Money Energy Law #2:
Money Energy drives more than wealth. Embrace Money Energy for your happiness and health.
Stress… It’s unavoidable.
Stress often gets a bad rap. However, we sometimes neglect that stress also helps you overcome daily challenges and it can become the catalyst, or even the motivation, that drives you to achieve your goals. In fact, these life pressures can help nudge you to become a happier, healthier, and perhaps wealthier, person.
Unfortunately, we are all too familiar with what happens when we experience too much stress. On the macro level, we are emotionally susceptible to anxieties when we witness global economies fail, geopolitical issues, civil unrest, and unstable markets. Compound those feelings with stress we encounter on the micro level. How much pressure are you under at work, at home, socially, physically, or mentally? All of this can have an adverse effect on your health and happiness. And perhaps this is nothing you haven’t heard before, but most people have a disconnect between the ill-effects of bad stress and the ability to improve their financial health.
Stress not only disrupts your health. It impacts your wealth.
The stress and anxiety you experience may harm your autonomic nervous system (ANS) and trigger mental and physical health conditions. The ANS is responsible for that “fight or flight” response you often experience. It starts within the hypothalamus (an area inside your brain) that triggers your adrenal glands to release the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. When your heartbeat rises and your blood rushes throughout your body, that’s the reaction of your hormones to stress.
However, when the perceived fear dissipates, the hypothalamus should tell all systems to go back to normal. But, as we all have experienced, our nervous system sometimes fails to return to a normal state and that hormonal response continues and causes havoc on our nutritional, physical, and mental well-being. What you might not be aware of is that these same unhealthy stressors are also doing harm to your current and future monetary well-being.
The connecting consequence is that as stress increases, your health not only declines, but it also disrupts your ability to create and enjoy wealth. It may even be very costly. The tension you are under also reduces your cognitive sharpness and the ability to see and take advantage of opportunities, which are essential if you wish to achieve your personal Money Energy potential.
Money isn’t everything, but it is in everything.
So, where does money and its energy fit into this situation? Just as your health can impact your ability to build wealth, Money Energy can potentially improve your health and happiness. It’s interconnected to your other life energies, which include your food intake, your body, and your mental well-being. But when you understand the invisible power of Money Energy, it ushers in radical changes in how you approach life. Failing to understand how these four energies work together means your physical, mental, and financial wellness are at risk.
Just as stress can manifest itself in one of four life energies and then influence your entire well-being, a healthy relationship with money can have a positive inverse effect. You improve your health by exercising more, practice mindfulness, eat a more nourishing diet—so why not build better habits with your money?
Meet the ever-logical Joshua Conner.
Joshua is the finance manager for the local legal firm. He is single, and the nature of his job makes his schedule very predictable. Joshua is 41 years old and has worked his way up through various positions in the finance department of his current employer since graduating college. He loves to travel and tries to get away frequently to help him manage the mundane nature of his job.
Joshua is your analytical type and he’s someone who prefers to conduct extensive research and make calculated decisions. Joshua doesn’t like being rushed; he is logical, focused, and cautious. Joshua is a precision planner – he has a life plan, an investment plan, and even a health regime plan, which correlates to his talent in terms of plan implementation.
His work-life balance is out of sync.
Recently Joshua became stressed and anxious both in his workplace and private life. He’s struggling with a volatile economic climate and the resulting financial challenges for the law firm. The increased tension he is experiencing mirrors his feelings for his own personal financial position. Joshua fears not having enough money in retirement and the apprehension is compounded because it’s something his parents experienced. This additional fact only adds to his stress in this economic climate.
No amount of research or analysis will help reduce the growing panic he is feeling. His heart variability rate (HRV), also widely considered one of the best objective metrics for physical fitness and determining your body’s readiness to perform, is low because his heart is racing from the increased stress.
When he informed me of his decision to pull out of a planned camping trip with close friends, I grew concerned. This was extreme, and so over coffee, I asked him a few questions, and he answered NO to each of them:
Do you have any long-term guaranteed revenue streams from investments and contracts?
In terms of antifragility – do you have a counter-cyclical wealth creation strategy in place?
Do you have three or more ways to earn immediate cash flow to pay your bills if needed?
Are you regularly taking advantage of the many educational opportunities to be a continuous learner?
Outside of us four friends, do you have an established variety of networks to open up career and business opportunities for you?
How’s your energy and health regime? Are you following personal energy management practices to counter stress?
It was clear to me that Joshua has not yet fully integrated money into his overall life and hasn’t set himself up with the opportunities to charge up his Money Energy battery. His HRV reflects the chaos he is facing. As he oversees the tightening of fiscal matters at work, this is creating pressure on his Money Energy behavior and those feelings are spilling into his private life.
His HRV readings are signaling imbalances in his ANS. He’s lost his mojo – and as friends, we need to help him understand and fire up his Money Energy. We need to teach him how to live outside his work life and save for retirement, while still having enriching life experiences that build happiness and health.
What about you?
Can you, or someone you know, relate to any of Joshua’s experiences? Maybe you know a friend, a family member, a business colleague, or even a client that is showing unhealthy levels of Money Energy. Whether you are coaching yourself or coaching others, it begins with understanding Money Energy.
Stay tuned every week as we continue to reveal all 40 Laws of Money Energy.
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