Make Cheer, Avoid Burnout
I am a person who largely disagrees with the concept that we introduce ourselves by what we do, as opposed to who we are and how we got this way. But if you're curious, I am a talent development professional. I work for the City of Chesapeake, but I'm just a person. I love people. I'm really creative. I have a podcast. I'm a creative person who loves to make cheer. If you ask any of my close friends, anyone from college, they would tell you I do the most. I do the most literally in execution, but also in personality. I'm very dramatic, very gregarious, so much to the point that in college they actually called me DTM for doing the most. It was just a thing, everyone knew Amber does the most.
I was an RA, which stands for resident assistant. Basically I lived with about 30 residents during their freshman year, and I was there for advice. I also co-founded an organization with my best friend, called WISTH, it was Women Inspired by Success through Health. We designed t-shirts and sold them to raise money for breast cancer. I had an article, Delta Sigma Theta, Doing the Most. Delta Sigma Theta is my public service sorority. This was an article that kind of talked about all the work that we did.
I did all of these things on top of the fact that I had two on campus jobs. I worked at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I was a double major in Spanish and business. I did all these things and what did this lead to? Me being burnt out. I was historically an A student, from elementary school through college, but by my junior year I'm doing all of these things and my GPA went from a 3.5 to a 1.9, which is detrimental. That GPA led to me losing one of my scholarships in my final year of school, which cost me $15,000. I had to take out a $15,000 loan my senior year of college just to afford to be able to stay in school, because that one semester where I pushed myself way too far.
You may say to yourself, "This is probably where she's going to tell us how she learned her lesson." No, it's not. My lovely roommate Amanda Robinson, used to say, "Natural disaster took place on my roommate's side of the room." My side was the hot mess, her side was a beautiful black and white bed with nothing under it but one suitcase. This is a perfect representation of my life. As we said in the beginning, that duality. I was the person who was a hot mess, but all you see is the other side of this dresser. You see the put together Amber with the made up bed... I post on social media, I'm happy, all you see is that I'm succeeding, but under it all I'm literally looking like this messy room.
Did I now stop and say, "Amber, learn your lesson." Nope. I continued to, what? Show the duality. People on social media see I graduated. You don't see that it cost me $15,000 extra dollars. You just see I graduated. I have this brick that my parents bought for me when I graduated, it says, "I came, I saw, I flourished." I sure did, but I had some breakdowns, I shed some tears. At this stage of my life I was not quite ready to address the fact of my blundering side. Instead of learning, I graduated and I kept the same pattern.
I get this phenomenal job. I'm a human resources manager. I'm working 60, 70 hours a week, and just like when I was in college I'm like, no, I want to do things. I want to make cheer. I want to help people. As Mark said earlier, food is the gateway to good times. I believe that. No, I did not become a chef, but I still absolutely love to cook. We are really big here on Sunday dinners in our family. Every Sunday we do potlucks. I used to just host dinners at my house and invite people over because I wanted to. I paid for the food all by myself. Look at me, I just told y'all I had all this debt and here I am paying for all this food! I'm still spending my money, my resources, and my time to host dinners and workshops. I'm projecting all these things to help everyone else but me. I'm still a hot mess. Here I am, working 60, 70 hours a week, but spending every dime I have to host events, make t-shirts, and be involved. I'm not going to blame all my financial blurbs on other people. Even now, I still love to shop. I still waste the extra money that I had.
Here I am, years later, burnt out and this time the bill was $20,000. There was a $15,000 loan for school, and then a $20,000 in credit card debt that I amassed over the next four years. I'm a creative person, you see. I made a vision board where discipline was the biggest word. On the back, I cut up all my credit cards and glued them to the back and I said, “I never want to forget again.” When I messed up in college, I clearly forgot how it felt because I did it again. I said, "Amber, we're not doing this a third time in a row." I cut up my cards. I glued it to the back of this vision board because I wanted to always be able to remember what I did and keep from doing it again.
