INTRODUCTION
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1 CHAPTER
1 MIN READ
THIS WAY
LIES
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A toolkit for surviving in a world that wants everything you’ve got
L.M. SACASAS
THE CONDITION
THE CONDITION
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3 CHAPTERS
3 MIN READ
We find ourselves in a perpetual state of wanting.
Each day more of our attention is hijacked by algorithmic feeds. We are bombarded with a constant stream of advertising telling us that we are not enough. Not beautiful enough. Not productive enough. Not wealthy enough.
Each new purchase or indulgence eases our discomfort for a moment. But each act of self-gratification is immediately followed by familiar feelings of emptiness. And those feelings are just as quickly replaced by the irresistible need to indulge ourselves once again. And so the cycle continues.
This endless wanting is an illness with which we’ve been infected. We live in a social and economic system that 'continually places new struggles before us while also conveniently providing consumerist solutions to them.' 'The main product of this system is manufactured desire or discontent' – we have made a world that by its nature makes us ill.
Every new interest or pursuit is turned into another struggle for self-improvement and another set of things to buy. Whether it’s an air fryer or a personal trainer, our Duolingo streak or a houseplant, no enthusiasm is safe from being bent into consumption.
'Every aspect of our culture is designed to make us think that happiness, or something like it, always lies just on the other side of more.' We have come to believe that this forever cycle of endless wanting is a natural human condition rather than a culturally induced pathology.
This is not the case.
“This craving is the capitalist long-game: continually surface new struggles while also conveniently providing consumerist solutions to them.”
ANNE-HELEN PETERSON
“Consumer culture in particular encourages lies. Advertising is one of the cultural mediums that has most sanctioned lying. Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy. Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism.”
BELL HOOKS
In exchange for living with this illness, our material wants and needs are catered for. Food, housing, medical care, bottomless entertainment, on-demand everything. These rewards are never enough. The more insecure we become, the more grateful we are for what we are given.
Each of us is born with a set of essential needs beyond the material – the need for human connection, the need to do meaningful work, the need to be treated with dignity. Needs that when unmet present as fractured internal lives characterised by feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and worthlessness.
Over time, the effects of this disease only worsen. 'This does not manifest only as over-consumption, though that is the most observable symptom. A more subtle but severe effect is the reduction of our ability to tell the difference between what we want and what we need.'
The harm this disease wreaks goes beyond distorting our internal lives. It wrecks the home that we share. The world we inhabit laden with the discarded junk of yesterday’s wants. Landfills overflow with consumer goods as the temperature climbs ever higher.
More insidious is that it makes us strangers to one other. We feel that our problems can only be solved by professionals and institutions. That we must buy services rather than rely on the goodwill of our neighbours. We want only what they have, rather than what they have to give.
Alone in our homes. Transfixed by our screens. Broke but still spending. Too sick to see that we are not alone.
This disease is not naturally occurring. It is not an accident of nature. It was not, and is not, inevitable. This pandemic of desire is man-made but has grown far beyond our control.
It begins in our own minds. Every facet of our cognitive makeup exploited. Dopamine when we’re bored, nutrition-free fast food when we’re hungry, endless potential matches on dating apps when we’re lonely. No tomorrow; only this moment right now, and the need to satisfy our desires.
The world’s brightest minds walk the halls of the companies who work to perfect this exploitation. Trillion-dollar machines concerned only with the manufacture of wants through the manipulation of the basic wiring of our brains. Every executive a victim of this same illness. Each willing to forgo the common good in service of their own wants.
We have taken up the cause of our own oppression. Our culture reveres businessmen the way we used to worship art and artists. We worship Bezos instead of Bowie; Musk instead of Kahlo. We even see ourselves through the lens of the economic forces that shape the world around us - everything permissible in the name of greater productivity, efficiency, and economic growth.
A world built at a scale that dwarfs the human spirit. A world made by us but not for us.
