I Am Not My Wallet

A Year of Challenges: January 2025

Lake Kissimmee State Park 2025

Dear Friend,

My heart wants you to know that creating challenge is an act of love that allows expression of the soul. To know who we are at our core is to discover the Truth of Being.

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Monthly challenges offer time for action, reflection, and a variety of deviations to be expressed (as I learned). It also offers us an opportunity to create a monthly central focus that tests the rhythm we discovered at the start of the year. I explain more here on my reasons and methods if you need a refresher.

From Intention to Challenge

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My input and output of January: The month of no spending.

Input: When the 1^st of January arrived I still hadn’t made a solid plan on how “no spending” would actually work but I had ideas on what it was obviously meant to do for understanding my rhythm. Spending money on objects we don’t need is a by-product of a consumer driven society. It’s also a learned behavior to circumvent uncomfortable feelings. Retail therapy anyone?

So with this in mind my rules for the month of January took shape. This is the list I used for myself:

1. One weekly food shopping day

2. One monthly trip to a big box store big dry good purchases

3. One trip for dog food

4. Only exception was a medical emergency

Which led me to remember….

5. One trip for vitamins and medicine

I also limited what I allowed my daughters to talk me into buying them. I love them big so spending money on them is an easy fit to express that love because that was how love was shown to me.

6. No extra money spent on girls except for the known required school events

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Output: Considering I had some curve balls thrown my way I did good. Not perfect, but good.

I managed my rules for food shopping with the exception of two times. In each case we ran out of a food; this was poor planning on my part.

Everything else was accomplished as planned except one tricky incident. This incident told me all I needed to know about my spending:

My subconscious brain is a master thief.

I had managed to convince myself to hire my daughter to crochet me something in exchange for her keeping any extra yarn that remained. This broke two rules: first, I wasn’t buying anything the whole month except food and second, I wasn’t giving my girls extra stuff.

It took me over an hour after I had walked into a store and bought yarn to realize what I had done. I had glimpses internally that something felt off about the exchange. Yet, I had to step away from the situation to understand the pervasive nature at which my mind is programmed to spend money and the lengths it goes to make it happen.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to spend money needlessly; I just didn’t cave to the temptation.

When I was emotional (big trigger for spending), I just sat with my feelings while asking good questions around self-care needs.

Online browsing was another habit I discovered I utilized to ease emotional tension. This breakthrough was a sticking point for days while my nerves kept trying to reach for the phone. Once I figured it out I required myself to give it up this month too.

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Final thoughts:

This challenge taught me that I’m not my wallet, the things I purchase aren’t my happiness, and there is far more to be learned in understanding the base need triggering the response rather than filling the empty desire with something bought. For this I am blessed.

Are you doing any challenges in your life right now? If so, let me know and I will happily cheer for your from the sidelines.

Until next time my friend.

With Love,

Leah 💕

The year of monthly challenges in an ongoing conversation that started at the beginning of the year. If you are just finding this conversation and would like to read more you can find other threads in the series here: