21 Ways to Have Fun for Free!

In response to my post from yesterday, I got a comment from Steve that said, “Dude, you forgot #8, cut out all the fun!” While I don’t agree with Steve that those 7 ideas are cutting out all of the fun from your life in order to save money, I think this is a great opportunity to list 21 ways you can have tons o’ fun without spending a dime!

Saving money doesn’t have to be a chore.  You shouldn’t have to hate your life because you are trying to be frugal.  Just get a little creative.

Use your imagination!

When you were a kid, you didn’t have any money to spend but you had fun all day long!  What did you do then?  Why not now?  Don’t underestimate the amount of fun you can have by just acting like a kid again.

So here they are:

1. Build a bonfire

2. Go camping

3. Grab some friends and play freeze tag (you know you want to!)

4. Have a picnic

5. Go kayaking

6. Read a good book

7. Build a fort

8.  Play beer pong

9. All night board games

10.  Go do karaoke

11. Start a blog

12. Blast your favorite cd

13. Take a ton of funny pictures

14. Go swimming

15. Create your own holiday and celebrate it

16. Go see Shakespeare in the park

17. Make someone a mixed cd

18. Watch funny movies

19. Play with your kids

20.  Go to the dog park

21. Explore downtown

Extra tip: Watch the Big Lebowski as many times in a row as possible!

See, saving money and having fun don’t have to compete, you can do them both at the same time!  Do you have any ideas to add to the list?  Let us know in the comments section!

4 Ways to Discover Your Life’s Purpose Now

Over the course of my young life, I’ve read a lot of books on finding your life’s purpose.  Constantly searching for the inspiration that will lead me to what I am meant to do.  Everyone always says, “just do what you love”, but I find that to be a little vague.  I love many things, but there isn’t a lot there that I would say is my purpose in life.   How do you find what you are meant to do?  What should I be doing with my life that won’t leave me empty and regretful at the end of my journey here?

Some people know from a very young age what they are meant to do.  They love it whole heartedly and are passionate about their careers.  I have had a different experience.

When I was younger, I had one passion and one passion only: sports.  My goal in life was to make my dad proud by all the athletic accomplishments I could rack up.  Unfortunately, after high school it became quite evident that I was not born with the gifts to take that love of the game any further.

So I did what I was supposed to do, I went to college.  I’m very grateful I was told that I had no choice but to go to college now.  I think it was worth every second.  However, I did not give much thought to what I wanted to do with my life while I was there.  I picked finance as a major and entered the business world.  While this path does have some updsides, I’ve gained knowledge that has proven to be very beneficial to me.  But I’m not passionate about it.  Honestly, I’m pretty miserable with my career.

The good news is, I’m willing to take a risk.  I’m willing to search out what my purpose is for this life, and then go and get it.  You should be willing to as well.  I know it’s scary sometimes, thinking about leaving your livelihood to try something else, but the pure happiness and joy you will attain by living your passion and following your dreams will leave you more grateful then you have ever been before.

Life is short!  Go for it!

But how do we figure out what our purpose is?  Here are 4 methods that you can try to discover your life’s purpose.  If you don’t get there from these, don’t give up.  Keep searching!

4 Methods for Discovering Your Life’s Purpose

1)      Write your life story as if it were perfect –

Take out a sheet of paper and start writing.  Write about every aspect of your life to be absolutely perfect in your eyes.  Your house, your job, your family, everything in a utopia that you construct.  What does it look like?  What do you do with your time?  What gives you that feeling of happiness?  What activities do you do?  When you have completed this exercise, and it may take many revisions and several days to complete, if you are completely happy with this life you created, start writing what you would need to do to create this life.  It may be difficult but it can be done!  Go get it!

2)      Thoughts Map –

Get a piece of paper and at the top write “This is my true purpose in life”.  Now comes the fun part.  Start making a list of the first things that come to your mind.  It can be a question, one word, happy, sad, or crazy.  Just keep writing.  Don’t stop, don’t think, just write.  Keep writing words one line at a time until something hits you.  Keep going until something just feels so right and you are filled with feelings you haven’t felt in a long time, if at all.  When that happens, you may have found your purpose.