To work against this enemy requires us to look at ourselves. To see the effect these manipulations have on us and the harm that they do. We must name the disease and point at those who profit from keeping us ill.
We refuse to succumb to this illness.
We refuse to have our natures exploited.
We refuse to have our pockets emptied.
We refuse to be isolated.
THE TREATMENT
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3 CHAPTERS
10 MIN READ
To get our minds right we have to understand our subconscious. To do this, we must begin a dialogue with ourselves.
In service of this, you will find some simple questions at the beginning and end of each section.
If you find yourself answering “yes” to any of the prompts then the symptom that follows might well be relevant to you.
The questions at the end of each section are designed to be an ongoing practice. You can use these when you feel the rush of dopamine as you contemplate meeting your next want or when you begin to feel your discontent manifesting. You find templates for journalling linked here:
If you can only remember one thing to do - remember to ask your self the following question when desire overtakes you:
How did I come to want this?
The answer will be in there, and more often than not it will come from outside you. By beginning this dialogue you are making the subconscious conscious. As a result you will begin to rewire your underlying patterns of thought and increase your resistance to this disease.
A.
THE HEDONIC TREADMILL
DO YOU...
…doom scroll and shop when you feel anxious?
…think you might be happy if you bought/experienced just one more thing?
…enjoy the anticipation of getting new things more than their arrival?
Our happiness perpetually adjusts to our circumstances. The joy we feel at some great celebration or accomplishment fades over time. So too does the grief we feel at some loss or suffering. It is a feature of our minds that is useful for our survival.
But it can also harm us. It leaves us stuck on a treadmill where the only certainty is that what was sufficient today will be insufficient tomorrow. Our brains respond less and less favourably to rewards we have come to expect. We must travel faster and consume more to stay in the same place.
This treadmill is the engine upon which our economic system is built. We buy, we feel some sense of relief, that relief diminishes, and so we must buy again. And again. And again. The presence of technology, and by extension consumption, in every part of our lives is causing this treadmill to speed faster and faster.
Every inch of our awareness is blanketed in targeted advertising. We are assailed with visions of happiness that are always one purchase away. We cease to have purpose apart from staying on the treadmill – our inner lives hollowed out in the pursuit of external validation and the disease of more.
Stepping off this treadmill is an act of resistance.
Doing so begins with a step we have all contemplated – reassessing our relationship to technology. How do these ever-present screens shape our perception of ourselves and our wants? The more we can bring a measure of mindfulness to this engagement, the more we can slow the cycle of compulsive, unsatisfying consumption. Fewer screens, fewer wants.
Stepping off this treadmill is not a one-time thing. It is a daily practice. A continual recognition of the value of what we have now over what we must have next. An understanding that the conditions for our happiness have already been met.
In a system that profits from our discontent, the act of choosing contentment is a subversive one.
“When I was at my most burnt out pre-pandemic, traveling constantly for reporting, working all the time, the muscle under my eye twitching almost constantly, still without the language to describe what I was doing to myself, the one thing that would temporarily calm me down was buying shit.”
ANNE-HELEN PETERSON
DO THIS:
Consider how you might reduce your exposure to constant marketing. Try taking a break from social media
Take a look around you at some of things that cost you money and attention that now sit unused and unloved. Dopamine is generated at the anticipation of a reward, not its arrival.
Write down the answers to these questions:
How did I come to want this?
When I consumed something like this in the past, how long did my satisfaction last?
What are examples of consumption that I regret now?
B.
DO YOU...
…find it difficult to save, diet or exercise?
…think nothing really matters as the world is probably ending anyway?
…struggle to feel like you are worthy of your own compassion?
Our brains are wired for immediate gratification, a relic of our evolutionary past. In a world of scarcity and uncertainty, prioritising the short-term was an adaptive strategy. The idea of saving resources for a distant future self would have seemed perverse to our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
These evolutionary adaptations work against us now – disconnecting our current selves from our future selves. We struggle to empathise with the person we will become, to viscerally connect with their wants and needs.
