Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Frustrated By Simplification

How many "5 Steps to Financial Freedom" books have you read? How many articles have you read promising to "Lose 10 Pounds + Get A Flatter Stomach Now"? These short, simple lists seem like magic fixes until we go through the steps and then don't get the results we expected. Too often, these simple fast fix lists are like McDonald's fast food, tastes good in the short term, but in the long run it is likely to leave you out-of-shape, frustrated, and tired.

Instead of always running towards simplicity, we need to face and embrace the complexity involved with our marriage and our money. While lists are one of the very things that makes life manageable, at the same time there are often other steps that are not included or explained that are necessary for successfully completing the process.

This became glaringly obvious to me while I worked with my 8 year old nephew on a model car. The kit named 8 steps to assemble this car. What the instructions took for granted is that there are "steps between the steps" that will make the official 8 steps easy.  As adults there are many lessons we learn (that we forgot that we learned) which make it easy to put together a model car. This is accumulated knowledge.  Anytime that we have things boiled down into a "simple" formula, it may serve as a basis for understanding. However, it will not be a full foundation to build upon, especially for someone that does not have the same life experience as you.

The real fruit in understanding most subjects is not in the simplicity but rather in the complexity. With complexity, there are often fewer definitive answers and many more questions. Yet, it is with the development of complexity that we are then able to reduce the information into manageable pieces.

Simplicity gives the appearance that complex problems are approachable and achievable. But if you have ever spent any time working on your finances, you know that it is never quite as easy as a 5 step program, or a one time effort. Becoming proficient at managing our finances often takes years of practice, mess ups, reflection and yes successes.

When things are not as simple as they seem, we should not allow that to be a barrier to making progress. Instead it should be a realization that we have a problem in front of us that is going to take more work to solve. We may need additional tools, knowledge, perspective, and experience before we are able to solve the problem.  Referring back to the model car, I have developed skills that my nephew has not. So while the simple steps are easy for me, they are not easy for my nephew. I am not better than my nephew, but rather I have developed the necessary knowledge to read instructions, interpret what they are telling me and render a completed model car. I trust that with practice and experience he will also be able to build a model car on his own. Until then, he is going to naturally experience some frustration with completing model car kits.

As you face financial problems that you wish where solved by easy steps (but are not), consider asking for help. There is a good chance that there is someone who can come alongside you and help make sense of those seemingly simple "5 steps towards Financial Freedom". It is in relationship with others that we can engage in the complexity of a problem, and receive the needed guidance to move forward.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

From Simplicity Towards Mastery

We run around frantically looking at our most vexing problems in life for simple solutions. For many people they are either marriage and money. We as a culture are hungry for answers and yet seldom find satisfaction in the answers that we receive. Why is this? I would suggest that we have become accustomed to bland and dull information. Information that is broken down into tiny pieces for us, but with no way of putting it all together. Sure this is the very promise of 12 step programs, 7 habits, etc. Yet the reality is that a journey into deep knowledge can not be summed up in a few simple steps or 5 minutes a day.

The path to mastery is fraught with challenges, set backs, frustrations, and yet for those that choose to journey on the path towards mastery find great joy in the journey. They are not disheartened by setbacks and frustrations, rather they embrace them as they come. At the same time I am not saying pursue them either. This is the place that I have often allowed my own mind to wander. That somehow I have to make the path to mastery difficult or it will not be worth it. This is all wrong, rather it is in the pursuit of mastery that the challenges will come, and with those challenges eventual solutions.  This all of course does not happen in a straight line or on a fixed timeline as much as others would like you to believe.

Think about it, how much would you have appreciated your kindergarten teacher telling you that if you would just learn the alphabet that you would then be able to read. Not the case at all, the alphabet is the simple 26 charters that lead to the development of our language but mastery of the alphabet does not give you mastery of language. Sadly this is what we get with 8 step articles, we get building blocks, but not the whole thing.

