Stop trying to force your finances. Do this instead

Recently, I was coaching one of my students through a common problem: the resistance and inertia to working on her finances, and doing the things she knows she “should” be doing.

The most common solution people try is some kind of brute force. They think they must be lazy, and need to force themselves, have better discipline or willpower.

Burying your head in the sand, or trying to force yourself to get better, won’t help you fix your financial woes.Credit: Simon Letch

That might yield short-term results but it rarely lasts. Quickly, that steam runs out, and they return to their previous patterns of avoidance until eventually, they muster the energy – hoping that this time it will last.

What’s a better solution? Let’s start by looking at why people resort to such behaviour.

Negative emotion

If you’re avoiding your finances, it’s likely there is some negative emotion attached. Maybe you’re scared to look at it, ashamed of past mistakes or you grew up in a household with a lot of financial conflict, so you associate money with conflict and stress.

Research shows that emotions such as shame exacerbate behaviours that lead to adverse financial outcomes. So, instead of judging yourself as lazy, you should understand your behaviour is connected with your emotional experience.

In a way, your brain is doing its job. It perceives finances as a painful experience and protects you by avoiding it.

This is why brute force is an ineffective strategy in the long term. It takes a lot of energy to work against yourself.

Start with an emotional shift and you have better prospects of success long-term. What negative emotions have you attached to your finances and why? What shifts in your emotional experience would enable you to lessen the negatives?

If you’re feeling down about a past failure, find a way to see the value of your journey, appreciate where you are and see the potential enjoyment in building yourself up – an easier way to look at your finances, rather than being flooded with shame and regret.

Meaning and interpretation

Among the cases of financial avoidance I see, people attach disempowering meanings and interpretations to doing the finances, or the overall financial situation. They think:

• “I’m not where I want to be/should be/other people are. Therefore, I’m failing/behind.”
• “This looks complicated, and therefore I don’t think I’m cut out for this, or could achieve that.”
• “This is very time-consuming, laborious and tedious, and I don’t have the time or energy.”

Take a different view. You can interpret your situation as “I should be further ahead” or “Look at how far I’ve come”, each a valid interpretation. When you’re feeling good about your situation, you’re more inspired to take action.

Change won’t happen overnight, but it’s important to identify how those interpretations affect your ability to produce a more positive outcome. Then, you can start to get curious: “What’s an interpretation that feels better, and therefore is more likely to help me move forward?”

Identity & self-perception

You might have a self-appraisal that isn’t consistent with taking confident action on your finances, making it harder to take action against your perceived position.

For example – someone who sees themselves as very sporty is going to find it much easier to engage in exercise than someone who sees themselves as a couch potato.

You think your self-perception is a statement of fact: “This is just who I am.” But what if it’s actually a statement of limitation? It’s not who you are, it’s who you are limiting yourself to being.

So, do you see yourself as someone who: is bad with money, isn’t a “numbers person”, isn’t intelligent enough to learn new or hard skills as an adult, doesn’t have the formal qualifications you think are required to be good at finance, doesn’t come from the “right kind of family” or profession to be financially successful?

That self-perception will be more conducive to financial avoidance than financial action.

If you’re stuck in financial avoidance, the good news is there’s nothing wrong with you. You are probably acting consistently with your current set of thought, emotion and belief patterns.

The solution isn’t to brute force a different behaviour – that behaviour will change naturally (and more sustainably) when you change the underlying patterns that are driving it.

Paridhi Jain is the founder of SkilledSmart, which helps adults learn to manage, save and invest money through financial education courses and classes.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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