The Real Deficit

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my therapist about the real meaning of the word deficit. No, we did not argue on actual or anticipated monetary amount our country has incurred or the pending fiscal cliff. Instead we went back to the root of what deficit really is and how it is connected to our relationship to power, recognizing that how we relate to power determines whether we walk in the world from a place of enough-ness, or one of deficit.

This leads me to why I was actually in my therapist’s office in the first place. Just recently I expanded my Money Coaching career and joined a local firm to be immersed and trained in the world of financial advising. Although it’s been extremely gratifying experience (who would have thought!) and a really good fit, it has raised a lot of internal questions on how does my masculine relate to the world of money. (Not to say that my feminine doesn’t have these same questions but it was my masculine that really needed to talk). I asked, from what part of myself do I engage others when I do my financial advising? What is the internal power dynamic I experience when I am more fully immersed in the flow of money? What is that really nourishes me in the end?

Anyone that has stepped more fully into the money flow and made a lot of money can attest to a heightened sense of vitality and vibrancy that comes with it. As some in my office would say: “You feel like you are on top of your game”.  Money can be almost like a sudden hit of life, a shot of yumminess that makes us feel successful and worthy inside. But is it really lasting?

Most people would say no, but there’s still this underlying value in our culture of acquiring more. Yet, times are changing and people are uncovering the veil. Money doesn’t buy everything- that we most definitely know.

So knowing all this and having many years of experience coaching others in this domain I was humbled to still see how much money still “whammied” me. I could feel the emptiness when it didn’t come in fast enough, I could see my judgment arise when my actual income did not match up to my projections. And even though my premise is always to help people first, an unconscious thread in my relationship to money was starting to creep up on me… and fast!

I did what many of us culturally creatives in the Bay Area do in a time of need- I went to my therapist. J

Without going too much into details I will say my session reveled three main things:

-       Real deficit is an embodied experience. It is true that there are times when there is not enough in our bank accounts but more often than not regardless of what we have we can’t always feel enough.

-       Feeling enough requires us recognizing where we are parting from- from an external image of what success and worth should be, or from the internal axis of our core. At this place there is a source of potency that anchors us in this world- in our sense of wealth, wellbeing and ultimately our service to others.

-       And finally, that this place of potency (i.e. my relationship to my own power-with, not power-over) is equally important in obtaining an experience of enough-ness in the world. Money alone can’t do it (actually if you ever were to ask money, it doesn’t want this role as well!!)

If it helps at all, my place of potency looks like an alchemist’s flask. It’s boiling and bubbling, creating a mysterious witchy brew. When I put my experience of deficit aside when I sit down with someone this is what I connect to:

1. That I have no idea what is supposed to be the final “product” of my financial planning with people,
2. I can only gather information, put in a little ingredients of my own and taste the final brew (yes, it can be bitter indeed!), and
3. Most importantly, that above all, it is the process of mixing ingredients that makes me an alchemist. From this place I can dance with others because I am interested and because I care. And from this place no matter what happens I can look at life’s encounters and say that the flask is already half-full.

Money, Marriage and Rites of Passage

In a recent interview, author and depth psychologist Bill Plotkin states that rites of passage are “potent means for human communities to mark, celebrate, and support life-stage transitions.” He makes an important distinction, however, noting that a “rite of passage doesn’t necessarily catalyze a stage transition that was not already set to unfold. What enables a passage to occur is daily progress, over years, with the developmental tasks of the individual’s stage — this along with the numinous and unpredictable intervention of that same Mystery that causes us to be born.” Rites of passage create containers for the process to speed up and for grace to take place, but magic won’t happen if we haven’t done the daily prep work first.

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to get married. I fantasized the big wedding, the glorious celebration and the never-ending story of love. Life, however, taught me that things do not always turn out as planned. My first intent at marriage became a fiery explosion; I proceeded to cancel a wedding at 27, and spent many years thereafter mourning what I thought life should be.

Now, five years later, I tried once more and successfully passed through the threshold of marriage, but from an entirely different place. I knew myself, I knew what I wanted and I eventually did get the big, glorious celebration but it all happened in ways I could have never imagined.

What made this time different? By walking through fire the first time around I was forced to look beneath my childhood fantasies and see what I really desired. I was asked not to settle but to use the pain of shattered dreams and broken homes to catalyze a new vision of marriage and the coming together of two people. In sum, I was forced to do my own work.

Much of this work included looking at my relationship to money and ironically I became a Money Coach making a living helping others look at their money relationship as well. (Yes, we do teach what we most need to learn!) It’s been an amazing 5 years of exploring money archetypes, having money conversations with myself and others, and ultimately making peace with money and seeing it as a loyal friend.

