Choose the stories you tell yourself about money and you can choose to smile or frown.

Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

 

Money is a story that drives many of our emotions and feelings. To be more accurate, the absence of money is the story we tell ourselves.

 

We tell ourselves stories about money. That’s for sure. And that’s not a real problem. The real problem arises when we start believing that those stories are solid and real. We then become slaves of those stories.

 

We all recognise the stories we tell ourselves about money.

 

One story tells “the absence of money”. May be we used to have a million dollars in the bank, but now the balance is only ten thousand. Instead of seeing the truth, which is that we have a positive balance of $10,000, we tell ourselves we are $90,000 down or in another words, there is an “absence” of $90,000.  This story of the absence of something like money creates a soup of emotions which gets in the way of our peace of mind.

 

This is same feeling that we have when someone who used to live with us in the same house, may be a partner or a close relative, but now that person has gone. We feel a big hole in our heart because everytime we enter the house, we notice the “absence” of that person.

 

Another story we tell ourselves about money is that “we don’t have enough money for the future”.  Then we start experiencing failure in advance. That’s what anxiety is, isn’t it? “Experiencing failure in advance”. I notice that people who are telling themselves this story are getting younger and younger. When I was in my twenties, did I think about money for my retirement? But now it seems that more and more really young people feel more insecure.

How about “I should have $100,000 because that’s what I need for my happiness but I only have $50,000 “, “I should be earning $50,000 for the work I do but I am only getting $30,000”…………all the “should bes” create some very distressing stories.

 

I am curious, how many people tell themselves this “there is no absence of anything in my life”story?:   “I have some money in the bank, a roof over my head and a very nutritious breakfast, clean water to make tea, I delight in all my good qualities and good fortune.”

 

Isn’t that another kind of energising story to help give us a holiday from the other heavier stories that we tend to carry around?