So Much Happier Blog
Money, Honey!
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
Continuing to follow along with Maslowe’s concept about the needs we must take care of before we can really thrive as a total human being, in this week’s blog, we’ll take a look at another aspect of security: Your ability to make enough money to support yourself and your family. We’re not talking here about your ability to live the most abundant life possible, as that will be for a later post. This one will be about how to create the feeling that you can always handle your basic financial needs.
Your feelings about making money, saving money, and spending money are shaped most profoundly by what you were taught experientially by your family. If you saw your parents and other family members struggling to make and have enough money, then you most likely learned that making money is hard, and that not having enough is something to be feared. If you watched their fortunes go up and down, you probably came away from that experience feeling that money is fickle, and one can as easily lose it as gain it. If you were often told that your family couldn’t afford the things you wanted, then you may have learned to resent money as a concept altogether. I’m sure you can see that these attitudes that so many of us learn about money are not at all helpful in our quest to feel safe and secure enough to pursue the life goals that most excite us.
With these attitudes in tow, we are far more likely to talk ourselves out of taking even small risks in moving toward our goals. We will tend to move through life with a sense of fear and pessimism about our possible monetary outcomes. We are likely to feel that we’re not equal to the task of providing for ourselves and those we love during changing times. All of this will sap our energy and enthusiasm for life in ways it’s hard to fully comprehend until we’re able to finally find ways to transform these beliefs and attitudes.
As far as monetary skills, some of us are lucky enough to have been taught some of these at home. If you did learn some basics about balancing a checkbook or budgeting, for instance, then you may have built some confidence around your ability to handle money. If you were allowed to participate in discussions about financial decisions, then you probably built more there. Those of us who were very fortunate may have learned about investing, or how to run a business. It’s also possible that you learned some things at school that were relevant to finance. You may have had classes in junior high or high school that touched on the basics of earning and using money. You may have elected to take classes in college about business and finance. All of these create advantages that help us to feel competent in the financial arena of life. Unfortunately, many of us come through our schooling with little to no practical learning about financial matters such that we lack confidence and a sense of literacy in this extremely important area. If you didn’t learn these early, you may still be struggling to learn them now, but there are resources available to help you at every turn if you are willing to look and learn from them. It’s not hopeless, even if you’re not where you want to be!
Once we enter the workforce, we start learning through trial by fire if we’re still relatively clueless at that point. Now we are responsible for earning money and paying our expenses. We’re likely motivated by both needs and desires to make ends meet. We start gaining valuable on-the-job skills, and realizing that some of the things we picked up along the way, like social and communication skills, have very real practical value on the job. If we’re willing to continue learning and stay flexible, we can often parlay our gains in experience into better job opportunities or entrepreneurial ventures. If we stop learning or aren’t assertive in looking for expanding opportunities, for whatever reason, then we’re not building the confidence in our ability to earn that would help us to create the important sense of security we’re after.
Another way to build confidence in your ability to support yourself is through life experiences in areas not related to income. Say you encounter a health challenge and are able to make lifestyle and attitude changes to help you in regaining vibrancy as you follow a recommended course of treatment. Rising to the occasion has taught you that you have power within the circumstances that present themselves in your life; you have the ability to roll with the punches and come out better than before, with new knowledge, skills, and belief in yourself. Or say you have a serious issue in a relationship with someone close to you, and you confront it and take action to improve the relationship. While the skills you learned in doing so may not seem immediately relative to your income, you will often gain faith in your ability to handle whatever comes to you in the future. And you may also find that those skills will eventually help you in your moneymaking ventures down the line. Things that you are particularly good at in life have a way of making themselves useful in surprising ways.
