I’m Glad I Can Cry
“I’m so glad that I can cry in front of my advisor,” a client told me recently. Of course, you can cry! Laugh, rage, pound the table if you want. Her need to shed a few tears had nothing really to do with the dollars and cents; it was the knowledge that her and her husband’s lifetime of saving had provided enough that could help their child who was struggling without unhinging their own goals and dreams for themselves.
Money touches everything in our world – you are sick – money helps; it might not cure you, but it can buy a lot of treatments and specialists and care-givers. Your child is in trouble – money helps for treatments or legal fees or therapists. Your parents are struggling to cover their costs – money helps to buy care-givers and drivers and deliveries. You lose your job – money helps cover your costs until you can land the next job. Have a great passion? Money helps to fund it or develop it or further it.
Everyone knows this; it’s why our whole society is built on the pursuit of the mighty dollar. But when you really stop to look at the list of those items, items that stir up a lot of emotion, items that can move you to tears or fire you up or drive you into action, nowhere is there any of the stuff that we throw in our shopping carts or “one-click” to buy. Yet, so many people give up saving so that they can have the latest this or that or the other thing that will end up at the bottom of a drawer or in a give-away pile or a trash can in no time. I look at my throw-away’s, give-away’s, and “what do I do this” pile and I do want to cry but for a totally different reason!
Are we putting our money toward the really emotional aspects of our lives? Those things that bring tears to our eyes, inspire our most creative selves, change the world, or change our perspectives of it? Are we tapping into the hard-wired emotion of money to get us where we want to be instead of just giving us more of what we already have too much of?
Take a hard look at where your dollars are going and rate the emotional impact those dollars have on your life, your future, and your world. If your “emotional impact” score is not where you want it to be, shift $1 toward something meaningful and significant today. Keep doing that until your dollars inspire you.
To your financial (and emotional) success,
Tana
