Hopefully the moral of the story is clear: the power of perspective. It’s often not your situation that is the problem, but how you view it and what you’re comparing it to. (I hasten to add the takeaway isn’t “make your situation worse so you can appreciate what you once had”).
At this time of year, when we tend to set goals and define all the ways we’ll do better and achieve more, it’s worth considering whether you could do it differently.
Sometimes, focusing on what we haven’t yet achieved can be demotivating, even demoralising.
It’s particularly relevant when it comes to finances, because the end point of wealth accumulation is a mirage – “enough” shifts endlessly into the distance.
We’ve all seen people come unstuck constantly chasing more – and most of us are guilty of it to some degree.
In psychology, it’s the concept of “hedonic adaption” – our tendency to keep chasing “more” because our brains quickly return to a baseline level of happiness after attaining the “more” we once pursued.
You don’t have to just take it from me and a book aimed at preschoolers; clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire gave me some pearls of wisdom that I intend to sit with over the summer. Perhaps you might like to as well.
She says getting off the “hedonic treadmill” starts with “slowing the reflex to ‘fix’ discomfort with consumption”.
“A useful question is not, ‘do I want this?’ but ‘what am I hoping this will give me?’ Often the answer is safety, ease, status, or relief rather than the thing itself.”
Meeting those needs in other ways, she says, gives chasing “more” less power.
She also recommends considering intentional rather than reactive spending. “Money aligned with values usually feels satisfying long after the purchase. Money spent to soothe stress, keep up, or avoid discomfort rarely does. That awareness alone can be surprisingly powerful.”
One of my “discomforts” is craving a sense of security, and when I start fixating on how I should be more secure by now, there’s a tactic that I find helpful – comparison.
No, not comparison to others – I’ve written before about how damaging that can be to your happiness and your finances – but comparison to your past self.
Cast your mind back 10, 15 years, maybe more, and consider how far you’ve come.
When I do that, I remember when I would only put $5 of petrol in the car at once (it would buy more than 1.5 litres back then) and an unexpected mechanic or dentist’s bill would spell disaster.
From that Nadine’s perspective, I’m now remarkably financially secure. That doesn’t mean I don’t wish to be more so, but it does suggest the things I’ve done since have been effective.
However, Maguire has a word of warning when looking backwards. “It becomes unhelpful when it turns into a stick to beat yourself with ‘I should be further ahead by now’. A more useful form of reflection asks: what have I learned about myself? What do I now know how to handle that once felt overwhelming?”
Another book, this time one aimed at the adult reader, speaks to the power of looking backwards. It’s called The Gap and the Gain and the gist is the more you measure and focus on your “gains”, the more motivated you are to move forward and create more of them.
I’ve often wondered how you balance being grateful for all you have, with still being ambitious – I assumed a level of dissatisfaction was required to be bothered striving!
In fact, Maguire says gratitude and ambition work best together; the tension arises “when gratitude is used to silence desire – ‘I should be grateful, so I shouldn’t want more’ or when ambition dismisses the present entirely”.
Instead, she says, anchor ambition in your values. “Ambition driven by meaning tends to feel expansive and energising. Ambition driven by fear of falling behind rarely does.”
While I would encourage you to set goals this year – make them “smart”, break them down into smaller steps, track progress and all that good stuff – I’d also encourage you to pause and reflect.
Money has a way of making us focus on what’s next, forgetting how far we’ve already come.
As Maguire so beautifully puts it: “Progress is not always visible in the season it’s being built.”
When you feel discouraged, consider whether the problem is really the house – or the way you’re looking at it.
Perhaps it’s not such “a squash and a squeeze”, after all.
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