Category: Mental Health

Abundance, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Working Mums

How Gratitude Can Change Your Perspective

Lyn Bailey

How Gratitude Can Change Your Perspective

They say the love of money is the root of all evil. We are not here to pass judgment on that inanimate object, but the idiom does point out the danger of obsessing over what you don’t have. Often, people who love money never believe they have enough, so they never enjoy the fulfillment of their passion.

Focusing on what’s missing does not recognize one important fact: Your mindset is a choice, not a destination.

You can choose to be grateful for what you have right now. The choice takes a millisecond. You are free to choose gratitude for the goodness in your life rather than frustration over what you don’t have. By the way, science tells us that choice can do you a world of good.

The Many Benefits of Gratitude

Would you like to lower your blood pressure? Gratitude has been proven to do exactly that. Express gratitude regularly, and you will enjoy more positive emotions. A gratitude practice has been linked to reduced chronic pain symptoms, better sleep, and better overall wellness in mind and body.

Those are some pretty nice rewards for simply taking the time to say, “Thank you.”

By the way, those benefits are yours whether you are thankful for something you have done or someone else has done for you. You get the same rewards if you are sincerely grateful for a beautiful sunrise or sunset. Taking time to appreciate the goodness in some far-flung part of the world will make you happier and healthier.

Your Mindset Creates Your Reality

Do you know someone who is usually negative? They can’t find a good thing in the world or their life. They can have an experience you would be grateful for, but all they take away from the situation is negativity.

You probably know someone who is the exact opposite of that person. They are always happy and upbeat. Their positive outlook doesn’t prevent them from experiencing difficulties and overcoming challenges, but it allows them to make the best of a bad situation.

In each of these cases, mindset creates reality. Most of the time, you will see what you expect to see. Express gratitude, and you foster a mindset of positivity. Guess what you begin to see everywhere? You see goodness and positive people and experiences.

The person who obsesses over what they don’t have will continue to experience lack. They don’t have the time to be thankful for the gifts in their life. They constantly try to achieve or possess something they don’t currently have. With that mindset, they are constantly frustrated and possibly even angry because they don’t have what they want.

Planning for the future and working to achieve your goals is okay fine and necessary.. That gives you purpose. Just be sure to appreciate what you have. Gratitude for your life as it is now fosters positive emotions and has an almost magical way of attracting more goodness.

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Mental Health, Mindfulness, Working Mums

Easy Ways to Start a Gratitude Journal

Lyn Bailey

 

      4 Easy Ways to Start a Gratitude Journal 

Journaling your thoughts is a proven mood booster. It helps you develop a better sense of yourself, fosters goal achievement, and is a great stress reliever. Start a daily gratitude journaling habit to lower your high blood pressure, sleep better, and experience more happiness and contentment.

Those are just a few of gratitude’s many physical and mental health benefits. Combining gratitude and journaling is a wonderful way to enhance overall well-being, and here is a four-step process for getting started.

  1. Choose a Space and Time

The human brain doesn’t like surprises. It prefers to know what’s going to happen. Scheduling your gratitude journaling practice at the same time each day makes your brain happy. It starts to mentally prepare you before your scheduled journal time.

You will get more out of the process when you set a schedule for journaling and stick to it. The same is true of the environment you choose. Always journal in the same space. If you can dedicate a space to nothing but writing in your gratitude journal, all the better.

Your survival instinct and sensory network will begin to recognize your chosen space and time as a positive experience. Expressing gratitude triggers happiness and other positive emotions. Your brain rewards that positive experience with feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters, and you look forward to your journaling sessions.

2. Choose a Medium

We recommend that you write by hand in a physical journal. Handwriting boosts learning and memory in a way that typing on a keyboard or tapping on a touchscreen can’t. That means you naturally get more out of the process when you take a physical journal and record your reflections.

There are countless journals available online. Your local bookstore may carry gratitude journals. You can also use a simple notebook to record your expressions of gratitude.

