Experience Your Life Blog

April 15th, our least favorite day ofDollar the year. The day when taxes are due and the piper must be paid, or at least the IRS. Once the taxes are filed and the boxes of receipts are stashed away, it's a good idea to take a moment to look back over the previous year and review the financial decisions you have made and reflect on the impact those decisions have made on your life.

 

Ask yourself whether the way you handled your money over the last year is in keeping with your goals and the vision you have for your future. Like it or not, managing money is something that can cause stress and tension if you don't have a plan or focus for your financial life.

Money, or the lack of it, is often a source of stress and anxiety.  It can lead to arguments between couples, stress in families, and a sense of anxiety for those making it on their own. It is a facet of modern living that greatly influences our relationship with ourselves and others and yet it is a subject that very few people are comfortable speaking about openly.

In many cases, our associations with money have become such a negative influence in our lives that it can be challenging to shift our negative beliefs into healthy ones. There is also a huge amount of pressure from friends, family and society to succeed, or at least display the material symbols of success. Thus, for many of us, success doesn't exist without money.

One approach to altering a negative relationship with money and relieving some of the stress that relationship causes is to redefine your view of money as your only reward. Look for emotional rewards in your personal achievements and successes and recognize that money is merely a manner in which society agrees to recognize that success along with you. In other words, your worth as a human being is based on the sum total of what you achieve in your life and what you bring to the society in which you live rather than the amount of zeros in your checking account balance.

By shifting our relationship with our finances we can eliminate some of our anxiety and feel more powerful in our associations with money. Money itself is neither a positive or negative force, it is simply the manner in which we recognize the exchange of time and energy. It can provide us with many comforts, experiences and opportunities but money is only one of many tools at our disposal that we can use to improve the quality of our lives.

If we allow money to become one of the results of our journey rather than the main goal, then we are recognizing a bigger form of achievement and will often be surprised with how much more fulfilling our journey through life becomes. As we release the fear and anxiety that money can stir up in us we will find there is more room to enjoy the rewards of a successful and happy life.

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