Coaching Blog for Financial Wellness During the Covid-19 Pandemic
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This is NOT a typical personal finance blog that provides you with money tools and strategies on how to budget, save, spend, and invest to improve your cash flow. This blog takes you to the root causes that impact your cash flow, and guide you to make long-lasting changes.
I recently came across an article by Jennifer Porter in the Harvard Business Review called “To Improve Your Team, First Work on Yourself.” Her article highlights how building internal and external self-awareness, as well as taking personal accountability, are essential qualities that leaders should first master before they support their team members.
As a Wealth Consultant and Financial Wellness Coach, I instantly saw how this method to improve your “team” would also apply to your “cash flow”, because I strongly believe that, no matter where you are on your financial wellness journey, working on yourself first is the most effective and sustainable way of improving your cash flow.
Yes! You heard me right: To improve your cash flow, first work on yourself.
How we relate to ourselves directly impacts how we relate to what’s around us in the world, including our personal cash flow.
Over the last 12 years, I’ve helped thousands of people create budgets and get closer to achieving their dreams. Some of the most frequently asked questions relating to cash flow include:
“Why can’t I stick to my budget after having tried many different budgeting methods?”
“I have positive cash flow every month but why do I still feel that it’s not good enough?”
“I want to improve my cash flow but how can I when my debt is increasing each year?”
If I simply listen to these questions at face value, I may want to suggest some great budgeting tools that have worked well for most of my clients, or I might offer specific solutions on cutting obvious luxury discretionary expenses.
However, when I listen to these questions at a deeper level, hold my urge to offer solutions right away, stay present, non-judgmental, and curious, I get to learn a lot more about my client. I see them as a whole person and start to get a sense of who they are, and what they value. I observe their inherited money habits and beliefs, and how their current relationship with money impacts their decisions on saving, investing and spending, which all have a direct impact on their cash flow.
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There are three simple steps you can take to improve your cash flow. Even though they are simple I can’t guarantee that they will be easy for you.
These steps are for anyone who has exhausted all the practical strategies on budgeting, as well as for people who have just started working on improving their cash flow, and want to take a more holistic approach by working on themselves first.
Step 1: Become Aware of Your Core Values
One of the key things that will help you become more aware of yourself, is to know your Core Values.
Values define who you are, not who you want to be. Values are what you care about, what you prioritize, and what you deem important. Values show up in your behaviours, and these behaviours are visible in the choices you make.
For instance, if you know you value owning and reading books, physically holding them, and smelling the pages, then you might be less likely to stick to your budget if the recommendation is to reduce book expenses from paperback to digital.
When you are able to align your actions with your values it generates resonant choices that connect your actions with meaning and purpose. When you take action from a place of honouring your values, rather than stepping on them, it becomes easier and more sustainable to make good choices.
My blog “How To Budget For Your Passion And Financial Wellness” covers some tips on identifying your core values. Working with a Life and Financial Wellness Coach is also a great way of discovering your values.
Step 2: Be Aware of Your Choices & Their Impact
Every life and financial choice you make, or don’t make, has an impact on you, others, and the world.
Often, we describe our current situation, especially if in a predicament by looking at external factors such as: education, family, corporations, government, society, and the natural environment. I hear stories like:
“I have a negative cash flow because my spouse left me, my parents never taught me how to budget, my bankers never explained how a lines of credit works, the credit card companies charge me too much, my boss never gives me a raise, and I didn’t expect COVID-19 to happen.”
Yes, external circumstances have an impact on you, and many are rarely within your control. Nevertheless, how often you choose to look inward and examine the impact you are having on yourself is absolutely within your control.
For instance, now in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, some people who’ve been laid off are choosing to wait for their position to reopen once the economy picks up, instead of looking for another job. These people continue to watch their negative cash flow impact their lives. Others are choosing to create new jobs and opportunities for themselves, in order to generate income and minimize the negative impact on their cash flow.
There is no right or wrong choice that works for everyone. However, whether you decide to do something or not, you are always making a choice.
You may not have control over the impact of your choices, but you can always choose to take responsibility for the impact you are making. Which brings us to our third step…
Step 3: Take Responsibility
This may be the hardest step of all.
Taking responsibility in this space means self-leadership and ownership of your values, choices, and the impact they make. It is about showing vulnerability, and having the courage to learn from failure and ask for help. It also means being flexible and open to making the radical changes necessary to achieve what matters to you most.
For instance, one of your core values might be family, and you’d like to increase your cash flow by $300 in order to use the extra cash to support your extended family. However, financially supporting others in this way may, in turn, exhaust your positive cash flow, leaving you without enough funds to provide for your own basic needs.
In this example, you are honouring your value of family by helping them financially, but you may have not been aware of your responsibility to your own financial and emotional stress. This may impact the longevity of everyone’s overall financial wellbeing.
Taking responsibility in this way is not easy. Again, no single situation or solution will be the same. One responsible thing you could do in this example, is to have an honest conversation with your family. Tell them about the impact your choice has on your own situation (ie. not having enough funds to pay for rent, groceries, etc.), and that you need to take care of yourself first before helping them.
Take ownership of your own choices.
Summary
Financial planners can provide you with the guidance and tools to help you identify, track, and cut expenses. They are experts in financial planning and strategies.
However, they are not you. You know yourself best. Simple recommendations based on your lifestyle are not likely to help you sustain your financial goals. To attain true financial wellness, you must go deeper and examine how your values, beliefs, family upbringings, life experiences, emotional triggers, money shame, fear, judgement, blame, ego, and your purpose, are embedded in your lifestyle.
In my experience as a Wealth Consultant and Financial Wellness Coach, most people find it uncomfortable to talk about money and their relationship with it.
Imagine the impact that never going deeper to work on yourself, never examining what makes you you, will have on your relationship with yourself and money.
Remember the values you are honouring, you are always at choice, and you are responsible for your impact.
If improving your cash flow or any other aspect of your life is important to you, my desire is for you is to first work on yourself.
Ask trusted friends, family, or colleagues for help, or work with a Financial Wellness Coach, as they can act as your eyes and ears to help you be your best self.
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