Getting Over the After-Holiday Blues

Posted On: 2005-12-28
Length: 14:13

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Hi, this is Joan and this is episode 24 of The Prosperity Show. Today we're going to talk about getting over the after-Christmas money blues. We didn't have our regular opening to the show today because the other day I bought a new computer monitor and when I plugged it in, it fried something, we're not quite sure what, and we're still trying to figure out how to do it. So I've got this little back-up computer working, and all the files for the opening are on my main computer.

Anyhow, our main site is prosperityplace.com where you can find lots of information about improving your relationship with money and yourself. And today probably there's a bunch of you out there who aren't feeling great about your money. There's a tendency over the holiday season to overeat and overspend. And very few people feel good about that when it's all over. Lots of feelings like guilt, shame, loss, and emptiness, feeling disappointed, ignored if you didn't get what you wanted, if you couldn't buy what you wanted. Feeling inadequate. There's lots of negative feelings that can come up as a result of the holidays after the initial euphoria of what ever gift buying or buying for yourself, or gift getting passes, and it's often exacerbated by the fact that people eat lots of sugar over the holidays, and sugar often affects moods, like depression, feeling not great about things. You can often have that happen as a result of eating a lot of sugar. So, you could be at this moment kind of doused with sugar, and feeling overspent, and not great about your money.

So how can we turn this into a plus? I'm the perennial optimist with this eye operation I had recently, and I can't see out of one eye. I'm calling myself the cock-eyed optimist. But I always see good in every situation. So no matter how bad you feel, there's a good side of it. First of all, you can take a look at the feelings you're having. The guilt, the shame, the disappointment, the ignored. The things that you went through during the shopping season when it's very possible you felt confused, or inadequate. I know I got an email from someone who talked about being really confused about what to get her, do for her grandchildren. She had lots of grandchildren and she just wanted to get them each a savings bond. She didn't want to shower them with gifts. First of all, it would have put her in a difficult financial position, and she knew the kids would get lots of gifts from other relatives. And for her, the practical thing was a savings bond. But then she started worrying, well should I have done more, how will the kids feel about it. There's all this stuff where we try to guess what other people are going to think about what we've done for them. But you can look at the feelings and say, ok, these feelings really don't have anything to do with money, I'm just using money to...