How is Your Wealth-Esteem?
by Ian Watson
Too Little......or Too Much?
Many
of us struggle with the idea that we don’t have enough
money to do or to have some of the things we would like,
or even to pay for the things we are already doing and
having. But just suppose for a moment you had the
opposite problem. Imagine having so much money that you
realized you would never find enough things to spend it
on in your lifetime.
Spare a thought for seventy-five year old Warren Buffet,
second-richest man in the world, who faced exactly that
conundrum earlier this year. The poor (i.e. rich) chap
had a cool $30 billion to dispose of, and time was
clearly running out. Not only that, being the smart
investor that he was, his fortune was continuing to grow
at a phenomenal rate, presumably in spite of his best
efforts to spend some of it.
The obvious solution of course is to simply give the
money away, but can you imagine how difficult that would
be in practical terms? Who are you going to give it to?
Which cause is more deserving than another? How can you
ensure that it is put to good use? How are you going to
tell all those people who would like some of your fortune
that they can’t have any? And how would all of that
make you feel?
What quickly becomes clear is that when we deal with
money, which we all do on a daily basis, we are also
required to deal with something else. Responsibility.
Fear. Guilt. Expectation. Worthiness. Greed. Envy. And,
strange as it may seem, we have to face pretty much the
same issues within
ourselves whether we are struggling
with too much money or too little.
In my own consultation work I have found that a person’s
relationship to money is a reliable indicator of their
inner state. As we transform on the inside, the flow of
money in our life quite naturally transforms as well. The
thought-patterns and emotions that have become associated
with money throughout a person’s life create what I call
their wealth-esteem.
It is, of course, an aspect of self-esteem that just
happens to show up very clearly in how we handle our
financial affairs.
Transforming Your Wealth-Esteem
Wealth-esteem consists of three primary components. They
are the beliefs,
emotions and behaviours
that have some
kind of an association for us with wealth. Collectively
they form our financial ‘inner reality’ which is
outwardly reflected in our daily acts of earning,
spending, giving and receiving. Whether we pay our bills
on time, are saving for a ‘rainy day’ or are forever in
debt no matter how much we earn, our outer life is
reflecting what we hold to be true on the inside.
Put simply, we will only allow ourselves to act in ways
which are consistent with what we believe to be true at
the time. To do otherwise will feel extremely
uncomfortable, and none of us likes to feel uncomfortable
for very long. This is a crucial point that many people
miss when attempting to transform their financial
situation.
Most of us will initially attempt to change things on the
outside when we find ourselves in financial difficulty -
we work harder, or try to curb our spending, for example.
Behaviour modification can certainly help, but it takes a
considerable effort to maintain and there is always a
tendency to slip back into the old familiar ways.
The second most popular approach is some form of
mental-reprogramming, such as positive thinking or the
use of affirmations. This too can be helpful, but again
we will encounter resistance to changing our old limiting
beliefs and, more often than not, we find ourselves
reverting to the old ways pretty quickly. Or, even worse,
we tell ourselves that we have changed, yet our
behaviours and experiences in the outer world tell a
different story. This is commonly known as being in
denial.
The
Role of Emotions
What both of these methods fail to address is the
emotional
component of
wealth-esteem, and in my experience it seems to be the
most important aspect of all. Suppose, for example, you
work as a therapist and charge €40 for a session. But
your client is so thrilled with what you did for them
that they insist on paying you double! How would that
feel to you, and how would you respond?
Depending on your internal reality at the time, there are
a number of possibilities. You might be thrilled and
accept the gift graciously. Or you might get suspicious
and wonder what their ulterior motive must be. You might
presume that if they’re paying you double you had better
work twice as hard in return. Or you might feel that you
don’t deserve to be paid that much, so you reject the
offer, even though you could certainly use the money. And
so on.
If you’re observant, what you will notice is that the
response you generate in a situation like the one above
is directly related to your feeling-state
in that moment.
The general principle being, we limit our responses to
the ones that feel more or less comfortable to
us,
and will wriggle our way out of any other alternatives -
even if that means we end up rejecting something that we
would really like to have.
The bottom line seems to be that our
emotions are
the glue which binds our beliefs to our
behaviours. If we want to really
transform our financial (or any other) situation, we have
to uncover and release the feelings
that arise
whenever we start to move outside our existing comfort
zone. This is not inherently difficult, but it seems to
be the one crucial area that is most frequently
neglected.
One of the most useful things I learned about
uncomfortable feelings is that they don’t mean what we
think they mean. Most of us will generate all kinds of
reasons as to why
we are feeling a
certain way, but what if you could simply
accept
whatever you are
feeling and just let it go? It is, after all, only a
sensation passing through your body - how could it
possibly mean anything?
Bringing this kind of neutral and compassionate
acceptance to uncomfortable feelings (rather than pushing
them away or seeking to avoid feeling them) goes a long
towards dissolving the resistance we experience when
making a significant internal change. This creates the
necessary space within which transforming
the belief that
is limiting becomes relatively easy.
What
we Believe to be True, is True for us (even if its a
lie!)
If you confront a person’s deeply held beliefs head-on,
you’d better watch out! There’s no better way to elicit a
hostile or aggressive response. The reason is that our
core beliefs have become an intrinsic part of our
self-identity, and none of us are prepared to give that
up without a fight.
The good news is that it is rarely necessary to confront
a belief. What seems to work much more effectively is
simply to uncover them and to gently question their
validity. The way that I usually go about this in my
consultation work is by addressing a small number of very
specific questions. The one I most often use is along the
lines of ‘what does that mean to
you’? If you can uncover the
meaning that you have attached to something, then you
have discovered what you believe to be true in that area
of your life.
For example, a person might tell me that they just don’t
seem able to make ends meet, despite their best efforts.
The dialogue might proceed something like this:
The fact that you’re unable to make ends meet - what does
that mean to you?
It means I’m not working
hard enough ..... (belief number one)
And if it were true that you
weren’t working hard enough, what would that mean to you?
It would mean that I
couldn’t succeed.... (belief number two)
And if it were true that you
couldn’t succeed, what would that mean to you?
It would mean that I
don’t deserve be successful..... (belief number
three)
And if it were true that you don’t deserve to be
successful, what would that mean to you?
I must be a bad person
....... (belief number four - most likely a core
belief)
Within the space of a few minutes, the unconscious (and
completely false) associations that this person has held
between earning a living and being a good or bad person
have been uncovered and brought into conscious awareness.
And at each stage of this process, a certain feeling will
arise quite naturally which only needs to be accepted and
allowed to be felt. In this way, any resistance is
quickly dissolved and the person will begin to see for
themselves what they believe to be true, and will more
than likely have a good laugh at how ludicrous it is!
Once you can laugh at your own core beliefs, you’re in an
excellent position to revise them.
How we relate to money tells us a great deal about our
values, our sense of worthiness and the limitations we
place on our own freedom. Uncovering these unconscious
patterns and transforming them has a liberating and
empowering effect not only on our financial situation,
but on our whole life.
So how did Warren Buffet manage to dispose of his
billions without losing too much sleep over it? With a
single act - a masterstroke - he solved his dilemma.
Being the second richest man in the world, it occured to
him that there was only one person better qualified than
himself to handle that kind of a sum. Enter Bill Gates,
the richest man in the world, who, as co- chairman of the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, now has Mr. Buffet’s
billions to get rid of as well as his own. Poor guy!
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This
article first appeared in Network Ireland magazine in
2006, a holistic magazine published 3 times a year. For
more information, contact Ruth Marshall on 061 921
642.