"You can only impact others if you're good yourself." I like this quote. That is something that I have come to understand wholeheartedly. I cannot host events, I cannot donate money, I cannot spend money to cook food and do all these things if I don't have any. It doesn't work.
I work for the City of Chesapeake, but specifically I work with the libraries, which is the most beautiful creation under the earth. The library literally just exists to create space for others, to provide access to resources. Service is not just something I do on the side, it's what I do in my full time job. My parents are pastors, so I'm used to serving in the church. I'm like, I hope one day from now you'll see me somewhere and be like, "I remember that girl."
I have so many unfulfilled dreams, and visions, and ideas inside of me. I said, "Amber, you can't do any of them if you can't manage your money, you can't manage your time, your room looks a hot mess, you're not sleeping." I had to pause and let's tackle this debt. $20,000. I was only 22 when this happened, when I got to that highest number. It felt like, well I'll pay it later. I can do it later when I'm older. It was so big, I ignored it for several years, but one day I was like, "Okay, we have to get this thing together." I used what is called the debt snowball to do so. The debt snowball method is a very popularized method that many people refer to as a way to get out of debt. The way that the debt snowball works is, first you list all of your debts from lowest to highest. For example, let's say I had a Macy's credit card, which I did. I had a Target credit card, which I did, and I had a Discover credit card. Let's say those are my only three debts. I write those debts down and I say how much the balance is on each of these.
The next step is, you make the minimum payment on all our debts except the smallest one. As I hope you may know, with credit cards there's always a minimum payment, but if you only pay the minimum payment you'll be paying it forever. Let's say the minimum payment on Macy's was $20, Target's $25, and Discover is $30. I'm going to pay $25 on Target, $30 on Discover, but my surplus income that I have each month, let's say I have $80 of surplus income, I'm going to apply that to Macy's. Instead of paying $20 on Macy's, I now pay $100 on Macy's. I'm paying $100 on Macy's each month to add that extra $80 to pay it down quicker. Then I'm still just paying the minimum on Target and Discover.
The way the snowball works is the Macy's debt is going to clear quicker than the other two. When that happens, instead of saying, "Ooh, the Macy's credit card's gone, I have this extra $100 for myself." You say, "Ooh, I have this extra $100 to apply to the next lowest credit card." $100 Macy's payment is gone, and now Target was $25, but I pay that $100 on the Target. Now I'm paying $125. Then next I end up adding $125 to the $30 and by the end I'd be making a payment of $155 a month to Discover.
The concept of the snowball is you do a little, and it makes you feel really good, you get a win. I got rid of the credit cards and the momentum compiled with the actual fact that you're paying more money builds onto each subsequent credit card. Just like a snowball, if you imagine a little ball, and imagine someone rolling it, as it goes it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Not only does it work, you'll repeat until your debt is paid, you literally psychologically feel the momentum. Like wow, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. As you continue to do it, you believe you can really knock out your debt. Then I got to the point where I'm just like, here's $1000, here's two, let's get it done. I went from being hopeless to excited to give whatever extra dollar I had to just get it out. I said, "I've got to get this gone." I was able to pay it off by December 2020.
Now I will add, I didn't just do this with my salary. I hustled. I used to do graphics, so I used to get paid on the side to do graphics. If I got $500 for a project, I could just put that straight to the debt. I don't have to consider it as a part of my working income. With my salary I tried to just budget, but any time I got money from graphics, I paid it in. I also took an overnight job. I worked at a hotel overnight. Every paycheck went to my debt because it just got so stifling to not be able to do. When you're a person, like I'm sure many of you are because you're on this call, you're a person who has the heart to create, and you can't, that feeling... That feeling is something I never want to feel again.
I got a package from Reasons to be Cheerful with the 2020 annual and the latest zine. I do graphics. I know this is a labor of love and time, but I also know this was an expense. What if the RTBC team were in the same position I was and because they were so stifled by their debt and the poor decisions of their past, they didn't have the resources to make cheer, to make all that we know today and bring us together here today? That was enough for me to say, "All right, I've got to pull it together."