The world we live in has changed so much, and so rapidly, that many of us were never formally prepared for the kind of economy in which we now must function. It wasn’t long ago that the norm was for a worker to spend 30 or more years working at the same company and retiring with a financial package designed to keep him going for the rest of his life. Now the norm for a similar worker is to move to a different job, and often workplace, every few years. She is now responsible for her own retirement income. We are at a distinct disadvantage if we’re not good at negotiating and selling ourselves and our talents, or if we’re afraid to try new things and branch out into different kinds of work. Things move quickly in this economy, and sometimes it’s necessary to regroup and take an opportunity that’s being offered even if it’s not what you were looking for. It’s possible to leverage every step you make into more of what you want, but sometimes patience is required.
If you want to feel a sense of security that will free you, here are the items I recommend considering:
- Take stock of your financial skills. Do you know how to budget, balance a checkbook, organize your yearly information to get your taxes filed? If not, spend some time on basic financial literacy. These skills are essential to feeling secure around money.
- Learn about the basics of investing. What are some of the kinds of investments available? It can be very helpful to ask people you know about what investment ideas they’ve come across and chosen to use. Obviously, it’s better to ask people who seem like they’re doing relatively well financially! You may not put this research to use right away, but the more comfortable you become with investing concepts, the more easily you will be able to make good choices when it’s time.
- Regularly take stock of your marketable skills and update your resume. Often we don’t give ourselves credit for the skills we’re constantly learning in the course of life and work.
- Think about skills you have that you might not normally include on a resume, but that help you to remember that you can be flexible, and that you have learned and grown all throughout your life. If you don’t like trying new things, find ways to stretch outside your comfort zone, and make an effort to enjoy the thrill of the novelty.
- Have the courage to examine the beliefs you were taught about money and your ability to have enough. Find a process you can follow to transform any that are clearly not helpful. Often this process yields tremendous gains in your confidence and ability to excel going forward! My favorite way to address this is through Tapping, which can help you to quickly gain clarity and improve your money-related beliefs, but there are many possible paths to the same result. Find one that appeals to you and do this essential work.
I hope this post has given you a few things to think about as you work toward creating a sense of confidence in your financial safety and security. Until next time, I wish you and your family all monetary happiness!
There's No Place Like Home, Part II
“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
In the last blog, we examined the importance of your feelings of safety from the outside world while you're at home. This week, we'll talk about maintaining a safe, secure environment inside the home, which is just as vital to your health and happiness for all the same reasons. There are two aspects of safety we’ll touch on, both physical and emotional safety; both need attention if we are to feel that we are truly free to reach confidently for the things we most desire out of life.
When we're spending time in at home, in the space that's supposed to be just for us, we deserve to feel supported, loved, understood, and protected. We live in environments that we ourselves have created in our imperfect image—we are constantly confronted with the choices that have made it what it is; we've made these choices over time, sometimes without even realizing that we're doing it. The countless small decisions of the past add up to an effect that we feel every time we open the door. Let’s take a few moments to consider what you’ve established and whether you feel good about it. For instance, do you feel comfortable with how being at home generally feels to you? With the way you spend your time there? With the others who populate the world of your home? If not, you have the power to modify the conditions inside your home to improve your comfort and safety.
The louder of the two aspects of safety is the physical—if you feel like your safety is in jeopardy because someone close to you is violent and may potentially harm you physically, this will tend to be very obvious to you, very upsetting and hard to ignore. That’s as it should be! Someone who can’t even treat you with the respect required to refrain from hurting you outwardly does not belong anyone near you. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why we sometimes put up with behavior from others that is completely inappropriate. Those may include that this person is a family member, and we can’t just choose not to be related to them anymore (it can seem unthinkable to cut someone out of your life who has been such a long-standing part of your life.) It may be that we love and care for this person, even feel that we understand them, and so we wish to be a loving influence in their lives. It may be that we fear change and are afraid to be alone. Whatever the reason you might give, there is a lot of great information out there in the world on dealing with abusive relationships, and while I certainly hope that you’re not a part of anything that looks like this, if you are, there is help for you. I encourage you to go find it. No one should have to live in fear for their physical safety.
