It’s that time of year, again. In a debt-driven economy dependent on perpetual consumption, December brings with it the biggest retail event of the year! Purported to open our hearts, for many this is more likely the press to open our wallets in some effort to meet or exceed expectations too often shaped by advertising and marketing hype.
Who amongst us does not know the challenges of money? So many of our choices in life are dictated by its presence or absence and yet, so many outcomes fuelled by this intent leave us feeling empty and incomplete. Perhaps we need to take a more radical look at money and begin our exploration from the inside, out. In so doing, we may well come to recognize that money is an external marker for an internal cue; and as we become better able to hear and heed that internal cue, our relationship with money changes.
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The following closing thoughts can be found at the end of:
Episode 92 of ‘Reclaiming Your Self: Women Unedited and Engaged!’ on the topic of ‘Radical Money!’.
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As we come to a close, here are a few thoughts for you to ponder as you allow this exploration to continue to rumble around inside you; leading you where it may.
- Take a moment and allow yourself to consider ‘money’ as a nominalization; as a code word that tells in a single word the story you hold about your identity and about your value as defined by your net worth. When you consider that identity, what is the story that you’re telling yourself about the money that you do or don’t have? How does your story about money propel you forward or pull you back? And if you were to consider your identity without money as a critical marker, who might you come to know yourself to be?
- What are the unclaimed stories that you’re living out in your life today that are actually the family stories from another time? As we grow up, the identity that money has shaped for others often becomes embedded as our own without the benefit of any mindful scrutiny. Were you to let go of that story, who are the people in your life you may also need to let go of… or at least, redefine the nature of your relationship with them. And who are the ones who would stay?
- And finally, without money – without the currency that allows you to accumulate the ’stuff’ of life – how would you find meaning in your life? What would become the markers of your life in determining your value to yourself and to others? Allow yourself to consider and define for yourself the relevance of money in your life and the part that it has played in shaping the life you’re living?
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