When Familiarity Breeds Complacency

 They say familiarity breeds contempt.  I say that it breeds complacency.

We are in an age now where job security is not a sure thing.  Where people change jobs every two years, chasing a higher wage, different benefits.  But what about those who stay in the same job for years?

You may be in a relationship for a decade or two, but are you happy?  Or is it just what you know and it is easier?  Are you making yourself unhappy because you are too scared of being alone?

In relation to behaviour, you may have grown up a certain way and you act in accordance with that, but does that not mean that you can change?  Questioning the way you have always acted can be intimidating.   It is has worked for you so far, why change?  But what if the change will make your life better?  Make you better.

The new can be exciting but also terrifying.  It is an unknown quantity threatening to enter into your space.  A space that you know well.  That is safe.  It is what you know.

I have experience with some of these.

I was with my previous employer for twenty-five years.  I had grown up there; it was safe and familiar.  I had a fantastic boss.  But.  The work had changed and was hurting my soul.  The business had moved to somewhere inconvenient.  The money was not what I wanted and was not likely to change.  My partner questioned frequently why I stayed.  My answer was always; it is home.  But the truth was, it wasn't anymore.

Then one day I was approached by someone from my current employer, suggesting a move.  Something in the stars that day made me think.  Made me question what I really wanted to do and what I wanted to achieve. 

My job then was a safe cocoon, but was I still happy?  I decided to make the leap of faith, knowing it was right and that I could do this.  I was ready.  Although there were many tears (from me) when I left, it was absolutely the right choice.  I do not regret it for a second and have been so happy in my new employ.

The second experience is how I act.  How you act and react is often formed early on.  Behaviours are learned that are not always healthy.  Now that I have reached a time in my life where everything is good, those behaviours need to change.

I apologise too often.  I put myself down too often.  I wait to see someone’s reaction before I allow myself my own.  I am scared of rejection and can be like a puppy begging for affection.  All of these things are learned behaviour, but I know are not what I was meant to be.  Who I was meant to be.

Hard wired reactions are hard to change.  But the answer is slowly.  Step by step.   Day by day.

I pause a lot now before I speak.  Before I rush out an unneeded apology.  Before I put myself down.  I have noticed since doing this that I even used to put myself down first, before mentioning something good that had happened to me or something I had achieved.

A prime example of this was this weekend.  I was at a spa with friends and I was talking about a post that I had written with my friend, while we were getting a facial.  She said that I was a writer and I was good at it.  I immediately tried to diminish.   Saying no, I am just a blogger.  I write part time.  Just bits and pieces.  It was an immediate reaction that I could not take back.

But I am a writer.  Yes, I do write part time, but it is my passion, my love.   It is my vehicle for words that may not come out of my mouth, but are in my head.  My words flow freely through my fingers when I write.  It is a natural.  It is freeing.  It is mine. 

If someone likes my writing, then that is wonderful.  But it is not why I write.  I write because I want to.  Because I need to.   It is in me.

Now, when someone asks me what I think, I try not to predict their reaction before I answer.  I also try not to give them the answer or reaction that I think will please them the most.  I am more honest. 

These are all things that I am still learning, still trying to do.  It is hard to rewire learned behaviour, but it is possible.

I don’t know about you, but I have been at so many stages in my life, and I am a very different person to the girl I once was.   Every step, every change, you do not notice while it is happening; but then you look at yourself one day and you are not the same person.

Courage.  Courage is key.  It is about giving yourself a chance.  A chance for more, a chance to be a better version of yourself, a chance to expand your life.  A chance to be happier.

I welcome new things into my life now.  Changing the immediate no, to a maybe, to a yes, to a hell yes.  When you open yourself up to new things, the possibilities and rewards are endless.

Budgeting Tips for 2026

 I have talked about money saving tips before on this blog here.

Today I wanted to talk about the basic budgeting techniques that I carry out every day in order to make the most of my money and make it work for me.  I have one budget for my personal money and another for the joint account for my partner and myself.

I have a monthly budget for every month for the next year.  Sounds excessive?  Probably, but it works for me.

