Is Your Emotional Brain Keeping You From Your Money Success?

If I were to ask you today how you feel about money, would your response be more or less positive if I had asked you the same question three years ago when the economy appeared to be stronger?

More than likely your response will be “less positive” because your brain is thinking first about the drastic changes in the economy since then and not about your true feelings about money. It’s our natural tendency to look outside of ourselves to explain our feelings and not to think that emotions by themselves may have something to do with it.

We all know that the idea of money is complicated by a variety of personal and economic factors. But when your brain has to decipher your money issues it likes to first seek out simple and immediate answers. Then when you have to act on those money issues your emotional brain kicks in with feelings that will either move you to fast forward or slow you down to a freeze frame.

Even though both women and men appear to share strengths and weaknesses when it comes to earning and spending money, their feelings about money can be quite different. Here’s a report that should give you some insight into emotional feelings about money. 

In 2007 Ramit Sethi, a NY Times best selling author of I Will Teach You to be Rich conducted a reader survey about money and finance. From the 1,167 responses, Sethi identified 13 money differences between men and women.

The most significant difference came from how readers rated their feelings about money and finance from choices of – confidence, anxiety, apprehension, confusion, exhilaration, indifference and depression. The dominant response to “confidence” was 58% for men and 44% for women. Nevertheless, 46% of  the women responded from their emotional brain at almost twice the rate of men when it came to feelings of anxiety, apprehension, confusion and depression about money and finance!

Here is where your have to stop and conduct your own personal survey. 

When issues of money and finance arise, regardless of what the economy is doing, are you having feelings of anxiety, apprehension, confusion and depression? If any of your answers are “Yes” then know that your emotional brain is interfering. These emotional states will keep you from making good money decisions, keep you from navigating through a tough economy and most certainly keep you from having the money success you envision for yourself.

Now, here’s the part where you think that I’m going to offer you the solution if you happen to be held emotionally hostage by these money feelings.

No. I’m not going to tell you that you have to try and fix your emotional relationship to money immediately, or that your emotional money relationship can be fixed immediately.

What I am going to tell you is that the best way to start is to observe yourself when responding to money issues and how you feel about them.

Then, once you understand your feelings you can begin to change how you do want to feel about money.

We’ll talk more about how to do that next.

In the meantime, have a talk with yourself and find out how your really do feel about money. The conversation may just surprise you.