Your Mental Wealth

“What would you like as a gift to celebrate the holiday season?” “What would you like for your birthday?” If, like me, your mind (or a loved one’s) tends to go blank at that kind of question, you are not alone. There are a fair number of us. This “not knowing” moment is very real.

It is not an “Aw shucks, you don’t have to, give to someone who needs it worse” answer when I really know, but I am waiting for them to ask again moment. Where I am from, an example of the “aw shucks, you don’t have to”, worked like this. The bottom line rule was that it was polite and expected to say no three times to an offer before you said yes. For example, this was a typical exchange:

“Would you like a piece of cake? “(Or cup of coffee, stay for a meal, whatever)”

“No, no thanks anyway”

“Come on, have a piece of cake, I made it myself”

“No, I really shouldn’t”

“Come on”

“No, I don’t want to bother you”

“No bother, I am going to feel bad if you don’t”

“Well, ok “

Next up, “Would you like a cup of coffee to go with that? Same three no’s to a yes,

Then “Would you like cream and sugar….. “

It certainly was a way to manage time and the depth of the conversation.

What we are talking about is not pretending to not know or politely saying you don’t know for the expected number of times. It IS an absolute honest “going blank” moment. As an otherwise relatively highly functional soul I find myself suddenly reduced to someone who, in that moment, loses their ability to be coherent, beyond muttering some variation of “Nothing”, “I don’t know”, or “I don’t really want or need anything”. It’s not because I really don’t have anything on my wish list. It is just, at that moment, when asked, the ‘list’ disappears.

Then, when I don’t get what I didn’t ask for on gift giving day, I feel mildly disappointed.

How would you like to be the gift giver? Talk about a no-win situation. Go figure.

Furthermore, it isn’t that I don’t believe in the whole gift giving thing. I tend to be very generous when it comes to giving to others. I take the adage of “It’s better to give than to receive” to the extreme. In the process I’ve been told that my behavior denies those who care about me the benefit of giving, and they have to resort to guessing.

A term we have coined to describe this behavior is that asking a person, “what do you want”, triggers a Financial “White Out”. Our mind goes blank. It’s as if the brain just shuts off. We call such experiences a ‘gift’. Sort of like the Hallmark cards that never quit giving, this is a “gift”, usually from childhood, that told us it was not considered good, polite, or respectful (insert any other derogatory word you’d like) to really, really need, want or ask for anything.

Sometimes we were punished (or watched others be) for wanting something. Criticized. Ridiculed. Told we were ungrateful. Selfish.

Still others of us just gave up wishing as a way of managing the sadness, hurt and disappointment when what we asked for never happened. We learned early that there was no Santa Claus, in terms of what was on our list. That didn’t mean we didn’t get gifts, it did mean that the gifts we got were on someone else’s list for us. Our right to dream, imagine, want, and visualize what might be, was stolen.

In our clients we see that this “giving up on wishes, wants, and dreams” is easily transferred to other areas of their lives. So much so, that asking them to imagine (as adults) what they would like their life to be like in the future is nearly an impossible task. Their self-protective minds just won’t allow them to go there.

This not being able to imagine or dream or want can have a significant effect on adult money behaviors. We believe that if a person’s dream for what they want isn’t theirs, they will not follow through with any plan that would involve things like saving for the future, investing, spending less than they earn, seeing themselves as ‘free agents’, or being able to organize their lives and resources so that they will be able to do more and more of what they love and less of what they don’t want.

What’s a person to do? I have found it helpful to have a dialog with someone else about what it was like ‘back then’. Talk about the moments when I decided to stop dreaming. The circumstances. The people. The situations. It’s helped clients of ours, when they have been able to do the same.

It is also very helpful to hang around other people who have not lost their ability to want and wish and plan and dream. It’s catchy. It’s fun. In America, it is a birthright.

This year, before you ask, I’d like……