The biggest things to factor in are the things that you don’t think about at first glance.  For example, some months of the year have five weeks in them.  There are four this year.  So what does that mean?  An extra weekly food shop at a minimum.  A five week month will typically require an extra £150 to my budget when you look at all the extras.

What I do to counter this is at the beginning of the year I look at the number of months with the extra week and work out the extra money needed.  So this year, an extra £600.00 was needed.  This equates to £50.00 per month.  Every month as part of the budget, I transfer £50.00 to our savings account, using when needed on the “extra months”.

Another thing to look at are subscriptions services like Amazon.  We have regular subscriptions set up for things like coffee, pet food etc which are all set to different frequencies.  Some can be every six weeks, every three months, etc.  So at the start of the year I check the dates (Amazon helpfully projects the dates for you) and I incorporate these figures into the appropriate month.

When it comes to food, make sure that you have the store clubcard.  With mine, I pay an £8.00 per month subscription, but this saves me 10% of two of my shopping bills.  On average, after taking the subscription payment into account, I usually save at least £20.00.  Over the year, that is a saving of £240.00.   Every little helps!

Other things to think about are things like home and car insurance.   It is usually cheaper to pay annually for these things, so I set aside an amount every month (based on the previous year’s figure with an increase of 10%) to go into a specific savings account to pay for them when the time arises.  This accrues interest and means that when the time comes, the money is ready and waiting to be paid.

I tend to use a cashback site when arranging the yearly insurance too, which can gain you around £100 if you shop around.  I use the cashback sites for many things, but the big earners are home insurance, car insurance and pet insurance.

I also incorporate a “slush” section into my monthly budget.  There are the inevitable things in the month that come up that you need (or want) to buy and having some extra money available helps.  I account an amount of money every month and anything we don’t spend is moved into a savings account.

Forward planning for the year ahead means that I am never surprised by the extra food shop in the month, or when the bulk orders from Amazon come out of the account.  It is there, ready.

This type of planning absolutely takes time and I am much more vigilant than I need to be.  I update the budget when bills come out, food is bought etc every few days so I always know where we are at any given point.

Here is an example of the accounts I use for our joint account in order to keep everything running perfectly.

 Current Account                      All bills are paid from here

Insurance Savings                    Money is transferred here by standing order each month

Regular Savings                       Any money left over from the “slush” money goes in here together with     the monthly “five week payment”.

 These are just a few of the ways that planning out your budget for a year can save you money.  I would estimate that doing everything the way that I do saves/earns me £400-500 a year.

What top tips do you have for your budget?

Creative Corner 4 - Wishes from a Genie

Story Prompt

You are given three wishes by a genie, but the twist is, you don't get to chose what you receive. The genie does.

Do you remember the day that the earth decided to stop hiding the magic in the world?  No one ever discovered the reason why.  It was as if Mother Earth had just decided that there was too much pain in the world and decided to give us the magic that we knew, or hoped, was under the surface.  Just outside of our vision.  But no longer.

What became interesting was what was folklores were true, what creatures were real and what we had in fact made up in our heads.  Fairies?  Real.  Trolls?  Real.  Dinosaurs?  A hoax, apparently perpetrated by pixies (also real) to mess with the human race.

Dragons were real, but had in fact become extinct.  The Loch Ness Monster, was real but also now extinct.  I was sad about that one.

Crime rates went down, though this was a technicality because it turned out that a lot of unsolved murders were actually committed by vampires and the occasional werewolf and no one was quite sure yet as to whether those beings could be charged with a crime.  You certainly couldn’t put them in prison.  They would eat the population.  

The Yeti and Big foot were real, but decided to stay in the shadows.  They were still not interested in interacting with humans.

Magic was real, although who was magical and who wasn’t was still not obvious.  A bit like Harry Potter with us being the muggles.  Magical people prefer to keep to themselves and have their own government.  Although it is called Nydrian.  Not the Ministry of Magic.

