Читать книгу Money & Mindfulness - Lisa Messenger - Страница 9

I was brought up in the day of hire purchases and lay-bys. Few people had credit cards back then, so you could really only spend what you could afford (yeah, that wouldn’t fly in society today). My mum, a single parent, was paid in cash for her wages and I was always aware that money was a tough subject. As a result, there was a constant hovering, hindering worry that we didn’t have enough, or quite as much as other people. I distinctly remember Mum sticking notes above the toilet paper roll saying something like, “just take one sheet” and feeling guilt-ridden if I ‘indulged’ by using two. (Although she now says that note was for environmental reasons, but the jury’s out. Either way – go Mum!) As a kid, I viewed money – and how to earn it – with a mixture of fear, suspicion and superstition. I was the little girl parroting, “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck,” and I really believed it.

Fast-forward to my adult life and I still can’t walk past a 5-cent coin on the pavement without bending down to pocket it. If you spotted me doing this, would you ever imagine that I’m actually the owner of a global business, the founder of a magazine sold in more than 37 countries – which costs over AU$350,000 an issue to produce – with multiple side projects, collaborations, partnerships and deals worth millions upon millions of dollars coming in every year? Yet, I still can’t walk past a “penny”. And that’s not the only childhood imprint that has stuck with me as an adult.

A report authored by behaviour experts at Cambridge University found that an adult’s attitude towards money is essentially formed by the age of seven. Seven! That means we’re clued in on money matters probably long before sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll, politics and all those other ‘evils’ are on our childish radars. A 2014 survey by Halifax bank in the UK found that 77 per cent of children aged eight to 15 know their parents worry about money, close to the real figure of 91 per cent of parents who are actually concerned. The same study found that 59 per cent of children would like to learn about finance from their parents, followed by teachers at school (20 per cent), then the Internet (8 per cent) and television programs (4 per cent).

As an entrepreneur, everywhere I look – business meetings, networking events and social occasions – I can see glaring examples of grown-ups whose inner child still holds their purse strings. These grown-ups may as well be carrying Hello Kitty purses and handing out Monopoly money, because it’s so obvious their early money memories still propel, control, enable or restrict them. I see it in the millionaire who doesn’t like tipping, in the struggling freelancer who spends $2000 on a present, in the CEO who boasts about their profit but won’t spend $10 on a magazine, and the start-up founder who honestly can’t tell you how much his company is worth because he has zero grasp of the finances, so adopts a head-in-sand approach to business.

That is why, although this book is focused on helping you reach your full financial potential as an adult, I’m beginning chapter one by jumping into a time machine to revisit my childhood – and why I’m asking you to regress with me. Take a moment to think: what is your earliest money memory? How was money discussed in your household and how did it shape your view of the world, your parents, your peers, your neighbours and yourself?

You might look at me now and think I’m financially savvy, but it certainly hasn’t always been this way. For many, many years I was scared of making money, losing money, saving money, spending money and deserving money. I was trapped in a mindset of scarcity where I had a warped view of wealth, how much I needed, how much I deserved and what I needed to do to achieve it. It took a lot of work, self-development and self-analysis to get to a point where I see money not as the enemy, but as an ally to help me achieve my purpose.

When I called my mother to ask about my financial upbringing before sitting down to write this chapter, she admitted that when my sister and I were little she did feel like a black cloud of worry was hanging over us. Just to put my own childhood into perspective, we were far from poverty-stricken. In fact, after our country upbringing in our pre-teen years, if we hadn’t been raised in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs and instead had a house in the deep west of the city, we probably would have been the richest in our neighbourhood. As it happens, we were definitely some of the poorest kids in a private school, the smallest house on the best street, the lowest percentile in a high percentage. Yet, as a single parent, my kind and sensitive mama was terrified of getting sick and not being able to support us, was adamant that she didn’t want to take any handouts from family, and felt weighed down by financial responsibility. Even if I didn’t realise it at the time, this does have a knock-on effect when you’re an impressionable kid, and money became the monster under our beds, a dirty word we shouldn’t mention and something that, for many years, I personally felt I didn’t deserve.

I don’t think I’m the only child to be raised around such fears, often by no fault of the parent who was just trying to do their best with the resources they had (while dealing with their own money memories passed down by their own parents, our grandparents, who have their own money memories passed down from our great-grandparents and so on). Even if you had a blissful childhood where money was abundant, it can still warp your perception of money in adulthood.

