Oh look! It's FREE!!!

I, like  lot of people, sign up of for many store's incentive cards.

You know the ones I'm talking about:

"play 10 rounds of putt putt and get the 11th FREE!"

"Buy two and get one FREE!"

"Join our birthday club and we'll send you a voucher for a FREE meal!"

The list goes on and on.

It seems like my purse has become this endless void of frequent visitor savings cards.

If you put something in there you may never find it again.

I often find myself frantically digging through my purse as the checker and everyone in line behind me waits for me to find it.

Or, if I don't find it, then I get to yell out my personal phone number for the world to hear.

I'm not too crazy about that and invariably I get a "can you repeat that?".

Ugg....


Anyway, one of the restaurants that I signed on with keeps sending me loads of FREE stuff in my e-mail.

Most people would ask why I'm complaining.

It's because, while I can and do plan for restaurants, getting a constant barrage of free appetizers, meals and desserts from a place that gives you a free and endless supply of bread and olive oil BEFORE your meal even comes is kind of like offering a drug addict his fix on a daily basis.

Somehow I feel somewhat compelled to use this because, hey, it's FREE!

Who refuses free stuff anyway?!

I do.

I've had to learn to tell myself that just because it's free doesn't make it a good choice, doesn't make it my moral obligation and doesn't mean I have to run out in a frenzied panic and get it before all the food is gone(yikes- there's some old programming).

It's something I will plan ahead for at times but eating there as often as I get a coupon would mean going at least once a week and I have other things I want to use my weekly's on.

My husband, after tiring of hearing my complaining on the subject, said "why don't you just cancel it or hit delete before you can even think about it?".

I do hit delete now more often than not.  I find if I leave it in my In Basket it seems to taunt me.

Ah, if only all bad habits were so easy to delete.


It begs the question though- what stuff that doesn't serve you are you ready and willing to let go of?

Sometimes success it isn't just about what we get, it's about what we release.