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You’re in a meeting, and a client offers feedback on a project. It’s generally positive, with a few logical criticisms. You agree to implement the changes—and then you retreat to your office, feeling uneasy. Instead of working, you sit at your desk wondering whether you’ll lose your job and how long your savings will hold out before you need to sell your house.
Sound familiar? Fear and anxiety caused by financial stress negatively impacts the workplace in record numbers. In fact, recent research from Willis Towers Watson shows that 59% of employees feel disengaged at work due to money worries.
Financial stress is indeed real and can have a serious impact on your ability to focus, perform at your job, and frankly, on your health. In fact, financial stress holds its grip on us, even when we know how to manage money, because we’re not getting at the root of the issue. Most financial advice involves planning and managing. We’ll be calmer if only we invest smarter, save more, or budget better. Right? But this just isn’t true. Even the wealthiest people suffer from financial stress. It doesn’t matter how much you have in the bank; what matters is how you think about money.
Watch on Forbes:
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The truth is, many of us approach it with terror. I call this “Bag Lady Syndrome,” and it comes from a real place. Our stress response dates from primal times, when we were either hunted or hunters. We’re hardwired to crave safety, which in modern terms means money.
In order to enjoy financial freedom and security, we need to examine our inner relationship with money—our emotions, thoughts, and beliefs.
Step One: Confront Your Thoughts
We have around 6,000 thoughts per day, most of which we repeat. For many of us, those thoughts revolve around worst-case financial scenarios: My client gave me criticism—what if I lose my job? What if I drain my savings account, tap out my retirement funds, and end up on the street?
Emotion-driven “thinking traps” fuel these thoughts instead of logic. We jump to pessimistic but improbable scenarios, like ending up homeless. Or we overgeneralize, taking one piece of information (a tidbit of criticism) and turning it into an overarching statement—that we’ll get fired.
The Solution: Break the thinking chain. Next time you spiral into a trap ask, “Do I have evidence to support this theory? What’s the probability that this awful result will actually happen based on this single event?”