Resiliency, Bunnies and Our Financial Inner Voice
Many of us approach our personal finances with a sense of shame on the one hand or of “doing the right thing” on the other. Very rarely do we approach our own finances with a sense of kindness; kindness for ourselves, kindness for the people we provide for and kindness for the world at large. And yet, care is at the heart of most financial choices we make.
In The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness author Kelli Harding draws from research that shows that bunnies fed a high-fat diet but were cared for with a great amount of kindness, outlived the same types of bunnies fed that high-fat diet without the care and attention. The interesting thing about being human is that we have the consciousness to treat ourselves with care and kindness. However, when it comes to money, I hear much more self-judgment, shame, embarrassment and fear than I do kindness when clients are talking about themselves.
Why does this matter? I will share an example of a client of mine with inherited wealth. She had lived for decades before we began working together beating herself up for each choice she made around finances. In her inner world, her father would have made different (and better) choices and so her experience of her money was not what I could see, that her father loved her and wanted her to have a feeling of being cared for by the money he had left her, it was of chronic failure.
She came to me deeply concerned with the state of the world and wanting to make a difference with her investments, but I could see that each financial decision she made was accompanied by inner turmoil; for the choices she was making different than what her father would have, for the privilege and wealth that she has that others do not and because she thought there was a“right” way to deal with money and whatever she was doing, wasn’t it.
I will tell you some secrets:
• There is NO right way to spend, save, give or invest money. Money is there to help us co-create the world we live in and to fulfill our life’s meaning.
• Putting ourselves into a state of inner suffering will not make any difference in the world. Our self-inflicted pain will not lead to justice for the billions of people with less. Only actions filled with loving-kindness can do that.
• Internal kindness creates resiliency, according to Kristin Neff, PhD, Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, in Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.
After working together for a number of years, my client tells me that she can feel her father’s love for her when she is giving to charity, when she is helping a friend, when she is traveling to see her grandchildren, when she is able to buy a home on the water which she loves, when she invests in a forest of trees which will sequester carbon and help improve the planet those grandchildren will live in. Her experience of her money is no longer painful; it is loving; loving of herself, of her family and of the planet.
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