What is the opportunity cost of your choices? What is the financial cost or the p/leisure cost of the decisions you make regarding how you spend your day.

I hope this message finds you well and ready to dive a bit deeper into our own personal development.

I wanted to share something from my own day that might seem small but actually has a big message behind it. Amid a busy schedule, I decided to hit pause and take my dog out for a lovely walk in the sun. It was a moment of calm and connection, away from the endless to-do lists.

This break got me thinking about how important it is to give ourselves a moment away from work, to recharge and enjoy life. It’s all about the opportunity cost – what we miss out on when we’re buried in work. For me, skipping this walk would have meant missing out on a beautiful moment of peace and joy, not just for me, but for my dog too.

This idea of opportunity cost came up with a client today. She’s been doing a lot of work for free, worried that asking to be paid would make her seem greedy or off-putting. We dug into this fear of being seen in a negative light for valuing our own worth, which I like to call the ‘money shadow’.

It’s all about facing those fears. What could change if you weren’t scared of being seen as greedy or pushy? It’s not about ensuring people won’t see you that way; it’s about not letting those fears hold you back.

This seems to be a big deal especially for women, but really, it’s something many of us face: realising how much we might hold ourselves back by not standing up for what we’re worth.

So, take a moment to think about this for yourself. Where might you be playing it too safe because you’re worried about how others will see you? What could open up for you if you moved past these fears? How might your life look differently if you embraced your true value, without hesitation?

P.S. About four hours after our session, this particular client emailed to tell me that as a consequence of our session, she had rung someone for whom she had been working for free and told him that she believed she had added significant value and would very much like to be paid for it. And, his response was, no problem, we have a budget for that so will do.

This, my friends is the power of embracing our shadow. 

Key Takeaways from a Jungian Perspective:

Embrace Your Shadow: Recognise and confront the parts of yourself that you might be avoiding or suppressing, such as the fear of appearing greedy or demanding. Acknowledging these shadow aspects can lead to greater self-awareness and personal growth.

Seek Balance: Just as taking time for a walk can provide necessary balance between work and rest, strive to find equilibrium in other areas of your life. Balance between different aspects of the psyche is essential in Jungian psychology for overall well-being.

Explore Your Archetypes: Consider the roles you play in your life and how they align with Jungian archetypes. Are you embodying the Caregiver by helping others at your own expense? Could embracing aspects of the Warrior archetype help you assert your worth more effectively?

Understand Your Personal Myth: Reflect on the narrative you have constructed about your life and your identity. How does this story influence your actions and self-perception? Revising your personal myth can lead to transformative change.

Practice Active Imagination: Engage with your inner world through creative activities or meditation. This can help you connect with your unconscious and discover insights into your behaviour and desires.

Value Your Individual Journey: Recognise that your path to self-realisation is unique. Honour your personal journey and resist comparing it to others. Everyone’s process of individuation – the development of the Self – is distinct.

Mindfulness and Reflection: Regularly take time to reflect on your experiences, feelings, and actions. Mindfulness can enhance your awareness of the present moment and your deeper self.

Seek Synchronicity: Pay attention to coincidences and serendipitous events in your life. Jung believed these were signs of the unconscious at work and could lead to meaningful insights and decisions.

By incorporating these Jungian concepts into your life, you can foster deeper self-understanding and lead a more balanced and fulfilling life.

Transcendent Conditioning and how it can help you deal with intrusive thoughts:

Do you suffer from intrusive thoughts?  There’s no human being alive who does not, it’s just a question of degree.

But people don’t realise they can be the victim of their thoughts.  They just think that these intrusions are normal and that there’s nothing they can do about them. Because it’s not a case of the enemy without, it’s the enemy within.  

These can be individual thoughts, or thoughts from the collective, as we see manifesting via social media.

Some people can manage them more than others. But they can really affect our health and all aspects of our lives from the personal to the professional; from when we are at work, to when we are socialising, to when we are trying to fall asleep…

And sometimes we try to suppress them, to force them down, but like a ball underwater they just pop back up to the surface. So what do we do? Are we stuck with him? Are we destined to continue to be their victims for our entire lives?

I’m glad to tell you that we can manage them, not by suppressing them, but by transcending them.