For me personally I discovered that I had a combination of three main money archetypes: the Martyr, the Tyrant and the Fool. My Tyrant dominated my money world keeping me tight and constrained. I liked keeping money “in” and suffered when money went out of my balance sheet. My Martyr often gave her services away, not liking to charge full price for her sessions, and yet secretly feeling resentful and depleted because by not having enough resources come in, she couldn’t fulfill some of her other needs. And then my Fool would sometimes come and shake everything up with a moment of impulse saying, “Screw this!”, spending unconsciously on workshops, bodywork and clothes to make up for this lack of nourishment I felt inside. It was indeed a vicious cycle, egged on by past and inherent money patterns that kept me in a cycle of feeling stuck.

Slowly and surely, and by working with others with similar patterns (again, Life gives you want you need!) I came to understand that my Tyrant needed to relax and trust, my Martyr needed to set boundaries and speak her needs, and my Fool needed to slow down and understand that impulsive behavior was only a Band-Aid.

All of this led me to the understanding that one of my deepest need was to be seen. I hear this often in my work- the need to be loved, the need to be valued and the need to be seen. They go hand in hand. But as my therapist wisely said, we won’t be really able to receive these needs (yes, it is OUR responsibility to know how to receive them!), until we value these needs deep inside. Food for thought…

I spent weeks before my wedding sitting with this, in meditation, in my walks and at home. What did it mean to value my needs?

One day it just hit me. Valuing my needs meant opening myself to the vulnerable places that deeply WANTED this. I needed to connect to my little girl who felt awkward and out of place and sometimes not seen. I needed to feel my deep longing and make that ok. And then, really only then, would I allow myself to open and receive.

The insight washed over me like a breathe of fresh air. I connected to my little girl many, many times in my pre-wedding weeks and vowed to include her thoroughly in the wedding, yet a little unsure how. She wanted spontaneity, she wanted to be seen, and after speaking this over with our officiant I let it go. I trusted it would happen in the way it needed to.

Our wedding ceremony was magical in so many ways. But my favorite part was this- right before we said our vows our officiant (who happened to be our therapist and new my deeper process with my little girl) instinctively said, “Elizabeth and Zayin, why don’t you take a moment to turn to your community and take everyone in”. It was like magic to my ears. I turned to the crowd with a smile and drank in everyone’s presence, love and encouragement. They were there supporting me, seeing me and as a result of deeply seeing them, I felt seen. I got what I wanted, in the most unexpected moment and in the most unexpected way. I felt complete…..

Now, weeks later all of this starts to settle in. My Martyr feels at peace. My Tyrant no longer has to hold on so tight (because ironically it wants similar things), and my Fool has slowed down. I have been shown next steps in my career and Life, those I never would have expected but I trust are right.

What made this rite of passage so magical? The work I did before it. Marriage became the celebration of a process completed and the start of a new passage with myself, witnessed by another. I don’t look to Zayin to complete me. That, I have found, within myself.

Love & Money: Talk at Bloom!

As the saying goes, "money can't buy you love". In essense money and love are two different things. Yet, by being in relationship to us everyday, money can reveal how well we give and receive- resources, currency, and yes, ultimately love.

This Valentine's Day come hear Bloom's very own Money Coach, Elizabeth Husserl, speak to the intricacies of the relationship between money and love. She will offer simple steps to begin to untangle the two and help shed light on how our relationship to money can be an ally instead of a source of anxiety as we create the love we want in our lives.

The Wisdom of Our Money Shadow

According to Carl Jung our “shadow” is that part of our unconscious mind that holds our repressed weakness, shortages and unexamined instincts. By nature it carries the pieces of ourselves that are usually the hardest to see.

Yet in my experience our shadow also holds some of our greatest gifts. It is there that we find important keys towards understanding some of our greatest blocks and where we can unleash unimaginable streams of vitality and potential.

Today a family member gave me the “gift” of showing me a part of my shadow. I say “gift” in parenthesis because at the time it did not feel that way. In fact it led to a pretty big blowout at the breakfast table. But in the aftermath of walking away and as the emotions begin to settle down (when extreme feelings get stirred, you know you’re on to something!), I began to realize that there was more there to be explored.

My first reaction had been out of defense (and to be fair, her delivery was not the best, but then again, who’s perfect), and because of that we did not get very far in our initial exchange. When I calmed down and started discerning what was mine and what was hers, I asked myself the important question: what truth lies in what she was trying to say? (And I knew there was some, if not I wouldn’t have been so shaken).

What I came to was this- she was speaking to my money archetype of the Tyrant, the part of me that is rooted in scarcity and as a result tries fiercely to control. And what happens is when I begin to feel that there is not “enough” of things- not enough time, not enough attention, not enough of resources to go around, I react with anger and impatience and my delivery of requests becomes harsh. Anyone who knows me can vouch that I have been working on this for many years. I inherited this harshness from my father, and he from his father. (Yes, we do have financial DNA, and yes it can change. You should see my father with my daughter now- total melt!). This is contrast to my mother’s side of the family who was taught to inherently trust in the “plenty” of things.

