Guilty as charged.

Of course, Geneen isn’t the first or last person to speak this truth. And her directive makes perfect sense to my logical, analytical mind. “Eat when you are hungry, and only when you are hungry.” Sounds so simple. Stomach growls = time to eat.

So why don’t we do it?

I mean, there are very obvious, physical symptoms of hunger. You would think it would be easy for us to tell. Right? Well, obviously not.

You are probably confused right now, because the title of this post is about money, not food or weight loss.

Here’s the tie-in:

It seems to me that money is (almost) just like food.

• We think it will make us happy, but it won’t.
• We don’t want to spend so much, but we keep doing it.
• We buy things we don’t need.
• Or, on the flip side, we don’t spend money on things that are really good for us.
• We worry about our financial fitness, but we never seem to do anything about it.
• Or, we don’t do anything good for us because we are spending so much time worrying about money.
• We buy things to fill emotional holes, and then we crash when the emotions don’t go away… which just leads to more spending.
• Or, we starve ourselves of things and activities that bring us joy so we can feel virtuous.
• We feel like money (and how much we have or don’t have) is a measure of our worth as a person.
• And like food, money is a “drug” that we must keep using in order to survive.

I’m writing about this because every single client and potential client I have worked with has talked about money. Money keeps them from making the leap to what they want, keeps them from getting the help that will get them unstuck, keeps them frozen. People’s beliefs about money can have dire consequences. This is so common that I have changed my coaching process to address beliefs about money upfront because I am 100% sure it is going to be a roadblock.

Now don’t get me wrong… if you need money to keep a roof over your head, this is very real. Obviously we need money to keep us out of cardboard boxes on the streets. And we all have a certain lifestyle that we are comfortable with.

This post is about situations where we think we need more money to make us happy when we actually don’t, or when our worries over money (rather than money itself) hold us back.

As an example, here is a very typical conversation I have with clients (details are changed, masked, and mixed up to protect the innocent):

Me: So, it sounds like you know what you want to do. Sounds really exciting, and I’m so glad it combines so many of your interests. I can tell you are really fired up about it. What’s keeping you from taking the next step?

Client: Well, I just don’t know how I’m going to earn enough money doing that.

Me: Ok. How much is enough?

Client: I can earn $7,500 per month doing my current work, so that is my goal.

Me: That would be nice. That’s a great goal. How much do you need right now?

Client: Umm. Need?

Me: Yes, need. How much money do you need to earn in order to pay your bills, maintain the important parts of your lifestyle… things like that…?

Client: Umm… well…

Me: Yes…?

Client: Well… I can pay my bills with a lot less. That’s not the issue. It is just that I can’t have a job where I don’t earn good money. I’ve always earned a lot of money.

Me: Ok. What would happen if you didn’t earn good money?

Client: I wouldn’t feel valuable. Like I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain.

Me: What bargain is that?

Client: Um. Contributing to the family finances. I want to be an equal.

Me: So, money is the measurement system?

Client: Well, no. My partner doesn’t really care how much I earn. It isn’t like that. We just want to be happy.

Me: Ok… so happiness is the measurement system?

Client: It should be… I suppose it is.

Me: How would you measure happiness?

Client: By feeling like I can breathe. Like there is no tension in my shoulders.

Me: Cool. So when you think about your new career, you feel like that?

Client: Yes.

Me: And the measurement is happiness?

Client: Yes.

Me: And so are you ready to take the next step?

Client: Well, yes… Um. Actually, I’m still concerned. I’ve spent money before on new ideas, and they didn’t pan out. What if the same thing happens again?

Me: Yes, that could happen. What if it did?

Client: I would feel like a loser.

Me: Ok. So you are a loser if your new career venture doesn’t pan out?

Client: Um. Yes.

Me: So, your success is tied to how much you earn in your new career? What about the happiness part?

Client: I knew you were going to say that.

Me: Yep.

Client: So, I suppose you are trying to say I should go for the feeling where I can breathe, and I don’t have tension. That would be success?

Me: I’m not telling you that. But doesn’t that feel better?

Client: Yes.