What does this mean? It means cultivating the observer mind. What is the observer mind? I’ll give you a concrete example. Someone says to you: imagine a green elephant. So you imagine a green elephant. But who is conscious that they are imagining a green elephant? Your higher self, your observer mind. 

And if using that higher self, you ground yourself in the now, rather than in the fears of what might happen in the future, or the regrets about what happened in the past, you will disarm those intrusive thoughts. Their playground is the past which they try to rewrite, and the future where they get busy warning you about all the terrible things that might happen. It’s like the nervous flyer who feels that if they don’t keep actively imagining the plane flying high through the sky, it will crash.   

Recognise that this worrywart is the ego. Trying to keep you safe. The ego has a negative disposition, always looking for problems. And up to a point that is helpful but beyond that point the intrusive thoughts it produces become not helpful but toxic.  Its negative bias begins to poison us. 

So the antidote to this?  Transcendent conditioning: Take time to practice cultivating this observer mind.  Visualise yourself rising up above your body, and looking down upon it with great compassion and love. The more you cultivate this observer mind and a state of being in the here and now, not the past or the future, your ability to transcend the intrusive thoughts that your ego mind is creating will become stronger and stronger.

So just as we have been conditioned for decades to accept the infiltrations of intrusive thoughts, we can recondition ourselves to know that, by cultivating the observer mind, we can transcend them. In this way, we can create transcendent conditioning – a virtuous circle. 

So next time you feel one of those intrusive thoughts scuttling around your mind, rise up above yourself, cultivate the observer mind, ground yourself in the now, and look down. Know that we are not our thoughts, these thoughts do not define us. They are just thoughts, and, like the weather, they blow through us and away.

So give this practice of cultivating the observer mind, the transcendent mind, a try and let me know what you think. And if you have any tips for how to manage intrusive thoughts, please comment.

Wishing you peace.

PS I just have to share with you the most wonderful example of synchronicity. I wrote this blog the other morning in London, and then I went out for a walk, and I took a strange, rambling route that took me past a gallery.  Something about it tugged at me and I stopped, and looked in through the window and the image at the top of this piece is what was staring back at me.  This is what Carl Jung called synchronicity: the coming together of two seemingly unconnected occurrences, which might appear like coincidence but if, like me, you’re interested in playing in the realm of the unseen, you can recognise as one of those miracles of life where the universe guides and smiles upon us.

Unlocking the Power of New Year’s Resolutions with Jungian Psychology

Welcome to the latest edition of my newsletter! As we embark on a new year filled with hope and aspirations, many of us have set our New Year’s resolutions. However, it’s no secret that these resolutions often fizzle out before February arrives. In this edition, we’ll explore why New Year’s resolutions tend to fail and how we can leverage the wisdom of Jungian psychology to make them succeed.

The Ill-Fated New Year’s Resolution Phenomenon

Year after year, countless individuals set ambitious New Year’s resolutions with the best of intentions. From losing weight and adopting healthier habits to pursuing career goals or nurturing relationships, we embark on these resolutions full of enthusiasm. However, the statistics reveal a stark truth: roughly 80% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by mid-February.

Understanding the Psychology Behind Resolutions

To address this issue, it’s crucial to delve into the psychology behind resolutions. Carl Jung, proposed the idea of the “shadow self.” This concept posits  that we all have an unconscious part of ourselves filled with unacknowledged desires, fears, and motivations.  We put into our shadow  parts of ourselves that we deem to be unacceptable.  For instance,  many girls are taught from an early age to be “nice” to be “amenable and non-confrontational,”  to “blend in”  and so grow up to become adept people pleasers, embracing this persona and putting into their shadow anything that they believe might make people displeased with them, or dislike them.  In this case,  traits like assertiveness,  argumentativeness, confrontation  and  exuberance are suppressed into the shadow side. 

This shadow side will have been creating patterns of behavior which,  repeated  through the years, become so automatic and entrenched that we’re not even aware of their existence. Jung  has a great quotation:  “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call It fate.”  

Unless we start the process of looking inward,  when we set resolutions without acknowledging our inner complexities, we inadvertently set ourselves up for failure.

