Better Money Energy, Less Stress Begin With Self-Awareness

by: Hugh Massie

This article first appeared in?Nasdaq.

Most people have a complicated relationship with money. Money brings complexities, challenges and opportunities. Most of all, money heightens emotions and impacts health.?Money decisions?affect our feelings, our behavior and our relationships.

For many, our financial behavior is driven by past family experiences, both good and bad. We repeat learned behaviors – again, good and bad – generationally. It’s time to break that cycle.

Self-awareness is the key. Inherent money behaviors can be revealed and measured. (Even and especially ones of which you are not aware.) At first they will be unique to you. It’s worth spending time to become aware of behaviors that are tied to money because, without awareness, they override rational thinking?and drive decisions.

Consider this…

• Everyone has money energy. How does yours manifest?
• How would you describe your authentic identity?
• Can you see how discovering who you are and how you will measure your life's success is foundational to taking ownership of your life direction and gaining money clarity?

Your money energy reflects your behavioral style and shows up in how you earn, invest, spend, save and give. (Hint: Almost everywhere.) Further, money is a significant factor in causing stress not only because of how much you have or do not have, but because money impacts your mind. And stress impacts your food and alcohol intake, body, mindset and more.

Sustained stress processed through your emotions and the operation of your central nervous system can trigger many illnesses and diseases. So, get proactive: Reset how you think about money and look deeply into how money impacts your behavior.

The energy of money and your relationship with it can regularly play on your mind (and mental health), which potentially causes you to stress in some way, negatively impacting how you hear, see and feel in making decisions. For example, some people will have anxiety because they cannot pay the bills. Still, others with wealth may be money-stressed because they do not want to spoil their children or let money be divisive with family members and friendships.

Enjoying positive money energy

This interconnectedness works on the flip side too. When there is high money energy that you are positively aligned with, the stress goes away, and your physical and mental health and quality food intake should go up, along with overall clarity. In this scenario, you can more easily and purposefully amplify good money energy in your life by taking advantage of financial opportunities, having more life experiences, being generous to others and improving your relationship capital.

With self-awareness, you can author your own behavior with money. You can control its impact on your health and well-being, and above all, you can have clarity of thinking that opens your eyes to new opportunities.

Is it time to integrate all your personal life energy fields to make quantum leaps in your life…rather than just in a linear progression? Money, whether you have little or much, is part of your identity. How you use it and behave with it tells a story about you and your identity.

Nice guy, bad energy

Let me introduce you to Michael Johnson. He is 50 and owns a successful carpet store. He makes $350,000 per year, yet feels “ squeezed” right now because he undertook a project to build his dream home before selling his current home. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Michael trusted and believed in the advice he was getting from friends. It’s important to him to look good in his community. Had Michael understood his identity and predisposition to spend, he would not now find himself financially struggling with debt that he has no significant additional income streams to service.

He eventually sold his original home and moved into his new building, still stressed by the significant debt and difficulty in reducing it.

His advisor can see that Michael is likely to make poor decisions in the hopes of paying down debt; therefore, he encourages Michael to look deeper and take note of his financial personality. He is a spender, not a saver; he fails to pursue agreed plans and goals, needs more boundaries and has often been taken advantage of. To Michael, building relationships is more important to him than anything else.

He is a nice guy; this is his identity. But this is what needs to be managed. His focus must shift to building back his wealth and managing what will be his fear of?regret bias. His natural receptive and trusting character will not change, but it must be addressed.

Conscious knowledge of one's character and feelings is an excellent first step toward understanding identity. Knowing he has the propensity to spend and lacks financial boundaries can be managed. This revised – informed – approach will also bring opportunities as he digs deeper into his identity and learns to manage it.

Your money energy experience

Whether you’re an advisor or consumer, if you have your own theories, struggles or success stories about some aspect of money energy,?I’d love to hear from you, as money energy research is by nature ongoing.