Me: If you are earning $7,500 per month and you can’t breathe, what is that like?

Client: Hell.

Me: Ok. Hell doesn’t sound like a good option. So are you ready to take the next step?

Client: I think so. Although it does seem a bit frivolous with the economy the way it is. I want to, but maybe I should wait until things are more stable. Less risky.

Me: When you think about taking the next step, how does it feel?

Client: Like I said, open, no tension.

Me: Anything else?

Client: A bit nervous. Butterflies in my stomach.

Me: Is that a good feeling or a bad feeling?

Client: Good. Light.

Me: When else have you felt that way?

Client: When I started a non-profit many years ago.

Me: Tell me about that.

Client: Well, I started a non-profit, and it was a lot of work. A whole lot of work. I learned a lot. Met a lot of like-minded people. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

Me: What happened?

Client: It lasted for a while, and then I had to close it up. Just wasn’t the right time. Couldn’t make it work financially.

Me: Say more.

Client: Um… I’m glad I did it. It was a great experience. I just wish it would have succeeded.

Me: By success, you mean that it generated money.

Client: Hmm. I guess we are back to that again, huh?

Me: Yep.

Client: (Sigh) Ok. I know, I know. I had the time of my life. I closed it up when it was obviously not working, and I wasn’t irresponsible financially. So, I guess the point is that I would be smart enough to do that next time, if I needed to? And that it made me happy?

Me: Is that true?

Client: Yes.

Me: So, are you ready to take the next step?

Client: (Laughs) Yes. I am.

There are many interesting things about this conversation. But one of the most important in relation to this topic is that, while there are a lot of similarities between food and money, there is a major difference:

With food, we can physically feel the hunger. While we may often ignore it, we all know what a hunger pang feels like, and a growling stomach feels somewhat similar for everyone.

But with money, we don’t have an obvious (and audible) way to know when to spend, and when to save. When to take the leap, and when to hold back. When to keep going and when to stop.

The answer is different for each of us.

But the answer is still in your body. Notice how you feel when you just know that you are making the right decision. How you feel when you are doing what you love. How you feel when you are ready to take a risk and you are prepared to handle the upside and the potential downside.

And notice how you feel when you overspend, let a good opportunity pass, or make a decision based on someone else’s idea of success.

Once you notice, you’ll be able to use these feelings to make better decisions about money. Just like a growling stomach can tell you it is time for food.

What does this feel like for you?

I’m also curious: Have you read any good books that have helped you change your relationship with money?

Willpower:

“The strength of will to carry out one’s decisions, wishes, or plans.”
(American Heritage Dictionary)

This topic is near and dear to my heart, and it seems particularly appropriate this time of year. When I first started coaching, I focused on productivity. I helped people identify goals, articulate steps to achieve these goals, and then create systems to achieve them. We worked on organizational systems, how to create and work through a task list, and methods for reducing procrastination. Sounds good. Except that people wouldn’t do it. Even though they had defined their goals and created systems to get there, they still didn’t make progress.

Apparently, Ramit Sethi saw the same thing. Ramit is the author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and here is what he has to say about willpower:

We love to believe that willpower determines our actions. “If I just try harder,” we tell ourselves, “I can lose that last 10 pounds.” Or save $200/month. Or improve our time management. The problem is, it doesn’t work. Willpower is important, of course, but there’s more to behavioral change than just trying harder.

You may be trying to improve your life and career by focusing on things that matter, things that you love. But this requires changing your habits. And changing habits is not about willpower alone. It is about changing the way you think. And that can often mean working with a part of your brain that you aren’t consciously aware of and which doesn’t respond to logic.

In a fascinating U.S. News & World Report article, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak explores how your unconscious is making your everyday decisions:

According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness.

Szegedy-Maszak goes on to tell us about Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor of marketing from the Harvard Business School. Zaltman was interested in determining “what made people buy one thing and not the other. In the world of neuroscience, this goes to the heart of the profound questions of motivation.” Zaltman ended up creating tools that allow companies to figure out how to access the 95 percent of the brain that motivates choices. He did this by “accessing the deep [unconscious] metaphors that people, even without knowing it, associate with a particular product or feeling or place.”