Digital gratitude journals provide anytime access if you can’t lay your hands on your physical journal. Current users highly rate the following apps. I haven’t personally used any of these. I prefer to hand write in my journal.

  • 365 Gratitude Journal
  • Gratitude
  • Presently – A Gratitude Journal

 3. Use Gratitude Prompts

Some days, you need help to recognize the goodness in your life. That’s what gratitude prompts do. Here are a few prompts to help you start your gratitude journal.

I am thankful today for _____.

  • What did I do today that made me smile?
  • What can I see in my immediate surroundings that I am thankful for?
  • What do I experience in nature that makes me happy?
  • What memory do I have that fills me with joy?

Most gratitude journals you purchase will come equipped with daily prompts and other features to simplify the process.

4. Take Daily Action

That’s it—it’s that easy. The next step is to take action. Stick to your schedule, and don’t miss a day for the first three or four weeks. By then, you will be so used to the process that it will become a habit. Start a gratitude journal today for more happiness and better overall well-being.

If you want help or support to start your journaling, then I’m offering a FREE Discovery Call to help you get started. Just click HERE to book your call.

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Mental Health, Mindfulness, Personal Development

Daily Habits to Cultivate Gratitude

Lyn Bailey

Simple Daily Habits to Cultivate Gratitude

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and you will live a happier and healthier life. Gratitude has been a big part of my life for many years. It has helped me get through many major challenges in my life, including a marriage breakup after 34 years, and a diagnosis of bowel cancer over 5 years ago. Regular gratitude practice has been linked to significant health benefits in the mind and body. Your relationships will improve, and so will your outlook on life. I am living testament of this. Here are a few tips for cultivating gratitude daily for an overall wellness boost.

 

Volunteer And Help Others

How does helping others make you grateful? Volunteering your time or services develops an appreciation for what you have. It is a simple way to cultivate gratitude and connect with others who want to help in their community.

 

Say Thank You Five Times Every Day

Commit to thank someone five times every day. Do it in person. If this isn’t possible, then pick up your phone and do a FaceTime or audio call. This is far more personal and meaningful than a text message. If text is the only way available, as is currently with my granddaughter who is overseas for eight weeks, then by all means use it. Expressing gratitude in someone’s presence gives you the benefits of socialization. Personal interactions trigger the production of chemicals that make both parties feel safe and happy with the connection.

Committing to five “thank yous” every day is positively contagious. You will find yourself expressing gratitude more than five times each day in different experiences and aspects of your life.

 

Give a Genuine Compliment

Paying a compliment is a form of gratitude. You express your happiness about someone’s clothes, hairstyle, or behavior. People love receiving compliments. The recipient of your grateful recognition might be having a difficult day. Your sincere compliment could change their perspective from negative to positive. I like to make a point of complimenting someone each time I go to the supermarket. It may be a worker on their work, or another shopper on the colour of their top. You can always find something if you just look.

As with any act of gratitude, paying a genuine compliment makes you feel good, not just the recipient of the thanks. You are happy about what you did, and your self-respect grows. 

 

Express Gratitude for Yourself

You can thank yourself for being the unique person you are. Be thankful for your skill or a random act of kindness you performed. Being grateful for some aspect of yourself is a sign of respect. Your self-esteem and self-appreciation grow, and that’s a beautiful thing. This is often the most difficult expression of gratitude to give. Try it in front of a mirror, and repeat it until you feel comfortable thanking yourself.

 

Start a Daily Gratitude Journal

Record your thoughts every morning and each night. Begin and end your day with wellness-boosting thoughts of gratitude. Each morning, express gratitude for what you hope to accomplish. That increases the chances that you will have a good day.

At night, journal about the goodness you can take away from your experience. What people, places, and things were you grateful for that day? Are you thankful for something you did or experienced? Digital gratitude apps ensure you can always record your thoughts about what you are thankful for.

