Pulling Back the Curtain and Being Honest Part 1

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I'll be on a spending diet during this journey. While this sounds straight forward, I've recognized that spending money is a behavior/habit that needs to be assessed if I want to be successful.

Many behaviors and habits, whether good or bad, are connected to the brain's reward system. This becomes extremely powerful when a behavior becomes associated with, or triggered by, certain emotional states. While spending money isn't inherently a negative thing, when it's fueled by emotions and used as a coping mechanism to mask negative feelings, it becomes something that easily works against your best efforts at achieving personal goals.

I'm guessing the foundation for my poor spending behaviors started at a younger age (always blame EVERYTHING on your childhood, right?). To keep it short, I grew up in an environment that didn't help me develop a strong self esteem. Combine this with experiencing high levels of cultural stress to wear a certain "brand" of clothing (or shoes, or whatever), which wasn't as accessible to my family, and it created a low level "trauma" that set the stage for bad spending habits in my young adult life. I don't want people to think that I equate these issues with more traumatic experiences, but when talking about behaviors I think it's important to understand past experience and how it can create underlying "triggers" for behaviors that carry in to your adult life. To make you laugh and show you how much this impacted little D, I remember wishing that my school had uniforms to help remove a stressful distraction from what I was going to school for...to get learned.

In addition to this, I'm genetically prone to depression. I'd rather call my experience a recurring state of melancholy, because it's never strongly affects my ability to function. But life is rather gray when I find myself in this state, and it has happened more frequently as I get older. When you begin to see life without color, it's easy to sabotage your goals because thoughts of  your future self become nothing but a cloudy image.

My childhood experience, and my apparent brain chemistry, have led to different issues with money.

First, beginning when I started earning that first paycheck at 14, most of my earned money went towards attempting to buy self esteem. Having the power to purchase the things that helped me feel good about myself led to money leaving my bank account as quick as it arrived. This behavior continued through my 20's, and I'm hopeful in saying that it died in my late 20's/early 30's. I'll be 35 in June. I'm certainly not saying I believe buying quality name brands is bad (I still do), but I'm no longer trying to purchase things to establish an identity or to make myself feel good. I've become comfortable with who I am as I've grown older, which I feel fortunate for because identity purchases can get quite expensive when you're an adult. The feelings do still crop up at times, however, as I find myself mentally comparing my material possessions with peers. I'd suggest surrounding yourself with people who don't buy into this. It's a trap and doesn't add much at all to your overall quality of life.

Stay tune for part two tomorrow.

Do you spend time in reflection? Have you had goals to change certain behaviors that felt like will power alone wouldn't break? I urge you to consider your behavioral triggers and how they impact your habits.