Ep. 27 Shifting from Scarcity and Comparison during Christmastime

[CFM COACH ASSISTANT AI ]: Welcome to the Money Style yout Problem podcast, where every week we talk about how you can become good with money in your pocket and in your mind by using practical life coaching tools and simple and efficient ways to do money math. Are you ready to invest in yourself? Let's dive into this episode. Hey, welcome to another episode of the Money's not yout Problem podcast. My name is Madeline and I'm your host and we're here for another episode. I have a question for you. Is there a time of the year when you feel worse about your material possessions than Christmas? Wow, what a happy subject. But joking apart, Christmas is one of those seasons where bring a lot of people reminders of the things that they don't have and the things they're missing in their lives. And of course, as you probably have done before, we usually compare ourselves with people that are doing much better than us. And then you look at the other person who's better off and then you say, gosh, I can give this to my son or maybe I can earn this much or I can afford this this year. Right now, at the end of the year, you see everybody going traveling to spend time with family or what it looks like everybody. We tend to exaggerate the number of people that are actually going somewhere or doing something and we generalize saying that everybody. That way you can tell that yourself you cannot do those things and you end up feeling worse by using that type of mentality. It is terrible because we don't want to do those things. We don't want to do what hurts our finances, but we end up giving into the pressure to the group pressure and we end up spending money that we don't have and blaming other people for the decisions that we made. It is common also for having people that are well with money or they look they're doing well with money to insist for their family members to come spend time with them or to insist in doing some extravagant activity related to the snow, like snowboarding or going to see the lights where you have to pay in to go see the lights. And even worse, they come with the guilt trip saying that if you don't want to do those things, if you're getting out of debt and you don't want the extra expenses, they tell you that you're breaking the family tradition and that extra pressure makes it even easier for you to just pull out a credit card with the money that you don't have end up spending just to make other people happy. I don't think those families intend for evil. They have good intentions. But if you're working on a plan and if you're trying to get out of debt, then getting out of debt is a priority and they don't see that in the future. If you do your work right now to get out of debt and save your emergency fund and have a financial free life, then later on you're going to participate in so many other activities they just look at right now. And that vision, that closed vision makes it hard for, for the family, for the son or the daughter or whoever is being pressured to say no, I'm going to stick to my plan. But remember, none of those problems are created because of those people. Sure, there are triggers and the things they say. The commercials that we see, the ads that we watch on social media, they are triggers to our personal thoughts. When we come in with a frame of mind during Christmas time, that's going to be a lot of expenses, a lot of parties and gifts for everybody. It's difficult for us to accept that our financial situation does not allow us to do this. Or if you're working on a plan and building your emergency fund, for example, your focus has to be in a different area and that makes it difficult for you to say no to those invitations. But remember, this is not a problem. If someone makes a request from you, you can say no. The only thing is that you're going to have to be able to have the maturity to understand that when you say no, they do not react. They might not react the way you want it. They might just react and be mad at you and still bl you for things. But you have to understand that they are not the problem. It's how you think about the situation that's the problem. I know we don't like to think that the thought is the problem. You don't agree with this, but I know you might be thinking, Madeline, you don't know her. You don't know my mother in law. The problem is not my thought. My problem is my mother in law. It's her and the things that she does to antagonize and disturb my life. In one of the earlier episodes of our podcast, we talked about Bruce Castillo, who's my teacher, mentor, and we talked, talked about the tool that she developed to simplify and analyze our lives and to get the results that we want. The tool that she organized together, it's called the model. And the model talks about the five parts that we have in our lives. Remember, we have the circumstance which are those things outside of us. They're going to Trigger our thoughts. The thoughts are going to create our feelings and the feelings are going to lead us to the actions. And the actions, they create our results. The circumstance, those people in our life and those parties and those ads, they are the circumstance. They are facts. They're happening there. But how we think about them, that's gonna create that feeling of guilt, shame and unhappiness and jealousy that we end up feeling this time of the year. And because we feel that way, we are gonna act in a way that's gonna give us the result that we don't want. What is the result? Well, if you're feeling jealous, you might say bad things, you might gossip or you might try to diminish them, you might try to judge yourself or say what a horrible person you are because you're feeling this way or that person does not deserve this and it's not fair. All these things are going to come up and you're going to be angry, you're going to feel all the resentment coming up and you're not going to get the result, which is to experience a good Christmas time, enjoy your family, enjoy and be content with the things that you have. On the opposite. You're