The failure to imagine our future selves as fully realised extensions of our current selves leads to a range of problematic behaviours. For example, in the near-term – we drink too much knowing we’ll be hungover tomorrow. We stay up too late knowing we’ll be tired in the morning. Some examples far in the future – we don’t put money in our pension even though we’re dimly aware that we need to, we do things that are bad for our health even though we understand the consequences in later life may be severe.
Building empathy with our future self is an act of resistance.
To fight back against our own brains, we must learn to see our present choices through the eyes of the person we will one day be.
By anchoring ourselves in a sense of continuity across time, we access a vital source of meaning and resilience. We can begin to craft lives of greater intentionality, purpose, and compassion. It is not just a matter of financial prudence, but of existential coherence.
It’s easy to be fatalistic as we look at the condition of the world – but fatalism is a win for consumerism and we should resist it. We must treat our future selves with the same care and consideration we would extend to those we love.
DO THIS:
Write down the answers to these questions:
What are some things you wish your younger self had done for today you?
How do you picture yourself twenty years from now?
What do you want for your future self?
C
SPEND WITH INTENTION
DO YOU...
…feel the ache of want when the new version of whatever you already have comes out?
…find yourself broke by the end of the month, but feel you’ve nothing to show for it?
…find it difficult to explain your own decisions?
We have internalised the idea that consuming less will diminish our value and limit our happiness. We believe that our spending habits and wants are purely a reflection of our authentic preferences. This is not true.
The key to finding contentment lies not in spending more but in spending better.
Investing in meaningful experiences, relationships, giving money away, and buying time – these things yield more enduring contentment and happiness than the accumulation of material things. Fixing our relationship with money won’t be achieved by shaming ourselves for our desires, but by understanding which spending habits are induced by our illness, and which reflect our authentic selves.
Spending intentionally is an act of resistance.
Spending is neither wrong nor avoidable. We make decisions about our consumption dozens of a times a day. Much like eating, we cannot give up spending – we have to come to terms with it. Spending can be beautiful – we can travel together, we can buy gifts for the ones we love, we can support causes we care about, we can buy things that we value for decades.
Do not let your money be taken from you cheaply. Do not let them empty your pockets while you look on feeling nothing. Spend with intention. Spend with joy.
DO THIS:
Don’t shame yourself for spending. It will likely lead to more of the same behaviour. You’re fighting an uphill battle against a vastly better equipped foe.
Write down the answers to these questions:
Will I remember this thing I’m considering buying? Will I create a new memory here?
Where have you spent money or time in the past that is still rewarding you? (We all have treasured memories and possessions).
D
COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY
DO YOU...
…feel like everyone has more than you?
…find yourself coveting things after you see other people with them?
…feel inadequate as you’re not productive and successful enough?
LESSONS LEARNED FROM SPORTS CAR DRIVERS: MORGAN HOUSEL’S INSIGHTS
We are asked daily to measure our worth against the curated highlight reels of others. We are compelled to compare ourselves to an idealised version of ourselves – one with a better phone, a meditation habit, or a more stylish wardrobe.
Our desires are profoundly shaped by those around us. One person’s consumption becomes another’s desire. Comparison becomes the thief of joy.
We must deliberately shift our gaze from what we lack to what we have. This does not mean not wanting better things, but rather beginning to think about what we want by first appreciating what we already have.
Gratitude is an act of resistance.
In a system that profits from our dissatisfaction, the act of celebrating what we have is a revolutionary one. When we orient ourselves away from lack and towards abundance, we find greater satisfaction in the present and reduce the impulse to seek fulfilment through buying.
We start to see ourselves not as incomplete projects to be endlessly upgraded, but as whole and worthy as we are. To define ourselves by what we lack is to insist on the emptiness of the human condition. But we are not empty or incomplete.
True abundance lies in the subversive power of gratitude. By appreciating what we have, we resist the oppression of comparison and reclaim our joy.