What this means in our example of the woman with the “people pleasing persona” is that if one of her New Year’s resolutions is to stand up for herself  more in her personal relationships and her career and to negotiate better working conditions and a long overdue pay rise,  she’s going to find that kind of self-advocacy both on a one-off and on a continued basis both deeply uncomfortable and hard to sustain.  Sooner or later, and probably sooner, her  old conditioned behaviour will reassert itself and she will slide back into people pleasing. 

However if she looks inward and begins to recognise the conditioned  patterns of behaviour, she can begin to understand where this discomfort comes from.  And then she can begin to transcend it.

In that way she can keep those New Year’s resolutions going sustainably.   

How can you apply Jungian psychology to your own New Year’s resolutions?

  1. Practice self reflection: 

When you are setting your New Year’s resolutions,  take time to reflect on your inner world. Identify the desires, fears, and motivations that may influence your goals. Are you setting resolutions to please others or because they align with your true self?  Look for patterns of historical behaviour and look for heightened emotions around certain behaviours. These emotions will tell you there’s a shadow side at play.  

2. Take steps to integrate your Shadow: 

Jung believed in the integration of the shadow self as a path to personal growth. Instead of suppressing “undesirable” aspects of yourself, acknowledge them and work on incorporating them into your resolutions. This process can make your goals more authentic and sustainable.

3. Set realistic goals: 

Jungian psychology emphasizes balance and harmony within oneself. When setting resolutions, ensure they are attainable and in harmony with your overall life goals. Unrealistic goals are more likely to trigger resistance from your inner self.

4. Stay flexible:

Jungians understand that personal growth is an ongoing process. Be prepared to adapt your resolutions as you progress and your understanding of yourself deepens. Avoid rigid, all-or-nothing thinking, which can lead to frustration and abandonment of resolutions.

5. Seek support and guidance:

Jungian therapy encourages individuals to seek the guidance of professionals who can help them navigate their inner world. Consider enlisting the support of a therapist or counselor to work through any psychological barriers that may hinder your resolution success.

If you would like to explore this with me get in touch here to book your free half hour “Unlocking Your Inner Abundance” call.

Conclusion

Incorporating Jungian psychology into our approach to New Year’s resolutions offers a promising path to success. By fostering self-awareness, embracing our shadow selves, and setting authentic and achievable goals, we can move beyond the annual cycle of resolution failure.

This year, as you embark on your journey towards self-improvement, remember that success is not solely about willpower and determination. It’s about understanding and embracing your inner self. By doing so, you can unlock the transformative power of New Year’s resolutions and pave the way for lasting change in your life.

Let this year be the one where you not only set resolutions but also embark on a profound journey of self-discovery and growth. Happy New Year, and may your resolutions thrive with the wisdom of Jungian psychology guiding the way!

Contact me directly here with any questions, or to book your free half hour ““Unlocking Your Inner Abundance” call.

My CreativeMind Soul Sessions podcast appearance

How to Use Adversity to Create a Meaningful Life

As a CreativeMind Jungian Life Coach graduate, I understand the value of sharing our stories, so we may inspire courage and positivity in others.

I was thrilled to recently appear as a guest on the truly inspirational CreativeMind Soul Sessions podcast. I shared some of my life experiences with one of their founders, Debra Maldonado. You can watch or listen to the episode here.

The running theme was how to overcome adversity. We discussed so many of my life stories, including:

  • My experience of having worked as an investment banker
  • Becoming a global bestselling author
  • The time my husband and I were kidnapped and held hostage in Iran
  • My diagnosis of and recovery from breast cancer and how despite the brutal surgery and chemotherapy, this brought many silver linings into my life

Plus so much more!

Tune in to the full 30-minute episode on CreativeMind’s website here.

Email me with your thoughts, feedback, and any questions. Be sure to subscribe, and of course, share the episode with all your friends and family!

I truly hope that my stories may inspire you on your journey!

Here is a snippet of our conversation:



The seduction of coffee

I love coffee as much as the next woman. I also enjoy coffee and shopping and regard the pairing as one of the finer things in life. However… That particular dopamine balloon has been punctured by some fascinating research out of the University of South Florida which has found that caffeine makes shoppers spend more and alters what we spend our money on.

Making you spend more… Literally!