going to show up bitter and resentful and you're going to treat everybody really bad. And that's just going to create another negative trigger for you. And you're going to keep spiraling down with your negative thinking. In a cycle. You think bad thoughts, you feel bad, you act bad, and you just make the situation worse. Because unfortunately, when you think that in this case of the mother in law, if you think that she's horrible, she's just disturbing your peace and she's just antagonizing you. Your brain is going to look for more evidence of the things that she does that is going to give you more reason to think that's annoying and disturbing. You're going to find more of those things. See, the result is the consequence of our actions or lack of actions. The moment we compare what we have with others or get angry when someone else gets something and we don't. It usually happens when our thoughts, our mindset is one of scarcity. I don't know why, but we think that because someone else has something, we cannot have it, that they only have that one thing and it will run out or we can share because otherwise we won't have it anymore. A practical example of this would be some entrepreneurs that I know. Some people that they're starting their business or they're promoting their business instead of using Something that they can help people, future clients, possibly to already start making changes in their lives with the amazing resources they're creating. They are afraid to share things for free so they they don't get ripped off. It's an important marketing strategy to provide maybe future clients with a few wins before they have bought anything from you. Especially if it is a course they're buying from you, or a service that you provide or a product that they're going to purchase from you. Those are the Costco samples. We tend to buy what we like. But if you're at Costco and you want to try something, every time you have to try something, it's a huge packet. So it's much better if you tried before and say, hey, I like this thing, so I'm going to purchase. The same applies when you go purchase something online if you're learning from someone. I don't buy any course or any training or purchase any service unless I've got some results from the free stuff that I learned from that person. I don't know if I'm gonna put money into something that's not gonna help in my life. I am more open to doing business once I see that the things that I've learned so far from that person, even with the free stuff, it's already working for me. That's how it was with the Dave Ramsey program, who's my financial mentor. That was like with Brooke Castillo, Jody Moore, Stacey Bayman, Pedro Calabres, all of those. I've learned something before, something with their free stuff that made me want to learn more from them. You might think that you don't do that, but you do. If you listen to podcasts, most podcasts are free. And if you listen to that person, you can learn about that person and learn their teaching style and you can start trying some of the things that they suggest you. And if it start working for you, you'll become more fan of that person because they're helping you transform and get the results that you want in your own life. In the end, we end up purchasing from people that we know, trust and like. But of course, as entrepreneurs and business people, we need to take care of the things that we create because of copywriting and for other people, don't steal. Because the normal thing, especially nowadays with technology the way it is. But I believe, and that's the way that I decided to think for myself, I believe that if I'm providing value, if I'm helping, helping others with my free stuff, and if someone's gonna steal, they're gonna steal it anyway. But if I'm doing my part and helping others and letting them get to know me before they purchase something from me, then the Lord's gonna bless me somehow. Somehow he's gonna bring the people that need to purchase things for me and the people that are gonna take things and benefit their lives with the free stuff. And that's okay. It took me at least three or four years to spend the money and purchase the certification for life coaching. It was a big expense, but for me it was a big investment. But I needed to know that those tools were going to help me and how I could change and help other people learn and change as well. So it took me three years. Imagine if they had given up and now let me get the free stuff for those three years, right? I wouldn't have made the big purchase. What happens when we have this mentality that when someone took it, there won't be no more available? That's what we call scarcity mentality. So how do we describe a Scarcity mentality is a mindset where we believe that there's never enough. And this mindset can be as much for money as for friendship or love, relationships or for time. It's everywhere. Whether you tend to have more of a scarcity mentality or less depend a lot on your personality, including the degree of emotional stability and conscientiousness. For example, with money, let's say you're working on a company and someone else takes the promotion that you applied for for, well, you might be really mad at that person because they got the promotion and you didn't do it. Okay, that position might be the only one. But it doesn't mean that there are not other positions that you can apply. If you're unhappy where you're working, then you can find another job. Or you can see that rejection of your promotion as an opportunity for you to grow in certain areas. I know you're going to tell me, well, they knew the manager, they knew the other person. That's part of life. So if you accept that, that could happen. But also look at this as an opportunity for you to learn and see what else you are going to improve that you need to improve, then that's going to be a good experience for you. You know, we see failure as something that's devastating, but if we look at failure as a learning opportunity, that's going to be more beneficial and more helpful for our careers. Anyway, I finished reading the