Making your quitting the 9 to 5 dream come true can be hard if you have a negative relationship with money. So how can you explore what your relationship is and how to move forward to a healthier
outlook?
1) Think about what attitudes you grew up with.
When you were growing up was money scarce or abundant? For most people it was a mixture of both but even this can have an impact on your current outlook.
Many people who grew up with scarcity have used it to drive them forward, to accumulate as much as possible so that they never have to go through this themselves as an adult. The trouble with this is that although they may well accumulate wealth they are driven by fear. Fear is never a good emotion on which to base your motivation because it is a stressful state to reside in and we all know how stress can eventually adversely affect us. If you were, or are motivated by fear, working towards letting go of that fear does not mean that you lose your drive, it just means that your drive comes from a different place that is less negative. Not everyone who grew up with scarcity has been able to use this experience to drive them forward of course, some feel stuck in the same place that their parents were and feel that there is no hope for them to make more because 'that's just the way it's always been'.
If you grew up with wealth you may have an expectation that this wealth should be an entitlement for you as well. It doesn't automatically follow that your life as an adult will echo the life you had as a child and some people are not as successful as they could be after growing up with wealth because rather than working in a focused way towards having this themselves they wait for it to come to them just as it did when they were a child. They might also be prone to spending on credit cards and building up debt in the belief that they need to keep up a certain lifestyle or that the money will be paid off one way or another because money has always just 'been there'. They might also manifest the opposite state - perhaps you rebelled against the idea of wealth, maybe you see it as selfish or embarrassing to have so much money? Perhaps for you money is something you actively push away so that you can live a life that is more in line with your personal values of sharing and not having too much for yourself?
If you grew up with an uncertainty because sometimes money was abundant and at other times it was harder to come by you are more likely to have a healthier attitude to money because you will save in the good times and use this to ride the lows of the hard times (especially if this is what your parents did and taught you to do). However, this can also make you very risk adverse often meaning that you are less likely to want to become an entrepreneur which is associated with a certain amount of risk taking.
Whatever you grew up with - you have the power to let go of the past and start again afresh with your own clearly defined values that come from who you are now, not who you were or who your parents were. Research shows that whatever you grew up with can affect your level of education or your current income (if you keep the same values or thoughts) but it does not have any relationship with your ability to change the way you think about money in the future (which is an important predictor of your potential wealth accumulation) - this means that all of us have the same opportunity to change how we think and therefore change our futures.
2) How do you view money?
A study into Risks for Experiencing Adverse Financial Events (von Stumm, Sophie; Fenton-O’Creevy, Mark and Furnham, Adrian ,2013), took four main money attitudes and examined how each of these could predict how likely it was that you would experience adverse financial events. The four attitudes were:
- Security - viewing money as a security blanket, leading to hoarding and compulsive saving behaviours.
- Power - viewing money as a status symbol leading to social recognition and acceptance.
- Love - viewing money as closely associated with an act of love or generosity, including the buying and selling of emotional closeness and affection,
- Autonomy - viewing money as a route to freedom and the escape from daily routines.
Which of these attitudes do you hold? Attitudes to money have been shown in several studies including the one cited above to be independent of socio-economic status, education and income levels - which means you have the power to change them whatever your circumstances are or what your background is!
The study showed that holding 'Power' as your main attitude to money made you more likely to experience adverse financial events (such as bankruptcy, repossession or refusal for credit). This is perhaps because people who hold this as their attitude are more likely to purchase status symbols that they later cannot keep up the repayments on. Holding 'Love' or 'Autonomy' as your attitudes were not positively associated with either an increase or a decrease in the risk of experiencing adverse financial events. Holding 'Security' as your attitude however, showed an decrease in the likelihood of experiencing adverse financial events.
So changing your attitude to move away from 'Power' is the best thing that you can do for yourself if you want to avoid adverse financial events. Moving towards a more secure attitude where you save some of your money can help all of us whatever our attitude to money is.
3) What is your emotional attachment to money?
There are many emotions that we attach to money and yet money itself has no emotion save the emotion that you give it. It is an exchange tool, it enables you to exchange one thing for another that is it's sole purpose - but we associated it with all kinds of things which are emotion based. To explore what emotional attachments you have with money try asking yourself some of the following questions and note down how you feel when you answer them. You are likely to have more than one emotional response to each question so try to look at each feeling as it comes up and address it.
- How do you feel when someone offers to buy something for you?
- How do you feel when you have very little money?
- How do you feel when you have a lot?
- How do you feel about the idea of sharing money with your spouse or partner?
- What feelings do you have when you win money or it comes to you in a way that is unearned?
- How do you feel about paying taxes?
- What do you feel about the way your parents handled their money?
- How do you feel about people who have lots of money and possessions?
- How do you feel about people who don't work but have lots of money?
- How do you feel about people who have little money and don't work?
Some common negative emotions associated with money are:
Guilt - Do you feel guilty about having money or not having enough?
Shame - Do you think that having lots of money is something to hide or feel ashamed of? Perhaps you feel ashamed because you are not earning more?
Fear - Do you fear having money or losing it because it would change your circumstances - perhaps by bringing you greater responsibility or more hardship?
Conflict - Perhaps having money or not having it is in direct conflict with your social background, your chosen lifestyle, the public perception of your job etc.
Anger - Maybe you feel angry with people who have more money, angry that you are deserving of more but you always struggle to get more, angry with people who do not earn as much as they could or are not trying hard enough to earn more?
Finding out how you feel about money can give you an insight into what is holding you back from earning more, where you need to address self esteem issues, practice forgiveness or let go of fear.
Looking at your own attitude to money, how the way you grew up has influenced you and the emotional attachments you have to money can give you a means to change your future. You don't need to be a product of your past choices any longer - you have a fresh start, a new page EVERY DAY. Make your choices now, will they be the same as always or is it time to change things for the better?
How has your past held you back? What changes are you planning on making? Leave a comment and let's help each other.
Love Nova xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment