 72km in a single sitting (most has been 45km).

I have trained for the past ~~month~~ two weeks (due to the flu) as well as I could and have tried my best to be as prepared as possible for this punishing task ahead of me. I used the word “punishing” because by completing the 72km race you will, in fact, get a Punisher T-shirt.

I have only ever entered into one other race before this (45km) and it broke me. Partly because I registered at literally the last minute, hadn’t trained at all for the race and worked very physically the day before to the point of bodily fatigue and stiffness resulting the day of the race. Not very smart approach.

Me, changing a tire (for the first time ever) while out training on a technical trail this past weekend. Preparing for the 72km race. Mission was successful.

At the end of that race, I was exhausted and broken but, I did it. I felt so amazing that I finished it and conquered this beast. Sure, it was dumb and FOMO is a real thing, but I did it. I pushed myself. This resulted in some major mental mountains and strongholds to come crashing down. Ultimately, I grew. I progressed. This was one of the best moments in my life.

Now the time has come to push myself once more to do something I have never done before. It helps to surround yourself with others who help push yourself (thanks Gareth), without them, you might never get up and do anything. Or anything that matters. Pushing myself and going beyond what I thought was possible for me has been one of the biggest aspects of progress in my life that helped me combat severe episodes of Panic and Anxiety (something which has been a huge deal to me for 2 decades).

I think it is good to throw yourself into things like this because you need to break down these mental thought castles that restrict and weigh you down. Maybe this is not a must, but it is healthy to do in my opinion. It also opens up new and exciting opportunities that would have never come up if you hadn’t said yes to life.

I believe that it is also good to not always seek out comfort and put yourself in things that make you feel downright uncomfortable. Call it Stoicism, being AntiFragile or just plain sucking it up and getting on with it.

I have seen with preparation for this race that you never feel quite ready for it. You want things of value to come to you and you want it to come easily. No struggle, no pain, no work and no discomfort (I am a millennial after all).

This is exactly why I registered for something that I cannot say with 100% certainty that I can achieve. What I can say is that I will give it my all, I will do my best. I will push myself.

Getting things done. Simplified.

A black and white shot of a man stretching his right leg before running on the road

It is really, really easy to over complicate things. Even when it comes to getting things done. This last year I was able to get the ball rolling on a lot of personal goals some big, some small and I was making some great progress too!

Hmm, progress…

Progress is something that makes me happy, so a good few months back I started reading more, journaling and watching videos on how to do things better, quicker and load more tasks on my plate because of my efforts.

It was around this same time that I started noticing that I was not able to get as much done as I wanted to and my progress sort of stalled, in almost all areas of my personal development journey.

The reason?

Well, I think it has to do with overcomplicating things and although books and media are really a great way to motivate and educate yourself. I found myself thinking more, doing less. Then I took a look at what lead to my previous stretch of progress and how to return to that state. Admittedly it was a particular motivational video (I know, ironic) that lead me to my “Aha” moment.

Solution.

Go back to the basics. When I was making the most progress in my endeavors§ was when I simply showed up and did something small that lead me to my ultimate goal.

For example:

Goal: Be ‘day to day’ fluent in Norwegian
Action: Do one Duolingo lesson every day.
This should take no longer than 5-10 minutes at most.
This was easy enough for me to consistently do for over 230 days (incl. weekends)
Best Progress Results

New Commitment.
Goal: Be ‘day to day’ fluent in Norwegian.
Action: Study Norwegian every day for 1 hour. Break up the hour session into different lessons that include conversing, reading, writing and watching something in Norwegian.
Lowest Progress Results

No doubt about it, option 2 would yield substantially better results. If I was able to accomplish this intricate regime I set for myself. Mix this regime in with having a busy schedule, family, work and quite a few more goals I have set for myself like: Follow a strict eating plan, Read a certain amount of pages per day, cycle/gym a certain amount every day, Code an hour a day etc, is a recipe for having too many ‘well-meaning things to do’ on your plate. Getting overwhelmed and ending up doing none of them.

Back to Basic. Do. Even if it is a little.

There is nothing wrong with pushing yourself and ‘increasing the bar’ on your goals, but something that I have come to learn is that taking some form of action of your goal every day for 5 minutes(or less) is far better than having done nothing at all.

Find your passion

We are lucky enough to live in a time where we no longer need to just ‘get a job’ and show up each day to work in a factory, eat our lunch, go home and start the process all over again.

No. Not us. We are likely to be the first generation to quite literally have the world at our fingertips. I heard an interesting fact (or seemingly factual statement made by someone who seemed rather convincing) that most middle-class westerners live better than some Kings did a good couple of years ago. This is beside the point but just let that little nugget sink in for a minute.

The problem with finding your passion.