What brings me to my post today though is my experience with a magical being.  Not a witch, wizard or warlock, but an actual genie.  They are exceedingly rare so rumours still fly around as to their existence.  But yes, I met one.   Here is my story.

What you need to know about genies is that yes, they do grant three wishes, of a kind.  The difference however is that they choose for you.  They are a pure spirit and can see what it is that you actually need.  So what did the genie choose for me?  Three opportunities to speak to my soul, the essence of my being, at times of my choosing.

At the time I was disappointed.   Winning the lottery for example would have been nice.  But after much thought on the matter, and indeed after having my three wishes, I discovered that what I had been given was actually priceless.  I received inner peace.

Have you ever found actual true inner peace?  I did not think it was possible to be honest, or even if I thought about it, it was never something that I believed that I could ever attain.

The first time I spoke to my soul I was wary.  I was going to find out who I actually was.  I had been through a lot in my life and wasn’t sure I would like what I found.  So I started with “Hello.  Who am I?”

My soul, unnamed and female, told me to close my eyes and she took me back to the absolute baseline of myself.  The core of who I am.  For that time period, every moment of pain, every sadness, every bad moment of my life was lifted off my shoulders and set aside.  It was all still there.  But temporarily moved to the side.  So I could truly see, me, stripped bare.  I felt lighter, so much lighter. And so young. 

There is something wonderful, and quite relieving about realizing that you are the person that you thought you were.  The feeling that had plagued my life of not being good enough was frankly ridiculous.  It was such a pure feeling; and it has stayed with me since.

Even when it was over and all the pain that had been removed was put back, I knew, absolutely, that I was not only still a whole person, but that I was enough and that made so much difference.  That is when I began to realise what I had been given.

I chose not to take my second opportunity to speak with my soul for about six months.  I was settling into myself, the new feelings of confidence and I knew, somehow, that the actual work would begin with my second meeting.

I was right.  The second time was hard.  The hardest thing I have ever experienced.  There was anger in my body.  Rage. Indescribable fury.  There was something in me that needed to come out.  Immediately.  I won’t tell you the details, some things do have to remain private, but the words that erupted from my mouth had festered in me for decades. 

It was painful, but so very needed.

Anger isn't healthy. Pain isn't healthy. Burying them as deep as I had damages your soul. 

The fall out from that took me some time to heal from.  To accept.  To understand what that meant and how my life would be different as a result.   For a time the sadness that I have carried for so long was much worse, but I began to understand that the knowledge of it was no longer festering inside me.  I was free of it.

I waited a year for my final encounter with my soul.  I needed to heal.  

I did not know what to expect.  I was nervous.  Scared.  But what happened that day was the most beautiful, perfect time of my life.  I found my inner peace.

This time, my soul said hello back and although there was no corporeal being for me to see, it felt that she was pleased to see me.  She was welcoming me I realised.  She told me that I was free.  She invited me to step into what I guess you could describe as a mansion in my mind.  Some people call them memory palaces.

I realized that there were no more skeletons hiding there.  No locked boxes with chains wrapped round them, never to be touched.  No dangerous paths that I did not dare traverse.  I was finally free of all of it. 

It is hard to describe, but I felt that I was finally moving into myself.  There was so much of me to explore.  No dark corners.  I was there to be filled, to be explored.  The more I moved around in this place, the more sunlight streamed in.

There was scar tissue there. Previous pain. But healed. It no longer needed attention or notice.

I knew at that point with absolutely certainty that the future was mine now.  To do with what I wished.  That nothing could hold me back. All those dark places inside me were now filled with light and were ready to be filled again with whatever I wanted. With happiness.

I can truly say that I had never felt as happy.  Ever.  I experienced real, beautiful joy.

Knowing that nothing can hold you back now is powerful. I can truly see now what I have in this world. So much to be grateful for.  I can look back at my journey and feel proud that I made it out. In one piece. Whole.

The world is now is open to me.  I can truly enjoy my life. 

So if you happen to come across a genie, let them choose. They truly do know best. 

I'm off now to chat with the fairies, who really do live at the bottom of your garden. Turns out, they can make a mean mojito.