Welcome to Under 2, an email series delivering short insights to empower your money life – in 2 minutes or less.
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I happen to enjoy math. It’s black and white. True or false. Equal or not equal. I like that blatant straightforwardness.
I know not everyone shares my math sentiments. But you don’t need to be good at math (or like it) to be good at money.
In fact, I believe the majority of success with money doesn’t come from adding up dollars and cents at all, but rather comes down to our routine thoughts and behaviors.
Today I want to talk about external and internal factors that influence those thoughts and behaviors, so you can be aware of their role in your money life. After all, awareness is the first step to creating useful change.
To do this, let’s talk about Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies, because their definitions rely on two possible answers to two types of expectations.
Inner expectations are what you expect of yourself, like wanting to spend less money to achieve a goal of changing jobs.
Outer expectations are what others expect of you, like donations for a class party being collected, so giving money even though you’re already over budget for the month.
You might respond readily to both types of expectations (inner and outer), neither type, or more to one or the other.
But what do we mean by expectations? I think our tendencies to respond to inner and outer signals goes beyond personal expectations of ourselves or expectations from others. It relates to any type of trigger to act.
Theories of motivation (the force behind any action) propose that a trigger, or cue, is required to initiate action. This impetus may be internal or external, as well, and has powerful sway over our money habit loops.
Internal cues may be feelings of need, inadequacy, fear, and so on. You may feel “less than” around the office if you too don’t have the designer shoes or bag. That feeling is the internal trigger to buy shoes you can’t (or don’t truly want to) afford.
External cues, when it comes to spending, are best illustrated in advertising. A discount, limited time availability, and sales messaging all provide external inputs to drive your behavior. Think of all those app notifications instantly letting you know about a new release or sale.
Which ones are you more responsive to? The feelings inside (internal)? Or catching the Target endcap displays in your line of sight (external)?
Start to observe the times when you make an impulse decision, especially with your money, and check what triggered that choice. Was it an internally generated thought and feeling you struggled to ignore? Or something external finding its way into your attention that triggered your motivation?
Use that awareness to align your behavior more closely with your values – the ones that you predetermine without the presence of the cues pinging around you.
In my opinion, location (i.e. environment) is the most powerful driver of mindless habits and also the least recognized. In many cases, our habits and behaviors are simply a response to the environment that surrounds us.
James Clear
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey