Day Six: Now I get it!

Irritibility and anger has been a common theme in my household for months. I lost my job last year and found another one for half the income. We had to move - the third time in three years - and could not sell our homes, so we rent out two homes and live in another home that we are renting ourselves. Because of my overspending during prosperous times, we are now facing huge sums of credit card debts that we just can't pay anymore. So...we are stressed. But...stress is no excuse for poor behavior. It may be a root cause, but that is not a good reason to treat my family poorly. I am working on that and this past week has been really good and my wife is noticing a change - so that is positive!

Now, on to the dare. Find some time to destress in my schedule and look at things that I waste time due to negative motivation. So, what I am getting out of this is that people will make time for what is important to them. My schedule has always been to get up at 6:30am and get my oldest son ready for school and his breakfast together while my wife gets ready for work. Once she leaves I have an hour to get ready. It only takes me 15 minutes, so I typically spend the rest of the morning spending time on the internet. Just recently I have realized that while I wasted time on FB, the there were many things around the house left undone - which resulted in adding stress at the end of the day or week. Another huge stressor is being unorganized. Searching for clean clothes, or clean enough clothes and other stuff like that. My wife has always said that being unorganized about our housekeeping is stressful. So, I have become organized and spend 45 minutes every morning taking care of the housework because I have time to do it - and most of the stress is eliminated. But, that is a step I took before I started the dares.

My son, who constantly leaves toys lying around the house, gets upset because his DS is missing, or because my 3 year old took, lost, or broke one of the toys he left out. I say to him "you place importance on those things that are important to you." Or, take care of your stuff. But that line applies to my life too. I like to believe that the most important thing is my family. But what importance do I place on them? Often I ignore the needs of my family because I have other things I want to do - like internet, tv, gaming, etc... While those things typically do not take up a lot of time, collectively they cause me to lose my focus on my family. I need to place importance on those things that are important to me - my wife, my family. What has been my negative motivation? Simply put would be selfishness. My family needs me. As I pursue my desire to take care of my family, I need to remember that this desire include taking care of them in the home as well as taking care of them through working,

another great post! good job!