As a “millennial” I have been told that it is really important to find my purpose, my passion, my calling in life. I have been told that there is an ‘oceanic’ universe-halting moment that I will experience when I find that one thing I was destined to do with my life. Now, if you are like me, there was not one person who took the time to sit me down and tell me these ‘truths’. Instead, it is something that I have picked up in the most subtle way through (mainly) digital media; things like advertising, movies, magazine ads, and even story books.

Social Media? Well now. Social media is in a class of its own. We have gotten so used to constantly being distracted that each moment we have, where we are not doing something, we return like moths to a flame to the blue glow of our smartphones. We fill ourselves with others stories, others that are all doing so ‘well’, but I digress.

Truth be told, I think I have bought into this “finding your passion” thing for most of my life. Until one day, I realized that this searching for my place in the universe actually had the opposite effect on me and that was a sort of overwhelmed procrastination. I would often find myself, over-thinking ideas, turning away opportunities that I tried for some time but just wasn’t “feeling it” and overall just having a feeling of uncertainty and overwhelmingness that would just leave me, stalling. Doing nothing. Not trying or trying to little.

I should have put a disclaimer out earlier but these ideas are my own and I do not mean to put down any self-improvement endeavors or dreamers out there who want to aspire to do great things.

This blog post is more of an “Ah-Ha” moment for me, where I discovered that in order to actually find my passion is to stop searching for it. By doing so, the pressure of finding this mythical experience becomes much, much less and it allows me to take action and try things. Stick opportunities out a bit longer and put some effort in, even when I am not “feeling it”.

Maybe you are like me, maybe not. Whether you have all your ducks in a row or are still figuring things out. I want to encourage you to just do something. If we continue to do, we will continue to progress, when we progress in something, we get better in that area and enjoy it more. I am paraphrasing here, but these are some (similar) words from Mark Cuban.

So here is to us. Let us take action and do things and by doing, find things that make us happy. Love the journey, not the destination.

Live for the now. NOW!

Below is a blog post from a friend of mine – Dwain Maralack.

I previously heard about this Mexican fisherman parable from Simon Sinek, whilst watching one of his YouTube Videos.
This parable resonates with me deeply. It takes very little effort to get swept up in this, always living for the future and never living (truly) for the now.

Does this mean, we should not save for a rainy day, keep learning, work hard and strive for a better life for us and our families? Absolutely not. There is no “honor” in laziness and carelessness but, as soon as we start missing the “now” and we get stressed up, “too busy” for everyday important things like spending time with our family, something needs to change #perspective

Read the Story here – https://dwain.blog/2018/03/14/is-enough-enough/

When is enough enough? How long are we delaying our lives as we struggle for someone else’s picture of perfection? How many more years should we put into building a fortune, for our old age? We all need to read the story below na make up our one minds. The Mexican Fisherman and the Investment…

via Is enough, enough? — Dwain Maralack

2017 a Winner of a Year!

Before January comes to an end. I wanted to write a short blog post of why 2017 was one of the best years of my life.

Here is a list of things I did in 2017 (worth mentioning):

Finally. Made Progress with my GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder)
Climbed Table Mountain
Bought my first MackBook Pro
Travelled to a new continent (Australia)
Travelled the Garden Route
Took up Mountain Biking
Completed a grueling (at least for me) 45km MTB Race.
Landed a dream remote job.
Attended 2x WordCamps
Involved in organising 2x WordCamps
Did a WordCamp Talk
Launched a WordPress Plugin
Got 5 new WordPress.org badges.
Launched my new website
Got into a morning routine
Regular Gym
Walked the Tsitsikama Bridge
Sang in front of 450 people
Played music in a band in front of a live audience
Got involved where it mattered
Made new friends
Hung out more with my family
Climbed the tallest building in town to put up a WiFi tower.
Saw a Koala Bear
Touched a Kangaroo
Saw the Sydney Opera House
Got a Dribbble invite
Extensive South African Travels.

What I learned in 2017

I love entrepreneurship.
Helping people and others heal you. It takes you out of your own problems and once you are out of them. You see how small they actually are.
Do things for people around you.
Anxiety is a totally false perceived reality
You can do WAY more than when you think you can. When you think you’re done, you are only 40% in.
Video Editing, Sound Recording and Tutorial making
It doesn’t matter what you feel. It matters what you decide.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.
Norwegian (in Progress).
You can be SO BUSY with all the wrong, insignificant things. Do things that help you get to your goals as quickly and effectively as possible.

Looking forward to 2018

Achievement Unlocked — Become a Real Designer

I have officially been “drafted” to become a player in the dribbble.com community. Don’t feel bad if you have no idea what I just said, here let me explain:

Dribbble is an online community and social media network for designers. Anyone is free to visit and browse different designers and their work on on the platform BUT, in order for designers to actually get a chance to share or upload their work, they will need to get invited(drafted) by a previously invited and active designer(player).

Invitations are very limited and many designers try for years, sometimes resorting to begging for an invite from a Player. Because each player only gets a limited amount of invitations, they will only draft players whom they believe, really deserve to be in this elite designer ‘club’.

Category: Wellness