book Psychology of Money and I thought something was really interesting. A lot of times we compare themselves with someone else who has a lot more money, or they're purchasing things that you think that you can never afford. And what happens is we have to take in consideration that we're running two different races, that we are playing different games. The example that the author brought up was that he was an author. And so he decided that he was going to stay home in his sweats, work with the computer writing instead of the other person who decided to become a lawyer. So that guy worked a lot and he dressed professionally. He has to go to the office, office, and he has more money. They are two different races, two different games. He's playing the game of the lawyer and the author is playing the game of the author, where different possibilities. So the capacity, the probability that the lawyer is going to make a lot more money, it's more likely than an author because he needs to get a book deal and he needs to be able to sell lots of books. So you have to see that you compare someone that has a different background, different circumstances in their lives. And it's not a fair comparison. Just think of it, two different games. They're playing different games. And if you try to compare yourself with someone that has the same job as you, there are many different aspects of their lives that you're not taking in consideration. Many skills that they have developed that you might not have developed. So the comparison is never fair. So just accept that you're playing a different game. And the real comparison is comparing you with yourself and always looking that way. It's gonna bring you more momentum to improve. Going back to the fact that our personality plays a big part in how we behave and how we think. Professor Pedro Calabres, who is a neuroscientist in Brazil, talks a lot about that. He adds that it's not just about physical lack, it's about our perception of what we lack. Remember, we talked about thought. What you think is missing in your life. Generally, what causes pain, what causes a problem is when we look at a circumstance or a situation and it represents something about us. We are. We are less than. We're inferior, we're worse. It's always something that has to do with us. Sometimes it doesn't even seem that way. But that's why it's a problem, because it makes us feel in a way that we don't want to. It means something negative about ourselves. During Christmas time, this can manifest itself as feeling that we don't have enough money, time, or even emotional energy. Understanding what's behind these thoughts, this scarcity Mentality is the first step towards fighting it. When I got married here in America, my husband's family used to throw a lot of parties during Christmas time. And they were all at my sister in law's house in Orange county in a very fancy place. And her house was wonderful, she had all the best. And everything she did always seemed to me to be perfect because everyone kept talking about and I felt really bad because I couldn't reach the level of success that she had. I had this thought in my head that since she was better than I was worse because she did things one way, then I was doing wrong because I was doing another way to make matter worse. I had people commenting on her all the time and how wonderful she was and how her house was beautiful and how this was this and this was. That always made me feel very bad that I could never achieve anything, that things would not work out for me and I would never be as good as her. It's because I made her success mean something about me, my worth. That's what causing me the most trouble, the most problems in anguish. And you know, it took me a long time to realize that her success and mine were completely separate things. They're completely exclusive. One did not depend the other. Her success was hers and the success I achieve is mine. And it's available to everyone. It was available to me and it's available to you too. In my case, her success was completely real. So I kept seeing her success in money and financial stability. And I compared to myself. A lot of times we're comparing ourselves with people that are now well off. They are projecting an image that they're doing very well. And it might be possible that those people are not even doing that well. In America today, 8 out of 10 people are living paycheck to paycheck, which means if they have an emergency, they won't have money to cover. They won't have the margin in their budget to deal with the problem. The difficulty of comparison nowadays is because before you had to see your neighbor with a new car, you had to see the neighbor with something else. Now you just open your phone and you go on Instagram or another social media and you see those people doing things that look to you like they have a lot of money. And you also see all the advertisements and you end up convincing yourself that you were forced to buy more presents than, than you can afford, spend more than you should, use your credit card, and having to pay that bill well into the new year, most likely February or March. That's the average let's look at an example of a mother with a scarcity mentality, but she's unaware. She goes to a store during Christmas time and she sees all the decorations, the presents, people moving around, and she feels overwhelmed thinking about her budget, her budget limitations, and her family's expectations. That's a scarcity in action. It's that voice telling her that what she has or what she can give is not enough. Sometimes we think that we are not enough. So she gets out of the store just feeling depressed, defeated, and just less than. That's not a fun place to be. No wonder Christmas time can be really difficult for a lot of people. Actually, you always hear people talking about all the difficult times other people have during Christmas time. Let's say, for example, you have kids. That's very common for us to feel during the time when we have kids. Kids, they don't have their brain developed and they're not able to understand the