On a slightly different note, it is also possible to feel physically threatened by a pet that lives with you. Sometimes it’s necessary to be honest with yourself and admit that a pet that seemed like a good idea at one time is not conducive to your happiness and safety any longer. This can be very difficult for some of the same reasons as described above regarding threatening people. Our pets are family to many of us, and recognizing that a relationship with one isn’t healthy and taking action to correct the situation can be extremely painful. However, it may be easier to change/”train” a pet than a human, so if this is your issue, you may want to look into getting professional help with the animal’s behavior. You’ll still need to be ready to make a new choice if the relationship feels threatening after your best efforts. Your safety, again, should come first.
In order to create an environment that really feels safe and secure from the inside, we must also consider the emotional quality of our relationships with people, as they are at the core of our home's overall effect on us. If you feel that those who figure importantly in your time at home are likely to attack you, your choices, your character, you are not going to be able to enjoy the sense of harmony from which you can be at your best, see clearly, have good ideas, and live a high-functioning life.
· Most importantly, who gets to live in your personal space with you? As anyone who has ever had a bad, or even just incompatible, roommate knows, this affects so many areas of daily life. If someone in our space is at cross purposes with us, it can seem like the whole world is opposing our every move! On the other hand, if you enjoy the people you live with, you get to experience a sense that life is more fun because you’re not alone; you get to feel that others are looking out for you and the home base you share. Ideally, those you live with love and support you in such a way that you feel seen and accepted for who you are when you're around them. If this in not what you generally feel at home, you are dealing with unnecessary stress and dissonance, and you can improve your happiness dramatically by giving some thought to the situation and taking appropriate corrective action.
· Who visits regularly? Who else you allow into your space with regularity also has a lot of bearing on how you will feel at home. If you’re allowing people into your personal space who don’t seem to be on your side, people who are judgmental, selfish, or overly demanding, you will begin to feel that you cannot relax even at home. It will be hard to rest and enjoy downtime there. Again, you are inviting stress into your experience that could be eliminated through the establishment of some better rules about how you use your home.
· Who calls your home number and expects you to pick up the phone? You train others to expect your time and attention by demonstrating when you’re available to them, as well as, in this case, giving out your digits in the first place. If you’re in the habit of giving away all your time and energy to others over the phone when you’re at home, this is another way in which you may be creating a home environment that doesn’t feel safe, calm, and supportive to you. While I’m not suggesting that you should act like a hermit and refuse to talk to anyone once you’re home, I do think it’s important to make sure you get some time to yourself regularly that’s free of unwelcome demands. You decide what time you will give to your community of friends and family, and must make sure you communicate what time is off limits.
· Who has a key and can let themselves in? This level of trust belongs only with those you know you can trust no matter what, and it pays to be very selective on this count.
If a relationship with a family member or other roommate is not supportive to you, and you want to restore your feelings of safety, you'll need to find a way to communicate your experience and ask for changes. This is an area in which we tend to be woefully uneducated, and the idea of confronting others about what’s not working can be frightening because we’re not confident that we can lead the situation to a helpful resolution. There are many excellent books available on building your communication skills, and I highly recommend that you make it a priority to brush up on them if you ever have trouble talking to people in your life about important subjects—and who doesn’t, really? One of the books I like to recommend is Crucial Conversations, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, because it deals specifically with isolating the bad habits we usually fall into when attempting to communicate important content and finding ways to break out of them. I think that communication skills are a critic necessity for living a happy life, and I encourage you to consider yourself a lifelong learner here. Being able to accurately and confidently express yourself makes it possible to achieve so much more in your life. You deserve to be able to handle whatever comes up with other people in the most constructive way possible.
Beyond verbal discussion, there may come a time when you need to set some boundaries and enforce them in order to create a sense of lasting safety for yourself. Again, many of us have not been trained in confidently discerning and putting into place the boundaries we need. If you are in a situation that feels bad to you, particularly at home, and you don’t see a way to resolve it, you’ll need to find an advisor to help you find a way through. A smart, balanced friend or family member or a professional counselor of some kind can help you to see the situation more clearly and find the course of action that is most appropriate for you.
