Step # 1: The Correct Attitude

Which of the following statements is a good rule to go by when grocery shopping?

A. Always buy things on sale.
B. Buy larger packages to save money on the product.
C. Both A and B.
D. Neither A or B.

Answer: D

Get rid of self-defeating shopping savings thoughts, believe that you will save, and you will have mastered the first step necessary to overcome your struggles with saving at the grocery store. What is true about you in your mind, you will live.

Remember, your �personal truth.� You hold powerful beliefs about these influence and ourselves, good or bad, and affect how we approach our life. You don�t have to look far to find negative examples of �personal truths� that can jump out and ambush our home grocery savings program. You start this program or try that program. However, our �personal truth� is that of a failure and why wouldn�t it be?

Every success or failure flows from your self-determined �personal truth.� No matter what it is, that is how you go into the world. What you believe about yourselves, how you treat your own truth, leads and directs your hard work.

There are events that go on inside you � inner issues that include the things you tell yourself, the things you believe, and the inner chat that shapes your activities. Unless you get rid of your self-defeating belief, they will actually gain thrust, becoming more totally stuck in the routine patterns of your life and more steadfast to change. Before you rid our self of these beliefs, you must spot and admit them.

How you approach this issue of choice is essential to your success. You are creating your own situation. Once you wake up to this fact, you can begin to see, with crystal-clear definition what choices you have made that led to this result. Then you can start changing thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, and choices to get a different result.

You must accept your role in your problems, recognizing that you are responsible, means that you get it. It means that you welcome that the answer lies with yourself. This gives you a wonderful head start toward success.

I understand that when I start talking about mental goings-on, your reasonable reaction may be, �He�s asking me to look at my thoughts and deal with my feelings. Be real, I don�t put myself first.�

I�m not a self-help guru. What I want to is help you take control of your internal self-talk. Then you�ll be amazed at the power you have to get your food budget under control. However, change must come total from within; this is where you�ll find real power to create lasting results.

Increase Our Savings Through Self-Talk

During the day, you engage in chats with many other people, but your most active and steady chats are the talks you have with your self. It is a real-time metal talk and a flow of opinions that you have with your self about everything that is going on in your life. It is your behaviors too. Deciding your thoughts, you choose the costs that you link with those opinions. If you pick low self-esteem and low self-confidence, it really flows from your self-talk.

Your thoughts are controlling agendas. That�s why your focus with this step will be to throwing away any harmful self-talk you�re dragging around with you and change it with positive, creative inner chats. However, please don�t confuse this with �think yourself rich.� I don�t believe something as important as budget management can be summed up in such a pat phrase, and I�m not here to tell you that the answer to your budget problems is to think good thoughts all the time.

Phase One: Become Aware of Your Faulty Thinking

Typically, mistaken thinking runs along obvious lines. After some research, I have recognized ten of the most general self-defeating messages that can weaken our efforts. Clearly, if we know what these messages are and become aware of them in our own life, we can change the path of our efforts. They are:

1. Outside / Inside: Sensibly, measure what you can control and what you cannot, and take action to make a change in your life.

2. Classifying: Classifications are self-descriptions in your inner chats that echo certain statements you�ve make about yourself. Many of these labels came from how you observed yourself, messing up or it has come from others. However, whatever their basis, you�re inclined to internalize your labels, believe your labels, and live by your labels. When you believe such a label as true, you destroy your self-confidence, your self-determination, and your longing for a better life. If you believe a destructive label, then you�ll completely miss proof to the opposite.

3. Jamming Belief: So when faced with a jamming belief, protect yourself. You convince yourself that any type of lifestyle change is difficult.

4. Crystal Ball Gazing: You are your own psychic and you can foretell your future. You make predictions about your future all the time.

5. The Whole Enchilada Thinking: Many times, you could be at the grocery store and tell yourself, �what the heck, I keep looking at those strawberries and this time I bought them. I�ve blown my budget, so why not get that extra half-gallon of ice cream.�

6. Devastation Thinking: You know you�re in difficulty when you evaluative events and overstate their importance or consequence. It is a form of negative self-talk when an extra dollar you spend is the most you�ve overspent. When you talk to yourself like this, it can lead to loss of self-control.

7. Follow Impossible Dreams: Maybe you�re thinking, �if I save money on my budget, I�ll be like Donald Trump and have my own TV show.� OK, sounds positive, but is it? However, it is negative because it is difficult and impractical. You want to avoid feelings of failure and disappointment. It is a case of being real.

8. Gut-Level Reasoning: For example, the belief that �I feel poor� becomes �I am poor.� You accept a feeling as absolute truth and begin believing it. Your bank account may show you have a small fortune there, but you don�t see or hear that.

9. Self-Downing: �I don�t have any self-control,� you say. You�re condemning yourself. Stop it. It is hard enough other putting us down; we don�t and must not do it to ourselves. You have the power to stop any self-doubt.

10. Poor Me thinking: This comes from feeling deprived or out of fear. For example, you have not had Fig Newtons for months and you love Fig Newtons. You begin to feel sorry for yourself. All you need to do is believe you can have Fig Newtons, occasionally, and still stay on budget.

There are some classic types on self-talking that may be sabotaging you. I hope you�ve recognized from this discussion that self-talk, when negative, is relentless, and can be highly destructive. If you�re demeaning yourself, your body, and your personal control, and your self-talk shows it, you�ll be compromised. Everyone criticizes themselves. Everyone has self-doubt. Everyone has anxiety. However, you don�t have to passively accept these messages. Challenge them and get your life under control.

Phase Two: Challenge Your Faulty Thinking

Is your budget savings problems are due at least in part to errors in your thinking, to flawed statement about what is going on in your life, you have to work to confront that thinking. You need to ask three questions:

Is your inner chat true?

Most of us don�t question the truthfulness of our inner chat; instead you infect it with many of the self-defeating messages. For example, �I can�t help but buy one or two impulse items when I�m grocery shopping.�

Start reacting to your inner replies as if they were statements on a true-fast quiz. Are your responses true or are they false? Can you prove it? You�ve got to start challenging your inner chat in this regard, and expose the fictions and the falsehoods. No matter what you�re telling yourself, test everything against this question. Should it be true, then you must deal with it. If it�s not true, kick it out!

Does your inner chat serve your best interest?

It�s a sure bet that you�re clinging to certain thoughts and beliefs because they serve as a handy excuse or justification for why you�ve botched your grocery shopping savings efforts in the past.

You�re locked in classic victim things. You�re reacting to the world as a victim, clinging to the belief they your problems can�t possibly be your fault. You�ve been conning yourself without cross-examining yourself, because no one�s listening to your inner chat except you. You�ve been willing to accept your excuses as face value and you�ve been letting yourself off far too easily.

There are no victims, only volunteers. You are creating the situations you�re in; you�re creating the thoughts and emotions that flow from those situations. You must embrace the fact that you own your problems and take action to solve them.

Is your inner chat helping you achieve your grocery shopping savings goals.

Given your goals, how does your current thinking help you get there? If you keep repeating �This won�t work,� or �It�s too hard,� help you achieve grocery shopping savings control? Are your thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes moving you closer to what you want?

When your inner chat isn�t true, when it doesn�t serve your best interest, when it�s standing between you and your efforts to reach your goals, then it�s time for you to jack up your thinking and do something different. It�s time to generate positive, healthy inner chat that does everything the negative internal crap does not. If you shake up your internal messaging system, challenging in particular those views you hold about yourself, rather than blindly or habitually accepting them as the whole truth and nothing but, then your level of control over your problems will strengthen, and I mean fast.

Phase Three: Restructure Your Thinking with Positive Inner Talk.

You�ve seen through the examples here that inner chat can be highly negative and disruptive. The flip side to this is a positive type of inner chat � one that is rationally optimistic and productive.

If you tell yourself good things that are not based in reality, this brand of inner chat is not at all positive. It all comes back to your �personal truth,� and you know that is a truth you live. Lie to yourself, and you will pay the price of never achieving your budget goals over the long-term.

A rational, healthy inner chat would tell you the truth so you can do something about it. If you�ve got a problems, admit it. Have an honest conversation with yourself. For example: �I�m not powerless over this behavior. I�m in charge of myself. I have to choose what�s more important; reactive shopping or taking care of my family. It�s my choice, and I can do something about it.� Simply, don�t con yourself.

I want you to root out the self-defeating thinking that holds you back and incorporate rational, balanced, and productive dialogue into your thinking. Doing this means that you must have a new conversation with yourself that respond to negative messages truthfully and positively.

For example: �I�m a loser. I�m a failure.� You want to replace these thought with descriptions that are positive and accurately reflect who you are and what you stand for. Instead of a confining label, describe yourself positively, but always realistically. Call yourself a winner. Call yourself an athlete. Call yourself a grocery shopping saver enthusiast. You want to describe yourself in a manner that reflects a winning identity.

If wrong thinking has been infecting your life for a very long time, keep in mind that changing it is an ongoing process. You must seek to question your focus, dispute the inner conversations you have with yourself, come to grips with your self-honesty, and make it a matter of practice to replace self-abusive talk with rational, healthy dialogue. You must work hard to ensure that faulty thinking does not continually poison your thinking and your self-perceptions. Be patient with yourself as you go through this process. You are learning new skills, and like any new skill, you master them only through practice.

In the Step #2, you continue to believe you can create great savings at the grocery store. In this next step, you�ll see how important keeping an inventory of your pantry, freezer, refrigerator and spice rack are.

Go to Step #2 

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