Posts Tagged ‘emotions and money’

Years ago, when I was attending a number of 12-Step programs, I learned the Serenity Prayer and repeated it often. The Serenity Prayer states:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Let’s look at the phrase, “accept the things I cannot change.”

During these tumultuous times acceptance can be an antidote to fear. Acceptance allows you to find solutions to your problems and to experience peace of mind, no matter what is going on the world. Non-acceptance leads to dissatisfaction and many forms of emotional discomfort as well as poor financial decisions.

Like it or not, economic conditions have changed for most people in many countries. You can’t alter the state of economic affairs, but you can accept what’s happening as neither good nor bad. It’s just what’s happening. And by being aware and realistic rather than staying in a state of longing for what was, you can adjust your behaviors and goals to realistically fit current conditions.

Acceptance is not the same as resignation because resignation usually means giving up. I see acceptance as a stimulus for new actions and behaviors, and this can be downright exciting.

No Judgements
Acceptance starts with taking the judgment out of any situation. These times are not good or bad, they are what they are. What’s happening to you is not good or bad, it’s just what’s happening. What matters is how you deal with what’s happening.

It would seem relatively safe to assume that economic conditions are not going to dramatically improve for an extended period of time. That’s not good or bad, it’s just what is. The question is what actions can you take to turn this into a time of opportunity, growth, and financial stability, which may be something you’ve never had before.

This is the perfect time to learn real-world financial skills. Unless you’ve got your head totally in the sand, then you know that frugality and saving for the future are definitely in style. Gross consumerism no longer is.

If you’ve been out of work for an extended period of time or have been earning less than you did before, accepting the situation allows you to examine new income-producing pathways that you may never have considered before. Once you accept that old methods aren’t working, you can look for new ones.

Of course moving in the direction may necessitate altering habitual behaviors and accepting the discomfort of change. Don’t fight it, just roll with it.

I understand this isn’t easy for people who like to be in control or who need certainty in their lives. Learning to accept what is and act within the reality of a constant change takes time, patience, understanding, and self-acceptance.

For the last 10 months, members of the Peace of Mind & Prosperity program have been discussing and developing ways of overcoming fear and accepting what’s going on in their world. The results have been measurable, with the many of the active participants finding financial stability now.

During the 40 years that I’ve been on a spiritual self-improvement path, I’ve developed many techniques for overcoming financial difficulties and developing the real-world skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

I consider it an honor to be able to share what I’ve learned with those on the Peace of Mind & Prosperity and prosperity program who are seriously looking for a new approach to life and finance. I hope you’ll consider joining me. Read more about the program.

If you have questions about the program, feel free to ask them via this the comment box below.

There’s an incredible disconnect between the movement of the stock market and the economic reality for much of the US population.

As I’m writing this, the headline on CNBC.com, just above the market chart, is “Stocks Gain 4% for Week Amid Earnings Optimism.” No doubt about it, the market has been going up, enabling those who are supposedly in the know to assure us that we are on the way to recovery.

At the same time, stories are dribbling out about the economic pressures faced by many people:

• There are over 1 million healthcare-related bankruptcies per year
• Over 47,000 people die each year in the US because they can’t afford health care
• 6.3 people are looking for every available job
• High level jobs are going unfilled because workers lack the necessary skills
• Foreclosure rates continue to rise in many areas
• Unregulated financial products are still in the pipeline
• States are cutting back on funding for education, safety, and other necessary services.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my book, Build Your Money Muscles, I talk about Financial Vagueness Syndrome (FVS) as a key stumbling block to financial comfort. If you don’t know what is going on with your money, it’s difficult to plan, strategize, and make rational financial decisions.

If you have been listening to the gloomy financial news, then you probably know that one of the main reasons the system is falling apart is that no one really understood the sophisticated financial instruments such as mortgage back securities and credit default swaps that were being traded in the markets.

Recently we learned that when billions of dollars of TARP funds were distributed, no one kept track of where the money went and what it was used for.

On top of that, no one was watching the store. When the SEC was warned about Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, for example, the warnings were ignored. No one really wanted to know what was going on.

You could easily conclude that Financial Vagueness Syndrome played a significant role in the global financial crisis. Has it played a role in yours?  Read the rest of this entry »

In my quest to explore emotions that people express through their money, I recently tapped into feeling vulnerable and unprotected.

