Money is an extension of ourselves. We can use it to create change and improvements in our lives. We can also use it to detriment and sabotage ourselves. Spending and gambling to the point of addiction is far too common. But spending for the greater good has fantastic personal implications.
We use it to create change and improvements in our lives. You can use money for food, clothing and shelter, but you can also use money to forward your career. You can pay tuition to learn new skills, get a new certification or a degree that will help you get your dream job, or a better income. You can use money to improve your health with a gym membership, assuming you actually use it. You can even buy healthier food, which is not always more expensive, but it can be. Money well spent can bring you joy through entertainment, days at the spa or vacations to beautiful places. You might buy a trip to a spiritual retreat or personal development workshop that pays emotional and life changing dividends for years to come.
For as many ways as we might use money to improve ourselves and our lives, we can also use it to detriment and sabotage ourselves. We spend on any number of detrimental foods, drinks, and activities. We shop, eat, drink and otherwise distract ourselves from our pain and frustration. Sometimes we sabotage ourselves because we subconsciously believe that we deserve to suffer. Sometimes we sabotage ourselves as a byproduct of unwillingness to face our reality. Either way, it is a form of avoiding the hard work of seeing your truth, and building the life you really want.
Spending as an addiction is an all too common extension of this denial and avoidance. Retail therapy, as they call it, is a great distraction from your current reality. Finding something to buy gives you a temporary dopamine hit. It feels good right now, but wears off quickly because your reality is still there and has not changed. Spending in this way can become addictive. The debt piles up as you say to yourself that you, “just need this.” But no one purchase seems to relieve the issue for long. The shame and unworthiness pile up alongside the purchases and it all drives you deeper into the sadness and frustration that started it in the first place. It’s a vicious cycle.
Stopping is best done all at once by cancelling and cutting up all those credit cards and operating cash-only for a good long while until you change the underlying problems in your reality.
Meanwhile, spending for the greater good, can be a therapy of its own. Studies have shown that spending the same amount of money on something to benefit someone else, has been shown to have longer lasting positive effects on your mood and mindset, than spending that same amount on yourself for temporary enjoyment. Even spending just a little bit on someone else’s benefit makes us feel wonderful. Paying for the person behind you in line at the coffee shop, or leaving an extra large tip to the waiter or waitress are just a couple of simple ideas. In this way, spending just a fraction on others, pays dividends to your psychology. It makes you feel kind, and worthy. It changes your view of yourself and others. And THAT is what changes your underlying reality. When you feel worthy, you will stop sabotaging yourself and start using your money to better yourself.
In all of these cases, money is an extension of ourselves, not a separate entity.
