What Can Money Teach Us?
Here’s a great topic to avoid – money! In my experience of coaching, discussing financial issues can be one of the areas that clients have most resistance to broaching and yet money is something from which we can learn a tremendous amount.
You’ve only got to set yourself the challenge of living just a single day without spending any to discover just how dependent we are on using this tool of modern society. What does our approach to using it tell us about ourselves and how can we benefit from that knowledge?
Security
For many of us, having enough money gives us a sense of security. But what does enough mean? In absolute terms, enough can be a different amount of money for each of us. So, clearly it’s not a magical fixed sum that’s enough for anybody to live on, but rather how we value it and what we use it for that determines what’s enough for us. So perhaps what we can learn from our feelings of security or insecurity around money is how much money – savings, debt, monthly income – represents a feeling of enough for us.
Vehicle for Expressing Ourselves
When I asked Jane what her concerns were around her financial situation, she replied that money just seemed to flow into her bank account and then disappear! She didn’t know where it was going or how it was or wasn’t supporting her way of living. Naturally, this led to some worrying on her part and also feelings of lack of control of how her hard earned wages were being used.
One way to view money is as a vehicle for expressing ourselves. What does “where our money goes” say about us? Our level of debt might represent our willingness to be led by others. When we manage debt well, then this could indicate that we know our boundaries and responsibilities.
How much we spend and where we buy the necessities in life can express much about our views on the production of food, clothes and toiletries. It can illumine our attitude to health versus convenience, ethics versus costs and wisdom versus blind compliance.
Jane summoned the courage to investigate the particular stream of money that made its way through her life, following its arrival, stemming trickles running into areas she no longer valued, creating pools to store some savings and encouraging a small and steady flow into good causes.
Gratitude and sharing
To what extent are we prepared to share our money? Jane decided that she was happy to share 5% of her income with good causes and also that she would carry a small amount of cash with her each day for what she called spontaneous donations! This, she said, gave her the flexibility she needed and also the reminder each day of the joy that she could experience from giving.
In addition to these changes in habits, Jane decided that she wanted to change her attitude to paying bills. She’d noticed her tendency to feel resentment towards paying others for services and goods, as she perceived bill paying as something that depleted her funds. With some encouragement, she was able to find and express gratitude for the services that others had provided for her or the goods they had made. She also discovered that she felt gratitude for her ability to pay and for the skills she had that enabled her to earn a living.
Living Without Spending
A great way to highlight the effects of something on our lives is to try living without it. Having committed to 2 days without spending money, Jane reported that she had become more creative! How had this happened?
A couple of common rat race habits are:
- spending our way out of misery and
- spending our way out of problems.
Jane noticed that, on days when she was resisting spending, she used her creativity to find solutions to problems, for example by reading the manual on her central heating boiler when it failed and finding out how to reset it, rather than calling out an engineer. She also reported enjoying a relaxing walk in the park during her lunch break rather than buying a bar of chocolate to cheer herself up and working through her lunchtime.
Conclusion
Old rat race habits die hard, especially when it comes to our approach to money and especially in a recession when the temptation is not to face up to our finances. When we know what’s enough for us, how to express ourselves – our gratitude, shared joy and creativity – through money, we can learn a lot about ourselves and how to embrace money as a life serving tool.
Sally Lever is an active member of Ethical Junction, learn more
Tags: money, philosophy