If you feel this is too much time or effort, then just get a small notebook and every day write down just three things you are grateful for, just three things.

 

Say “Thank You” to Your Mistakes

Look at the positive side of your mistakes and failures. If you let them, they can be wonderful teachers. Mistakes tell you what didn’t work, and they are stepping stones to improvement. Be grateful for your mistakes and embrace anything positive you can take away from the experience. This is often the hardest time to feel grateful. Believe me, if you do this, it can change your whole enjoyment of your life. When I was diagnosed with cancer I became grateful for my doctor who ordered the blood tests that detected something was wrong, grateful for my surgeon whose expertise saved my life, grateful for my family and friends who rallied around me during that difficult time. 

 

Start today with our FREE Mini Gratitude Journal. Click here.

 

 

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Journaling, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Personal Development

How Journaling Can Help with Mental Health Issues

Lyn Bailey

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Keeping any type of journal will help with improving any mental health issues. However, if you really want to tackle a specific problem youíre having, it will help to determine the right type of journal to keep. Keeping a particular kind of journal may work best for your issue.

* Boosts Your Mood ñ If you really want to boost your mood, keeping a gratitude journal is where itís at. All you have to do is once a day, preferably before bed, write down what youíre grateful for today. It might not seem like much but itís very powerful for going to sleep, thinking positively about your life.

* Increases Your Sense of Well-Being ñ As you write out your thoughts, youíll start seeing issues from a new angle just because youíre opening your mind to think about it. This is going to make you feel more capable of dealing with whatever happens.

* Lessens Symptoms of Depression ñ Understand that depression is something different from sadness, and that you likely need a counselor. Writing it all down can make it seem less horrific so that you can feel better. Plus, you can look back at days you thought life was “over” and see better days after.

* Reduces Anxiety ñ The problem with anxiety is that it was designed to help us get away from immediate danger. It triggers the “fight or flight” response. If each time you have that anxious feeling you choose to write in your journal how you are feeling and why, youíll start to control it better.

* Lowers Avoidance Behaviors ñ Many people who have mental health issues practice avoidance behaviors such as not going to places that cause them anxiety, or not doing the things they need to do due to how they feel. When you write it out, it helps you get the feelings out but do the thing anyway.

* Youíll Sleep Better ñ Pouring your heart out into a journal is a great way to get things off your chest. However, for sleep, go to the gratitude journal and write down what youíre thankful for today and go to sleep thinking of that.

* Makes You a Kinder Person ñ Exploring your own emotional state and accepting your own feelings while you work through what makes you who you are in your journal is going to make you naturally more empathetic to others too. Letting go of judgment for self improves your thoughts for others also.

* Improves Your Memory ñ This is almost a situation where you want to say “duh” but it has to be said. Writing down things helps you remember them because you can go back and read it, but also because the act of writing something down enables you to recall it.

One thing that can really help you make your journaling work is to learn how to keep one effectively. Make some journaling rules, do it every day to create a habit, and keep it private unless you decide to let your therapist see it or you decide to use it to help others. This is for you and only you for the most part.

Click here for your FREE Gratitude Mini Journal
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Journaling, Living Now, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Personal Development

How Journaling Can Help with Achieving Your Goals

Lyn Bailey

Journaling can help you achieve your goals because it will force you to think about them, consider the why and how, and delve deeper into the situation so that you can examine all sides of it. Read on to find out how journaling can help.

* It Forces You to Write Down Your Goals ñ When you start a journal, it basically is a way to force yourself to document your goals. Whether you write them down on paper or you use technology to get it all down doesnít matter. Once theyíre written, they are ready to tackle.

* It Makes You Consider Why and How ñ As you enter data into your journal, youíll be forced to face the why and how of your goal. This is especially true if you write down a goal and focus on it in your journal. 

* It Enables You to Examine the Opportunities and Threats ñ When you are focused on goal making with your journal, youíll also explore opportunities and threats coming your way due to your goals. It helps you avoid roadblocks in advance. 