For you, maybe your finances are tip top. Maybe it's not your finances. Maybe it's your health that's suffering, or your marriage that's suffering, or your mental health, or your relationship with your children, your parents, your religion, your time, you don't have enough of it. You're slipping with your boundaries, maybe your job, your business. There's so many things that bring us joy and are reasons to be cheerful. But if we're not good, how can we then deflect from that and try to help other people?
I said to myself, "Okay yes, I paid off $20,000 in debt, but I still want to get a little bit better and save." Now, my focus for me personally are finances, health, my religion, time and boundaries. Maybe for you it's something else. I want to talk through a few ways to help yourself through this time.
My mom always says, "You can't expect what you don't inspect." The thing about finances, and I start with finances because, number one, it was a huge obstacle that I overcame, and in overcoming it I'm like, I have the power to overcome every other obstacle I have. Also, being someone who specializes in learning and talent development, I'm big on analogies and similarities and things to help me understand concepts.
In the same way when you're in debt, the first step is to track all of your expenses. You have to get a pulse on your spending habits in order to really change them. I'm applying that same concept to the rest of my life now. I literally have a spreadsheet, guys. Each day I track if I made an unplanned purchase. I track if I worked out that day. I track if I spent time to have a devotional. I track if I was late anywhere, whether it's work, a birthday party or whatever. I'm tracking that. I track any time I say yes when I really wanted to say no.
This is me, because I do the most, so for me making a spreadsheet to get my life together makes sense. I'm not changing anything yet. I'm doing what I would do when I first got my debt, before I could make a budget I had to say, "These are your spending habits." These are the five things I want to work on, and I made a spreadsheet and I'm just tracking them in the same way.
So my mom says, "You can't expect what you don't inspect." You can't say I want to lose weight, I want to grow closer to my spouse, I want to spend time with my kids, if you're not actually checking to see how you're doing in that area. That's what I'm saying with my debt. It was so big I said, "Ah, I'll get to it later." I wasn't checking it out and really realising what I was doing, and realising that I had the capacity to change my situation.
The first step is you have to make the choice. There's a saying that goes, "When the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of making a change, that's when you change." It was at some point the pain of me just sitting here with this debt and being a hot mess was like, okay no, it's going to be worth it to try to change. I really love this quote from Brianna Wiest. I am just obsessed with her work.
"Self care is often a very un-beautiful thing. It is making a spreadsheet of your debt, enforcing a morning routine, cooking yourself healthy meals, and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution. It is sweating through a workout or confronting a toxic friend, getting a second job to save money, or figuring out a way to accept yourself so that you're not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything all of the time. True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don't need to escape from. And that sometimes means doing the ugliest thing you have to do."
First things first, make the choice. Second thing is to get some help. I'm sorry if you came here thinking I was a financial expert, I am not. I hired someone to help me with this. I read books to help me with this. Get an expert. Again, if you're talking about your marriage, get a marriage coach. If you really want to work on your health, get a nutritionist. Get an expert to help you. Get a therapist.
I know that with everything that Reasons to be Cheerful do, all the money they make is donated to an organisation that helps prevent suicide in young adults. We want to make sure that we are getting with experts that have the tools, the resources to help us when we need it. Maybe you just need a mentor. Maybe you want to do better at work or you want to write a book, so you get a mentor with someone else that wrote a book, right? Maybe you want to work on your religion or whatever, your faith, so you talk to your pastor. It is okay to ask for help. Sometimes it's the people that help others that are so afraid to ask for help themselves, or are so busy helping other people they don't ask themselves. Ask for some help.
Next is to express yourself. Mark (of RTBC) said about the Monday Communions, "When the pandemic took hold and the lockdown started, I knew that I would miss a couple of things. I would miss presenting. I would miss accidental meetings with people not like me. I would miss togetherness. I would miss the exchange of ideas. So rather than grieve these things, I set about recreating them online."