Researchers conducted three experiments in large retailers in France and Spain, setting up coffee machines near the entrances. They found that shoppers who took up their offer of a complimentary caffeinated coffee before shopping spent 50% more money and bought nearly 30% more items than their fellow shoppers who drank only decaffeinated coffee or water. The findings were published in the Journal of Marketing and also revealed that caffeine tipped us towards luxury items such as scented candles and perfume.

Dipayan Biswas, the lead author of the study, notes that “caffeine as a powerful stimulant, releases dopamine in the brain, which excites the mind and the body. This leads to a higher energetic state which in turn enhances impulsivity and decreases self-control. As a result caffeine intake leads to shopping impulsivity in terms of higher number of items purchased and greater spending.“

So, next time you shop: maybe stick to decaffeinated?

#HowToSaveMoney #CostOfLivingCrisis #shopping

How to fight the lure of the sales

I’m all for discussing financial literacy online but sometimes those blanket exhortations to save 10% of our salaries or to keep six months’ expenses in cash grate on me a little because we all know that this would be a good idea but even for those who can potentially afford to do so very often a whole variety of discretionary spending traps extract our money from us and scupper our best laid plans.

Chief among these can be the ‘sale.’

Now I’m a sucker for sale as much as the next person. My mother and I turned bargain-hunting into a fine art. It was a bonding experience for us as we smuggled sandwiches into the Oak Room in David Morgan, a lovely department store in Cardiff, ordered a coffee to fortify ourselves and then scoured the shops. This was wonderful and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. But it has given me a slight addiction to ‘sale’ because it has carved out a deep dopamine pathway to ‘hit the sales.’

The Oak Room at David Morgan, Cardiff

Few of us can resist a ‘bargain’ but understanding the psychology behind this can help us do so.

And this is… an unholy marriage of our scarcity complex and the cash illusion.

What do I mean? You can find out more about the Cash Illusion in my book, 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Money, but in short, parting with anything other than physical cash often doesn’t feel like real spending, and creates a marked tendency to overspend.

Our scarcity complex? In The Affluent Society, the great late economist John Kenneth Galbraith said: “Nearly all people, in nearly all nations, for nearly all of human history, have been poor. Widespread poverty is not an anomaly. Widespread affluence is.” We are hardwired to overconsume because of the legacy of our survival-orientated scarcity complex.

It worked back in the day but it doesn’t serve us any longer. Instead it leads to us amassing a load of stuff we don’t need, and probably can’t afford. It gets in the way of our best laid savings plans.

If we understand it then we can help control its promptings and we can delete all those clarion emails calling us to online sales or simply swivel to avoid the shops calling for our business.

Happy saving 🙂

2022 financial detox: Money, mental health and the silent killer

In the past two posts I’ve looked at how we can detox our finances and also help our physical bodies in the process.  But now I want to look at debt and its impact on our mental health.

To quote Dickens in David Copperfield:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute calls debt the silent killer. They estimate that more than 100,000 people attempt suicide every year because of outstanding arrears.

Anyone who’s ever had a debt that they struggle to repay knows all too well the burden it imposes on our waking and on what should be our sleeping hours. The Royal College of Psychiatrists estimate that one in two adults with debts has a mental health problem and one in four people with a mental health issue is also in debt. They observe that debt makes people feel depressed, anxious, guilty, hopeless, embarrassed to discuss their financial situation, and feel like everything is out of control. On the other side of the coin, creditors can behave in inappropriate and sometimes distressing ways when attempting to recover debts.

One immediate thing we can do for ourselves, wherever possible, is to reduce our debt burdens. If we manage to save money from the financial detox hacks I set out in the previous two posts – unsubscribing from online retailers and monetising a dry, a Deliveroo-free, or flexitarian January, we can deploy some of the savings we make to reduce our debt burden and the toll it takes on us.

To discover more ways we can master our finances so they do not master us, have a read of my book, 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Money.

2022 financial detox: Monetising dry January.

We’re all familiar with the mantra healthy body, healthy mind, but how about healthier body, healthier bank account?