* It Makes You Develop Steps for Success Based on Your Goals ñ When you see it written down, youíll want to notice and pull out any steps youíve developed in your journal and put them in your calendar for scheduling. 

* It Helps You Improve Goal Setting and Achievement ñ Each time you intentionally set goals, define steps to achieve the goals, and perform them, you are setting yourself up for being able to improve your skills. 

* It Provides Accountability ñ Even if no one else is reading your journal, a private journal can help you become accountable to yourself. If you develop the habit of looking at your journal each day and put something else in there each day, itíll work great for helping you become more accountable. 

* It Provides a Permanent Record ñ Having a permanent record of the things youíve done in your life, whether itís personal or work, is a beautiful thing. Hardly anyone has a perfect memory, so youíll maintain the lessons learned better with the record to look back at.

* It May Be Inspirational ñ Depending on the journal, you might even be able to take the information inside and compile it into a real book for others to read to inspire them. You might also take from it steps for your success for a project and turn it into a course to inspire someone else.

Journaling is an excellent way to work toward achieving all your goals. It will even help you make better goals because the process of entering facts in your journal will cause you to see them in a more logical way that is more useful.

Click here for FREE Mini Gratitude Journal
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Living Now, Mental Health, Personal Development

Is Journaling Right for Everyone?

Lyn Bailey
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Is Journaling Right for Everyone?

 

 

 

Journaling is an effective tool often used for self-reflection and personal growth. Self-reflection is the process of thinking about and evaluating one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

 

It is a way of assessing oneself to make changes and improve one’s life. Self-reflection can be done through journaling, therapy, or simply taking time each day to think about your experiences and how they have affected you.

 

Self-reflection is critical because it allows you to see yourself objectively and to understand your thoughts and feelings better. It helps you identify areas in your life that you want to change. By practicing reflection, you can make positive changes that will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.

 

Journaling can also be used to help improve your mental health, physical health, relationships, work-life and more. However, it’s not suitable for everyone.

 

If you’re not ready to truly look at yourself with an objective eye, act on the information you gain from this insight and do the work necessary to become the person you want to be, journaling may not be right for you at this time. When you’re ready, then journaling can help.

 

Below are some characteristics that may indicate that journaling could be a struggle for you. We’ve also included tips to help you overcome the problem so you can try to make it work.

 

You have trouble focusing

 

If you have trouble focusing on one task for an extended period of time, journaling may seem frustrating to you. The act of writing can be very calming and therapeutic, but it requires a certain level of focus and concentration. If your mind wanders, you may find it challenging to stay on track while journaling.

 

Tip to overcome this: If you have trouble focusing, try setting a timer and concentrate on writing for that amount of time. Alternately, rotate how you journal. One day, focus on what you’re writing. The next day, let yourself freely write whatever comes to mind, whether or not it makes sense. 

 

You are not comfortable with self-reflection

 

Journaling involves self-reflection, learning to be open and honest with yourself. Getting to know yourself on a much deeper level. If you’re not comfortable looking inward and examining your thoughts and feelings, you may find journaling an uncomfortable experience.

 

Tips to overcome this: If you’re not comfortable with self-reflection, try journaling about topics other than yourself. You can write about current events, your favorite TV show, or anything else that interests you. Share your thoughts, opinions, and feelings on the topics and even how the topics affect your life. 

 

 

You are resistant to change

 

If you’re resistant to change, journaling may be less effective than you wish. The act of journaling can be compelling and transformative, but it requires a willingness to reflect on your life and make changes. If you’re not ready to change your life, you may find journaling tedious.

 

Tips to overcome this: If you’re resistant to change, try journaling about your resistance. Why are you resistant to change? What are your fears? You may find exploring your resistance is not as impossible as you thought.

