The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom (5 page)

As you are thinking back to your past, close your eyes. See whatever you can; remember what the scene looked like. Was someone baking cookies? Were you holding a wet bathing suit? What else was happening in the scene? Was someone laughing, arguing, crying, in the next room? With your child’s eyes, and with the adult eyes you have now, remember everything you can.

This first step may open the floodgates to many emotions. I’ve done this exercise with hundreds of people, and most people—even those who grew up in the wealthiest families—recall a painful memory, a memory that leaves them sad still. One woman remembers stealing from a schoolmate’s cubbyhole and still feels ashamed. One man remembers his magic Roy Rogers hat, which was stolen from him when he left it behind in a restaurant; he mourned the loss of his most valuable possession for weeks and never recovered the powers it gave him. One woman received less allowance from her father than her older brother and younger stepbrother did, and her rage at her father’s unfairness—and her powerlessness against it—still hurts today. One man still remembers crouching in the backseat of his father’s stretch limousine so his friends wouldn’t see him. Even now he feels ashamed of his money. Every one of us has such a memory, and every such memory tells at least part of the story of who we are today. If you let it, your memory will reveal the roots of the fears that so strongly rule your financial life today.

After you have spent some time thinking about this, please write down everything about this memory that you can. Do not censor anything. If any of your friends or family members are interested and willing, you might want to invite them to do this exercise with you. If they take you up on your invitation, please be sensitive as everyone re-creates their memories; we want to resolve the pain of the past, not add to it. If you can do it with others, this exercise will not only help you to begin to remove your personal blocks about money, it will also help free you from the taboo that forbids you to talk about your fears about money. You will be amazed at the things everyone remembers.
This is a very important exercise
.

We are all powerless as children, and money looms so powerfully. As we grow up we claim our power in one way after another, taking on jobs, families, commitments, responsibilities.
Yet we don’t grow up to claim our financial power until we look money directly in the eye, face our fears, and claim that power back. Each of our memories is different, but they all lead us to similar places, places that are riddled with self-doubt, unworthiness, insecurity, and fear. Fear that has paralyzed us into thinking of all the things we can’t do, not all the things we can. No financial advice you get or financial book you read is worth anything unless you can put that advice into action. I’ve been afraid at times, and you might be afraid now. Let’s see what you’re afraid of, then do what must be done to put the fears to rest.

I
N OUR CULTURE
it’s okay to talk about therapy we’ve gone through, marital problems we’ve had, our deepest intimate secrets—but telling the truth about money, confessing our worries to our children, our parents, our friends, just isn’t done. Money is our secret both in private and in public. Imagine going to a dinner party and telling a group of close acquaintances, “I just don’t know what to do. My credit card debt has gone up to $17,000, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of it.” The room would fall into embarrassed silence. (Most silent of all would be the others in the room weighed down by the secret of their own credit card debt.)

In the most profound sense our money says nothing about us, about whether we’re kind, generous of spirit, living our lives well. Yet we need money to live, as surely as we need air to breathe, and this need cuts across all races, both sexes, all income brackets.

Almost all of us have, at some level, fears or anxieties about money—but we rarely admit them to those around us. We may not admit them to ourselves. But because they are holding us back, preventing us from taking control of our financial lives, looking these fears in the eye is an essential step toward freedom. This chapter will show you not just how to confront your fears, but how to replace them with new, positive truths for yourself. Remember the goals you set for yourself when we began? You’ll be surprised at how taking this step will free your mind and give you strength to take other action toward those goals.

Don’t you find it strange that you can raise a family, hold down a job, fix things that are broken, and deal with everything that comes up in your life—except your money? I used to hear it from clients every single day: “I’m too busy at work to deal with my money. I just don’t have the time.” How is it possible that we’re all too busy working so hard to earn our money to be able to deal with the money we’re working so hard to earn? The answer is that it’s not possible. There’s plenty of time for work, barbecues, bike rides, reading books (even books about money), seeing friends, talking on the phone, hanging out on the Internet, knitting, golfing, playing baseball, watching
TV … time isn’t the problem. What prevents you from dealing with your money is not lack of time, but your fear of money.

We saw in the last chapter how powerful our memories of money from childhood are, even today. In this step we will hold these memories up against our fears. Then we will replace the grooves in our brains that our fears have created with strong new messages to ourselves about what we will achieve with our money, beginning now. The sooner you deal with your fears, the more money you will be able to create. With money, when you heal your heart, you help your pocketbook.

The trouble with fears is that when we keep them inside and refuse to deal with them, they grow, like weeds left alone in a garden. Take the fear of not having enough to cover the bills this month and let it wander around by itself, unchecked. Where will it go? It will become the fear of not having enough in general. Stretch that fear out, and what do you have? The fear of having nothing, of somehow losing everything. Take that fear one step further, and there’s the fear of being worthless, being nothing. That’s a long way from not quite being able to pay all the bills this one month. Even so, that’s a fear too many of us live with, whether we really realize it or not—and we don’t have to.

When you hold things in this way, you give them power. The way to control the fear instead is to voice it. Once you say it, you can see it: There’s no crocodile under the bed. So some bills will be late this month, it can’t be helped, things happen. That’s one reason we say time is money. The less time your fear
allows you to devote to your money, the less money you will have. Weed out your fears, so you can give your financial garden what it needs to grow.

In the previous step we looked back at our first experiences with money. I found with my clients over and over again that when they examine their fears, they’re connected to those early memories. Understanding your fear often allows you to see what those memories mean. Take Sheila, Mark, and Liz, for example—all paralyzed by their fears.

When asked, “What is your greatest fear when it comes to money?” Sheila answered, “That I will lose everything. That I will not be able to hold on to it, and I will lose it all.” Had she ever lost money before? “No.”