Friday Reflections - What to do when old narratives cease being useful. 🤔

TLDR: There are infinite ways to view and interpret any given situation. Choose the interpretation that is aligned with your desired outcomes versus the interpretation you’ve been habituated to choose that no longer serves you.

When I graduated from college, my starting salary at my first job wasn’t enough to cover my basic living expenses and student loan payments (even though I was working 80+ hours/week at a consulting firm 😏).

As a result, I racked up thousands of dollars of credit card debt just trying to live during my first year as a postgraduate.

It just so happened that it was 2007, which meant credit card approvals were easy to come by, despite my thin credit file. I realized I could open new credit cards with 0% transfer fees and continuously transfer balances without accruing interest, while also attempting to chip away at those balances with my meager paychecks.

I lived every day with a sense of impending doom and a sickening sense of shame that I somehow was already failing as an “adult”. I felt trapped by my financial situation and couldn’t see a way out.

Then, at the end of that first year, I miraculously received an unexpectedly large bonus, which I immediately used to pay off all my credit card debt.

The sense of relief I felt was all encompassing and I swore I would NEVER have credit card debt ever again. I would never allow myself to feel that out of control and categorically unsafe again.

That experience further rooted my already internalized, scarcity-based narratives about money. Narratives that while anxiety-inducing, seemed ultimately helpful in ensuring I never repeated those negative experiences.

It wasn’t until this week that I realized those narratives are now limiting me far more than they’re serving me. That realization came during a session with the financial coach my husband and I recently started working with.

When we met with our coach this week, she was showing us some of our numbers and I mentioned it would be most helpful to know our “runway”, i.e., how much time we have with our current expenses, spending, and income before our money runs out (a perspective deeply rooted in my past experiences).

Her question back to me sparked an insight that has the potential to change my entire outlook on finances.

She asked: “what’s another way you could look at the idea of runway?”.

After admittedly drawing a blank for a moment, I responded that perhaps our runway isn’t the amount of time we have before our money runs out, but rather the amount of time we have to figure out ways to make our money grow.

With that small change of perspective, I felt something foundational shift in me.

I realized that because I’ve been focusing on the avoidance of a negative scenario, I’ve neglected the opportunity to focus on creating a positive scenario.

Because our brains tend to focus on whatever narratives we tell ourselves, I had essentially trained myself to only see and focus on the “problems” with our financial situation and dismiss or simply not see what was going well or could possibly go well with intentional effort.

As the saying goes, whatever we resist, persists.

Equipped with this new awareness, if I find myself slipping back into the old narrative of avoidance, then I can consciously choose to bring myself back to the present moment, to a place and time wherein I have far more knowledge, resources, and opportunities than I did all those years ago. To a place of curiosity and possibility and creativity.

I suspect that with this new narrative, we will be far more likely to achieve our desired outcomes than with the old one.

Never underestimate the power of a single, well-placed question and a willingness to consider a new perspective.

So my invitation to curiosity for you today is:

• What is a situation or challenge you’re currently experiencing that you’re viewing as a problem or an impending issue?

• What old narratives might that perspective be reflective of?

• What is another way you can view and interpret your current situation that reflects a more possibility-oriented and current, reality-based perspective?

• What might become possible if you adopted that new perspective?

As always, drop me a line and let me know what comes to mind.

Stay curious,

Jessica

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