 

You are not comfortable with emotions

 

If you’re truly honest with yourself when writing, journaling can be emotionally intense. If you’re not comfortable dealing with your emotions, journaling may be an uncomfortable experience when first starting out. 

 

Tips to overcome this: If you’re not comfortable with emotions, try writing about them in a detached way. Don’t judge your emotions. Just observe them. What do they feel like? What are they telling you? By observing your emotions without judgment, you may find that they’re not as scary as you first thought.

 

Journaling is a fantastic way to improve yourself and your life. While it can be a struggle and may feel uncomfortable at first, if you’re in the right mindset and willing to do the work, the benefits can be rewarding. If you try it and find it isn’t right for you, that’s perfectly okay. Use the tools that work best for you to overcome the roadblocks that limit your ability to live the life you want.

 

To find out if journaling is for you, download your FREE Gratitude Mini Journal below and give it a try.

 

Click here for your FREE Gratitude Mini Journal
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Abundance, Living Now, Mental Health

5 Benefits to Starting Your Day with Gratitude

Lyn Bailey

Why Start Your Day With Gratitude and Positive Thinking?

Did you know that starting your day with positivity is one of the best things you can do to improve your life? It has an immediate, powerful impact on your life. The benefits are numerous, and you start experiencing them from the first day you deliberately begin your day being positive and grateful.

These are the top five benefits you gain from a positive start to your day.

Better Mood

Starting your day with positivity increases your mood and helps you have a better day. Being positive brings you inner peace, lowers your stress levels, increases your optimism, and makes you feel good. All of these benefits combine to put you in a better mood.

Taking time out to inject positivity and gratitude into your day improves your mood at all times of the day but it is especially effective first thing in the morning.

Increased Health

Positive people are healthier than their peers. This is partly due to the lower stress levels experienced by those who practice positivity, but there is more to it than that and scientists are still working to understand it. Positive people are healthier on every level and tend to live longer as well!

Starting your day with gratitude and positive thinking sets the tone for your entire day and will lead you to be more positive throughout everything in life.

More Success

Being positive and grateful first thing in the morning helps clear your mind and allows you to focus more on your tasks for the day. This leads directly to having more success every day and over the long term. Positive people, as a whole, are much more successful than others. This is true in every aspect of life, from careers to relationships.

Happiness

Not only does starting your day with gratitude and positive thinking increase your mood, but it makes you happier. It boosts all of the “feel-good” hormones in the brain that make you happy. This isn’t a transitory effect, either; it lasts all day and over the long term increases your overall, permanent level of happiness.

Improved Relationships

When you start your day with positivity, you clear your brain and are in a much better space to relate to the people you care about most. This makes it easier to maintain healthy, caring relationships. This improvement starts almost immediately and lasts over the long run.

These are just a few of the benefits you can get from deliberately beginning each day with gratitude and positive thinking. You will experience many more if you make it a habit!

 

 

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Abundance, Living Now, Mental Health

5 Ways Gratitude Can Turn Your Bad Situation Around

Lyn Bailey

5 Ways Gratitude Can Turn Your Bad Situation Around

Gratitude has the power to get you through difficult times and turn your life around. It can motivate you to keep reaching for your goals by constantly placing what you have already accomplished right in front of you. This is why you are always told to learn to master thankfulness and nurture a grateful mindset.

Eighteen years ago, my marriage of 34 years broke down and ended in divorce. I was devastated. How could I manage on my own? How could I support myself? How could I ever be happy again? I felt so many emotions – guilt, shame, rejection, overwhelm, fear – just to name a few. How could I ever get out of this black hole? I didn’t know where to begin.

So, one day a few months later, I was meditating, a practice I have been doing daily for many, many years, when this thought popped into my mind. “There is so much to be thankful for. You have 4 amazing children, 2 beautiful granddaughters, your health, a roof over your head, a great career as a midwife, food on your table, wonderful friends, just for starters. There is a way out of this. You will try and figure it out.” I started to feel a sense of relief. “I may have lost my marriage but I still have the strength to work and rebuild a new life,” Just like that, I broke free from the chains that were holding me in the past, looked to what I wanted in the future, and started to live my life in the present, knowing this is the only moment I have complete control over. Gratitude became my new way of life, as I started to see the new doors that were opening in front of me.