Make an inventory of the things in your life that provide you with joy today. Update it over time. Half of contentment is just remembering what you already have.
Do not see yourself as an incomplete task list. There will always be weight to lose, skills to master, a promotion to get.
Measure yourself only by your own achievements – no-one else is really paying much attention.
Write down the answer to this question:
Do I want this thing because someone else has it?
E.
WEALTH IS THE MONEY YOU DIDN’T SPEND
DO YOU...
…spend money that you don’t have?
…feel nauseated when you think about your debts?
…avoid looking at the balance of your bank account or credit cards?
Our illness keeps us at the limits of our financial capacity and consumes any surplus. But small adjustments in our spending habits allow us to build wealth rather than accumulate debt.
This serves us in two ways. Firstly, our accumulated wealth attracts interest, allowing it to grow. Secondly, having money reduces our anxiety so we don’t self-soothe by spending.
Building wealth is an act of resistance.
So what is the smallest step that we can take to build real wealth?
A small pause to consider the true value of something to us. A minor adjustment in the frequency of our spending. These small changes can be the beginning of a virtuous cycle with far-reaching effects.
Having savings provides us with a buffer against the world. It allows us to make decisions that meet our needs and not just our wants. It allows us to say no to the things that do not serve us. It creates options and opportunities for our future selves.
We must learn to take comfort in the money we have rather than the things that others see. It’s easy to mistake appearing wealthy for being wealthy. It’s even easier to mistake spending money for having money.
“Wealth is what you don’t spend, which makes it invisible and hard to learn about by observing other people’s lives. Spending is contagious; wealth is mysterious.”
MORGAN HOUSEL
“The only way to be wealthy is to not spend the money that you do have. It’s not just the only way to accumulate wealth; it’s the very definition of wealth.”
MORGAN HOUSEL
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
EPICTETUS
DO THIS:
Start getting your money right. Right now. See next section.
Understand that it’s the small everyday decisions that make a difference. Not everything has to be a big swing. Benefits compound over time.
Write down the answer to this question:
Would I still buy this if no-one would ever see it?
More and more of our financial lives are abstracted away from us – no more cash, our virtual change rounded up, our bank accounts emptied by subscriptions we’ve lost track of.
This abstraction is lubricant for the engine of our consumption. One-click checkout, buy now pay later, six months interest-free. The gap between desire and gratification reduced to zero. Our financial security so compromised and our anxiety so all-encompassing that we just close our eyes and keep spending.
We must not be made passive. If money is the weapon of choice in this system, we cannot blindly hand over all of the ammunition.
Doing a few simple things is all it takes to reclaim control. The advice hasn’t changed in a hundred years, and it boils down to one thing:
Spend less than you earn.
A
SIMPLE, BUT NOT EASY
FROM 'THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY' BY MORGAN HOUSEL
Building wealth isn’t easy, but it is simple. It requires discipline, commitment, and time. Not a finance degree, a job in banking, or expert spreadsheet skills.
Consistency is our friend here, and will allow new habits to become second nature. If you are in your twenties, you are a time millionaire and in a position to play the long game. If you’re not in your twenties, the best thing you can do is start today.
DO THIS:
Don’t listen to the voice that says “it’s too late” or “I have too much debt”. There is no unrecoverable situation.
Don’t wait. Take action today. Even the smallest step is a beginning.
B
SAVE EVERY SINGLE DAY
To combat the passivity which feeds our disease, we must make our relationship with money active. Anyone can do this, but it is a long-term practice. Start a daily saving ritual and stay with it for 60 days - this will establish it as a new habit, and you will begin to feel more in control of your money.
We must internalise new ideas about what makes us happy. By establishing this new identity for ourselves as savers we build resistance to the lie that only spending can ease our discomfort.
BOJACK HORSEMAN - “IT GETS EASIER”
DO THIS:
Save a small amount, £1/$1/€1 a day for 60 days, and keep track of your habit. Put your daily deposit into an instant-access high-interest rate savings account not attached to your everyday account.