Simplicity is important, as it helps us to bunch information together, but at the same time if we don't take the time to dig deeper into the meaning behind the simplicity then we can never fully appreciate the simplicity that is before us. Again with the alphabet. If we were taught that the alphabet was enough to succeed, we would say that is foolish. We all recognize that the alphabet seems simple because we memorized it by the end of kindergarten but we would be missing the significance of how it has deep meaning in our life given the complexity of ways in which it is used in our life. And so the same is true of our marriage and money. We can acknowledge basic patterns about marriage and money from an early age, but if we do not take time to become students of both subjects then we will remain shallow in the way that we go about approaching these relationships.
The reality is that your elementary education teachers are much like your parents in that they lay the foundation for your understanding of a subject, but they can not be an end point of your education. In order to reach the deeper uses of the alphabet you must continue on in school, and the same is true of our marriage and money. If we stop at what our parents taught us then we will be sorely disappointed with life, just as we would if we stopped our education at the 5th grade.


Both Marriage and Money are exceptionally complex topics that can not be reduced to a simple formula. Our understanding and engagement with both subjects and then how they interact with each other are significant and will not be easily mastered. Yet you are not alone on this journey. There are people who are further ahead of you on the journey that can help mentor and grow you as you face the challenges that come with dealing with marriage and money.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Compassion Changes Family Finance

Fighting with your spouse is readily acknowledged as one of the biggest challenges of marital life. It is often as if couples are from completely foreign countries and do not understand each others financial culture. Yet when the fighting ensues, there is often much that is provoked just below the surface of the argument that is creating the real challenge. These issues below the surface can be related to past suffering. In the September/October 2014 Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy article titled Family Therapy and The Science of Compassion author Laura B. Wallace highlights the importance of building compassion for improving family relationships. She says "Compassion means seeing and responding to suffering". How we see the problem before us and how we respond will in large part determine the outcome of the argument.

Take a minute to reflect:

How compassionate are you?

How compassionate does your spouse think you are?

What would change in your life if your level of compassion increased?

These are important questions to grapple with. I trust that all of us have room to grow in our ability to provide and receive compassion, especially when it comes to interacting with our family and finances. When our compassion grows, our ability to engage in the difficult topics of our marriage and money will increase.

The Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education has helped advance our understanding of the role of compassion in developing deeper levels of connection in our lives.
The center identified three types of compassion, which are; compassion for others, receiving compassion, and self compassion. Of these three types of compassion which is most difficult for you? What blocks you from experiencing compassion in this area of your life?

As we focus on building the three types of compassion, the solutions that we need to our problems will start to emerge. Sadly as long as we are not experiencing compassion, the pathways to finding positive solutions to our problems will be difficult to find. In counseling the idea of unconditional positive regard which parallels compassion is a key ingredient in helping people grow. Many therapists have found that once a person feels accepted for who they are and where they are, that then becomes the place that the person starts to experience the freedom to move forward in their life. There is an implicit trust that the solution is within the client, and that from experiencing unconditional positive regard the client will feel (not just think) like they can move forward.

My experience tells me that each of us has an easier time with one area of compassion and struggles with the other two. However, if we are not experiencing the three types of compassion then we are not experiencing the fullness of compassion. I see this often playing out in the caring professions, where the professionals have great compassion for others and will spend endless hours serving others, but will not take the time for themselves, or receive care for themselves.

As we slow down to reflect upon compassion for others, receiving compassion, and self compassion what feelings are being evoked in you? What types of resistance are you experiencing in your gut? Become aware of these responses and try to put names to them, as they are what is going to help guide you into deeper levels of compassion. Our resistance points are what will block us from giving and receiving more compassion.

Ultimately compassion is not something that is so much talked about as it is experienced through touch and tone/quality of voice. Growing these areas can help add substantial quality to your relationships. As our levels of compassion for our spouses and ourselves increase it makes approaching the difficult subjects of family finance all the more easier.

What are those areas of family finance that have felt unsafe to address? Hold this experience in your mind, now go to a place in your mind where you have experienced compassion. What did you experience with compassion in another area of your life, what was stirring in your body? Now how can you hold onto those summoned up experiences, and focus on addressing the family finances. Go slowly and with compassion in mind as you try to address the family finance issue at hand.