One thing that enabled me to turn this bad situation around was creating an attitude of gratitude, shifting my focus from the pain of my marriage breakup to future I was free to create just for me.

Thankfulness turns your unfortunate situation around by:

  1. Shifting your focus.

   The worst thing about hard times is erasing them from your mind or finding ways of concentrating on something else. You can’t help but focus on how horrible your situation is and unintentionally think about how everything went wrong. Nonetheless, shifting your focus is possible if you maintain gratitude in trying times. Phrases like “I am still standing” “I have survived the worst” and “I still have so and so or such and such” will get you through tough times.

  1. Encouraging positive emotions.

    Gratitude gives birth to positive thoughts. Positive thinking is the key to positive emotions because what you think determines how you act, react, respond, or feel. Mastering thankfulness gives birth to positive emotions which keep you focused on “I am strong enough” and “I can fix that.” Therefore, understand that turning your situation around is possible only when you feel you can.

  1. Eliminating your fears.

   Gratefulness encourages you to concentrate on your ability to turn things around thereby eliminating your fears. Appreciating what you have accomplished and what you can still accomplish helps you notice that you have the chance to turn things around. So, use gratitude to overcome your fears.

  1. Emphasizing your strong points.

   Paying attention to what you can do when you are in a crisis is the only way of seeing things from a different perspective and changing what you don’t like. If you focus on “I am good at ABC” and “I can use this skill to effect change” you will move your life in the right direction and see the changes you are longing for.

  1. Imparting a strong sense of worth.

    One thing that makes you realize your sense of worth is having someone show you how much they value you when you are at your lowest point. To have someone do the unexpected for you reminds you that there are people out there who care about your welfare and that alone gets you going.

Appreciating that your life is not what it used to be because of something that someone did for you when you weren’t expecting or when you were not deserving fixes your mind on a thousand things to be grateful for.

Anything is possible when thankfulness becomes the center of your life. For instance, overcoming negative thoughts, controlling your emotions, getting back up, as well as turning your life around.

If you want help seeing life differently and developing an attitude of gratitude, download my FREE Gratitude Tool HERE

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Mental Health, Productivity, Working Moms

How Much Are Distractions Costing You

Lyn Bailey

How Much Are Distractions Costing You

You probably think you’re pretty good at multitasking. After all, you can text and walk simultaneously, right? Wrong! My daughter was doing this walking to uni one day, and didn’t notice the pothole in the road. She ended up breaking her ankle as she fell into said pothole! So, unfortunately, when it comes to multitasking, it’s more likely to cost you time and money than to save it.

A study conducted by the University of California, Irvine found that it takes the average person 23 minutes to recover from one interruption and get back to the task at hand. And if you’re interrupted multiple times, that number can go up exponentially.

So, how much are distractions costing you at work?

Let’s say you’re interrupted three times an hour. That’s an hour of productive time lost every eight hours, or the equivalent of losing a whole day of work every week. And that’s just for starters.

You will make mistakes if you constantly try to juggle multiple tasks. For instance, a study by the University of Pennsylvania found that people who were interrupted made 50% more errors than those who were not.

And those errors can cost you, both in terms of time spent fixing them and in terms of lost business. In fact, the AICPA conducted a study that discovered that one in four businesses lost revenue due to employee mistakes. You may even be passed over for promotion due to last-minute completion of work.

Research has repeatedly and consistently found that multitasking is not feasible with human cognitive functioning (Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Madore & Wagner, 2019). To take this one step further, in one study, only 2.4 percent of participants were found to be able to multitask effectively (Watson & Strayer, 2010). And most fascinating, Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013) reported that people who think they are good at multitasking are actually not good at it!

