Money Tapes

Last week (January 20, 2008) I shared some general information on behavioral tapes and promised to follow up

with thoughts on some of the more common tapes that influence our behavior. Let's talk about money tapes this week.

Money tapes are feelings and beliefs that somehow were encoded into your psyche and are now influencing your relationship with money. These tapes help explain why some people have a positive and healthy relationship with money and others have a negative and unhealthy relationship with money. It basically comes down to the internal messages and emotions that are triggered when you think of money. Remember, behavioral tapes are made up of two main components: facts and emotions. Unfortunately, the facts that are encoded into your memory are not always correct. Here are some common, but not necessarily true, messages about money that some of you might have heard during your formative years:

• Money is the root of all evil (a common misquote).
• Rich people are arrogant.
• Rich people are snobby.
• Rich people are miserable.
• Rich people are ruthless.
• You'd better hold on tight to your money.
• People who have a lot of money are...(you add a descriptive term).

I'm sure you can come up with a few more negative money messages. In general, these messages imply that people with an abundance of money are in some way flawed or unscrupulous. Other negative money messages help create a fear-based or scarcity mentality when it comes to dealing with money. Once these messages are programmed into your psyche, you might find it difficult to enjoy the tangible rewards of success.

When taken to extremes, irrational beliefs about money can lead to various forms of self-defeating behavior. For example, if you grew up in poverty and suddenly find that an abundance of money is flowing in your life, you might become too focused on the possibility of losing your money rather than enjoying your material success. This, in turn, could lead to counterproductive behavior that might alienate some of the people in your life who helped you become financially successful in the first place. In the end, money is neither good nor bad. Money is simply what you make of it and what you make of it is often based on your money tapes.

Hopefully you have a positive and healthy relationship with money. However, if you feel this is an area of life that you want to examine, here's a simple exercise that will help you explore your money tapes. Imagine you are very young (less than 10 years old) and you walk up to your parents (or primary caregivers) and boldly announce: "When I grow up I am going to get rich!!!" How do you think your parents would react to this statement? What would they say to you? Your thoughts should offer some strong clues to help you reveal your money tapes. And remember, when money is printed or coined by the government, it has no intrinsic emotional value or association. You give emotional meaning to money. Explore your money tapes and think about whether or not they are helping or hurting you when it comes to developing a healthy relationship with money.

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Overloading and the Plimsoll Line

There's this thing about fluids and buoyancy that anyone responsible for a vessel traveling through water needs to understand. Archimedes discovered long ago that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. Apply this principle to the world of boating and shipping, convert it to plain-speak and the consequences of overloading are clear. Ships and boats sink when they weigh more than the water they displace.

In 1873 an Englishman named Samuel Plimsoll published a book titled Our Seamen that documented the fact that nearly 1,000 sailors a year drowned in ship sinkings near or around the British shores. You see...that was about the time Lloyd's of London began insuring ships. Therefore, shipowners had strong incentives to overload their ships. If the ships made it to their destination, the higher loads were more profitable. If the overloaded ships sank...the owners collected on their insurance policies. Eventually overloading got so bad that people began to refer to ships that carried immigrants to North America as coffin ships. Plimsoll's solution to this problem was simple. Determine the maximum load a ship could handle and make sure the vessel never exceeded that load. He proposed that a mark or line be painted on the side of all ships to indicate the limit to which the vessel could be legally loaded. If the weight and bouyancy of the ship caused it to dip below the line, referred to as the Plimsoll Mark or Plimsoll Line, the ship could not set sail. The Plimsoll Line worked then and it still works today. Simply drawing a line reduced a tremendous amount of suffering and anquish...and saved thousands of lives in the process. Many of you exist today because of Samuel Plimsoll's idea and the fact that it helped your ancestors survive their voyage to America.

I tell you this story because so many people seem to complain about being overloaded these days. Okay, let's do some substitutions. Take this story and substitute the word 'me or I' for the word 'vessel' and the practice of personal overloading for practice of ship overloading...and then rethink the story. Then think...WWSD (What Would Samuel Do)? I'll bet Samuel would try and come up with an incredibly simple way to prevent oveloading. Would he paint a line on your waist, your chest or your neck? Naah...that wouldn't work. Painting lines doesn't sould like a good solution in this situation. But what did Sam have to do to determine where to paint the line? That's the real issue. He had to determine the proper load for the vessel. So, how can you determine the proper load for your vessel (body)? There are probably many ways to do that...however, here's one very simple way (I am going to simplify things by suggesting this technique without discussing the theory behind the strategy for now. Maybe the underlying theory will become the topic of a future blog entry):

• Start your next week by loading no more than one highly important task, preferably the most important task you can think of, in a single workday. Work on the task sometime during the first 48 minutes of your day or the first 48 minutes after lunch (therefore, if you are working on a huge project, you will need to break the project into a task that can be completed in 48 minutes or less). Stay totally focused on the selected task...the whole task...and nothing but the task for the entire 48 minutes. No emails, no phone calls, no interruptions, no breaks, nothing but total laser-like focus! Do whatever you want for the rest of the day...including working like a crazy person and overloading yourself.
• On day two increase the load, select two tasks and two 48-minute periods and do the same thing.
• On day three increase the load again, select three tasks and three 48-minute periods and do the same thing.
• Keep this up until you start to feel overloaded. Then subtract one or two tasks and consider that number of tasks your Plimsoll Line.

