Openly Living Your Financial Truth
Financial Trauma Doesn’t Have to Define You
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In my roles as a financial advisor and a financial educator, I encounter all types of people at varying levels of financial capacity, but a commonality among many of them is the importance of maintaining a level of privacy with their finances. It certainly makes sense to keep your financial status close to the vest, especially in a world where there are so many scams and fraud perpetrators looking for opportunities to separate you from your money. However, the reasons for privacy sometimes go beyond being protective and are a function of not wanting others to know anything about your finances for fear of judgment. That also is understandable, but it can also be limiting. If you choose not to take advantage of opportunities to improve your situation because you are concerned about optics, you may be missing out on the chance to make a positive difference in your life or your family’s situation. I see evidence of this regularly in my involvement in the Financial Empowerment Conference Series, which provides access to financial literacy opportunities and programs, all free of charge. While many people avail themselves of the education provided, many more decline to do so, and according to people I’ve spoken to, a major reason is the fear of what others will think or say. I had the pleasure of speaking with financial therapist, Rahkim Sabree, on episode 6 of the Know Better to Do Money Better podcast, a production of the Financial Empowerment Conference Series and TCC Productions, and during the conversation, we discussed issues of financial shame and trauma, which go well outside the bounds of normal financial discussions but are very real and important to pay attention to. His book, Overcoming Financial Trauma, provides insights into reasons for and outcomes of how people feel about money. As a result of that, we wanted to discuss in this issue of the newsletter ways to think about your approach to money and embracing it no matter how you feel about it today.
Come to Acceptance with Your Past
Many people have grown up in situations where finances were not what they would have wanted them to be. Unfortunately, those experiences can shape not only how you see the world when you have more autonomy over your life but can also unduly influence the financial decisions you make. As is the case with most issues or problems we have, the first step in overcoming is recognition of the issue. While knowledge is valuable and important, recognizing the role our feelings and emotions play in our financial lives is absolutely critical in the decisions we make. When it comes to how we see and feel about money, so much of what shapes our views is not talked about or even acknowledged. If you can’t recognize it and name it, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to do much about it, but you also have to understand that it is often the case that circumstances in your past may not have been things you had control over. That could be a result of family circumstances, societal influences, or even systematic structures, but carrying the weight of burdens from your past can prevent you from doing what is in your best interest moving forward. We all have a past, and most of us have things in our past that we wish were different, but there is nothing that can be done now to change the past. The best thing we can do is honestly review the past, accept what happened (including our part in it if applicable), and use the things that have happened as learning experiences.
Don’t Let Your Past Dictate Your Future
If you take the approach of using the past as an informational source to learn from, you then have to use what you’ve learned productively. Dwelling on past mistakes is not a productive use of your time or energy; however, using what you’ve learned to change how you might approach things in the future is. If you think back to your days as a child, chances are you didn’t hold onto much of anything for too long. You would probably have tended to be more concerned about what was coming next. Tucked inside of the past and the future, however, is the present, which really is all you have or can control, to the extent you can control things. You often hear from great professional athletes and other high-profile celebrities that their success comes from staying in the present moment. Rather than lamenting what happened before or having anxiety over what could happen in the future, success tends to come from applying to your present circumstances the knowledge you’ve gained from your experiences, and those more informed and productive decisions you make in the present will put you in a position to have a more desirable future.
Seek Improvement without Regard to What Others May Think
Because we as humans are communal beings and tend to care how others see us, we sometimes make our decisions based on what we believe others will think about us. Whether we’re trying to impress other people or just not embarrass ourselves in front of them, we can place much too much emphasis on the opinions of others. Much of the anxiety or fear we have as well as the negative self-talk we engage in is not grounded in what is actually happening now but instead in trauma that we’ve experienced in the past or how we perceive others may view us. A better approach is to concern yourself more with whether you have made progress from your own viewpoint (i.e. compare yourself to yourself and not to others). If you are constantly seeking to improve yourself, and that becomes your metric of success, the main thing that matters is learning and growing from what you’ve experienced. This is a key thing in understanding finance and making the improvements that will lead you to financial success. No matter how much you know, there is always more to learn, so you can always improve how you go about what you are doing. If someone else views your seeking to learn more as a flaw on your part, they may be the one who really has the issue, not you. Concern yourself with increasing your knowledge, wisdom, and effectiveness, always seeking to run your own race.
Stewardship Emphasis
Fear and shame are tools intended to cause you to question yourself and keep you stuck, but having real talk with yourself can unleash you to live without more freely.
The Empowerment Channel | Volume CCXLIX | Dedicated to Promoting Financial Educationthrough Stewardship