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This article was originally published on Time to Thrive as a guest blog. Check out their other valuable financial blogs.
Money and sex have always been hot topics for us, that’s not news. We confront these issues all the time, whoever we are and whatever our lifestyle is. With the current economic conditions, money has moved to the forefront in many of our minds recently. We feel the stress brought on by more money going out than coming in.
Some people take the bull by the horns and deal with it; they tighten their belts, cut back where they can, get an extra job perhaps, cancel their vacation. But many of us, and I must admit I’m sometimes one, bury our heads in the sand like ostriches, preferring not to know that the red balance is slowly building as we max out our overdraft.
What holds us back from managing our money better? The answer is simple really, but the resolution perhaps a bit harder. Money triggers strong EMOTIONS in us, and it’s those emotions that keep us operating in an unproductive way…often shooting ourselves in the foot, so to speak. When we are able to remove the emotions from the mix, we can learn to manage our money in a balanced way, one that works for us personally.
Underlying the emotions are our THOUGHTS AND BELIEFS. Limiting, negative, or unproductive beliefs lead us to negative thoughts, then to an uproar of feelings that in turn drive our behaviors. Then we may end up doing exactly what we said we weren’t going to do with our money.
Let me give you a scenario to help you relate :
Jane’s money is tight; her hours have been cut at work, and she’s already in debt on her credit card. Jane likes to eat out several times a week and meet friends for coffee, and each month she usually buys at least one article of clothing for herself. Jane keeps telling herself repeatedly that she has to cut back, but here’s what happens: She does well for a few days, then one day she’s sitting at her desk at work and a thought crosses her mind: “Oh my God, there isn’t enough money, how will I get through the month!†Then Jane begins to worry and stew. By lunchtime she’s in such a turmoil that she just has to get out of the office and meet her friends to calm herself. Jane’s simple lunch just cost her $10. Over a month of lunches she’d be spending about $200, money she definitely can’t afford to spend right now.
Does this sound familiar?
There are many ways to deal with the thoughts and feelings that aren’t working for us, the ones that drive us to behave in counterproductive ways – ways that are the opposite of what we really want in our life. At times we need help getting started. My coaching instructor, Martha Beck (author of Finding Your Own North Star), once said to me “Sometimes we need some outside energy to help usâ€. I liked that, it took the stigma away from seeking help.
Try some of these suggestions to take the emotional charge out of your money management:
1. As soon as you notice you’re feeling upset or beating yourself up about your money situation, take 3 deep breaths: in through your nose, hold as long as it’s comfortable, then exhale long and hard through your mouth. This will calm you.
2. Work backwards to track your thoughts and emotions by asking yourself:
* “What am I feeling right this minute?â€, then
* “What did I just tell myself to trigger that upsetting feeling?â€, then
* “Is there any truth in this thought?â€. If the answer is yes, then ask “Do I know for sure that it’s completely, 100% true?â€. (The last point is derived from Bryon Katie’s work)
1. Contact a friend by phone or speak with a trusted colleague if you’re afraid you’re going to ‘slip’ and blow your budget.
2. Walk in nature – by the water or near trees – whenever possible to keep yourself grounded and connected with you (be sure to get outside morning, noon and night, even if just for 5 minutes).
After having just completed a busy four days at the Festival of the Written Arts, listening to speakers and selling books with my fellow independent book publishers, I needed some calming time alone in my office to regroup. Curiously, a client turned up outside my open door with her little dog as I was on the phone; she was 27 hours early for her appointment. But it was the perfect time for me to take a break and move my legs, so the three of us went off down the lane to the beach, where we walked the shoreline for a while. We’re having a heatwave, but there’s a breeze today, so the temperature was just inside my tolerable zone!
Sometimes it’s hard to find the balance between being “out there” where all the people are, and all the intermingled energies, and finding our solitude. We often become skewed in one direction or the other. With the hectic pace most of us are living, time to ourselves can be a necessity.
Many women say they would love more alone time but the demands of family and work intervene. Often a period of transition is necessary; we need to wean those around us, both in the workplace and in our families, away from the idea that we are constantly available, get them used to a little less of us, and motivate them to do more for themselves.
In that spirit I offer you a few ideas that may be helpful:
- Teach family members to do their laundry, contribute to meals & clean their rooms & family shared space.
- Use the old parenting “Behavior-Consequences” method to reinforce this; e.g. no laundry-no clean underwear.
- At work, have an “Open Door” policy, but only during certain hours each day.
- Follow your gut feeling/intuition; when it feels like too much it probably is.
- Buy yourself time before committing to additional activities; personal, work or volunteer; e.g. “I’ll get back to you.”
- Consider cancelling or rescheduling activities when you are overtaxed.
- Spend time in nature each day, more than once if possible; it’s restorative; e.g. 5 minutes strolling near trees; walking barefoot on your lawn or in a park, on the sand or in the water; lying on the grass (kids know to do this naturally).
For those of you who are so used to being with others you find it difficult to be alone, I offer you this brilliant video by filmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis. Davis wrote the beautiful poem and performed in the video. It’s called How to Be Alone.
Guilt is something many women deal with every day. We feel that we’re not doing all that we should be doing. We’re spread thin these days and we wear many hats: as professionals, employees, mothers, caregivers for elderly parents or ailing spouses, volunteer workers. You can pick the hats you wear from this list, and probably add many more that I haven’t even thought of.
But where does it end? As women move into increasingly active roles in society, we still bear much of the responsibility for the traditional roles – the ones considered “women’s roles” in the past. The result of this is that many women lead a life of chronic exhaustion. Sure, they try to give themselves some “down time†or “friend time†just like the magazines recommend they do, but there are only so many hours in a day. Something has to give.