If the Tyrant is not your main archetype is can be difficult to handle or be in relationship with. They can feel tight and controlling as if it were always trying to get their own way. In fact another archetype (like the Martyr, predominant on my mother’s side) may accuse the Tyrant of being totally self-interested and keeping everyone else’s needs at bay. In reality however, the Tyrant is the most fearful of all of the archetypes because they are masking a deep pain. Something happened in their past that internalized a belief in scarcity and not-enoughness. Whatever they experienced was too much to bear; what was an emotional wound got internalized as a material deficiency and as an adult the tyrant aggressively tries to constantly satisfy his or her needs, at the expense of relaxing and allowing life to naturally do this, in more unexpected ways.

The wisdom of this archetype is that it actually makes requests (or demands), and lots of them! This per se is not a bad thing. It’s great to tell the world and others what you need, but what I learned to today was that only is the delivery of these requests just as important as the sheer act of making them, but so is the place from where these requests are made. (Scarcity vs. Enough-ness)

Inner Economics is a big part of what I do personally and as a living. I am in communication with my different money archetypes all day long. I have worked with my Tyrant, I have cultivated my Fool (its total opposite) and I have chosen not to feed into my Martyr. As a result my relationship to money is much freer, ever embracing and more interesting than ever before. But what I had not realized was that my impatience, a natural way with which I meet the world, came from a place of scarcity and much less, that this was a place where my Tyrant still lived. It was a part of me that I still had not seen.

However difficult, I am grateful from this lesson today. It reminded me of a friend’s comment 8 years ago that also changed my life forever. This feels like of one those times. Life throws a curveball but they are meant to shake you up to loosen the habits that have been internalized and habituated for a long, long time.

May you too embrace what feels at times may feel hard and hurtful. I promise you there is probably something there.  May it be gold…

The Power of Play

In working with my own money types, I have come to realize that some of the most important money strategies I need to implement in my daily life are to Relax, Express and Trust. These strategies can be totally different for someone else, but in my case they are meant to help my money “tyrant” trust that there is enough resources, money (and ultimately love) to go around.

Once I internalize this (for we can know something cognitively but not experience it directly), my tyrant can release its deep-seated fear of survival and exhale its gift to the world. Tyrants are often hoarders, and in our culture where about 60% of the population self-declare themselves as hoarders, I wonder how much of our true human potential are we “withholding”, within.

Relaxing and expressing are easier said than done. Yes, we all crave the end of the day when we can come home and relax over dinner (if you first don’t have to make it!), pour a nice glass of water or wine and enjoy the company of loved ones. Maybe relaxing is dancing, exercise, or curling up with a good book. Whatever its modality, craving relaxation doesn’t necessarily mean that it happens. More often than not we (or maybe I should speak for my fellow tyrants), feel burdened by a never-ending to-do list of “life” and so our beloved nightly off-time turns into a continuation of work.

What to do? Well, the consciousness of knowing that the tyrant needs to relax in order to heal does help. There is a certain permission is being told that it is ok, and in fact necessary, to do nothing sometimes.

A second step if this is hard is to create simple structures that “fit” relaxation into your life. An alarm clock can be set a particular hour that reminds you it’s time to turn the computer off. You can “plan” relaxation time into your schedule like any other commitment. Often having a partner to keep you accountable or share this down time with really helps. 

And yet a third option, which I find to be one of the most powerful, is to insert the element of play.

I know in my own money biography I can to realize that I had internalized the notion that in order to make money it took a lot of work. (Note the subtlety: I said “in order to make”, not have money required work. I’ve had the gift of very generous parents who’ve often provided, and so I grew up feeling like I had enough). Yet the messages I received around work were different- work is hard, work takes long hours, work requires sacrificing weekends sometimes, etc. It’s not like my parents wanted to pass this down to me, but my paternal grandfather also embodied this way of being in the world so down the genetic line it came.

As a result I have sometimes shied away from hard paid work. I have many times volunteered years of my life. I have organized and lead countless organizations. But I have struggled to commit to a forty hour 5-day week. Fortunately life has helped me develop a flexible livelihood more to my liking and schedule.  Yes, it has taken a lot of work to create, but it has also included a lot of creativity and play.

Today, driving home from picking my daughter up and thinking about the to-do list I had at hand, I was reminded my money strategies: Relax, Express and Trust. Relaxing can often be the hardest one for me and so I asked myself how could I bring relaxation into the work I need to do. The answer was: play.

Play helps us find the joy in any activity that we do. By bringing playful creativity to the other tasks at hand or simply having a bounce in your step as you continue on in your day, play can transform a mere job into a fulfilling livelihood. And play can remind us (tyrants) the wise old truth of not taking ourselves so seriously, because in the end we are perfect just as we are, we have accomplished plenty, and paradoxically real relaxation and downtime connections brings us the sustainable joy we crave.