I remember watching a hilarious skit that the New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords recorded for Red Nose Day a few years ago called, ‘Feel Inside (and Stuff Like That)’. They sat down with schoolchildren and asked them, among other things, about the economy. How much is a lot of money? Answers ranged from “a million” to “10” dollars and “your whole house full of money?” And, how do you make money? “We can get money from selling oil, gold and the crystals,” replies one little girl, “I saw that in a movie I watched, The Muppets.”

If you asked any child these questions, I’m sure you would get very different but equally cute answers. In a similar vein, Jeffrey Pritchard, an American financial blogger, asked his seven-year-old daughter to answer some basic finance questions. What is money? “Change. And you could use it to buy stuff.” How much money do you need to have to be considered rich? “Two thousand, ten hundred.” What job do you want to do when you grow up and how much will it pay? “Farmer. Five dollars every day or every month.” How much do you think a new house costs? “Ten thousand, fifty hundred.” A car? “$548,060.” At what age do people retire? “Probably 26.”

However, all jokes aside, could these inaccurate perceptions have a lasting impression? Will these kids grow out of it? Will their ideas really shift, change and evolve as they age? Or do many of the associations we place around money as a child actually stick with us, like a secret fear of the dark, the belief that if we step on a crack it might break our mother’s back, and an aversion to the taste of olives, though you haven’t let one pass your lips since your older sister force-fed one to you in pre-school?

Don’t be fooled into thinking your relationship with money began the day you cashed your first pay cheque, because I firmly believe that our attitude to money is deeply ingrained in us from our earliest experiences – when those mystical gold and silver coins that can be exchanged for lollies and marbles suddenly become a source of excitement, disappointment, terror or resentment, depending on the expression on a parent’s face as they gaze at the number that flashes up on an ATM screen. When we learn to cheer on Cinderella in her rags, to fear the Wicked Stepmother in her finery, when Robin Hood battled Prince John, and we’re taught that wealth makes you selfish, mean and a ‘baddy’, whereas poverty is associated with the ‘goodie’ and the eventual winner. And when we chose, very early on, where we would sit on that moral scale.

In his book, My Life and Work, the great Henry Ford (now there’s a man who knew how to build a brand) wrote, “We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has a value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child out into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.”

I learned a lot of long-lasting lessons during my childhood that had both positive and negative connotations – money is scarce, you shouldn’t take it for granted and the need to budget strictly. The same lessons that have allowed me to grow a business out of nothing have also nearly broken me, and for a long time stopped me living as the fullest version of myself because I refused to invest in myself, back myself, enable myself or ask for what I was owed.

I am not here to tell you to wipe your mind of all childhood associations (if only it was that easy!) but to examine your attitude to money, which associations are working for you and which are self-sabotaging. I hope that I never, ever stop picking 5-cent coins up off the street, even if I become a multibillionaire, because it is that jingle of coins in my pocket, the superstitious belief that money can bring magic, which continues to drive me, to ground me, motivate me and inspire me. (Side note: a friend of mine in America told me recently that a few weeks ago, he found 13 cents in the street and picked it up, much to the amusement of a passer-by walking near him. At the time, money was on his mind because he needed a plane ticket home to Australia but couldn’t afford one. A few days later he was taking a domestic flight across America and the airline had overbooked the flight and offered anyone who was prepared to stay a day and get the flight tomorrow US$1300 as compensation. Can you believe it? So this US$1300 paid for his ticket back to Australia. The universe works in mysterious and wonderful ways if you stay open to it. It is that reminder that money can be lost and found so instantly, which stops me becoming too attached to it, ensures I remember that wealth is subjective and fleeting, can grace anyone’s palm and burn a hole in anyone’s pocket.)

I recently watched a TED talk by Tania Luna, an entrepreneur originally from the Ukraine, who left her hometown with her family after Chernobyl to take asylum in America. In the talk, she recalls living in a homeless shelter (“We think that it’s a hotel – a hotel with lots of rats”) and the moment she and her sister, as schoolgirls, discovered true treasure in the street. “So, we find this penny kind of fossilised in the floor and we think that a very wealthy man must have left it there because regular people don’t just lose money,” says Tania, “And I hold this penny in the palm of my hand and it’s sticky and rusty but it feels like I’m holding a fortune. I decide that I’m going to get my very own piece of Bazooka bubble gum. And in that moment I feel like a millionaire.”

