Here’s a quick, three-part survey about one of the most powerful and pervasive stressors of our time:
a: What are the most frequent subjects of recurring relationship disagreements?
b: What’s the biggest fear men and women have about their future?
c: What secret do most people hold dearest? (Hint: It’s not sexual preferences.)
The most common answers?
a: Communication, sex and MONEY.
b: Losing control of their physical or mental facilities or being on the street because they don’t have any MONEY.
c: The amount of MONEY we owe.
According to a recent survey conducted by the American Psychological Association, concern about money is the prime source of stress for 73 percent of Americans. Everybody, it seems, has money issues, but, sadly, hardly anybody really talks about it. Money is our secret, both in private and in public. Sometimes we don’t even admit our worries to ourselves.
Well, Friends, with Thanksgiving just around the corner and more than 30 blogs on reducing stress published over the past four months, I’ve decided it’s time to “talk turkey” by bringing our money fears out into the open. My holiday gift for your New Year is to focus my remaining 2012 blogs on helping you declare your independence from worrying over this particular Über Stressor.
Like most secret fears, anxieties about money spread like the common cold until they’ve infected our attitudes and behaviors, robbing us of serenity and peace of mind. Compounding the felony, because we don’t admit or talk about them, we are blocked from getting release and relief.
Ready to reclaim your personal power and zest for living? Begin by taking this Baby Step: start talking. As with any fear, once we name it, we immediately reduce its power to hold us prisoner while increasing our own power to take constructive action.
Suze Orman, author of The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, believes that the sooner we deal with our fears, the more money we’ll be able to create. She says, “When you heal your heart, you help your pocketbook.”
Often it is the early messages we received about money that influence our current beliefs. That relentless, looping tape recorder in our minds picks up and continues to play old ideas that are sometimes so subtle we don’t even realize their presence.
So, one of the first steps in dealing with current money issues is to explore early beliefs that still have a grip on our attitudes and choices. Make notes about these old messages. Try writing a “money biography”—the history of your relationship with money from childhood to present. List your fears about money, no matter how ridiculous or far-fetched they might sound.
Our unspoken attitudes and ideas about money are stripping us of our sense of well-being and security. One of the best ways to find our way through a darkened room when things go bump in the night is to turn on all the lights.
Author’s content adapted under license, © 2008 Claire Communications
About djwlifecoach
I am retired from 40+ years of helping individuals and teams build lives and organizations they love. One of the great joys of my retirement from professional practice is having greater bandwidth to donate my professional and creative talents to support and promote animal and social welfare charities.
During my 30 years as an organization transformation consultant, I served as a senior partner in four of the world’s largest, most prestigious global professional services firms. In 2005, I took a five-year sabbatical to find healing and peace because non-stop work had taken its toll.
My recovery from burnout led to finding my purpose guiding others on their journeys. As a board-certified coach, author, consultant, radio host, Reiki Master and EFT/tapping practitioner, I share hope, possibilities and empowerment with the world.
111419 DJW Sid CH Pet Corner Photo ShootI help clients achieve rapid, extraordinary, sustainable results by connecting who they are with what they do, a connection often lost through stress and the sheer busy-ness of daily life. Courageous self-awareness and unconditional self-love lead to honest choices based on priorities that nurture you and those around you on a journey to wholeness.
Decades in coaching, consulting, change management, organization development, human resources and mixed media artistic expression honed my business sense, professionalism, creativity, intuition, leadership and communication skills. The result? Practical tools that help you become more insightful, creative, committed, productive and fulfilled.
Even the most dedicated and hard-working individuals can shift from frustration to a sense of futility when their values, passion, work, and lives become disconnected. One of the problems with not taking care of our health is that the effects of ignoring it are often slow to show up. We continue to juggle family responsibilities, work and finances until we lose ourselves, waking up one day 50 pounds heavier in body and soul—no good to ourselves or anyone else.
I love working with people who are ready to take life-changing action to make their dreams a reality. At each moment, you have inside you all the wisdom you seek to choose your life and your way of showing up. Limiting thoughts, beliefs and feelings can block you from moving forward. An absence of love and concern for yourself can result in negative head talk that holds you back with discouraging messages about who you are and what you can do.
By listening and caring deeply, I guide you in connecting with your own inner wisdom. We identify the way you’d like to live. We determine what’s blocking you and release you from the hold those blocks have over you—unleashing the positive energy that will fuel you forward. Together we develop a plan to move you closer to your heart’s desire.
My books, blog, radio show and signature coaching programs help individuals and organizations harness the transformative energy of love to turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities and step into their greatness. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! My book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! (Hay House/ Balboa Press 2013) shares my story and the stories of 10 of my clients along with my signature Discovery Framework.
For fun, I love reading, sewing, knitting, yin yoga, afternoon tea, opera and movies. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia with my spouse, Wilson Abney, and the cat who runs our life, Maisy Jane.
Here’s a quick, three-part survey about one of the most powerful and pervasive stressors of our time:
Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! 