Another example provided by Szegedy-Maszak comes from Malcolm Gladwell’s awesome book Blink:

In Blink, Gladwell describes how the Coca-Cola Co. made a costly mistake in using data from blind taste tests between Coke and Pepsi–in which Pepsi was emphatically preferred by most cola drinkers–to change the recipe and create the marketing debacle that was New Coke. Still, even with a less preferred taste, Coke remains No. 1 in the soft-drink world. More recent research that was published after Gladwell’s book was finished may explain why.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine offered 67 committed Coke and Pepsi drinkers a choice, and in blind testing, they preferred Pepsi. When they were shown the company logos before they drank, however, 3 out of 4 preferred Coke. The researchers scanned the brains of the participants during the test and discovered that the Coke label created wild activity in the part of the brain associated with memories and self-image, while Pepsi, though tasting better to most, did little to these feel-good centers in the brain. P. Reed Montague, director of the Brown Foundation Human Neuroimaging laboratory at Baylor, explained…: “There’s a huge effect of the Coke label on brain activity related to the control of actions, the dredging up of memories and self-image.” The point, says Montague, is that “there is a response in the brain which leads to a behavioral effect.” And curiously, it has nothing to do with conscious preference.

So, the bottom line is that we often do things (or don’t do things) because of hidden stuff that is stuck in our brain. Nice.

The good news is that there are things you can do about it, and it doesn’t necessarily require that you go through the time consuming process of figuring out why the hidden stuff is there, or even that you know exactly what the hidden stuff is.

There are many tools you can use to access your subconscious mind, including meditation, hypnosis, dream analysis, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), directed visualization, and stream of consciousness writing. Personally, I experienced amazing results using hypnosis to get past some of my hidden blocks. During hypnosis, you are able to access your subconscious mind and “install” new scripts or metaphors to replace those that are blocking your progress or making it harder to break bad habits. This still means that you have to do the hard work of making changes, but at least you aren’t working against hidden ick buried in your brain. I was so happy with my results that I decided to become a certified hypnotist myself.

If you find that you are not doing things you really want to do, or you do things you really don’t want to do, the path to changing your behavior is to change your subconscious scripts. Regardless of how you choose to do it, the goal is to get the conscious (read: logical) part of your mind out of the way so you can access the scripts that are sabotaging your good intentions. This is the key to making willpower work.

Do you have other ideas about how we can access our subconscious mind? I’d love to hear about them, and I’m sure others would too. Please leave us a comment…

The fact that many of the articles in this ebook are overtly (or sometimes covertly) self serving made me flinch a few times as I read it. Obviously many of these authors have a vested interest in promoting certain opinions and trends. But that’s always the case, right? It doesn’t change the fact that there are some great messages in this book. At the very least it provides a wonderful list of ideas to consider, including some that we probably don’t often contemplate such as parsing, neoteny, being dumb, nobody, slow capital, and mesh.

If you haven’t read the book, you may be a little confused. Good. That will get you thinking. And to add my unsolicited opinions and commentary to the mix, I’m going to choose ideas and messages from this book and expand upon them in this blog. My slant will be about how you can use these ideas to improve your life, your career, and your business.

First up: Willpower. What is it, do all of us have it, and does it work? Stay tuned…

For example, Frederick is not a fan of using career aptitude or personality tests. There are a lot of tests out there that career counselors will use to help you determine your ideal career. I’ve taken a lot of these tests, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kolbe Index, and the results can be very interesting. These tests can often explain your ideal work environment, your temperament, and the types of people you work best with. This is important and I am all for using these tests for these purposes. However, they don’t tell you a damn thing about your passions. Nor do they help you figure out what really makes you happy (which can be different than what you are good at).

I also agree with Frederick that once “your work is in alignment with your true mission…, your work will be successful and attract abundance–against all odds.”

My take is that you already know what you are passionate about. You just need to listen to your intuitive mind and your body. REALLY listen.

