Learn Your Way Out of Money Fears
I talk a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about money. These are the myths and mottos we absorb as kids, mostly from our parents but also from the world around us. While these stories can differ from one another, many of us seem to have an inherent understanding that money = survival. Whether that means that we feel the need to hoard it, endlessly chase more of it or never, ever talk about it, this belief that a loss of money essentially equates to death ultimately leads to a fear response.
I have spoken to enough people about their money to have seen this fear response play out over and over again. I’ve seen people get defensive, or panicky, and even avoid the subject altogether despite being on a call purely to talk about money!
I get it, I have zero judgment towards people who experience these responses. I went live last week to talk about an episode of the Money Box programme on Radio 4 that used language that it would be almost impossible to engage with and not begin to feel fearful.
So, many of us find ourselves in a fear response when we come to thinking about money. But how do we move past it? By learning about it.
It’s well known that fear flourishes in the absence of knowledge. I hate to bring EVERYTHING back to the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s a pretty good example so I’m going to. In the early days of the pandemic, fear had the nation gripped. We knew next to nothing about the virus, how it spread, how the government was going to deal with (turned out they didn't much either but that’s a different blog post) or how we were going to cope with an impending, indefinite lockdown. That’s a heck of an absence of knowledge right? And while it can definitely be argued that we still have a bit to be fearful of, with every new scientific discovery or step forward in self-knowledge (turns out I can survive on my own in a caravan on the edge of a cliff for 3 months - who knew?!) that fear response becomes a little less intense.
So how does this relate to money? I’m willing to bet that a significant percentage of your money fears are coming from an absence of knowledge. When you get that knot in your tummy before checking your bank balance, it’s probably got something to do with the fact that you don’t know how much you’ve spent that month. If a friend talking about their tax return or business bank account has your heart beating a bit fast, it might be because you know that you don’t know as much as you could about business finances.
You might be thinking ‘No, Gail, it’s not that I DON’T know enough about money, it’s that I DO know that I don’t have enough of it!’ I get that, and I would still say that learning more about what ‘enough’ looks like for you and how you might get there will lessen that fear response. Forming a plan is empowering. And fear hates power.
If any of this is ringing true, then it’s time for you to take control of your money, get learning, and get rid of that fear. Once you have a handle on how much you have, how much you need, and how to bring the two closer together, you can move past that fear response and start living a life free from money fear.
So, where do you start? By starting to do the work. Click here for ‘The Money Finder’. It takes an hour, costs £3.50 and I reckon I can find you £2000 a year that you didn’t know you had. A pretty great first learning step hey?
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Hi there I’m Gail Bainbridge. I have taken my 20 years of experience as a Chartered Accountant working with small businesses and their owners and become a money mentor.
I am on a mission to transform your relationship to money. I can teach you how to find money that you didn’t know you had so you can spend it on living a life you love.
Need some help with your money take a look at how you can work with me.