It’s Ok to Change Your Mind

I’ve noticed a com­mon theme in con­ver­sa­tions with friends the last few months. These friends have made big, bold deci­sions.…… and are now ques­tion­ing if that’s what they real­ly want/if they’re happy/if that’s the best path for­ward for them.

To my friends, I say it’s ok to change your mind.

I’ll say it again for my friends in the back. It’s ok to change your mind!

It’s per­fect­ly fine for you to try some­thing out and decide it’s not for you. It does­n’t mat­ter how much time you spent talk­ing up the changes to friends, fam­i­ly, and ran­dom strangers in the park­ing lot at the gro­cery store. If some­thing isn’t work­ing for you, you can go back to what did work for you.

I have some exam­ples from friends in the com­mu­ni­ty (dif­fer­ent friends than the ones men­tioned above). Since the fol­low­ing peo­ple have talked about it on their blogs, I feel ok with using their sto­ries and names as an exam­ple in this post. (I did also ask them if it was ok to use their like­ness as well because I’m a good blog­ger who does­n’t assume :D)

Sce­nario 1:

My friend Tonya at Bud­get on the Beach decid­ed to stretch her wings and fig­ure out what life looked like in Boise, Ida­ho. As you might have guessed from her name, she’s been in a beachy envi­ron­ment the last few years (or more lol). LA, specifically.

LA to Boise is quite the change, and Tonya quick­ly real­ized she actu­al­ly did­n’t belong in Boise like she did in LA. There’s no beach vol­ley­ball in Boise, just a few out­side vol­ley­ball courts one can use a cou­ple months out of the year. For some­one who loves beach vol­ley­ball as much as Tonya does, that’s a prob­lem. She also took a reg­u­lar office job while there and quit that after a few months after she real­ized it was­n’t pos­i­tive­ly con­tribut­ing towards her men­tal state.

So, Tonya packed every­thing back up and moved back to LA. She still does­n’t have all the answers, but at least she is in the right spot to fig­ure it all out.

Sce­nario 2:

My friend Liz over at Fru­gal­woods had a cloth­ing ban go on for 3 years. 3 years! That is huge­ly inspi­ra­tional, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er she had 2 kids in that time frame. She did­n’t buy any clothes at all — not from the thrift shop, not from a garage sale and def­i­nite­ly not from a store. She did get clothes for free from fam­i­ly mem­bers, friends and her Buy Noth­ing Group, which is super use­ful when you change sizes as your body changes from hav­ing babies.

I’ve been fol­low­ing Liz’s sto­ry for a long time. I don’t even remem­ber how long I’ve been read­ing! She’s been a fan­tas­tic source of fru­gal inspo for me, from intro­duc­ing me to the Buy Noth­ing groups to hack­ing your own home seltzer set­up to the cloth­ing ban. I did­n’t buy cloth­ing for a long time because of her stance on buy­ing clothes.

Well, in 2017, she wrote a post about the end to her cloth­ing ban. Basi­cal­ly, there were things she gen­uine­ly need­ed for their new life on the home­stead that she was­n’t buy­ing because of the ban. The item that broke the ban? Muck boots! A very use­ful item to have when you live on a homestead!

Then, this year, she wrote a post that was an in-depth reflec­tion on her rela­tion­ship with clothes. I think it’s easy to go to extremes in the world. First, she bought too many clothes (even if they were from the thrift store or garage sales). Then, she went too far in the oth­er direc­tion and banned buy­ing clothes all togeth­er. But… was that the best solu­tion for her long-term? Did those free clothes make her hap­py or feel at home in her new body after the babies?

She real­ized that a change was need­ed with her wardrobe. She gave her­self per­mis­sion to make the changes she need­ed to live a bet­ter life. If that bet­ter life looks like get­ting rid of a ton of clothes you’ll nev­er wear again and buy­ing 4 of the same pair of leg­gings, why would­n’t you make that choice? Espe­cial­ly when you have the mon­ey on hand to buy clothes that help you feel your best.

Lessons learned

Like I said ear­li­er, I take a lot of inspi­ra­tion from Liz and oth­er blog­gers in the com­mu­ni­ty. Hell, I got into the FIRE lifestyle by imple­ment­ing a lot of Mr Mon­ey Mus­tache’s ideas into my life. I’m not quite “Mean-Girls-copy­ing-Cady-Heron” lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion, but I con­sid­er what they have to say and try out some of it in my life.

