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Women, Money and the Holidays

On 11/30/2011, in Uncategorized, by admin
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Psychological conditioning can really interfere with true enjoyment of the holiday season.  Buying gifts and decorating our homes can come at a great cost-  like money and sometimes too much of it!  We have been conditioned to buy the perfect gifts, decorate the perfect home, and become the perfect holiday actress.  We are generous, elegant, and a wreck.  We take delight in all of this and yet know on some level that we are doing damage to ourselves by the indulgence and damage to our families by demonstrating poor role models and draining money from our bank he accounts.

Consider the tips below before you head out to the mall.

  • When doing your holiday shopping, take a look at the thing in your hand, seriously look at it and ask, “I have lived without this item for all these years, do I really need it now?”  This helps to stretch time out and provide a longer range context.
  • Meaningful buying is different from spending.  Buying is necessary to keep a family alive. Spending is an emotional drive to achieve a temporary emotional state of satisfaction.  Where is the need in that?  Please take a hard look at your needs.
  • If spending (as opposed to buying out of need) is a regular behavior in our lives, we are not choosing creativity, only gratification.  We are not deciding morally, we are defaulting to emotional confusion.  Take charge, do the right thing.  See your life as it is.
  • Expect and deserve.  We need to be clear on what items we deserve and the other items we can expect.  We may think deserve a lot, we what we can expect is probably much more limited.
  • Want a useful tip this gift giving time of year?  Make your shopping trips difficult.  Go at the busiest times.  Park way far away from the entrance- as in way far away and think about what you want to buy on the long trek in.
  • When shopping, only bring cash and watch the dollars disappear.  Bring a list to refer to including prices associated to each person.
  • When shopping for others, do NOT shop for yourself. Know the physical signs that indicate to you that you are in trouble.  If you feel anxiousness in your body or  hear that inner voice that says “I’m buying it anyway”– and I know you know this feeling!!!-  STOP, DROP, and ROLL away from the item.
  • Want to resist spending?  Then, ask yourself, who are you?  Can you draw yourself down to your core being?  Slow it down.  Calm yourself.
  • Be a role model for your children.  Show them thoughtful, intentional buying. They will inherit your behaviors.  Make them good ones.
  • Want to buy something?  Fine.  But leave the store for a few minutes and then come back.  Is it still what you really want?
  • Buy less and focus on inventive wrapping techniques.  What can you create with paper and ribbon to delight others? Fun!
 

The Money Attachment

On 09/04/2011, in Uncategorized, by admin
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We have touched on this before here on this blog, but it seems proper to elaborate. I just completed a presentation at the Albuquerque YWCA on the history and psychology of women and money and the attendees really made me think hard on this. I thank them for their openness and insights.
We begin the conditioning process from the moment we are born. For some of us, this means we develop an attachment to people, or power or money. These entities no longer exist as they really are, but rather, they become to us concepts or constructs around which we have written stories and applied meanings. These stories and meanings are transparent to us, we can’t see them and so we believe that they are true. For example, I drive a Camaro Z 28. It has a big engine and there are many movies and images that have been created that imply that drivers of Z 28’s speed, make quick lane changes, and otherwise drive a bit recklessly. If I believe that story, I could find myself doing all of the those things and also believe that almost have a responsibility to do so in order to keep the legend alive. It’s expected. Other drivers should understand this. And police officers, too, by the way.
In attachments with money during which money is typically over-valued and sought after, these exists a fear of not having enough, the fear of losing what I have, and actually, a belief that I can never have enough. This leads me to the bag lady syndrome. Alternatively, it can also cause me to feel jealousy toward others who have more than me. With spending as with other attachments like food and drugs, there comes secrecy and suspicion. And the image develops concurrently, the image of me the beautiful person who needs beautiful things around her to stake a claim to her own personal worth. So the spending, the denial, the sneaking around, and the over-use alternate with the withdrawal phase (denying oneself), the self-chastisement (usually at 2am), and the promises (never, never again). This is the cycle.
Part of ending the cycle is to let go the image. Can you family and friends really not love you in less expensive shoes? Would they really reject you if the quilt set on the bed remained for another year or two without replacement? More importantly, can you love you? Do you need these stories and meanings in your life when in fact, they exist only in your thoughts? It’s only a car. It’s only two feet. It’s only a bed. In reality, it’s only you as you with or without these things.. You can’t make a perfect thing better than it is.

 

Money Can’t Buy Everything, But……..

