Could a self-help book really teach me how to wish away my £15,000 debt?
For a year, Marianne followed the rules of self-improvement manuals. They failed dismally to find her love. Now, in the final extract from her bittersweet memoir, she asks ...
know. i had never felt secure when it came to money, and i had never learned how to take control of anything.
sadly, my vows to put unwanted possessions on eBay and draw up a budget didn’t last long. With March came a new book — rhonda Byrne’s The secret — and the reverse attitude.
The book tells the story of a guy who used to get lots of bills in the post until, one day, he decided to imagine cheques coming through the letterbox instead. Then, what do you know, within a month the cheques came flying in.
i really struggled to get on board with this book, but turned my attention to imagining cheques flying through my letterbox.
Next, i downloaded a blank cheque from ‘the universe’ that i found on the secret website. You just fill out the amount you want — and then that amount will magically come to you in real life. i decided on £100,000. ‘right, so when is this money going to land?’ Mum scoffed.
‘rhonda says our dreams only come true if we really believe — and if they don’t come true, it’s because i don’t believe.’ ‘That’s convenient.’ ‘And she says that “time is just an illusion”.’
‘i bet she does.’ The secret also suggested i doctor my bank statements to let them show the amount of money i wanted rather than the reality of what i had.
i took out one statement that informed me that my account was minus £1,238.00 and changed it to plus and Tippexed out the point so that it read £12,380. it was just a week after my financial reality check and already i was going back into la-la land.
if anything, self-help was exacerbating the money problem. After all, it was an expensive business buying all these books, taking time to read them — i.e. not doing my day job — and paying for the attendant courses / holidays. Take June’s book, F**k it: The ultimate spiritual Way, by John C. Parkin (saying ‘F**k it’ to things takes the stress out of life).
The main reason i picked it was because it came with a holiday attached. Weeklong F**k it retreats take place in italy. soul-searching in the sun . . . now that was something i could get on board with.
‘Can you afford to go away?’ asked Mum. ‘Not really, but i need a holiday.’ ‘Marianne, we all need a holiday. last week, you were crying at your credit card bills.’
i tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that everything i was doing was self-indulgent nonsense. i put it on the credit card. obviously. July saw me paying £500 for a fourday unleash The Power Within course in east london.
Yes, it culminated with me walking on hot coals, literally — which in turn made me believe i could walk on water, even possibly fly — but by the end of the month i was in financial dire straits.
i was in my local supermarket when the till made a dull beep and the guy behind it looked up at me. My card hadn’t gone through. i tried again. Cheeks burning. ‘it’s declined,’ said the cashier. i looked in my wallet to see if i had enough cash, but i didn’t.
i handed over my Barclaycard. Paying the £11.20 for a box of tampons and bottle of red wine on a credit card. A new low.
SOON
after, i forced myself to attend a Debtors Anonymous meeting. i was desperate for someone to say they’d run up £100,000 on credit cards just so that i could say ‘look, i’m not that bad!’ — but there seemed to be a shortage of specifics in the stories people told.
According to DA, my debt was a disease, something i was powerless over. But that felt like a lie to me. i wasn’t powerless, and i didn’t want to pretend that i was.
My financial mess was completely of my doing. i did not deserve sympathy — i deserved a giant kick up the backside.
For the rest of August i decided to put a hold on self-help and put all my energies into real help. That is, working and earning money.
By the end of the month i was not back in the black, but the debts were, at least, under control.
in so many ways, my self-help year was looking like a disaster. My debt grew, my productivity plummeted and i was a stone heavier than when i’d begun.
i became irresponsible, selfish and deluded, watching inspirational videos on YouTube instead of doing actual work, and spending money i didn’t have on the basis that the universe would provide.
But i decided to end my self-help adventure with a book called You Can Heal Your life by louise Hay. it’s a self-help classic which has sold 35 million copies since it was published in 1985. it’s about loving yourself. Hay says that instead of beating ourselves up, we must look
in the mirror every day and say: ‘I love and approve of myself.’ That’s pretty hard to say in the cold light of day, but I persisted.
Hay believes all our problems — from money to poor relationships — come from two things: holding onto resentment from the past and the fact that we don’t love ourselves.
Before I started my challenge, I certainly fell into that camp. But by the middle of the following April, at the end of my journey, that had changed.
I called Mum. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to stop the selfhelp stuff.’
‘Oh, good,’ she said, letting out a sigh.
There was a silence on the line before she asked: ‘Do you think it helped?’
‘Dunno. I’m still not fixed. I’m still broke and single,’ I said.
In so many ways the selfhelp books hadn’t helped. At all. Mum sounded surprised.
‘I didn’t think you were trying to fix yourself, Marianne. I thought you were trying to know yourself — and you must know yourself very well by now.’
I took this as a criticism, but she denied that.
‘ I actually think what you’ve done is very brave. You have faced up to things that people spend their whole lives avoiding, and that takes courage.
‘I am very proud of you. I could not be prouder.’
My eyes pricked with tears. It might have been the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.
It was time to stop trying. To just be whoever I was. For richer, for poorer. For good and bad.