I haven’t been on a strict cloth­ing ban stretch­ing over the years, but I have been con­scious of bring­ing new clothes into the house. I am deter­mined to wear my clothes as much as I pos­si­bly can. This lets me get great val­ue out of the mon­ey I spent on them, and also helps com­bat excess waste like from the fast fash­ion industry.

I bought sweaters in the fall of 2013 before I start­ed my first pro­fes­sion­al office job. They looked real­ly nice and I got a lot of wear out of them. The thing I’ve been strug­gling with is when is too long? I’ve had these sweaters 6 years now. Do I have the same fash­ion style as a 29 year old as I did when I was 23? Not really.

I gave myself per­mis­sion to update my wardrobe this year. I’ve spent a fair amount of mon­ey on clothes this year, prob­a­bly more than the last 2–3 years com­bined. Add in the mon­ey I spent on the per­son­al styl­ist con­sul­ta­tions and that’s prob­a­bly more mon­ey spent this year than the last 6 years com­bined. I tried real­ly hard not to spend mon­ey on clothes the last 6 years. But, I rec­og­nized the need for change and have now start­ed to reap the gains from it. I feel bet­ter about myself and more con­fi­dent, know­ing I’m wear­ing clothes that help me look my best. Those sweaters I bought in 2013? Active­ly get­ting phased out of my wardrobe in favor of out­fits like the one I wore below.

That pic­ture was tak­en by my amaz­ing sis­ter in the lob­by of a hotel in down­town St Louis.

What was I doing in a hotel in down­town St Louis with my sis­ter on a Thurs­day night? Excel­lent question.

I’ve real­ized in the last few weeks that my cur­rent com­pa­ny is not one I want to be at long term. So, when a com­pa­ny recruit­ed me to work for them, I inter­viewed for the posi­tion. The com­pa­ny ulti­mate­ly went with some­one who was a bet­ter fit, which I dis­cussed in detail here. Get­ting denied by that com­pa­ny was kind of like a hard switch in me got flipped. It made me re-exam­ine pret­ty much every­thing in my life. Why do I do the things I do?

I real­ized I don’t have very many rea­sons to stay in DC. I like liv­ing here, I’ve met some amaz­ing peo­ple and had some fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ences. How­ev­er, I’m not from here. I don’t have fam­i­ly any­where around me. Life here in DC is expen­sive and if I’m not get­ting paid enough to live here, why stay?

A friend was talk­ing about hav­ing trou­ble fill­ing a posi­tion on his team in a group chat. We asked him more details and it turns out the job would be a very good fit for my skills, so I applied. I would absolute­ly love to move back to the Mid­west. I have no rea­sons to stay in DC, and many rea­sons to move back clos­er to home. It was a bit of a mind­set shift to say where I went to col­lege and have peo­ple not only know where it is, but react pos­i­tive­ly about it. My phone num­ber is from an area code around St Louis. My St Louis Car­di­nals neck­lace did­n’t look out of place in the slightest.

I think the job would be very inter­est­ing to have! Every­one I met was gen­uine­ly nice and wel­com­ing, so the com­pa­ny seems like a great place to work and have a career. I’m will­ing to move to try out life at a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny, but I want to find a place where I can stay for the fore­see­able future. I’m tired of mov­ing around so much. Now that I don’t want to retire at 35, I want to find a com­pa­ny where I can set­tle in and stay for 10, 15, 20 years. This com­pa­ny seems like the place to do so.

I’m in the mid­dle of the inter­view process, so noth­ing is set in stone. If I don’t get this posi­tion, I’ll wait a few months until my secu­ri­ty clear­ance is renewed and pick up the job search then. I think some­where in the Mid­west would be ide­al for me to set­tle down — not home but close to home. Some­where like St Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, Madi­son or Min­neapo­lis would work well for me.

Conclusion

Before I leave you with just a pic­ture of the world I know best, I’ll offer more words of com­fort and advice.

At least, I hope you find them comforting.…

Any­ways, when mak­ing a big deci­sion, just remem­ber you don’t have to stick with it if you don’t want to. You might not be able to go back to your exact pre-deci­sion sit­u­a­tion, but at least you’ll know what works best for you and can go about build­ing that life. A move to a dif­fer­ent city did­n’t work out? Move back. A cloth­ing ban is no longer serv­ing your best inter­ests? Go buy some new clothes that make you feel fabulous!

Our lives are too short to be stuck in some­thing that isn’t work­ing for us. We are not trees — we can change our sit­u­a­tion any time we want.

Thanks for read­ing! Have you made a big deci­sion and lat­er went back? Let us know in the comments!