On 08/14/2011, in Uncategorized, by admin
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We have all heard, said, and believed that money can’t buy everything and that the best things in life are free. It’s true that love, nature, and music give all of us great joy and peace and that for the most part, these are gifts that nearly everyone can enjoy and enjoy for free.
But, I also contend that money can improve nearly every aspect of our lives and in fact, prolong it. Think about it.
Let’s start with nature. Many people choose to live in cities or suburbs, others might be trapped there because of finances. People who choose to live in cities often have enough money to take breaks from it to enjoy nature. They go to the beach or the mountains to find more pure experiences of nature. People who live in the city or suburbs and don’t have the funds to take vacations, can certainly enjoy nature to some degree, but their experience is limited in depth and breadth.
Take family relationships. Let’s say you have adult children who live out of state. Maybe they have their own children. If you have more money, you would have the freedom to travel to see them or bring them to your home. Once per year, you could create a family vacation so all of you could enjoy each other and some time away.
What about health? This is a big one. With money, you can buy good health insurance coverage, supplements, trainers, and exercise equipment and some sort of long term care insurance. Money can mean a healthier, active, and longer life.
Love, well, that one is a complex issue. So much of love is dependent on personal choice based a great deal on self-image, self- respect, and history. However, looking good, availability of travel to exotic vacation spots, entry into desired social circles, and even therapy, both individual and relationship are all available with proper funding. Or, becoming a more interesting person through further education or developing an enhanced cultural awareness due to travel experience make all of us more attractive. This does not insure love, but does make mate searching more potentially successful and satisfying relationship more possible.
Time. The luxury of time. Money means more of it. Money pays for house cleaners, landscapers, good cars and appliances in no need of time consuming repair, nannies, full price for goods without searching for sales, and general peace of mind having the household under control. Time can be used for more relaxing activities and interests. Time slows and is available for more satisfying use.
Money can be important to the way we live and enjoy our lives, but not in the traditional ways we have come to think about it. Not in the ways of having money for money’s sake or the prestige or power that it may bring. But it can enhance our lives.
Just something to think about.

 

The Silence Subjects

On 04/11/2011, in Uncategorized, by admin
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The Silence Subjects

People don’t talk about money. Why is that? Money is just another matter to be dealt with in life, isn’t it? We talk about many aspects of our lives like our jobs, our divorces, our errant children, and all things that make us happy. But we avoid those aspects that scare us. Let’s see, that means money, sex, death, and weight are all off the table.
Those areas of our lives that scare us are those areas that we don’t understand, don’t have control over, or have been conditioned to fear. Let’s take sex. Many of us don’t understand sex because we don’t talk about it seriously, partly because we don’t understand it. We tell jokes about it and laugh about it, but rarely have conversations about it. Not even, often times, with the person we’re having sex with. I think that sex has become so performance- and enjoyment- based that to talk about it puts us at risk of being judged- how good are you, how good is your mate, as a woman are you capable of enjoying it fully, how do you look in bed, how often are you having sex, and at middle age, is your mate still virile? I think that the laughing we do about it hides our discomfort so it looks like we’re talking about sex, but really we are only showing our fear.
Death? Talk about scared! I went to a public speaking presentation today and heard the old ranking that most people are more afraid to speak publically than to die. My thought is that we are so afraid to die that when asked to rank these two experiences, we are so afraid to even think about our fear of death that we default to public speaking to stay safe (-r). Again, we make jokes about death and dying, but it is nervous laughter that results. In our culture, most of us have nothing to say about our own death. We might discuss other people’s deaths or how nice a funeral we want, but death? No, not really. Of course, I also think that we fill our lives with so much TV news noise that we also don’t have silence in which to contemplate it.
Next, we’ll discuss our fear of weight and those such subjects and then finally money.

 

What if?

On 02/24/2011, in Uncategorized, by admin
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What if your year could be one of limitless possibility? What if it could go exactly like you want it? What would it look like? What would you be doing? Send me your answers!

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Those Sales Ladies!

On 02/02/2011, in Relationships With Money, Spending Money, by admin
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I know a woman who likes to go to the mall and I’m not talking about any mall.  She only likes the ones with the high-end department stores.  Often, she will travel out of town to conduct these shopping missions.  She dresses up in her trendiest clothes and attends to her hair and nails; this to go shopping for trendy clothes, almost like cleaning your house before the cleaning crew comes.

This woman is a really lovely person.  She likes to shop, but cares not to take a hard look at this behavior.

When she gets to the mall, she feels powerful and walks with purpose amongst other women who look and act like she does almost as if they belonged to an elite club.  She spends her money happily and with sophistication.  She feels like she has arrived and is among her own kind.  The other women may have billion dollar homes, I don’t know.  However, this woman’s home is in the low hundreds of thousands.  She loves this experience and it hits the sweet spot of comfort needs (like comfort foods?), but on some level, she also feels the imposter.  That eventual confession causes her to berate herself.

She once told me that her shopping is like a performance and the audience consists of the other woman shoppers and the salesladies.  She plays to her audience and watches how other shoppers shop and for what.  When she sees another woman buy something that is really rich and expensive, she takes in all of the delicious details and silently applauds, on one hand clapping congratulations and  the other a bit sadly with jealously.