When you feel the urge to spend, save instead. Give some money to your future self and feel good about it.
If you clear out your savings for a holiday or something else, don’t beat yourself up. But do save that day as well, and the next day. Make your saving habit invulnerable.
Download our iOS app and use our Habit Tracker. It’s free forever.
If you don’t have an iOS device, you can use a tool like this.
C
MAKE A PLAN
You can’t make good decisions without good information. You need to make a clear-eyed assessment of where you are in order to take control of your future.
We’ve built a tool called ‘Savings Genius’ that helps you map your resources, your spending, and what you can realistically save. We’ll give you guidance on how you might allocate your money between your wants today and building wealth for your future self. (It’s also free).
DO THIS:
Download our iOS app and use our Habit Tracker. It’s free forever.
If you don’t have an iOS device, you can use a tool like this.
This takes a minute. And will probably involve you digging out a payslip and trawling through a bank statement. You won’t want to do this. Don’t procrastinate – do it now while you have momentum.
D
RID YOURSELF OF DEBT
Debt is a vicious cycle that makes our illness worse. By allowing us to buy things with money we don’t have, it increases the pace of hedonic adaptation. At the same time, we become trapped by the cost of servicing our debt, which forces us to stop considering the needs of our future selves. Our anxiety increases, and so does our compulsion to consume.
It’s worth noting not all debt is bad. Things like mortgages and student loans allow us to access things that we wouldn’t be able to pay for in one go – they are also relatively low-cost. The key is to examine how a debt makes you feel, and if it fits into your aspirations for your future self.
Attack high-interest debt first. Re-finance it if possible. Throw everything at it until it’s gone. Then move onto your other debts.
HOW TO PAY OWN DEBT: STRATEGIES FOR DEBT PAYOFF
DO THIS:
Remember that your sense of the scale of money will change over time. A £10k credit card bill will seem overwhelming if you’re 22, but less so if your earnings increase as you get older. Don’t give up and don’t let despair push you further into debt.
This is a practical and proven approach to clearing your debts:
PAY OFF DEBT USING THE DEBT SNOWBALL
E
BUILD YOUR BUFFER
Your F.U.nd (aka. Fuck You Fund) is the amount of money that allows you to have control over your time and your future. It’s different for everyone but the benefits are the same. A buffer that allows you to tell whatever or whoever is holding you back to fuck off.
It’s different for everyone. We all have our own sense of what we want and need. The important thing is figuring out how much you need to feel secure.
THE GAMBLER (2014) - F*** YOU SCENE (7/10) | MOVIECLIPS
DO THIS:
Don’t compare it to others. It only matters that it provides you with a sense of security.
F
INVEST BORING
One of the biggest myths about money is that investing is a game that can be played. It is not and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. Stock picking is gambling in a game at which you are hopelessly disadvantaged. It plays on the same dopamine generating systems that fuel our consumption, and should be avoided.
So how can you invest safely? The best way to start, and the one that is tried and tested, is to invest in a low-cost, well-diversified index fund that will compound over time.
Build your buffer and then leave it in peace.
WARREN BUFFET: WHY MOST PEOPLE SHOULD INVEST IN S&P 500 INDEX
“The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.”
CHARLIE MUNGER
DO THIS:
Put your F.U.nd in a easy-access high-interest (4%+) savings account. This is risk-free and available to you immediately if you need.
Investing should be boring. Put your money somewhere safe and try and forget about it. Let time and compounding do its work.
An index fund is simply a measure of how well the stock market is doing on average. Put another way it’s like making a bet that the world economy will continue to grow.
The value of your investment in an index fund will go up and down over weeks and months. Try and ignore this - the stock market tends to increase substantially over years and decades - this is the timeline you’re working to.
This disease isolates us - it keeps us alone with our shame and our wants. Time spent with others is time we cannot spend buying shit that we do not need.