These are the kind of childhood lessons that should never be forgotten, that we should lock up in a safe and pass down to our children with their inheritance. I’ll never forget the sense of pride when I cashed my first pay cheque shortly after my 15th birthday, as a proud employee of KFC, where I just remember sliding across the floor at the end of a shift like an ice-skater in my white plastic shoes, complete with the deep satisfaction of tucking into leftover chips dipped in potato and gravy on the walk home. However, I also have to check myself when I am tortured with guilt over spending $2 on a bottle of water, when I’m tempted to undercharge a client or want to avoid my accountant’s phone calls. I have to stop and ask – where are these fears coming from? Are they based on fact or is there another factor at play?

GET CLEAR ON THINGS

To make enough money (and ‘enough’ will be a different value for everyone) it’s so important to set clear, specific intentions. The day before writing this chapter, with money on my mind, I sat down with three of my senior team members to set our financial goals for the next year. As we lazed on sun lounges besides the pool at a lovely Sydney hotel, sipping on a smoothie (because for me, sun + water + good food + fresh air = inspiration), I jotted down figures in a notebook – and they were very specific. “I want AU$20 million in revenue in the next financial year from these specific revenue streams…” I realise that sounds like a lot to some and a little to others. Remember, at the time of writing this book The Collective was only two years old… everything is always relative.

I believe that it’s extremely important to set concrete parameters. Once you know exactly what you want and you quantify it with a dollar amount, a time frame, where it is coming from and what it will be used for, it is very hard to stop it from happening. I read a book years ago titled I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was. I don’t remember any of the contents (and to be honest I don’t know if I even read the book or just the blurb) but the title stuck with me. I truly believe that once we know exactly what we want, the universe delivers every single time without fail (even if the road is a little windy or if we get a bit lost along the way). It’s the getting clear on exactly what it is that we want that is the tricky part.

I am a big believer in the power of visioning, whether it’s imagining the relationship you want, the work culture you’d like to be a part of, or how much money your future-self has in their bank account. A lot of people make the mistake when visioning of being far too airy-fairy: “I just want to be a millionaire” or “I just want to be rich” – but what does this really mean to you? How much do you need to be happy and fulfil your life purpose?

I know the exact yearly income that I could very comfortably live on (and I don’t desire any more than that for personal use), and yet I want to make a hundred times that; well into the tens of millions, because I need to in order to expand and amplify my brand and my purpose – to use myself as a conduit to be an entrepreneur for entrepreneurs, to live my own life out loud so others can see it and hopefully, be inspired by it. This is why my visioning is very specific and why I recommend that you also pinpoint your own dream income, financial timeline and end goal. I’m not the only one who believes in this strategy; for years those in the know have been visioning in detail.

In 1937, in the depth of the Great Depression, a book called Think and Grow Rich became a bestseller. The author, Napoleon Hill, was a former advisor to President Franklin D Roosevelt and for the book, he interviewed more than 500 of the most successful men in the country to try and calculate the key to their good fortune. “Define the exact amount of money you desire,” he writes. “It is not sufficient merely to say, ‘I want plenty of money’. Be specific as to the amount.”

He then recommends writing out your financial desire – including the time limit for its acquisition – and reading it aloud twice a day, once just before waking up and once just before going to sleep. “As you read, see and feel and believe in yourself already in possession of the money,” he writes. I’ve tried it, and I highly recommend it. Yes, you will feel like a lunatic at first, but I can vouch that this type of pillow talk is profitable. Another key point is to get clear on what you will give in return for the money, as he said, “There is no such thing as something for nothing.” That book went on to sell over 70 million copies worldwide. Clearly, there has to be some truth in it. So, today set your intention and tomorrow repeat it aloud, then repeat it again the next day and the next until you hit that milestone, at which point, celebrate wildly and then it’s time to upgrade and expand your intentions even further. This isn’t about relying on a prayer or believing in a higher power. It’s about sending a clear, concise message to yourself and imagining a solid casino chip in your palm that you can see, feel and touch – and one day cash in.