How Money Messes with our Minds
I was waiting with dread for my dental appointment. I knew it was going to be a painful ordeal (although it was worse than even my imaginings) when I came across this article in the NY Times, How Money Messes with Your Mind.
This paragraph caught my eye, "They found that feeling rejected stirred a greater desire for money and that thoughts about losing money made social rejection sting more. They also found that thinking about having money made physical pain feel less acute, thoughts of losing money made physical pain worse, and being in physical pain made people want money more".
This raises all kinds of implications in health care, drug addiction, the economy, poverty, education, and as the article ends with, even dating. If the fear of not being able to pay your medical bills can actually negatively impact your health, doesn't it seem logical that not having health insurance (or having bad health insurance) can make it more difficult for you to get well? Or conversely, that countries like Japan and Canada which offer basic health coverage for all their citizens would have healthier people? Of course, we are not allowing for other factors in this hypothetical, but still I think we are on to something. If we could study heart attacks, say, with this in mind, would we find out that a large percentage of heart attacks occur with a loss of income, employment, savings, money in general? Is the inordinate number of people with diabetes in the lower income bracket partly due from money stress?
If we look at the incredible greed that has been uncovered on Wall Street among the wealthy banksters, perhaps this study helps us understand a bit better. I know I haven't been able to get my mind around these people who have so much materially, but who never feel that they have enough, and who are coldly uncaring about the lives they are ruining as they raid pension funds. This might offer a clue: "Other groups were asked either to list what they had spent money on in the past 30 days or list weather conditions during that time. Those who itemized their finances reported less social distress from the computer game and less pain from the hot water".
There's a lot to think about here, but I do feel that there is some truth to this. I had a direct experience of how thinking of losing money makes you feel more pain! After 3 grueling hours under the dental drill, I was already feeling bad, but when I got home and found out that our truck repair would cost four times what the original estimate had been, I instantly experienced my pain level going from bad to horrible! It was interesting to observe the impact this news had on me. Makes me realize that there are good times for looking at bills, and bad times, and when you're already feeling sick or in pain, it may be better to put those bills away until you're feeling better.
Posted by dancingonthePath at 8:18 AM 0 comments
What is Success anyway?
I've been thinking a lot about success lately. In the last year many of us have had just about everything we know turned upside down and we are being forced to take a new look at old assumptions. For example, what is success? How we define it has a lot to do with who we are. Definitions of success are as varied as snow flakes -- no two are alike. Commenting fondly on the human condition, my spiritual teacher once said that there are 6 billion religions in the world, one for each of us on this planet, (although we tend to believe that everyone should believe the way we do!) Similarly, there are as many individual definitions of success that spur us on to take action (or not).
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the results), there is a powerful cultural overlay defining success that pushes us in directions which may or may not be right for us. If we do not have a deep inner barometer of success defined by our own truth and measured by our own integrity, this cultural definition of success can lead us towards dissatisfaction and even dishonesty.
If we hold a well lit mirror up to our pop culture icons we will see our cultural malaise and disease reflected back in various degrees of severity, from anorexia, to teenage breast implants, to the Wall Street white collar thugs who ransacked our nation's wealth. Bernie Maddox probably thought that he was a very successful man. And so did just about everybody else.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
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1 comment:
I personally have been struggling with this "money fight" I have been working all month and find out I may not get paid for my labor, It is testing every spiritual fiber of my being.. I find myself so angry, and afraid, that It is nearly impossible to be optimistic, much less look for another job to make ends meet. Our country has become a country of greed! We allow people to be greedy and step on anyone in their way, because after all this is America the Great!
What has become of basic human decency? What has happened to this country? I feel the eminent looming of our great demise...we are not able to trust even our neighbor anymore!
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