But here’s the most interesting part.  In order to maintain her membership in the club, the supporting cast must also be fully convinced of her performance.  She realizes that the sales personnel have been selling quantities of expensive items all day and are accustomed to ringing up large sales.  At the cosmetics counter, for example, she selects scientifically proven skin care products and cosmetics from a palette of seductive colors, most of which she doesn’t need.  And she doesn’t ask price.  Her goal is to win the approval of the salesperson.

Now, having said all this, I do not judge this woman and frankly, she is a compilation of women I have talked to over the years.  And, in the past, I have experienced some of this myself to some degree.  That is how I understand this phenomenon so well.

Like I said, she’s a wonderful person; smart, competent, kind, exactly who you would want as a friend.  She just has this little problem with self deceit.

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A Little Competition

On 01/27/2011, in Relationships With Money, by admin
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Carol Gilligan in her book, In A Different Voice, discusses some research she did with boys and girls at play.  She invited boys to engage in some sort of play.  For the most part, they chose games that were competitive.  After choosing sides, the boys often played a game involving a ball.  On the occasion that there was a close call with the ball, the two teams would come together to determine whether the ball was in or out.  With much enthusiasm, a discussion would begin and sometimes, a decision would be agreed upon or at other times, the teams would determine that a do-over would be best suited.

When the girls were asked to play, often, a non-competitive activity like swinging or jumping rope would be chosen.  Sometimes, the girls would choose a competitive game involving a ball.  Like the boys, when a close call occurred, the two teams would rush together and begin to have a lively discussion.  However, after a few minutes of this, the girls were likely to simply leave the game.

These observations show that girls need not compete to have fun and that relationship mattered more that winning or being right.  Rather than risk hurt feelings or damaged relationships, the girls would quit the game.

How many of you remember choosing sides for games at school?  It was a sometimes embarrassing and hurtful process.  Girls who were picked last not only felt badly because their skill level had been publically acknowledged as low, but their feelings were hurt because they were not considered as part of the more popular group.  The girls who were picked first were aware of the girls who have been picked last and often silently empathized.

Competition is a gender-specific behavior.  As in the example I used in last blogs in discussing community life 10,000 years ago, women give and nurture.  Competition is less natural to them because it can require taking and depriving.  How does this play out in our current institutions such as education, politics, business, and sports?  That’s a big question.

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The Shift from Chalice to Blade

On 01/18/2011, in Relationships With Money, by admin
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From Marilyn French’s book, Beyond Power, women were the center of society and the bearers of life. Men had much less responsibility and women’s work was granted more importance than men’s.  Men had time to contemplate spirituality and god-figures. When closer observance revealed that men played a part in reproduction, they found it desirable to found a personal, self-based legacy and in that way, eternal life.  They came to see women not as the miraculous bearers of babies, but more like “the soil ready for seeding.”  The men saw themselves as the controller of procreation without the inconvenience of having to care for the resultant product. There was also an identification of the deities as male, a form of omnipotence

As human societies and technology evolved, a shift from plant and root foraging to meat hunting occurred.   Because women were limited by their child caring responsibilities, hunting was undertaken by the men.  Tools for hunting were developed.  Hunting and therefore, the hunters themselves took on greater importance.  Aggression and control over nature were valued.  Women who had long been associated with nature itself, now took second position to the men who sought to control it by killing.

Another interpretation of this gender organization comes from Riann Eisler.  She talks of the shift from the “partnership” model which emphasized linking rather than ranking to “domination.”

Rather than a cultural shift over time, Ms. Eisle differs from Ms. French and says that a “cataclysmic turning point during the prehistory of Western civilization, when the direction of our cultural evolution was quite literally turned around” was brought about by invaders who “ushered in a very different form of social organization.” These were people who “worshipped the lethal power of the blade – the power to take rather than give life” and that this became the ultimate power to establish and enforce domination.”  Wow, the power to take rather than give life.

You can read these books and I have a link to an article that details the shifts/cataclysms in culture as it occurred in many societies as written about by several authors.  Pretty powerful stuff.   Important to understand in your relationship to money or in the way you understand yourself.  Something your daughters should know and sons ought not miss.

Not to worry.  Next, we discuss your daughters and sons.  It’ll be more fun.

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10,000 Years and Counting

On 01/13/2011, in Relationships With Money, by admin
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Otto Fenichel wrote “money can symbolize anything we can give or take away” including “breast, sperm, protection, gift, power, anger and degradation.”  He viewed money as a “source of narcissistic supply originating in an instinctual need for food and for omnipotence.”  (Does this remind you of any recent wars going on in the world?) Turkel said that money is “also a symbol of worth, competence, freedom, prestige, masculinity, control, and security.”   Like I said in one of my last blogs, money is a pretty hot topic.  Money is the ultimate “thing” to have.  We can take it or give it if we have it.  When we have it, we have power, when we don’t, we don’t.  Also take note that Turkel mentions masculinity and other masculine traits.  In this desperate pursuit of currency, we must compete, control, and be competent.