Building community is an act of resistance.
When we come together to witness each others’ stories, we begin to make sense of our own. When we strengthen our social bonds, we create a powerful shared immunity.
This system is built upon infinite competition, and so our co-operation weakens it at its very foundations.
What follows is a practical toolkit for sharing our stories and building community. You can also find additional free template resources here:
“It is a cruel and fundamentally inhuman tragedy that the culture has convinced so many of us that we must be healed in isolation, because being surrounded by people — people who love us, or care for us, or are willing to sit in the same room with us while we clean up our messes — is about the only way that I, for one, have ever been able to get better.”
RAYNE FISHER-QUANN / INTERNET PRINCESS
A
BETTER OFF TOGETHER
The five of us came together in 2022. We wanted to help people fix their relationship with money, and avoid financial hardship in old age. We felt that we needed to be open with each other about our own experiences with money – our hopes, our shame, our family stories.
We went away together for a night to work on our new project. That evening, we sat round the dining table and laid it all out, over dinner. Some parts felt good, some felt awful. Some of us said things we’d never said out loud before. When we woke up the next morning, we all knew that something had changed for us.
We think of that evening as the first ‘Communion’. The first time we conquered all the stigmas and conditioning we carry around. The first time we found comfort in each other on issues that we didn’t even know were causing us pain.
People come together for hundreds of reasons – book clubs, run clubs, WW, AA. We continue to come together to discuss our relationships with desire and money and it makes a huge difference in our lives. Now we’re inviting you to do the same.
We’re conditioned to keep our financial struggles to ourselves. We are gaslit and victim-shamed simultaneously - told we should have anything we desire, but that our individual greed is a moral failure not a systemic one. Our anxiety drives us further into isolation; makes us believe we are not worthy of the care of others.
Exploring our stories about money and desire is challenging work that can be made much easier when approached with others. Feelings of shame and anxiety multiply when buried. When we share our perspective the tricks and illusions of our disease become obvious and easier to overcome.
Managing our wants and our financial lives is not a one-off - we deal with it every day of our lives. Having a structure of support and solidarity around us is our most powerful asset.
I.
HOW TO START A COMMUNION
Reach out to friends, family members, or neighbours you feel would benefit from coming together to share their money stories
Once you have between 4-8 people interested in attending your Communion, create a WhatsApp group and invite them to join it
Arrange a convenient meeting date, time, and place for your Communion. We recommend a free public space like a community hall or even your own front room if you have the space. Wherever you decide to host it, pick somewhere that’s free and easy to get to and from. Alternatively, use a virtual room on Zoom, Teams or Google. Communions should last no longer than 1 hour.
Note: you do not have to be a coach or a money expert to set up a Communion. You just need to have the ability to organise the group and facilitate the Communion (including making sure everyone has the ability to speak and that the Communion begins and ends on time).
II.
AN ORDER OF SERVICE: WHAT WORKS
Our goal is for you to create an environment that feels right for your group. To get you started, here’s a tried and tested approach.
Lay out the ground rules:
See below under ‘Community Guidelines’. It’s important to do this every single time. The guidelines speak to the purpose of the group and ground everyone in the same context.
Introductions:
Move around the circle clockwise, give each person an opportunity to introduce themselves. It’s important that everyone gets the chance to speak.
Discussion and disclosure:
Invite each attendee in turn to discuss their feelings associated with money, experiences of money when growing up, their needs vs their wants, what’s going with them right now. Let everyone know in advance you’ll run a clock for 5min per person to ensure everyone gets the chance to share.
(Option A) Setting intentions and holding each other to account:
Once everyone has shared, invite the group to take a moment individually to reflect on their money behaviour. Ask each person to write a down a habit that they would like to make, and a habit they would like to break on an index card or similar. (No phones).
(Option B) Explore a topic:
Take one of the sub-sections from ‘Get your head right’ or ‘Get your money right’. Share your own thoughts and experience on the topic as a discussion starter and invite the rest of the group to react to you.