nuances of financial situations and other aspects of personal finance in the home. We might think that we can cover up very well all the situation, the stress, and the financial difficulties that we're facing. However, kids sense what's going on, they can realize that their mother is not doing well, well. But they cannot logically think about the financial situation and, oh, let's be nice and not ask for presents. They're not gonna do that. They don't have that capacity yet, especially if they're young. It's part of everyone's development. And because they can sense the resentment, stress, and the fights in the home, they think that the situation has to do with them and not with the money or spending less. They think the situation, the cause, was creating the problem. It's them. They think that they are problem, that the child is the problem. They cannot understand that the situation is about money and the father and mother spending less with Christmas gifts. So of course, you might be thinking, well, it's easy for you, Madeline, to save because you got this money thing figured it out, you're debt free and you have emergency fund. Well, I'm gonna tell you, I've been to both sides of the equation. I've been on the side where I had this huge scarcity mindset. And I also have this abundance that I feel right now, now. So I understand both ways. And the situation doesn't change much if you don't change the way you think. The only thing that changes is the amount of dollars that you're comparing. I have two daughters, and as I told you, my husband's family is big On Christmas. And of course he had big expectations for Christmas and how this should be. They celebrated Christmas big time. Level one Christmas. So Santa Claus buying presents, multiple parties, gifts and all of them and lots of expensive. So early on I have decided that I had to somehow make this Christmas from Hallmark Channel show up in my house. And I did that for many years. And there came a point when I began to resent Christmas. Resented so much because I did not want to do it. But I would end up deciding that I had to overspend, go way over my budget. When we were broke, completely in debt, a lot of debt. I would still use a credit cards to pay for all of that. And then after getting out of debt, I would save a lot of money and still would spend more money. But it wouldn't hurt our family anymore. We were able to work it out and save the money to make up for whatever I took out of savings to pay for the magical Christmas. But notice this pressure that I had to make this dream Christmas for my children was a pressure I put on myself. Now if you decide in a rational way that you're going to do it and you have the means to do it, go ahead and do it and enjoy yourself. But if you compare yourself to someone else, someone who has more money than you, and you continue with the scarcity mentality, you will feel just as bad bad as someone who has no money, who's super broke and won't be able to provide anything for their children during Christmas time. A few years ago, a professor, BYU named JB Ross was invited to do a devotional. When he got the invitation, he felt really bad. He did not want to. He was feeling that he wasn't good enough to give a devotional as good as the previous presenters or speakers. He felt inadequate. So quickly he wrote an email saying that he wasn't able to do it and reject the invitation. No problem. The next day he woke up with a very strong impression that he was depriving himself of learning something very important in signing up for this devotional. That's when he decided to do it and he said that he was fine. He used that experience to start his talk. And that's called wrestling with comparison. Even he, the BYU professor, suffers from this problem of comparing himself to others. This tendency, he says, is normal and everyone does it all the time. And he does it constantly. But even that statement is a bit misleading. He says saying I do it all the time is like saying I breathe all the time. It happens without us thinking about it. It can almost seem reflexive, almost natural. And that's the point. He says something very interesting, that when it comes to comparison, our competition isn't with other people. Our competition is with ourselves. He quotes elder Jeffrey R. Holland. We know all this, right? And we sometimes feel these truths deeply. But if we know these truths, then why do we comparing ourselves and doing so? And why don't we remember these truths? If any of this is being interpreted in this way, it says as much to others as it does to ourselves. This is worth noticing, facing and constantly remembering. When we find ourselves worrying about how we measure up by comparing ourselves to everyone around us, and when we're worried about what others think of us, at least we're in good company. In the Scriptures, we often find passages that show that even the apostles of Jesus Christ Christ struggled with this, even argued about it. Okay, so how do we make this comparison stop? How do we stop comparing ourselves with others? Because it is part of our nature and we do it all the time. But one of the important things is to try to look at others as Christ would look at us. When we use charity and look at people at their successes and at the things they are achieving that we haven't yet achieved, we can be happy for other people. It's a practice. You have to decide that you want to do that. We don't have to make mean comments because someone else achieves something we can too, too. And looking at them with this love of Christ, it will help us a lot not to feel the hurt and resentment that poison our souls. Another important thing is to show this kind of charity towards ourselves. It's normal for us to compare ourselves with others, to judge others. But if we stop and think about what we're doing, and if we are aware of what we're doing, then we don't have to keep judging ourselves or saying that we're terrible. Oh, what a wrong thing I'm doing. Gee, I'll never improve. That's not the attitude that's going to take you forward. So how do we combat the scarcity