How to Use the Window of Resiliency to Make Better Financial Decisions
Let's face it. Making financial decisions can be the driving factor in the average person's dealings with emotions such as fear, stress, and anxiety. Let me just say that, it sucks and nobody is exempt from life's woes surrounding money and feeling financially insecure.
There is a financial wellness method I've recently come to learn about and it's called the Window of Resiliency. Don't worry - you've probably never heard of it and rightfully so. It's not a cute term that you'd find being thrown out into your everyday conversations anyway - but its use can be significantly effective in helping us to navigate our relationship with money and become self-aware before making any financial decision.
A lot of the time when people make poor decisions with their money it's because they are making decisions, out of low vibrational states with feelings such as anxiety, fear, and self-doubt. These feelings -often subconscious- are what create the perpetual cycle of making poor financial decisions, keeping us in a state of mental poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, and often living above our means. The irony in making poor financial decisions is that it even further causes us to be more anxious and stressed out about our financial situation. 43 percent of Canadians are financially stressed, and just 22 percent consider themselves financially "comfortable."
What is the WOR?
The window of resiliency is an emotional awareness scale from 1-10 that helps determine what state of arousal we are in when it comes to making financial decisions or responding to a particular financial situation. When it comes to our finances, it's important to notice when money is making us feel uncomfortable by defining states of arousal.
How does one realize when they are in a state of hyper or hypo arousal and how can we find balance when it comes to making our own financial decisions?
This is my job as a holistic wealth coach to help millennial women notice when their anxieties or fears come up around money and how to in that exact moment subside our negative emotions and become more centered in efforts to make more of those aligned and intuitive decisions for our best self. Of course, in any effort to manage our emotions, it's usually something that takes time and a lot of self-reflection, along with doing some inner work. However, I think that just being aware of your emotions in the present moment is crucial to giving yourself the chance the set yourself up for success.
An image of the Window of Resilience scale from The Trauma of Money educational program I’m certified in.
The State of Hyper-Arousal
In a state of hyper-arousal, you would fall between the numbers 7-10 on the WOR scale. This occurs when you are having a more intense sense of anxiety and stress in a situation and so tend to make more emotional and impulsive decisions with your money. This can look like, for example, someone who emotionally decides to go shopping and buy a whole bunch of non-essentials because they just had a fight with their boyfriend. Or, maybe even someone who likes to emotionally eat because they aren't happy with their life right now and/or body. There is always an indirect correlation between people having poor money habits based on poor performance in other areas of their lives.
Which is why it's so important to constantly be keeping ourselves in check, and to in that moment really ask ourselves, where would I rate myself right now in this window of resiliency?
The State of Hypo-Arousal
When people find themselves in a state of hypo-arousal they are usually people who tend to avoid their finances and numb out. You don't want to budget, you don't want to look at financial statements and you sure as hell are afraid to invest your money. People who also tend to be very stingy with their money fall into this category, because they have a scarcity/poverty mindset. They are afraid that the money they put out into the world, won't come back to them in return. If you do not believe that you are held by the Universe and that whatever you intentionally buy with purpose, will not come back to you in abundance is a great indicator that you lack trust in yourself and in the energy of money, so often shut down.
The Optimal Range for Resiliency
The optimal place where you want to land on on the WOR scale is between 4-7, and if you realize you're not within that range, then you know there is some deeper work to do. Whether it's in that moment or at a later time, to see why you are making the decisions you are making that are later going to negatively affect your finances. A tool that I would highly recommend using to become more self-aware of where you are operating at all times within your WOR is to meditate. The benefits of meditation are endless, but I would say the greatest benefit of learning to quiet the mind is that it instantly helps to de-stress at any given moment.
Instantly if you're feeling any negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, or doubt and you feel a lot of tension and mindless chatter in your headspace - you want to start taking deep breaths. This can be simply breathing in for four seconds, and then breathing out for another four seconds or five or six. Usually, the longer you inhale, hold and exhale your breaths - the better. A simple meditation or breathwork exercise can easily help you to seek calm during an emotional storm. The more you begin to incorporate therapeutic practices like meditation into your daily routine, the less likely over time you will be to make impulsive and emotional decisions.
Additional tools and resources for maintaining an optimal WOR
Other tools or therapeutic practices you can start to incorporate that have more of a long-term effect on your decision-making behaviors are using alternative wellness and therapeutic approaches such as EFT Tapping and Meditative Journaling. Of course, there are also small habits you can build into your decision-making processes to prevent yourself from making poor financial decisions. Things like going for a walk around the block or waiting 24-48 hours before making a purchase are tried and tested reinforcement measures that actually help people to relax and calm their bodies before making impulsive financial decisions. Chances are that after that walk, you probably don't have that urge anymore to go on a shopping spree.
Remove yourself from the financial trigger or add a distraction
Personally, the easiest thing that I try to do and what's worked for me is just removing the temptation or trigger object altogether. So if there are regular e-mails that I get from a makeup store I really like, and there are always flash sales going on - the smartest thing for me to do is simply unsubscribe from all company e-mails. Lately, I've also been having a phase where I like to order takeout, and I must admit I've been getting a little carried away. So what I've started to do is get into the habit of always having water near me and if I'm feeling hungry and tempted to order food I simply have to finish drinking 1L of water first. By the time I'm done, I feel less hungry and eager to order out and end up whipping up something smaller in the end. So figure out and identify what your triggers are and how you can remove the trigger or commit to an additional step to take before making that final financial decision.
As I said, it takes a lot of self-awareness to build up a strong financial muscle and that's why using an effective method like the Window Of Resilience approach at the moment, can actually help you to determine what state of arousal you're in and using the above-mentioned tools to move into a more balanced state of financial decision-making.
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