Ready to be your own career intuitive? Read these posts:

• The intuitive decision making process
• Calling all extroverts…

Think this sounds interesting and want to work on it together? Contact me.

Every three years or so, I have the desire to watch old Merchant Ivory films. For those not familiar with Merchant Ivory Productions, it is a movie production company that has produced English films like A Room With a View (1985) and Howards End (1992).

This time, my Merchant Ivory-fest ended with The Remains of the Day (1993), staring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, and Hugh Grant. The film is based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguru, one of my favorite authors. The combination of Hopkins, Thompson, Ishiguru, and Ivory is almost too good to be true.

The story is about a butler and housekeeper whose boss is duped into supporting the Nazis in the 1930s. While the movie is very interesting from an historical perspective, the film’s poignancy comes from the relationship between the butler (Hopkins) and the housekeeper (Thompson). They fall in love, but neither will admit it, and the film shows how this repression affects them over the span of 30 years. Two people, so close to having what they wanted, refused to grasp that happiness because they decided that pride and decorum were more important than love.

But this is not a post about love or movies. The real question is:

What decision have you been making for years that is keeping you from happiness?

If something springs to mind, or if this question just makes you uncomfortable, rent The Remains of the Day. Hopkins and Thompson are masters, and their incredibly moving portrayal of two people whose happiness is overriden by “appropriate” decisions may be just what you need to inspire you. If you aren’t into movies, read the book, which is equally (if not more) inspiring.

Note to men: This is NOT a chick flick, even though it might sound like one.

I have no idea where this desire comes from. I love fine clothing. I have spent an embarrassingly large amount of money on handbags. But the best way to describe my style is “comfortable” (and that is probably being kind).

Regardless, I was thrilled when I discovered a website called “The Sartorialist” (www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com). On this site, photographer Scott Schuman posts wonderful images of (mostly) normal people on the street who have an amazing sense of style. I don’t always like the looks,  but it is extremely interesting to see how these folks decide to dress and style themselves.

Scott said it best in the intro to his new book, The Sartorialist:

The Sartorialist, at its core, is about fashion, but I don’t often think of ‘fashion’ when I look at my photos. I have been sharing photos with my audience on a daily basis for the past four years, and over the course of that time I have begun to see my images more as a social document celebrating self-expression than as a catalogue for skirt lengths or heel heights.

This is exactly why I like Scott’s work.

So, you are probably wondering, what does this have to do with decision making? Good question. I’ll get to the point.

The way we choose to present ourselves is one of the most obvious ways we communicate with the world. The features given to us by our parents don’t say nearly as much about us as our decisions regarding what we do with them: clothing, hairstyle, accessories, cosmetics. These seemingly insignificant adornments say volumes about what is important to us, what we want to say, how we want people to see us, and who we want to become.

I’ll give you a personal example:

About a year and a half ago, I couldn’t start my day until I spent an enormous amount of time straightening my hair. The problem was, I had recently decided to spend more of my life on things I enjoyed. My hair was not cooperating. So, I decided to let my hair be itself (see my picture at top right to see the result). It may not be sophisticated, but it is the “real” me and it is more aligned with the decisions I have made about how I want to live my life.

Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Own North Star, says there are several decisions we often make when we are in the process of changing our lives (or careers). Here are a few of her examples:

- You change your clothes
- You change your hair
- You remodel, redecorate, or renovate your living space

So, every time you make a decision about what to wear or how to style your hair, think about these questions. They apply equally well to your personal and professional life:

• Does this make me feel closer to who I want to be?
• How can I use my style choices to better represent my decisions?
• Do I want to change something about my look, and if so, why? What does that say about the decisions I am making?

Whales and dolphins are usually portrayed as intelligent animals. I recently learned more about them from the book Instant Genius: Fast Food for Thought by The Knowledge Commons, and I now realize they may be smarter than I thought.

Just like humans, whales and dolphins must breathe oxygen from air. They also need sleep. Since these mammals live in the water, how do they sleep without drowning? This is where they get smart: When sleeping, they shut down half of their brain and close one eye at a time. Every two hours or so they switch to the other side. This way they are still partially awake at all times. Brilliant!