mentality? I'm going to give you three tips. The first is to realize what's going on, what you are thinking. What is the thought in your head that's causing you to feel this way? This bad feeling, this feeling of hurt, resentment, envy? What is causing that? What was the trigger? What is the sentence in your head that's making you feel this way? When you encounter a situation, when you identify what you're thinking, you can decide whether the thought, thought it's something that you want to keep it or not? The best thoughts for you to heal this envy, this hurt are thoughts that will bring you gratitude. The things you have, the blessings you have, your family, the people by your side, your friends, the opportunities to be on this earth, of course, the life and the mission of the Savior Jesus Christ. These are all things you can think about that will bring you gratitude. And remember, if you want something that someone else has, you can work to get it. A lot of times sometimes you won't get it, but sometimes it's possible for you to develop it. It might be a skill that the other person has, or sometimes a material asset that you want to build. Sometimes it's a career, position, or some experience you want to provide to your family. These things are possible. But envy and hurt are not the best fuels to help you develop or achieve that. When we have the humility to realize our mistakes, be willing to change our behavior and ask for help, we are in a much better path to achieve what we want. In this devotional by President J.B. ross, he used a quote from Elder Woodsdorf who says that humility is thinking less of ourselves, but not thinking of ourselves less. So if we spend less time thinking of ourselves or thinking that we're inferior, that's going to be much better. When we are in service of others and thinking about others, that would be great. And it's not not to take care of ourselves. It's just putting the perspective in a correct way. Way we have our value and others do too. Again, it's not because I have more value, you have less value. We both are valuable. The second step for us to combat the scarcity mentality would be to set realistic expectations for ourselves and our families. Christmas does not have to be perfect to be meaningful. So remember, do your best, stick to your plan, your budget and try to do the things you can to provide a nice time with your family. Family, this past weekend I worked as a volunteer in a park near my house which has a beautiful display of lights. Every year I want to go, but nobody wants to go with me and it is expensive. So since I sign up to be a volunteer, I get to see the lights whenever I want during my shift. And not only that, but I also want four more invitations, more tickets that I can give it away. And they're very difficult because you have to schedule times. They usually sell out and people keep running out of tickets all the time. Time. And I'll be able to give them as a gift to a friend who right now is going through a Difficult time, and she really would like to see it. Maybe you can volunteer at an event, some activity that you can take your family to around your area if that's important to you. The third step would be to plan ahead. In this case, it's already Christmas, so your planning for this year will have to be rushed. But for next year, as we talked about two episodes ago, you can prepare in advance by putting a little bit every month into savings savings and not messing with it. And that could be your Christmas savings or at least the beginning or an extra big chunk that you can use next year to use with everything from your budget that you're gonna set apart for Christmas. When you use budgeting and saving, you can relieve a lot of the financial pressures we feel this time of the year. So let's recap these three steps. First, practice gratitude and pay attention to what thoughts are going through your head. When you're feeling envious, envy, hurt, resentment or anger, pay attention to what you think. Secondly, remember to set realistic expectations for yourself and for your family. And third, plan ahead. If you're really struggling to stop comparing yourself, I recommend doing a social media fast. It could help you a lot to spend 5, 6, 1 week, the week before Christmas without seeing anything on social media. Then you don't see what other people are doing, what celebrities are doing, how they're celebrating Christmas, New Year's Eve Eve. What a great time to do this fast. It helps a lot from all of this. What I really want you to take away with you is go through this festive season focusing on abundance, on the things that you do have in your life, and focus on the joy and love that Christmas represents because of Jesus Christ, because of the birth mission and his atonement for us. Okay, it's not Easter yet, but if he hadn't been born, he wouldn't have done his mission. That shows so much love for us. I hope I've been able to give you a little bit of strength to face this moment so that you don't compare yourself. Don't feel bad when you meet other people who are doing better than you. Remember the good things you have and move on. If you need to set new goals, goals that you want to achieve in the coming year, there's nothing better than using this moment to take stock of how your year has gone, what you want for your future, and how you're going to get there. Now, if you're planning to make big changes next year, especially in your financial area, then you can make miss the next episode in the next episode, I'm going to share something with you, a tool for you to use to make define those changes you want to do and how they can actually happen in your life. Also, I'm going to have a very special announcement to share with you. See you next episode. Ate Breve Yo Brigada. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. Remember to like, subscribe and share. And if you want to learn more about the atrocity attributes that make you good with money, go to my website right now, StrasbourgCoaching.com and sign up for the free 9 video series. I'll be back next week at the Brevio Brigado.