Balancing act
Michael Gilmore asks if we can find a path to financial peace of mind through zen
It would be tempting to think that there’s nothing less zen than money. Whether it’s the people shouting on the news about things most of us don’t understand going up and down, or the pile of bills building up behind the door, or a child asking for something we can't afford, our experience with money is often the opposite of calm. It’s either manic, fraught with tense emotions, or we deny it, later releasing the tension by splurging on a short-term pleasure, pushing the stress to the back of our minds until it’s too late.
Almost every survey conducted in recent years has found money to be the main source of stress and anxiety across all income groups.too often we think the only answer is more money, but more cash is not nearly as effective as we might hope. A recent study in the US found that money stress barely reduces with more income: even in the group earning more than $100,000 a year (£75,000) a huge 44 per cent reported feeling anxious about money. In every group earning less money than that, more than half said they felt stressed about their money.
The only thing that really saw the stress factor drop, across all income levels, was understanding what money really is and does: financial literacy.
That’s what my new book, The Little Book of Zen Money, is aiming for: understanding money without the stress we so often attach to it.
That doesn’t mean you will be able to achieve financial peace of mind by sitting cross-legged in a forest, saying “Om” and imagining all your money worries disappearing – although I admit that would be nice.
Instead, we start by understanding what our money really is, what we want it to do, and know how to build a path to get there. Alan Watts, a philosopher who helped popularise Eastern concepts in the West in the Sixties, described zen as “seeing reality directly”. Doing that with our money, knowing exactly what it is and how we can best use it, is how we will take control of it, and only then will we be happier about it.
I suggest using the analogy of a “simple path”, where one small step naturally follows another.
If you’ve ever been on a footpath across a field, you’ll know how the path ahead can seem to shimmer very clearly ahead of you. It might be that the blades of grass are bending over a little further, or there are a few scuff marks in the dirt, but something makes the path ahead clear. Viewed from the side, though, the path is almost invisible. It can disappear in just a few steps.
The same is true for money: there is a path, but because we aren’t taught it, or how to start on it, we too often approach it from the side, and can’t find it.
For example, without truly knowing what money is, what it can do for us well (like take care of basic needs) we too often use it for the things it does badly (like showing off or boosting emotions).
There are seven landmark learnings defined by an acronym: MISSION – standing for Money, Income, Saving, Spending, Investing, Owning, Now – that can lead us through a series of steps. We can start by understanding what money does well, like being saved for emergencies, or invested to turn into more money that we can use to be more free of financial concerns.
We also present 49 smaller simpler steps, one a day for seven weeks, that we can use as a challenge to change our habits around money, or to start practices that could, very simply, change our lives.
Financial information is everywhere – but most of it doesn’t work for many of us, because it comes without first knowing what step you are on now, and what you need to know or do. If you start at the beginning, simply and calmly, and take small steps forward, you can find your own path to financial peace of mind.
If we take small, simple, mindful steps, we can stay on the path more often than we stray off it.
We can know how to get back on when we stray away. We can all be more zen about money, starting with just five simple steps.
Journaling
Starting and finishing each day by writing in a journal is a popular part of many mindfulness practices, due to the awareness that writing things down brings to our lives. We all spend too much money to know exactly where it went, and if we don't know that, we can’t really know how much we can save. Tracking our spending is also a perfect place to start a journey towards mindful money, as even if you believe you don’t have enough to save, you can start by being aware of where it is going – and only a journal will do that. Start by writing down what you spent in the last day or week. Make it a puzzle to solve.
Practice
If awareness is the first step towards zen money, then practice should come quickly after. That practice could just be the habit of journaling, or it could be starting to save by placing a small amount of money into a savings or investment account at regular intervals. Agency, the ability to influence our own lives and futures, is a fundamental building block in long-term happiness – and that’s what practice brings. If you have never saved before, or stopped some time ago, start again now. It could change your life.
Start by understanding what money really is, what we want it to do and know how to build a path to get there
Less is more
Minimialism, frugalism, environmentalism, stoicism: there have been plenty of other movements
through history that have built on the idea that one of the things making us unhappy is that we have too much “stuff ” distracting us from what we really value. If this is true for you (you can test this by writing down your top ten happiest memories, and seeing how many involved spending lots of money), then focusing on enjoyment rather than spending could leave you with more savings and happiness.
Breathe
Shops like to tell us that we can feel better through retail therapy, but we all know that isn’t true. If it were, we wouldn’t need to go back, would we?
Most forms of therapy incorporate breathing, which has the added advantage of being free, as well as actually working. Done well, breathing practice can even lower the acidity of our blood, clearing the stress hormone cortisol from your system and relieving pain. Did we mention it’s free?
Now
The last initial of our seven-part MISSION acronym is Now. Because nothing starts tomorrow or yesterday. It starts now. We all have different steps we need to take, but most of those steps are actually quite small, or can be broken into small chunks, but by delaying them to another day, we make them harder, build more emotion into them. Pick a simple money task, and do it today, and give yourself a pat on the back for doing it. This is the start.
The Little Book of Zen Money by Michael Gilmore, AKA The Seven Dollar Millionaire, is out now from John Wiley, priced £15 in hardback