In addition to the tiredness women often feel guilty. It’s a vicious circle, often the more we do and the tireder we get, the more the guilt increases. Many women experience what I call a generalized guilt. It’s pervasive, like generalized anxiety is. We also experience guilt about specific things related to not being able to perform our roles quite well enough (in our minds).
Many women feel they’re not good mothers, daughters, workers, wives, etc. Studies have shown that when it comes to elder care, the most devoted or “best daughters” felt the guiltiest! I believe this idea can be extrapolated to other roles we have as women, for example, the “best mothers” feel the most guilt, the “best employees”, wives, and so on feel the guiltiest.
An interesting and controversial Spanish Journal of Psychology study was summarized on the website Sexploration; the study considered the differences in the guilt experienced by women and by men:
The results led researchers to conclude that “habitual guilt [by which they mean a kind of internalized feeling of guilt] was more intense in women than in men in all three age groups studied.†When it came to “interpersonal guilt,†the kind of guilt related to how our action or inaction affects others, it was “significantly more intense in women than in men in the adolescent group, and in the 25-33 age group, the pattern of results was similar.†Older men, however, achieved a kind of interpersonal guilt parity with women.
Another report on the same study, but with a somewhat more succinct summary, was published on Softpedia.
Part of the guilt is genetic, according to this study; women are more empathic than men, therefore they feel more guilt. But an enormous part of the guilt we feel is caused by our social conditioning. Many, perhaps most of us are trained to put others first and to look after them, often from a young age – our partners, our children, then in later years often our aging parents.
In researching my book Surviving Eldercare: Where Their Needs End and Yours Begin I discovered a European study that found many women were groomed and prepared in subtle ways to become caregivers for their elderly mothers when they were young women, many years before the caregiving actully began! When my mother was widowed at a young age, my mother-in-law warned me not to martyr myself by going overboard caring for my mother, as she had done. But I felt it was my job as a good daughter to care for her needs, and experienced guilt if I didn’t fulfil the”‘program” I’d set up in my head for her care.
Regardless of the reason behind the guilt you may be feeling, when you catch yourself starting to beat yourself up for not enough, or doing it good enough, try the following:
- Take 1-3 deep breaths, hold, then exhale.
- Ask yourself: “Who made this rule that I must do this particular thing or take this action?”
- Is it absolutely necessary that you do it?
- Can someone else do it?
- Would it be life threatening not to do it?
- What belief do you hold that is causing you guilt about this thing?
- What is the story you are telling yourself about it?
- Write a paragraph about what your life would be like if it was completely guilt-free.
I close with Elizabeth Gilbert’s May 2010 O Magazine message to all of us – to all the highly successful women she knows, and knows of, who feel they should be accomplishing more – “Lighten Up!”.
Many people are surprised when they find out I’ve passed my 60th birthday, apparently I don’t look or seem that age. In many ways I feel the same as I did at age 30 or 40, in other ways my take on life is different. And in case I forget about my mortality, I have my 88-year-old slowly declining mother to remind me of my own mortality.
As time goes on I’m learning more about what’s precious to me, and becoming clearer about how I want to live. Whether we’re 20 or 60, there’s no point in putting our ‘real life’ off until…until what?…Until we’ve completed such and such, earned a certain amount, been promoted to a particular level, had x number of children? – you fill in the blanks. Our real life is right now, right here, in this moment. Today is all we really have.
On Sunday a CBC radio interviewee opined that it is harder to find meaning as we age. That’s not the way I view it; I believe that we get choosier about what gives us meaning – we refine the process in a sense. Activities and relationships that may have been more or less okay in the past do not feed us now. So we keep what works and add the new to the mix, whether we’re dealing with to pastimes or relationships.
Living to the fullest means trusting that our intuition will lead us to our true path. It means stepping back and questioning ourselves about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, then building on the awarenesses and information that comes from this process.
Sometimes several small changes can make a big difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction in life.
In that vein I give you the following ideas for your consideration:
- Who are the 5 people I most love to spend time with? How much time do I spend with them?
- What 3 activities please me the most? Can I build more of them into my week?
- What makes me laugh?
- What brings me peace?
- Do I bring a positive attitude to whatever I do in my life?
What does success in life mean to you?
In our western society it’s hard not to equate success with financial gains. Money tends to be the way we measure our progress. That’s the way our society has developed over the last few generations. It’s natural to want to get ahead, to have a higher quality of life than our grandparents and perhaps our parents did.
Now that we have achieved a measure of upward mobility, we’re putting more emphasis on other parts of our lives, the intangible things that bring us personal satisfaction, fulfillment and a sense of growth. Maslow called this “self-actualization”, he theorized that self-actualization is what human beings do when their basic needs for food, shelter and safety are taken care of.
One could say our society has moved into a new phase, one where our definition of fulfillment has expanded to include not only the nice home withall its accoutrements, but also a feeling of internal satisfaction with our life – one we get from simply taking time for ourselves to take a walk down a wooded road or to ponder, spending extra time with our child, connecting with our best friend over dinner, or doing some volunteer work.
But have we really changed all that much?
Underneath the awareness of and desire for internal calm, the drive for success in financially measurable ways is often still there. It’s almost as if it was in our blood.
Could this be at odds with our urge towards self-actualization? It’s something to think about.
If we ask ourselves questions such as:
What gives me the most satisfaction?
How would I spend my days if I had my druthers?
What fills my heart with joy?
Who are the people I want most to be with?
What would my life be like if I did/didn’t do _____________ ?
What would it take for me to be truly happy?
we might come up with some information that will let us know if we are on the right track, on the path towards fulfillment that we want to be on, or whether we’re simply going by the book, by our conditioning, and putting our financial gains at the forefront.