Sometimes It’s The Office; Sometimes, It’s You

Sometimes the distractions are not due to how your workplace is set up but how you use your time. When you’re constantly checking your phone or taking calls, your boss may not view you as fully focused on your work. After all, spending too much time socializing with co-workers or browsing the internet takes away from productive work time.

To avoid these distractions, you must be mindful of your time management and focus while at work. For example, when coworkers want to chit-chat when you’re trying to get work done, you can politely say that you’re busy and need to focus on your work.

You can also try working in a different area where fewer people are around to distract you. Finally, if the chit-chatting is bothering you, you can talk to your boss or HR about setting some boundaries with your coworkers.

There are less aggressive things you can do even in an open office that gets the message across, such as posting a sign near your cubical or work area, or if you have an office door, shut it and put up a sign that you’re focusing on work right now to make an appointment.

Next time you’re tempted to answer that text, check your email or chat with coworkers in the middle of a work task, think about how much it’s costing you. But, on the other hand, the thought of the cost might be enough to make you focus better on working. Distractions may cost your company a lot of money, but they also cost you in the long run if you miss out on important promotions, raises, or the respect you deserve.

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Budget, Mental Health, Productivity

Organize Your Finances

Lyn Bailey

Organizing Your Finances for More Efficiency

Organizing your personal finances can help increase your efficiency. Being organized lets you stay on track with your budget, make smart financial decisions, and reach your financial goals.

Click here to get your FREE Tip Sheet – 9 Hacks to an Organised Life.

Being organized for efficiency financially means:

 Having a budget to track your income and expenses

  • Automating your finances by setting up automatic bill payments and savings transfers
  • Keeping your financial records organized so it’s simple to track your progress
  • Working with a financial planner to get professional advice on managing your money

The first step in personal finance is to find out where you stand financially, which will require some level of organization. You must know your income, expenses, debts, and assets. Start by getting organized so that on any given day at any given time, you can easily see where you stand financially without any stress.

Keep track of your spending — Knowing where your money is going is the first step to being more organized. Keep a budget or use a tracking app to help you get an idea of where your money goes each month. Personally, I find using Spending Tracker a very handy way to do this on a daily basis.

Make a budget — Once you know where your money is going, you can make a budget to ensure you’re spending within your means. Don’t forget to include savings so you will reach your future financial goals.

Set up a system —Whether it’s a physical system like folders and a budget binder, or a digital system like Mint or Personal Capital, find a way to track your finances that works for you.

Automate your finances — Automating your finances can help you stay on top of your bills and save money. Set up automatic bill payments and consider using a service like Digit or Acorns to save money automatically. I do this using my mobile bank app as I like to keep everything in the one place if I can.

Keep your receipts — Receipts can help track spending and budgeting purposes. Keep them organized in a system that works for you – use either a physical folder or a digital app.

Stay on top of your credit — Checking your credit report regularly is an excellent way to catch errors and keep track of your credit score. Clear Score sends me weekly updates and notifies me of any changes. It’s a free service.

Review your bank statements — Reviewing your bank statements can help you catch errors and fraudulent charges and keep track of your spending. Doing this on a daily basis really paid off for me recently, as I picked up fraudulent activity on one of my accounts within hours, and my bank was able to stop it immediately.

Invest in a good financial planner — A good financial planner can help you organize your finances, set goals, and make a plan to reach those goals. If you earn enough money to save money, this will be a worthwhile investment to get more organized.

Get organized — Getting your finances organized can help you save money, reduce stress, and make better financial decisions. Use the tips above to help you get started.

Personal finance includes planning for future financial security for you and your family. Organizing your finances efficiently requires creating a system for managing your money that is streamlined and easy to use. This might include setting up a budget, tracking your spending, and creating a system for paying your bills. An efficient system in place will help you save time and money.

Click here to get your FREE Tip Sheet – 9 Hacks to an Organised Life.

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