Taking some time to review how safe you feel at home, both physically and emotionally, is extremely important to the overall quality of your life. It’s very difficult to be your best self if you don’t feel that you have a place to be in your downtime that is basically supportive and peaceful for you. Please allow yourself to really consider this and see if anything stands out to you as needing your attention. Confronting these issues can be most uncomfortable, but is well worth it in the long run. Proving to yourself that you can improve this aspect of your life will improve your confidence in yourself and your ability to improve other areas of your life as well.
There's No Place Like Home
“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”
Sometimes daily life can seem like it's all about just trying to keep ourselves and our families clean and fed. Certain periods of our lives may need to be very much about those things—for instance, when we first move out on our own after our schooling (everything from cleaning to paying bills is new and takes conscious effort), or when there are young children in the house (who need a great deal of time, energy, and care). But there are times, hopefully, when we have more energy and focus available for pursuing projects for the sake of interest, self-improvement, career marketability, or creative expression and enjoyment. In order to have the stability to apply ourselves in satisfying ways to these projects, we need to handle a few other things than just physical needs. After we've satisfied our most basic needs, our old friend Abraham Maslow posits that we need to feel safe in order to keep progressing. There are several important areas to consider as we attempt to care for ourselves at this level, all of which are important in allowing us to move forward in life with enough confidence to achieve more than just staying alive every day.
The first one I want to address is the home. Humans are uniquely evolved animals, but animals nonetheless; we crave a retreat that can keep us warm and dry as well as safe from marauding predators. This may not be something you think about consciously all that often. It’s something you no doubt assess in some way when looking for a new place to live, and you may give it some thought in the first few weeks after moving into a new home, but after that you may find that you drop into a routine and take your safety somewhat for granted. While I’m not suggesting that you encourage yourself to be paranoid, I am going to ask you to think about whether there is anything about your home base that you feel uncomfortable about. Perhaps every now and then you have a thought about how you wish there was more light in a certain area outside, or a better lock on your door, and you experience a low-level sense of fear about something you haven't yet defined. If you find that there is something like this that comes up for you, consider that you may be wasting some energy on these worries that would be far better applied to the things you’d prefer to be spending your time on.
Most of us do not realize how much mental, emotional, and physical energy we waste on worrying about things that are in our power to easily change. The things that touch on our sense of physical security affect us on the level of our animal selves, and this level is instinctive. When it feels threatened, we go into “fight or flight” mode, which means that our bodies rev up an array of chemicals to help us prepare for running away from danger at top speed, or for combating the enemy, real or imagined. The body reacts the same way in either case, as it can’t tell the difference between thought and reality. In his book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton details how when we’re in the fight or flight response, blood rushes away from the organs and toward the extremities to fully enable movement, and the organs slow their processes; that means that the body is using energy, but not creating much of it from the resources at hand. The immune system also is greatly disabled in favor of the emergency chemical response. And the center of conscious mental activity, the forebrain, slows in favor of the instinctive hindbrain, because reflex is faster to respond than reason; by boosting the hindbrain’s activity, the brain joins in to help the body survive while the state of emergency persists. While all of this is happening, the body can’t engage in may of its normal activities, including growth processes that repair damage. This overdrive cycle greatly contributes to physical problems over time if it gets activated too often—and in modern life, with its hectic pace and constant demands, this is often the case.
If you could halt or slow this exhausting cycle by choosing to address a few things at home, such as adding a brighter light bulb or springing for a better lock, or even just hanging thicker curtains in the bedroom so it feels more private, why not make that a priority and give yourself more ease on a daily basis? These things may seem small, but they can add up over time. We’ll be looking at other ways to feel secure in future blogs, but in the meantime, just give a thought to how you could make your home feel more relaxing by addressing anything about it that makes you feel nervous or unnecessarily vulnerable. These small changes need not cost much, and they can yield far more than the value you invest.