The DiLauro Dossiers

The other day I shared a coffee with a pleasant young lady who uttered words that—either due to their forcefulness or their candour—caught me off guard.
Her words were (and I quote), “I hate talking about money, I always get a knot in my stomach.”
In my line of work, money and dollars (and if you think they’re the same thing, you and I need to talk) are my easel. Or maybe they’re my brush. I don’t know, stupid analogy. But you get the picture, right?
Anyway…

Open door
When someone talks that way, I view it as an open door—an invitation.
Right away, I asked her why she made that claim.
And so began a lengthy conversation about income and spending, about abundance and scarcity, and about family money issues while growing up (I’ve written about this before, and I’m detecting a definite pattern).
She also spoke of her brother—the “rich” guy.
She spoke of how half her family laughed at him because he was no more than a tightwad. The other half, it appeared, laughed at him out of jealousy.
He was, after all, “rich”.
I asked how she thought he got that way—”rich”.
Her reply was succinct, “He must make a lot of money. That’s what I need to do. Make more money.”

Spend spend spend
I then asked her if she knew of others who earned a lot of money and, if so, were they “rich” too?
She laughed (finally she laughed) and spoke of a friend who bought designer handbags, designer shoes—designer everything—and then gave most of it away.
“Some people spend because they like the feeling of spending,” I said, “Some people, no matter how much they earn, will always spend even more.”
The conversation continued until I asked if she still believed that more income would solve her money woes (and make that knot in her stomach disappear).
She agreed that, no, more money would only result in more spending. What she needed, she ventured, was to break her spending habit.
Was it possible, she asked, that her habit stemmed, in part, from her upbringing—from all those money arguments her parent kept having?
I agreed it might be possible and I then suggested her money woes weren’t about money itself.

It’s not about the money
No, I repeated, her issue wasn’t with money. It was with her perception of money. She had, I ventured, negative beliefs about money. Maybe she believed money was bad. Maybe she believed money was supposed to be a hardship.  Or maybe she believed herself to be unworthy of being “rich”.
We spoke of perception and of its capacity for influencing decisions, and habits and—dare I say it—our version of reality.
The conversation winding down, I then asked if she now recognized how to get rid of the knot in her stomach.
“What I need,” She replied, “Is to change my perception and my beliefs. I need to get clear on my relationship with money. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to change my spending habits.”
“But how,” I asked, “Will you feel when, just like your brother, your family starts making fun of you and your “riches”.
“I’m looking forward to it,” She laughed.

If you’re curious why I write the word rich in quotations, the answer is simple. It’s because there is no universal, no common, definition for that word. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and define “rich”. And please leave a comment and let me know what you came up with.

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