3)      What makes you cry? –

That’s right you are making another list.  Get ready.  This time you are going to list every single thing that makes you cry.  They can be happy things that make you cry tears of joy, or terrible things that make you terribly sad.  These are going to be things you are passionate about one way or another.  Is there a problem in the world you could work to fix?  Is there something that makes you so happy you would want to experience it every single day?  These are excellent places to start!

4)      Post-It reduction –

Grab a partner for this one.  Start writing the things that are most important to you in the whole world on post it notes, one per post-it.  Keep going until you can’t think of anything else to put down.  Now line them all up and sit back for a second.  Here is where it gets interesting.  Pick one thing that you can do without, that you can give up and hand that post it to your buddy.  When you get down to only a few post-its you are getting close to your purpose in life.  When you get down to the one thing you can’t live without in this world you have found your purpose.  If what you are doing in your life is not directly related to this post-it note you are headed in the wrong direction.  Do this several times, you’ll find that your answers will change over time.

Try one or try them all, but keep trying!  Life is too short to live a life without passion.  To not discover what you were put on this earth to do seems like a waste of the gift.   Do you have any ideas for how to find your purpose in life?  Leave them in the comments section so we can all give it a shot!

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Be Grateful!

Be grateful.  If you have the ability to read, you have an amazing gift.  If you have a computer, an internet connection, freedom, you are blessed more than you can imagine.  Be grateful for what you have.

I have been spending a lot of time on what I don’t have lately.  As I start to find my purpose in life and pursue my goals and dreams, I am constantly thinking about all the things that I wish I had that would make my pursuits easier or more financially rewarding.

I’ve realized that if I spend my time dwelling on my shortcomings, and all the things I don’t have, I tend to simply get more of that in my life.  And those thoughts breed more thoughts just like it and soon enough I’m stuck. Riding this never ending wave of self doubt and envy.

But if you think about it, if you are grateful for what you have, and you spend time consciously focusing on the abundance in your life right now; there is no room for self doubt or envy.  If you are intensely focused on how grateful and blessed you are to have the car that you drive, it is impossible to be jealous of your neighbor’s car at the same time.

When you appreciate the things in your life for what they are, and you are truly happy that you have them you can eliminate all of the negative thoughts that keep you from the life that you desire, the life you deserve.

“You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.”
~ Sarah Ban Breathnach ~

Here are 4 ways to include thankfulness in to your life:

1.)    Gratitude journal -

I am a HUGE Patrick Combs fan, and one of the very first things I learned from Patrick is to have a gratitude journal.   Every night before you go to sleep, open up your journal and write down every possible thing you can think of to be grateful for.   Then when you wake up, read back through it, realize all the great things you have in your life.  You will attract more wonderful things in to your life this way.  And in a year or two, you can look back through this journal and just smile.  You’ve had so much your whole life and you didn’t even realize it!

2.)    Picture wall –

Take pictures of all the things you are grateful for.  If you can’t take a picture of it, take a picture of something that reminds you of it.  Then create a big collage of all the things you are thankful for.  I hope you have a big wall to use because you will see it start to grow very quickly.  Make this something you see every single day.  Gazing at this wall can bring an amazing feeling of peace.

3.)    Write a thank you –

Don’t be greedy with all that gratitude you have.  Spread it around.  Write a nice handwritten thank you as often as possible.  It means so much more when you write it yourself too, although an email can be nice as well.  Do this as often as you can, the person who receives it will appreciate it more than you know.

4.)    Thankful Post-It Notes –

Carry some post-it notes around with you wherever you go.  Be aware of your thoughts.  When a thought of jealousy pops up, acknowledge it, and then pull out your post-its and write something you are thankful for on it.  Then stick it right in front of you.  This is a very easy way to break that cycle of wanting and then feeling bad about not having it.  When you appreciate what you have, you will attract more good things your way.