Wow!  To compete, to control, to be competent!  I’m feeling powerful and yet  completely exhausted.  As a woman, I think I want to do these things and yet, something inside cautions me.

Let’s step back a moment and breathe.

Spend some time thinking about Fenichel quotes above.  I know they can sound somewhat over done, but really, money symbolizes the ultimate in ownership.  Whoever owns, wins.  Whoever has it can give it or take it away.

Let’s digress here- like REALLY digress- and go back about 10,000 years.  Ready?

Marilyn French’s book, Beyond Power is a comprehensive and profound attempt to explain the meanings and shifts of patriarchy and matriarchy.  I think she is preternaturally successful.  I will hereby oversimplify and cherry-pick from her writing (546 pages) to apply her findings to our subject.

Among several gender theorists, Ms. French states that originally, women were recognized for their ability to produce children and thereby, their close connection to nature.  Pregnancy and delivery were viewed as natural events tied to natural ebbs and flows. Women very much valued family.  They established a pattern of creation and child caring which included food gathering.  As an extension, women would also provide food for the community.  Art and education were societal priorities.  Under women, society worked!  So, what happened?

Before you move on to our next blog, please read the passage below from Riann Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade.  She says it all so well.

“Of course it makes eminent sense that the earliest depiction of divine power in human form should have been female rather than male. When our ancestors began to ask the eternal questions, they must have noted that life emerges from the body of a woman. It would have been natural for them to image the universe as an all-giving Mother from whose womb all life emerges and to which, like the cycles of vegetation, it returns after death to be again reborn. It also makes sense that societies with this image of the powers that govern the universe would have a very different social structure from societies that worship a divine Father who wields a thunderbolt and/or sword. It further seems logical that women would not be seen as subservient in societies that conceptualized the powers governing the universe in female form – and the ‘effeminate’ qualities such as caring, compassion, and nonviolence would be highly valued in these societies. What does NOT make sense is to conclude that societies in which men did not dominate women were societies in which women dominated men.

“Nonetheless, when the first evidence of such societies was unearthed in the nineteenth century, it was concluded that they must have been ‘matriarchal.’ Then, when the evidence did not seem to support this conclusion, it again became customary to argue that human society always was – and always will be – dominated by men. But if we free ourselves from the prevailing models of reality, it is evident that there is another logical alternative: that there can be societies in which difference is not necessarily equated with inferiority or superiority.” [Eisler, 1987] (emphasis, mine)

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Who Cares About My Ice?

On 01/04/2011, in Relationships With Money, by admin
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Judgments evaluate people, things, and events as good or bad, right or wrong, interesting or dull, convenient or awkward, pleasing or unpleasant.  We all do this, everyday.  Right now at my desk, I am thinking that I in the previous sentence I wanted to offer options that were fairly universal because that is good and not options that are specific because that is bad.  I also noticed that the cold drink in my glass now has several frozen-together ice cubes that will be hard to break apart to enjoy and that is bad.  My desk is clean and that is good.  I see dog hair on my chair and that is bad.  I hear my husband sweeping the patio and that is good.  I feel like I had a hearty lunch and that is good.  Or wait, maybe I ate too much and that is bad!  I’ll have to think about that one to reach the accurate judgment.

Most of our judgments are inconsequential.  Who cares about my ice?  In fact, I read somewhere that our brains consider 60,000 thoughts per day.  Most of them slip by us so quickly that we don’t reach any conclusion about them.  One of my goals in life to think only 30,000 per day and consider each one a little more seriously.  I want to slow things down and let my need for judgment slide.  I find that one of the best ways to do this is to at least be aware of my judgments.  I will never stop judging, it is only important that I am aware of the judgments I make.  This points out my mental process AND gives me a choice.  Do I really want to see my frozen ice as bad or can I just let it be a circumstance in my life that just is?  If I see my ice as bad, then it makes me feel bad or frustrated, even regardless of how slightly.  And we’ll get to that too.

Assumptions, on the other hand, are the stories we have talked about before.  Often we are conditioned since birth to believe certain things to gain approval within our society.  Assumptions are almost always transparent to us, we can rarely know that what we are experiencing is a conditioned thought from the past and not a new current curiosity of our present.  And you remember what Felix from the Odd Couple said about assumptions: that to assume makes an as_ out of u and me.

All right.  Enough about thoughts and thinking for now.  Let’s get back to money and who we are as women.  It’s just that when we get into trouble with money it is usually rooted in artificially created thought.  We also need to go back in history and figure out how this whole money thing got started!

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