Feeling unprotected can lead to life stories in which someone takes advantage of you, or you are left feeling very vulnerable. I experienced feeling unprotected recently when my roof started leaking and I had to find a solution. I called a number of roofers, got a variety of responses, and felt really vulnerable because of my lack of experience.

A friend took me up on my roof so I could see for myself what was going on and he helped me make a decision. But I became aware of how vulnerable and unprotected I sometimes feel. And I realized that a lot of people feel this way.

Just last week a report came out that stated that over the last seven years, the United States has not done enough to protect its citizens against terrorist attacks. This could be something we created, as a group, because we feel so unprotected.

Remember, the situation doesn’t cause the feelings, the feelings are the force behind the situation.

How are you expressing unprotected through your stories? Which of your financial fears indicate that you feel unprotected? There’s a good chance that if you have any money invested in the stock market that you feel vulnerable and unprotected.  Or perhaps you have no savings or cushion for emergencies, inadequate health insurance, or enough debt to cause ongoing discomfort. I would guess that in any of these situations you feel vulnerable.

These feelings usually start in childhood and would certainly be present in people who were abused or bullied in any way, had one or more alcoholic or addicted parents, or who had narcissistic parents. Anyone who has experiences homelessness, eviction, or bankruptcy would probably feel unprotected.

• If you think that unprotected is something you are expressing, here are some suggestions:
  Get in touch with and process the feelings so you no longer have the need to act them out through your finances or other life stories. There are techniques for doing this in Build Your Money Muscles The new Build Your Money Muscles for Financial Strength & Security program focuses on these techniques.
• Learn about the financial world. If you make financial decisions without knowledge, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to loss or being taken advantage of–or just screwing up your finances.
• Think about actions you can take to protect yourself. You may need to learn assertiveness techniques or other communications skills so you can stand up for yourself, in other words protect yourself, in any situation.

Resources:

• The Prosperity Show: Podcasts #17–Changing Your Money Feelings
• Build Your Money Muscles for Financial Strength & Security. A comprehensive six-month program guaranteed to improve your finances and your life!

Because of cultural influences, people rarely reach adulthood with a clear understanding of their authentic selves. More often than not, identities are formed more out of the need to please caregivers than from authentic self-expression.

As a result, people experience a holding back, not just of who they are, but how they express themselves financially. Thus the common thought, "I should be earning more than I am" or a longing to reach a perceived true potential.

The prevalent feeling of being trapped in a particular financial position is the result of feeling trapped in an inauthentic persona. This also often stimulates feelings of abandonment (of self), deprivation, anger, and shame, all of which people tend to blame on external circumstances.

Self-help literature is filled with prescriptions for finding your authentic self. In this limited space, I can only give a few suggestions to move you forward:

• Remember the slogan: If one of us has to be uncomfortable, it doesn’t have to be me. Express your needs and give yourself permission to fill them.
• Learn how to express your feelings. I can’t stress how important this is to being in integrity with yourself.
• Do something today that you have always wanted to do but were afraid that others might judge you harshly for.

These three suggestions will point you in a new direction and help you create a new financial identity.

My book Build Your Money Muscles and the CDs Let Go of the Aloneness Blocking Your Prosperity and Healing Your Financial Shame have specific instructions for learning to express feelings without having to rekindle a lot of old hurts.

 

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Emotions, by their nature, want to be expressed. Noted psychologist John Bradshaw calls them E-Motions, or energy in motion. When they aren’t expressed, emotions get stuck in your body/mind system.

There’s a physical reason for this. Simply put, emotions don’t happen in your head, they are actually felt throughout your body/mind as molecules called neuropeptides attach themselves onto cellular receptors that are located in every body part. When the emotion is felt, but not expressed, it’s as if these molecules of emotion get stuck in your system looking for a way out.

If expressed through voice, writing, art, or any one of a number of pathways, the emotion reaches a point of conclusion. If not, the molecules will find an alternate route of expression, which can include breaking a bone, cutting yourself, back pain, or other physical ailments.

Emotions can also express themselves through your finances causing difficult or painful situations like foreclosure, debt, investment loses, financial scams, or an ongoing condition of lack.

To avoid a buildup of unexpressed emotions, try one of these:
Read the rest of this entry »