Understanding Money in Your Life
We all deserve to feel safe and secure in our lives and having a healthy relationship with money is part of that process. We are taught about how to think about and manage money as children. Coming to understand these attitudes will help you to begin to change the views that may not be serving you as you try to move forward in life. There are often enduring myths around money within a family. Money may be seen as equaling love, security, self -worth, power, freedom, success or even evil or being dirty. How we look at money will often arise from these myths. Check in with yourself to see if you are unconsciously carrying any of these myths. There can also be family stories about money that we heard at every family gathering- take the time to think them through and understand the message that was being sent.
Are there money issues that you are currently encountering in your life? You may feel that you have substantially changed the way you handle money only to find yourself back in the same dire situation. Notice patterns in the way you manage money, do they repeat themselves again in your lifetime? Often, we measure our value around how much money we have. If you are tying your self-worth to money, you will develop dysfunctional ways of dealing with how you earn it, spend it and save it.
Another thing to become aware of is your style around money. There are hoarders- people who never feel they have enough, so they don’t spend anything to ensure that they’ll have what they feel they need in the future. Under-spenders will resist spending even to their own detriment. Then there are compulsive spenders, people who get a sense of identity from their possessions. Money has become an antidote to emotional pain.
Feelings around money are pervasive. Check through the chart below to see if any of these emotions are relevant to your thinking. Again, it is important to understand these emotions so that you are not being undermined by them.
Avoidance, Procrastination, Dread, Struggle, Deprivation, Survival, Undeserving, Scarcity, Anxiety, Envy, Imbalance, Resentment, Destructive, Shame, Manipulation, Trust, Security, Crazy making, Self worth, Hatred, Desperation, Love, Fear, Need to perform, Panic, Control, Indifference, Guilty, Deserving, Cared for, Power
Changes can be made around our relationship with money once we become aware of our unconscious thoughts and actions that are keeping us stuck in a place that is causing unhappiness.