You can do the math. In an eight-hour workday there are ten 48-minute segments of time. I suspect three to five tasks and segments is the opitmal level for most of you. For example, if you draw your Plimsoll Line at five...that gives you half of the day to work in a sane and reasonable manner...and you still have half a day to work like a crazy person if you insist on doing so. Remember, in the end...you can't trick Mother Nature, gravity, mathmetics (unelss you divide by zero) and buoyancy! If you start to get that sinking feeling...stop what you are doing and try to determine your personal Plimsoll Line.

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Hold My Beer and Watch This!

Imagine suddenly finding yourself driving around in a high-powered race car without a steering wheel. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen doesn't it? Now replace the words 'driving around in high-powered race car' with 'walking around in a teenage body' and 'steering wheel' with 'prefrontal cortex' and you can begin to understand how nature can sometimes play nasty tricks on us humans. The prefrontal cortex is a fancy name for the part of the brain that helps control impulsive behavior, planning, organizing, good decision making and other so-called executive functions of the brain. It's our neural steering wheel. Some brain researchers believe that this part of the brain is not quite ready-for-prime-time until humans are well into their twenties. That's probably why so many young people display a "hold my beer and watch this" attitude until their mid-twenties. The part of the brain that handles sound judgement and responsible behavior is simply not finished yet. Of course, most scientists would rather share toothbrushes and underwear than share conclusions. Therefore, as usual you can expect to encounter plenty of disagreement among the experts on this prefrontal cortex issue if you dig into it.

I doubt if many teenagers are reading my blog...so what does this have to do with those of us, shall we say, beyond the mid-twenties. First, it helps us better understand the young people in our lives and gives those of us who are parents a way to distance ourselves from the erratic and sometime outrageous behavior of our offspring. We can always say to others, "I raised them to know better...it's that prefrontal cortex stuff causing problems you know!" It also helps us understand why we frequently have the desire to unwind some of the major decisions we made earlier in life. Of course, the two big ones are: Now...let me think about it again..."Why exactly did I choose this career?" or "Why did I marry this person?" If things have worked out great for you in both of these areas of life...then consider yourself pre-frontally blessed (or lucky). If they didn't, now you have a great excuse. You no longer have to try and convince yourself or others that you didn't really make a mistake...or that things are not really that bad. Now you have a scientific excuse and a neural scapegoat to blame...you can comfortably and blamelessly put past mistakes behind you and move forward in life.

Of course, you all know that making excuses and blaming your neurons won't really solve anything. But knowing that many of our major life decisions were made when we were in our "hold my beer and watch this" phase of life may help you understand, reevaluate and possibly alter your path in life now that your prefrontal cortex is fully up and running. If nothing else...you can use this information to scientifically scold your children. The next time you are going on a trip with them, you can say..."If you kids don't exercise some measure of control over your prefrontal cortices...I'll turn this car around and go home right this minute!"

If you want to know more about this prefrontal cortex stuff, go on the internet and take a look at some of the information on Dr. Jay Giedd's research.

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.

Do You Want to Avoid Getting Whacked?

I recently read something interesting in a book titled The Biology of BeliefImage removed by sender. by Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D. It was about how human bodies generate and use energy (see chapter six "Growth and Protection" if you want more details). Dr. Lipton is a cell biologist and his comments made me think that allocating energy to the various body systems designed to promote growth and protection is a bit like playing the game Wac-A-Mole. Wac-A-Mole is a simple game. Moles constantly pop up through holes and you whack them with a hammer. Unfortunately, there are several holes...many moles...and only one hammer. So what does this have to do with human energy use? Let's imagine for a moment that whacking a mole with a hammer symbolizes allocating energy to the various body systems. After all, it takes energy to swing a hammer and whack a mole. According to Dr. Lipton, there are four major body systems or "energy using moles" that may pop up and need to be whacked at times. The body needs energy for:

• The sympathetic "fight or flight" system (to deal with real or perceived external threats)
• The immune system (to deal with internal threats, viruses, bacteria, etc.)
• The cell replacement system (cells constantly wear out and need to be replaced)
• The energy replacement system (it takes energy to generate energy)

Just as you only have one hammer in Wac-A-Mole, you only have so much energy to allocate to the various systems. You just can't whack them all at the same time! Therefore, if one system is hogging too much energy (needs too much whacking), the other systems cannot do their jobs. This, in my mind, is a good illustration of how stress can kill you...or as they say in the Sopranos...whack you. Think about it. If you constantly operate in a stressful environment and your "fight or flight mole" needs constant whacking...there is not enough energy left over to fight off internal threats, generate new energy and replace worn out cells. It's the human body's version of a deadly zero-sum game. Keep up the rushing around, multitasking, overloading, under-relaxing, and all the other stress generating activities, and you will eventually whack yourself. Yes, we all need some stress to function properly. But we don't need to play Wac-A-Mole with our lives. I don't know about you, but I want my immune, cell replacement and energy replacement systems to have all the energy they need to do their jobs.

Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.