Читать книгу Money with Jess - Jessica Irvine - Страница 8

Before we get to the action parts of this book, where we organise your money and figure out where you want it to go, we need to stop for a hot minute and figure out how you currently think and feel about money.

In my career as a finance journalist, I've observed the way lots of people — such as readers, editors, fellow journalists, politicians and voters — think about money.

Overwhelmingly, I see people stuck in a pattern of thinking money is just too complex — too overwhelming — to understand. It's also common to believe that money is boring (this one hurts my soul!) or that it's just the case that some people suck at money.

The good news is that if you're one of those people who believe these things, honey, you're wrong. Don't feel too bad about it. An entire financial system exists that profits from your overwhelm. To fight it, you need to learn to manage your thoughts and emotions about money, which is what we're about to do now.

Perhaps some of us pop out of the womb knowing how to make good money decisions. But, believe me, most of us don't. The ability to manage money is a skillset that needs to be learned.

Unfortunately, many of us miss the memo and by the time we're old enough to control our money, we're already trapped in a toxic relationship with it.

We turn a blind eye to our overall financial position. We spend up big to calm our inner storms. We stick our heads in the sand and just hope our money problems will figure themselves out, one day. So much mental distress is caused this way and so much of it could be avoided, I believe, if we just took some time to really stare our money in the face. That's what this whole book is about.

But before we start looking at your personal money situation, I want to spend part I of this book really getting to the bottom of all the unhealthy attitudes towards money you may have unconsciously internalised — and then to help liberate you from them.

I'll teach you how to become a mini emotions detective, able to root out all the feelings you feel when you think about money. We'll then trace the origin of these emotions back to the thoughts you're having about money. And then, we'll replace those old thoughts with some more helpful ones.

Be warned: it might take some time and effort to really rid yourself of these unhelpful beliefs about money. But you'll feel so much better when you do, I promise!

It's never too late to start reframing your thoughts and feelings around money. So let's get into it.