I try to recalibrate my relationship with alcohol most Januarys. I don’t eliminate it but I cut back. Whether you drink at home or go out, alcohol is expensive unless you go for the real gut rot and that’s costly in other ways. The government raises billions every year taxing the stuff which is both useful for it and also in theory acts as a bit of a deterrent although I’m not convinced. But if we do cut back, we do a reverse double whammy of Christmas and New Year – we might lose a few physical pounds and add a few more to our bank account. If we can dilute what is for many of us the pain of foregoing a glass of wine with the pleasure of some extra pounds in our bank accounts then that is a good offset and might just help incentivise us.

For some the issue isn’t dry January. It might be an JustEat or Deliveroo-free January. I never use those in the country because they don’t exist where I live, but if I stay in London, thanks to one of my sons, I have discovered JustEat and Deliveroo and they are angels and demons all in one. I wrote about temptation in my post yesterday when it comes to online offerings of clothes, shoes, and stuff that we really don’t need. I would add delivered meals to this same category. If we can do without them again we’re likely to benefit by saving money and also probably not eating as much. If we prepare and cook food ourselves, we’re much less likely to over-provision.

Another thing I’m trying this January is to eat more vegetarian food. It’s lighter on the stomach and on the wallet. Lentils anyone? I promise all the sceptics out there, my husband included, imaginatively-cooked lentils can be delicious.

Again I’ll be interested to have a look at my bank account at the end of the month and see how much of a difference cutting back on alcohol, flexitarianism and home cooking make.

Tomorrow I’ll share ideas on what to do with the money we save. Let me know if there’s anything you might be planning to give up for January or cut back on and how much that might save you.

If you’re interested in reading more about how we can master money so that it does not master us then check out my book, 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Money, available here.

What financial thriller writers can teach the lawmakers.

Time machines, asking your grandmother and insider trading.

I’ve written in earlier posts about the gains you would make if you travelled back in time and asked your great great grandmother to invest for you in 1900. In the more recent era, you could ask your grandmother, your parents, or your younger self to invest for you. Armed with hindsight, you might pick Apple and Amazon, Microsoft and Google, Facebook etc. Forewarned, you would avoid all those failed companies whose names we have long since forgotten.

But here the law of unintended consequence might kick in. Your stellar investing record might come to the attention of the authorities. How is it possible that you have picked only winners and the gold medal winners in the stock market race at that? But the authorities could not possibly prosecute you. The law has not been framed around the possibility of time travel. Yet! The SEC are ruthless, aggressive and punctilious, quite rightly, but even they haven’t added that breach to their arsenal yet.

It just goes to highlight something I have long known. It is less the case now than it was when I first set foot in a corporate finance department of a large US investment bank several decades ago. Back then, those who conceptually broke the law morally /ethically were often not breaking it in fact because the law hadn’t yet been couched to encompass the imagination of the transgressor. Note to all the lawmakers out there: just ask a financial thriller writer what people might be getting up to before you frame updates to financial services laws… I hasten to add that I was not breaking the law either in fact or ethically but I did dream up some humdinging financial crimes.

If you fancy some summer reading about financial shenanigans rich in adventure, derring do and double-dealing, then look no further than my back list, starting with the global bestseller, Nest of Vipers.

Happy reading!

Why carpe diem beats carpe tomorrow

Time and money – when is the best time to invest in the stock market?

All of my missions as set out in my book, 10 Things Everyone Needs to Know About Money, and elsewhere in blog posts, is to persuade people to put some of their savings into long-term stock market investments. Then people ask me: When should I do this? They might say: Do you think next month or after the summer or the beginning of the year or the beginning of the tax year…

I can’t answer that with any degree of certainty about what exactly the markets will be doing at those times. Nobody can answer that with anything other than an opinion that can be on the spectrum from pure guesswork to well inform. It remains an opinion. Not fact.

In the absence of fact, the best we can say is sooner is better than later. In principle, today is better than tomorrow. Yes the markets might dip tomorrow and it might have been a better buying opportunity. Yes the markets might still be down in a year’s time, but, history suggests (see my earlier post on your great great grandmother) they will not be down in 10 years’ time. Plus, in the meantime, you would have been receiving dividends which if you reinvest will compound nicely.

Many people are put off by trying to time the perfect investment. This is where perfection is the enemy of achievement. Where good enough beats perfect. Lessons in psychology teach us that the quest for perfection is paralyzing. The old investors’ axiom says it best: “time in the market beats timing the market.”

Carpe diem, my friends.

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