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.