Whether you decide to build a platform, like Reasons to be Cheerful, which is unmatched, or like me, I have a podcast called Giving Roses, where we appreciate life and those we love. We literally give roses, tangibly and intangibly. Each episode we let people go on the website, you can go on the website if you want to and say, "I want to give roses to my brother. I want to give roses to my mom." We read these roses on the podcast. We let our listeners vote on who we mail a bouquet of roses to. We have just been mailing out roses to random people to spread light and joy. Same kind of concept.
Expressing yourself does not mean you have to have a podcast, or a blog, or host communions, you can literally cook. Just this past weekend I was feeling a little down, uninspired, I had to write a paper for school, so I said, "I want to make something I've never made before." I found this recipe for salmon with dill. It was just dill and ginger. I got some fresh dill, fresh ginger, chopped up the dill finely and then I used a micro plane to get the ginger grated. Then it was a citrus salad. It had grapefruit, orange, the same dill and ginger, cucumbers, olive oil and avocado. It was bright and different, and just cooking it gave me some joy. Then eating it was another way to express myself. It doesn't mean you have to do it in an outward way like this. It can be just a personal way to say, "I Amber, I love to cook and I want to express myself and do it through the food that I chose to make for myself that day."
You can exercise. I'm by no means some perfectly ripped person, but I have come to understand how exercising is not for the sake of losing weight, but simply for the sake of your brain. The oxygen flows to your brain, you just feel good. Exercise doesn't have to mean you're in the gym hating it. You could be like me, and I choose to exercise through dance. The gym is not my zone. I just try to dance every morning. 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day, and just moving my body without thinking I need to lose weight or make some six pack. Just moving my body each day. It gives you energy. It gives you oxygen. It makes you feel good and it's another way to make cheer for yourself.
Lastly, read. If you can't afford to hire an expert then read. Some people just love to read anyway. There are dozens of books in the world that are literally just designed to help you in every aspect of your life. I'm finishing up Atomic Habits by James Clear, but there are two books that are on my to read list. The Afrominimalist Guide to Living with Less. Then Set Boundaries, Find Peace, because I'm still learning. Boundaries are my weak point. Whatever you know you need, you can take the time to read yourself.
You may be thinking, "Girl, you gave me a lot of homework." Well, so is what Reasons to be Cheerful do. This Annual. This took a lot of work too. Sometimes when it comes to yourself it's like, I have to wake up early, I have to work out, I have to save my money, that's so much work. If I ask you to put together something amazing like they did, you'd do it quickly. Why? Because it's for other people, right? Everything that brought us here together today is nothing but hard work, money, time.
I don't know all of you personally, all I'm speaking about is Reasons to be Cheerful because they're who I do know, but I know if you're here reading this Annual then you're like them in some way. You're a creative in some way. You're making cheer in some way. I'm hoping this resonates with you, the concept that it's only too much work when it's for you. When it's for someone else, it's just a delight, it's a delight to sacrifice.
I cannot suffer from burnout ever again in my life, and I cannot ever put myself in the financial position that I have in the past, and so I am currently working. I'm out of it, but I'm currently being very intentional about making sure I never go back there. On my journey, I am just trying to tell as many other people in the world who I think may be like me to do the same, to find ways to make cheer and take care of yourself. Because there's a scripture that says, and this is translated into another version called the message,
"What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?" What good would it do? I really want you to ponder on that the next time you think it's too much work for you to wake up early, or it's too much work for you to tell that person no. It's too much work for you to stand up for yourself. It's too much work for you to put in a few extra minutes at the gym. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you?
I encourage you to think about the things that you put to the side. Think about the things that you may let suffer at the expense of helping someone else. Think about the things that you need to do, you need to inspect, you need to look at to ensure that you are your best you. Because when you're your best you, you do your best work.
Make the choice. Ask for some help. Express yourself. Exercise. Read. Make cheer for you so that you can put yourself in a position to make cheer for other people.
We need you.
Amber Heyward