I wonder what would happen if humans could just pick and choose which part of our mind to “access” at a given moment? In some ways, we can. I have done a lot of work on what I call “intramind mediation”. Author and life coach Martha Beck talks about the “social” self and the “essential” self. Your social self wants to please others and look successful; your essential self wants to quit your job tomorrow and live in a house by the beach (or something like that). Intramind mediation is a way to use mediation techniques to made decisions that satisfy both your social and essential self (i.e., the different parts of your mind).

For example, let’s say you accept an invitation to a networking event because you feel you “need” to go to grow your business. However, every time you think about going to the event, you feel like you are choking and you suddenly lose all ability to utter a coherent sentence. This is a classic scenario: your social self wants to play nice, your essential self does not want to play along.

So what do you do? One way to approach it is to start analyzing the thoughts that are causing you to feel like you are choking. The thought could be something like, “if I don’t go to the event, I will lose an opportunity to network and I’ll never grow my business.” Once you have found the thought, ask yourself:

What is a better thought that is more true, and that makes me feel good instead of bad?

An example of a better thought might be, “If I go to the event I will be so miserable I won’t make a very good impression. This will not represent me or my company very well.” Or, more simply, “if I go to an event that makes me miserable and unfriendly, I will be less likely to attract clients.”

Now, your social self realizes that to get what it wants (clients), it might want to rethink its strategy. And your essential self breathes a sigh of relief because it doesn’t have to go to the networking event.

This sounds easy, and it is easy (sort of) once you get used to it. Maybe it would be even easier if we were more like whales…

This was an interesting weekend for studying how people make decisions. On Sunday night during the live TV broadcast of the MTV awards, Kanye West decided to run on stage and interrupt Taylor Swift while she was accepting the award for best female video. Kanye’s complaint was that Beyonce did not win. In another incident on Saturday, tennis star Serena Williams decided to yell obscenities at a line judge during the semifinal match of the U.S. Open, costing her a win in the match and the opportunity to advance in the tournament.

Maybe we will eventually learn that Kanye’s little outburst was planned on his own or by show organizers. Although highly unlikely, maybe U.S. Open officials will eventually decide they reacted too harshly to Serena’s tirade. Either way, it doesn’t really matter.

The bottom line is that each of these individuals made a decision in the moment to proceed with a course of action that has riled a lot of people and disrupted their lives for the moment. There has been a lot of chatter about how immature it was… how unsportsmanlike it was. Many people are asking how celebrities could do something so rude and thoughtless. How dare they behave so irrationally!

The answer is… yes, they were behaving irrationally… and that actually makes sense.

According to Jonah Lehrer, author of the book How We Decide:

When we make decisions, we are supposed to consciously analyze the alternatives and carefully weigh the pros and cons. In other words, we are deliberate and logical creatures. This simple idea underlies the philosophy of Plato and Descartes; it forms the foundation of modern economics; it drove decades of research in cognitive science. Over time, our rationality came to define us. It was, simply put, what made us human.

There’s only one problem with this assumption of human rationality: it’s wrong. It’s not how the brain works…. It turns out that we weren’t designed to be rational creatures. Instead, the mind is composed of a messy network of different areas, many of which are involved with the production of emotion. Whenever someone makes a decision, the brain is awash in feeling, driven by its inexplicable passions. Even when a person tries to be reasonable and restrained, these emotional impulses secretly influence judgment.

Think about this:

• What is the difference between deciding to yell obscenities at the driver who just cut you off on the highway versus yelling at a line judge on a tennis court?

• How different is it to decide to complain loudly to your friends about the unfairness of being passed over for the job you wanted versus announcing a perceived slight in front of a live television audience?

All of these are examples of decisions that were made based on emotion. And my guess is that you make a lot of decisions like that, too. The only difference is that your decisions aren’t caught on television and broadcast to millions of people.

I am not trying to justify or judge anyone’s behavior. But I do think these incidents and the aftermath raise some interesting questions, such as:

• Should celebrities be held to a different decision-making standard than the rest of us? If so, why?

• When we behave irrationally, is it a problem or a fact of life?