Close:
Conclude the discussion by drawing on any common themes. Thank the group for sharing. Invite any final remarks and inputs.
Plan ahead:
Consider if and when the group might meet again. Discuss whether a theme or topic would help to frame the next discussion. Popular themes are Risk, Shame, Comparison, Anxiety, Empowerment.
Feel free to reach out to us at hello@communionsaves.com for advice on Communion theming, additional resources and logistical planning.
III.
COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
It’s your Communion, but we suggest that you and your group take on board our rules of engagement.
Confidentiality
It’s important to create a safe space. Take the stories with you but leave the names behind.
Respectful communication:
Listen actively, avoid interrupting, and refrain from any judgement, criticism or ridicule. All Communion participants should have a chance to speak and only one person should speak at a time.
No solutions:
Not everyone sharing a problem is looking for advice. Share your own experiences but avoid offering specific advice in relation to what others have shared.
Support and empathy:
Be understanding of different perspectives and points of view: no two people’s money stories are ever the same and all experiences are valid.
No financial advice:
Communions are not the place for giving or receiving financial advice nor selling or pitching products and services.
B
If you’re not ready to convene a Communion, or you don’t have one near you, try talking to someone in your life that you really trust. These conversations are normally avoided, so you may be surprised at what you learn about one other by going on this journey together.
If you do this and it’s working for you, consider whether you might widen your conversation to a Communion, as detailed above. Your learnings might have a powerful effect on others.
Below are some tips on how to have one of these conversations safely.
HOW TO HAVE MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS ABOUT MONEY
Create a safe space:
Choose environments where everyone feels comfortable sharing without judgement. This could be a café or a friend's living room.
Make time:
Choose the right occasion and don’t rush things. Meaningful conversations don’t tend to be quick chats.
Be vulnerable
Lead by example and share your own experiences openly. Vulnerability breeds connection, making others feel safe to share their own experiences.
Ask open-ended questions:
Instead of diving straight into finances, ask questions that encourage reflection and conversation. For example, "What does money mean to you?" or "How do you feel about your current financial situation?" or “What emotion do you associate most with money?”
Listen actively:
Practice active listening and empathise with others' experiences. Validate their feelings and offer support without trying to fix their problems.
Do it often:
Make money conversations a regular occurrence. Consistency builds trust, deepens understanding and strengthens bonds.
C
If you’re not ready to talk about any of this, that’s fair enough – it’s a tougher road, but no less valuable for it. Below we’ve laid out a journaling-style approach for personal introspection that will help you explore your money story.
Any of these reflection topics can be incorporated into your Communion as a basis for mutual exploration also.
YOUR MONEY TRAUMA STARTS AT CHILDHOOD | YOUR BRAIN ON MONEY
HOW TO START EXPLORING YOUR MONEY STORY
Grab a pen and a notebook
Write down the answers to these questions:
Day 1. What beliefs do you hold about money?
Day 2. What emotions do you associate with money?
Day 3. How would you describe your relationship with money?
Day 4. What was your parents’ relationship with money when you were growing up?
Day 5. What role does money play in your life today?
Day 6. What is your biggest money worry, currently?
Day 7. What could money bring you that you don’t have today?
Commit to tackling one question per day. Choose a consistent time for this each day and set aside at least 10 minutes to reflect and journal.
When you’re ready to write down your thoughts, write for yourself and you alone. Write as much as you can. And don’t leave anything out. Notice if and when something feels uncomfortable, then try to push through.
Once you’ve completed these seven journaling exercises, you’ll have a week’s worth of reflections.
On Day 8, take a moment to jot down any additional thoughts and if you feel ready to take action, consider a money habit that you might break and a money habit that you might now make. Try to make both intentions actionable immediately.
We encourage you to keep up the good work and talk about your money story. You could try starting a conversation with someone you trust or joining a Communion.