Getting Smiles Into Your Days

March 03, 2017

As I sat down to write a blog post, my phone’s text message alert went off.  One of my friends sent a message that he was watching the Baltimore Orioles first spring training baseball game of the year. He sent that to a group of us who get together periodically to go to baseball games and that message made me smile. When pitchers and catchers report to spring training, it tells me that warm weather is right around the corner. The first day of spring training games is almost a holiday in my mind.

Opening Day is one of my favorite days of the year. As a kid, my uncle took me to a lot of Opening Day games in Baltimore and that feeling of being a kid taking the day off from school to watch baseball still hits me as an adult. Baseball, to me, means the end of winter and the start of spring and summer which are my favorite seasons.  It’s all about renewal and hope (for a winning season). On Opening Day, everyone believes that their team has a shot at winning the World Series. 

I’ve seen the spirit of hope and optimism hit employees of our client companies when we have had a few conversations and their debt level starts to come down. A large percentage of people I talk to are coming to me for help with reducing or eliminating their debt load. In those cases, the first meeting is usually one where they come in looking very tense and full of stress. Being overwhelmed with debt, from my observations, is bad for a person’s posture, mood and stress level. 

After the initial conversation, we put together a personalized plan of attack for their debt and we check in periodically (the time line depends on the person and the severity of the debt load) for what I like to call “brag sessions.” In a brag session, they come in and tell me how much of their debt they’ve been able to pay down since our last meeting. We celebrate the progress and acknowledge that there is still room to go. The important part is that these sessions are enjoyable and we are always looking for ways to make more progress. 

In many cases, after a couple years of check-ins and brag sessions, the debt level is close to zero and you can see their eyes light up when talking about what life will be like when they get to $0 debt. I’ve had a number of people come in to the office and pull up their final credit card balance on their laptop to show me that they just paid their last little bit of debt off. When they show me that or bring in the checkbook and write the last check in the office, their level of excitement about what comes next reminds me of the first days of baseball season when excitement and optimism reign.

Are you’re looking for a way to generate some smiles and some enthusiasm into your days? Check out some spring training baseball or..get one of your debts to $0. Either way, it’s a great idea.