YOU DESERVE

Weary of this phrase in advertising.  Effective way to get selfish humans to buy more STUFF.

Every time I hear it or read it, I have to ask, how do you know someone deserves something.  What did they do to merit a reward? And I looked up deserve and it is about both a reward and a PUNISHMENT.  Hey, you deserve to get an F on your homework.  You deserve to be in jail.  You deserve to get divorced.  You deserved to crash your car.  Would you hear those words with the same glee?  Where did this entitlement mentality come from and how can I make it go away?

To me it seems quite normal to want personal peace and comfort for self, family, and friends, countrymen, and then the world.  But to throw around YOU DESERVE this and that......

Life is a gift.  I am grateful.  I do not say it is wrong to have a treat or buy something you don't NEED.  But people who fall into this I DESERVE thought pattern are in a trap of greed, love of money (sin) and insatiable desire.

I think if someone in a third world country heard an advertisement saying You DESERVE this, they would look at you with befuddlement!

Homework

Assignment:  Write a paragraph outlining how you will Search your heart, or cut the ropes, or Submit to plastic surgery, or Share Your Wealth.  --page 228, #7. of Calm My Anxious Heart, by Linda Dillow (Women's Bible study I am in at church)  I chose

I.  Submit to plastic surgery.

A.  I do not have credit card debt, but I am living above my means, using up my retirement savings and my kids' inheritance.  I have been a hippie-cricket, judging people who live with credit card debt, while I myself have refused to do the math and live within my means.  I am not totally wicked and out to lunch, in that I tried to buy a condo that was within my means, I sought counsel, looked far and wide, prayed.  But my assumption that I would reach a certain income within a few years without working hard enough to do so and the correlating assumption that I would not use up my savings too fast was inaccurate to say the least.  So I bought.  Then the economy went South and carried my investments with it.

So just as one who hits bottom, and realizes he or she needs to cut up her credit cards and pay off her debts, I have made a SMART goal on how I might reverse my life style from living outside my means to living inside my means.

My goal is to either 

1.  sell my condo and/or

2.   do these 4 things:

a.   get a roommate and

b.   refinance

c.    get a part time job

d.    ramp up painting and marketing;  i.e.  WORK HARDER

(I.)  This most important part of the goal needs to be made into a SMART goal of it's own!  I do have a couple of action steps from this already but it needs more work on Specific and Time sensitive.

Most of all self-coaching has helped me tremendously to sort this goal out.  However I am very aware of me need for PEOPLE and accountability to reach this goal.  That is one reason why I'm writing this assignment right out there in cyberspace.  Comments welcome.  

May the fog clear as I go forward, one baby step at a time.