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Increase Your Wealth and Health

by Regina May 08, 2010

Recently, I had the opportunity to conduct a retreat, Increase Your Wealth and Health, at the King George Zen Farm. The retreat was designed to increase awareness about our emotional relationship with money.

We all have both a factual and an emotional relationship to money. However, when anxiety goes up, our automatic emotional beliefs and assumptions can take over so that the facts get lost. Some emotional beliefs are: “I never have enough money.” or “If I had more money, I would be safe, happy or calm.” Of course, our money facts are easy to track. We know what comes in and we know what goes out.

The following is a list of questions I developed to help participants broaden their thinking about money. Included in these questions is the assumption that we acquire our automatic emotional beliefs and assumptions from our multi-generational family emotional process. One way of being a self with money is to examine the bigger multi-generational picture. Best thinking to you!

The smaller your focus, the more negative you get
-Loretta Nowakowski, Ph.D.
(or focusing on what you don’t have produces less, not more)

Questions to consider to broaden your thinking about money:

• What does financial health mean to you?
• When have you experienced financial health?
• When and how did you become independently financially responsible for your basic survival needs?
• What did your parents teach you about financial health? Money management? Was it talked about in your family?
• What were your parent’s beliefs about money? Your grandparents?
• What did your family teach you about generosity? What are your criteria for giving money to family members or charitable organizations?
• How anxious do you become when thinking about your current financial situation?
• How anxious do you feel when discussing finances with your spouse, your parents, or your children?
• To what extent is fear present when making financial decisions?
• When you get anxious, do you overspend? Avoid dealing with money by letting bills pile up or not looking at bank records or investments? Do you get critical of your spouse’s spending habits, or your children or parents? Do you compartmentalize expenses and purchases as though they are not related to your overall financial facts?
• What do you do to manage anxiety? When are you happiest? Most calm? Most at peace?

Most of us feel studk and without options when we get anxious about our money. Changing our thinking by examining our assumptions and family patterns can create new and creative solutions for our financial challenges.

 

 

Filed under Family, Bowen family systems theory

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