Having an attitude of gratitude will change your life.  It is something that is so simple, yet will make a difference almost immediately.  Take one of these 4 ideas and give it a shot, try it for a few weeks or a month and see what a difference it makes.

I hope if any of you out there have any ideas on how to develop a more thankful attitude you would visit the comment section and let us know.  There are so many different ways to be thankful every day, so let’s hear some more ideas.

My first set of links comes from a blog carnival called “Cultivate Posivity” and it features blog posts that are motivational and inspirational.  Here are 5 that I enjoyed and I think you might as well.

1.  How to Boost Your Self-Esteem (and Happiness!)  - Everyone seems to have an opinion on the importance of self-esteem. And yet, the general understanding of the meaning of self-esteem in the public arena is slippery at best.

2. Brian presents Think Positive & Fight Depression posted at How To Live a Longer Life, saying, “Thinking positive can can help improve mortality rates and assist in disease prevention and recovery but only in cases where the positive thinking is genuine. How then do you think genuinely positive thoughts when you’re fighting depression?”

3. Pay Yourself First - Anything you do requires energy. And everything you do creates energy. Anything. Even reading this article. You’re spending energy by focusing on the text, processing the info in your brain and matching it against what you already know. At the end of this process, you get some energy back in the form of new ideas, new approaches or possibly some answers. Hopefully, you’ll get some positive energy by reading this.

4.  Celes presents Cultivate Good Habits in 21 Days posted at Celestine, saying, “Have you ever thought of introducing a good habit into your life, but never got around to doing it? Perhaps you tried it for 1-2 days, but then lacked the discipline to continue afterward. This is a 21-day program which will help you cultivate good habits into your life

5.  Ali Hale presents Life: Choose Your Own Adventure posted at Aliventures, saying, “Do you feel like life’s boring, tedious or a struggle? Do you get stuck because you’re scared of making choices that might have negative consequences? Take back your life, and start choosing your own adventure!”

My Auntie Jan

“Looking out the door I see the rain fall upon the funeral mourners.  Parading in a wake of sad relations as their shoes fill up with water” ~Jeff Buckley~

Yesterday my uncle passed away.  He had been sick and suffering for a very long time and is in a much better place now.  My heart goes out to my Auntie Jan though who is one of the sweetest, kindest, most inspiring women I have ever met, and I’m so happy that she is family.

Auntie Jan is one of 9 children in a very close knit Irish family.  She grew up with my mom and her other siblings on the same street in Cleveland, Ohio with dozens and dozens of her cousins.  When she was 18 she went to live in a convent.  And there a big part of her story really began.

The sisters needed someone trained in first aid in order to care for any of the nuns that got sick.  So they paid for her to get her training.  It kind of stuck.  And she eventually left the convent and started to study to become a nurse.   I think the reason she excelled so much in nursing is because she just naturally cares so much for people.  As the oldest of nine she helped raise all of her brothers and sisters her whole life.

But she didn’t stop there, she just kept gaining nursing degrees one by one by one.  And that little hospital she started at she never left.  She has been at Fairview hospital for her entire career.  And through the decades as she built relationships and cared for patients became very beloved by nurses, doctors and staff, because she never stopped caring.

And so within the last year or so,  she became the first women president in the history of Fairview Hospital.  An achievement that inspires out to the most distant cousin and down to the nieces and nephews of our family.  And while I mourn for the loss her husband and my uncle. I know that she loved him very much.  I was told that last night she had them bring a bed in to his room and she put her scrubs on and slept right next to him through the night.

Life is short.  And I am inspired to live my life to the fullest every single day because we only get one shot at this.

There are no second chances.  Every moment that goes by is a moment we will never see again.

It is my sincere hope that I can one day be an inspiration to my family.  To my cousins and my nieces and nephews like my Auntie Jan.  To live my life in away that makes it evident that my nature is to care.  To love.  To hope.