The Psychology of Money: Why Your Relationship with Money Matters More Than Your Budget
Most people believe that improving their finances is about learning how to budget, invest, save or to earn more.
While those skills are important, they do not explain why intelligent, competent and capable people continue to repeat the same financial patterns year after year.
**Why do we overspend despite knowing better?
**Why do we save but never enjoy their money?
**Why do successful professionals still feel anxious every time they check theirbank account?
**Why do feelings of guilt, shame, fear, or inadequacy influence financial decisions ?
The problems is not money, it is our relationship with money.
That relationship was formed long before we earned our first paycheck.
It was shaped by our families, our culture, our experiences, our successes, our disappointments, and the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about whatmoney means.
Changing those patterns requires more than financial education. It requires awareness.
That is the foundation of my upcoming book, Money, My Secret Shame.
The book is about understanding your relationship with money and transforming that relationship so that healthier financial behaviours can emerge.
As an Executive and Financial Coach, I've noticed that the same framework that helps leaders navigate change also helps people transform their relationship with money.
This same cycle guides much of my work as an Organisational DevelopmentConsultant and Executive Coach.
Grounded in Gestalt philosophy, it reflects four interconnected stages of making meaningful change:
1. Awareness: Making the Invisible Visible
Many of our financial decisions are made unconsciously because they are driven by beliefs and assumptions that we rarely question.
Awareness helps us uncover the hidden patterns that influence how we earn, spend, save, invest, avoid, or worry about money.
We begin asking different questions:
· What messages did I learn about money growing up?
· Which financial behaviours keep repeating?
· What beliefs am I carrying that no longer serve me?
· What am I avoiding?
You cannot change what you cannot see. The first step is to make the invisible visible.
2. Sense-Making: Understanding the Story
Once we notice the patterns, we can begin to understand them.
We often make up stories from our experiences and over time, these stories become cemented as beliefs.
"I'll never have enough."
"I'm bad with money."
"Rich people are selfish."
"If I earn more, people will expect more from me."
Sense-making helps us understand the origins of our stories and the meaning we made of them. We can then choose if these stories are still relevant to our present conditions.
3. Contact: Meeting Ourselves Honestly
As pleasure seeking humans we often avoid the feelings that money canevoke.
Money as a topic is often accompanied by guilt, shame, fear, regret, comparison and pride.
Contact invites us to sit honestly with these feelings and ourselves as nonjudgmental observers. We can hold space and be compassionate with ourselves aswe begin to release the emotional burdens that have influenced and shaped ourfinancial lives for years.
4. Action: Turning Insight into Change
Once we understand ourselves differently, we can make different choices. We can take action using fresh insights to bring about change.
We can conduct small experiments to create new behaviours around money. We can intentionally and deliberately:
· Have difficult money conversations
· Set healthier boundaries
· Make better spending decisions
· Build savings consistently
· Plan confidently for the future
Beyond Personal Finance
Sustainable change begins by increasing awareness, making sense of what emerges, honestly engaging with ourselves, and then taking intentional action.
We often cannot solve problems by focusing only on what is visible, we have to make the invisible visible.
This framework is the backbone of my coaching practice and now it has become the framework of this book Money, My Secret Shame.
As with all change, before we change our financial results, we often need to change our relationship with money.
What financial story are you still carrying that might be ready to change?
