Living consciously requires us to be increasingly conscious about our money: making it, saving it, managing it, spending it, and leaving it behind. Appreciating Money is the financial health chapter in our book, Midlife New Life: Living Consciously in Midlife and Beyond. In this chapter, we explore the inner and the outer work needed to improve our financial health.
The inner work includes mindset shifts, limiting beliefs, and our relationships with money. Mindset shifts include shifting from a sense of lack to a sense of sufficiency, from financial fear to financial confidence, and from scarcity consciousness to prosperity consciousness. In an exercise from the book, we invite you to dialogue with yourself: In service of self-discovery, open your journal and have a conversation between two opposing characters that are part of your inner voice, for example, sufficiency and scarcity, courage and fear, the saver and the spender, and so on. Be open to what is revealed.
In The Soul of Money, Lynn Twist writes that money is “like water flowing through our lives, sometimes like a rushing river and sometimes like a trickle, yet with the potential for purifying, cleansing, and nourishing our souls.” Our relationship with money reflects and affects every area of our lives: our friendships, intimate relationships, self-worth, career, health, and spirituality. What is your relationship with money; what is your money story?
Money can also be a major source of tension and stress in our relationships with partners and other family members. Conscious conversations about money are essential for couples early in a relationship, especially when planning for transitions in the second half of life. Couples manage money in different ways, and this can be a difficult topic to discuss even in the most committed relationships, but having conversations about our individual philosophy and intentions around money is essential to the well-being of both partners.
To learn more about the book, download a sample chapter, and explore associated resources, visit the website at Midlife New Life – Living Consciously In Midlife and Beyond. Look out for more articles, quotes, and testimonials throughout the month of February. Aspire to live consciously.
