For today I thought I would explore my thoughts and feelings about money from an early perspective kind of approach …
For one … I don’t really buy into the whole The Secret visualize tons of this and that blah blah stuff … I think for gamblers in particular that type of philosophy is toxic and a carrot on a stick. Visualizing large sums of money and just mindlessly telling myself “you deserve it” in the past was never a positive thing for me. That part of our culture is quite blind to more nuanced understandings of how things work.
That being said, it may be valuable to dig around my earlier experiences and thoughts/perceptual shapes of money, because some of them may be triggers for gambling approach in the first place. Maybe, maybe not, but worth exploring.
What springs to mind for me is remembering that I never wanted to be associated with money before I had to. I remember burning a dollar bill more than once as a late teen/early adult. I’ve always retained a bit of a cognitive dissonance/somewhat spiteful relationship with money if i were honest. Rejection, spite, and even vengeance seem to be emotions of mine that want to drain into my energy field through monetary expressions … maybe I feel less settled with those feelings elsewhere?
I do feel there is a subconscious part of me that doesn’t like money in anyway and gives a feeling of “push” to it like pushing it away, whereas the more surface self is of course hussling to make it. Inner tension and sometimes paralysis over this seems like a very real thing.
I think I get bored with my savings and also feel like those scripts of acting out that push pull with money are a real thing for me … I used to love numbers and math … I feel like my experiences with trading-become-gambling over the years kind of numbed me to that … Anyway that early perspective of me is always feeling like money is a web or trap and sort of stretching and pushing like someone tied up to wriggle out of it … then the feeling of not having money is another trap and wriggling out of that … it feels like back and forth interplay between two expressions of wiggling/wriggling out of perceived states of being trapped …
I feel I come back to this emotional cycle over and over and it plays out with money particularly. I’ve gotten good at guarding the bulk of my savings and have good credit, but the emotional cycle and stagnancy of what I witness is a very real thing. Wriggling and tension to the point of exhaustioni from opposite points of view … on and on …
This is a habit that seems to have fallen into other parts of my life as well … areas where I’ve gotten lessons to relax and let go of the struggle … within certain activities. But as I write when I think of certain things now in addition to money vs. no money … I also think of starting and stopping activities … There can be great struggle.
The feelings of struggle themselves feel like a “home” state I turn back to … it’s like this feeling of need to create struggle for myself … to create extra challenge …. to challenge myself more than I need to or excessively instead of in balance …
Hard to say where it came from other than it’s a habit of my personality … in the areas where i’ve experienced freedom from this it has felt amazing …
But yea. Taking on too much challenge at once to the point of crushing weight … bad habit … There still are just simply other areas where I could use a looser dynamic flow and not get caught in the self induced chinese finger trap of personality expression (which happens outside of gambling too at times). I have a habit of toying with the difficulty level of things a bit too much back and forth and raising the bar too high too fast. Suddenly going from level 1 to level 4 difficulty … it creates a rush in and of itself …
Even as a kid i was drawn to challenges and complexity … as an adult and relearning more advanced/professional musical approaches I’ve found that it has had a lot more to do with letting go of making things harder than they need to be. Standing on foundations of simplicity, clarity, and direction instead.
So I wonder if that leads me into cravings to gamble too at times … stable life with savings feeling too “easy” and wanting to stretch the difficulty level and make money feel difficult and hard …
Anyway this just a curious exploration of mine … some of it feels relevant for sure.
I always feel lighter and better after writing here and getting a chance to encourage others. Progress and understanding are a wonderful thing.