Studies have shown that meditation can change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate.Getty Images
A growing body of neuroscience research shows that meditation can make us better to each other.Finding the best ways to do good.Eight weeks ago, I started meditating every day. I knew I’d be going home to visit my family at the end of December, and well, I have a bad habit of regressing into a 13-year-old whenever I’m around them.
All my old immaturities and anxieties get activated. I become a more reactive, less compassionate version of myself. But this holiday season, I was determined to avoid fighting with my family. I would be kind and even-tempered throughout the visit. I knew that in order to have a chance in hell of achieving this, I’d need a secret weapon.
That’s where the meditation came in. Starting in 2005, Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar began to publish some mind-blowing findings: Meditation can literally change the structure of your brain, thickening key areas of the cortex that help you control your attention and emotions. Your brain — and possibly, by extension, your behavior — can reap the benefits if you practice meditation for half an hour a day over eight weeks.
Just eight weeks? I thought when I read the research. This seems too good to be true! I was intrigued, if skeptical. Above all, I was curious to know more. And I wasn’t the only one. By 2014, there had been enough follow-up studies to warrant a meta-analysis, which showed that meditators’ brains tend to be enlarged in a bunch of regions, including the insula (involved in emotional self-awareness), parts of the cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex (involved in self-regulation), and parts of the prefrontal cortex (involved in attention).
A host of otherstudiesshowed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective.
Further research suggested that meditation can change not only your internal emotional states but also your actual behavior. One study found that people made charitable donations at a higher rate after being trained in meditation for just two weeks. Another study found that people who get that same measly amount of meditation training are about three times more likely than non-meditators to give up their chair when they see someone on crutches and in pain.
Still skeptical, I fell down an internet rabbit hole and soon found many more neuroscientific studies. Looking closely at them, I did find that a fair number are methodologically flawed (more on that below). But there were many others that seemed sound. Taken together, the literature on meditation suggested that the practice can help us get better at relating to one another. It confronted me with evidence that a few weeks of meditation can improve me as a person.
I say “confronted” because the evidence really did feel like a challenge, even a dare. If it takes such a small amount of time and effort to get better at regulating my emotions, paying attention to other people, seeing things from their point of view, and acting altruistically, then … well … am I not morally obligated to do it?
The science behind mindfulness meditation and how we pay attention to others
The word “meditation” actually refers to many different practices. In the West, the most well-known set of practices is “mindfulness meditation.” When people talk about that, they’re typically thinking of a practice for training our attention.
Here’s how Jon Kabat-Zinn, a scientist who helped popularize mindfulness in the West, defines it: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”
And here’s what mindfulness meditation practice often involves: You sit down, close your eyes, and focus on feeling your breath go in and out. When you feel your attention drifting to the thoughts that inevitably arise, you notice, and then gently bring your attention back to your breath.
This combination of attention training and direct observation is the basic practice. Sounds simple, right? But according to some studies, it can have profound effects on your brain.
In a 2012 study, people who were new to meditation underwent eight weeks of mindful attention training, practicing for around four hours each week. Before the training, they got fMRIs, scans that show where brain activity is occurring.
While they were in the MRI scanner, they viewed a series of pictures, some of which were upsetting (like a photo of a burn victim). After eight weeks of mindfulness meditation, when they viewed the upsetting pictures in the scanner again, they showed reduced activity in a crucial brain region: the amygdala.
The amygdala is our brain’s threat detector. It scans our environment for danger, and when it perceives a threat, it sets off our fight-flight-freeze response, which includes releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. It glues our attention to the threat, making it hard for us to focus on anything else…
Thinking of yourself as an observer is better for your happiness than obsessing over being observed.
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life. One night several years ago, after filling up my car at a gas station and pulling away, I noticed a strange sound behind me in traffic—sort of a metallic clanking noise. It sounded to me like someone was dragging a muffler or bumper, so I started looking for the car to alert the driver.
But no matter how fast or slow I moved, or where I turned, I couldn’t locate the car. At this point, I noticed people on the sidewalk pointing and laughing—at me. I stopped and found the gas hose still attached to my car. I immediately pulled out the hose and drove back to the gas station, where I was educated on the economics of breaking a gas pump.
My memory of that night is odd because I was judging the behavior of another person, who then turned out to be me. The absent-minded professor was some other guy. Philosophers might say that in these rare minutes, my “I-self” (the seer of things around me) and “me-self” (the one seen) were mentally separated.
This kind of separation is unnatural. Making it your permanent state of mind would be difficult and perhaps even undesirable. Each of us can, however, purposely change the balance of time we spend as observers and as the objects of observation—even without doing something as ridiculous as I did. And working to observe more than you think about being observed can be an excellent way to get happier.
When you look into a mirror, you see yourself almost as if you were two different people—one who sees, and one who is seen. That may sound confusing, but bear with me here, because both versions of you are important. As the philosopher William James explored in depth, you must be an observer of things around you to survive and thrive, but you must also observe yourself and be observed by others to have any consistent sense of self-concept and self-image. Without observing, you would get hit by a car or starve. Without being observed, you would have no memory, history, or sense of why you do what you do.
The trick for well-being is balancing your I-self and me-self. But most of us spend too much time being observed and not enough time observing. We think constantly about ourselves and how others see us; we look in every mirror; we check our mentions on social media; we obsess over our identities.
This brings trouble. Research has shown, for example, that focusing on the world outside yourself is linked to happiness, while focusing on yourself and how others see you can lead to unstable moods. Your happiness goes up and down like a yo-yo, depending on whether you see yourself positively or negatively in a given moment. This instability is hard to bear; no wonder self-absorption is associated with anxiety and depression.
Seeing yourself as an object rather than a subject can also lower your performance in ordinary tasks. Researchers have found in learning experiments that people are less likely to try new things when they are focused on themselves. This makes sense: When you pay too much attention to yourself, you ignore a lot about the outside world.
The idea that people should spend more time thinking about the world than about themselves predates modern science and philosophy. For example, it is a core focus of Zen Buddhism, which is fundamentally an attitude of pure outward observation. “Life is an art,” the Zen master D. T. Suzuki wrote in 1934, “and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting.” My colleague Robert Waldinger, a psychiatry professor and Zen priest, explained it to me via email in this way: “When I’m aware of the self I call ‘Bob,’ it’s me in relation to the world. When that falls away (in meditation, or when I’m standing in awe of a waterfall), the sense of a self that is separate from everything else subsides and it’s just sounds and sensations.”
In some traditions, the I-self is not just a ticket to happiness but a connection to the divine. Hindus seek to reveal their atman, which is characterized by an innate state of awareness in which one witnesses the world but does not get embroiled in it. Atman is considered a direct link to Brahman, the ultimate divine reality. This is consistent with Jesus’s teaching that “anyone who wishes to follow me must deny himself.”
You will never eradicate your me-self, nor should you want to. But you can certainly increase your happiness by adopting conscious practices that lower the amount of time you spend in an objectified state. Three conscious habits can help us transcend this tendency.
1. Avoid your own reflection.
Mirrors are inherently attractive, as are all mirrorlike phenomena, such as social-media mentions. But mirrors are not your friend. They help even the healthiest people objectify themselves; for people with self-image-related maladies, they can be sheer misery. In 2001, researchers studying people with body dysmorphic disorder (those who think obsessively about perceived flaws in their bodies) found that the longest time the participants spent looking in the mirror (and thus focusing on the source of their distress) was 3.4 times longer than the longest mirror-gazing session of those who didn’t have the disorder.
Take steps to make the version of yourself that the world sees less likely to pop up in front of you. You might consider literally removing all but one or two mirrors from your home and making a rule to not look at yourself more than once in the morning. I would also recommend turning off your social-media notifications, adopting an absolute ban against Googling yourself, and turning off self-view on Zoom.
2. Judge not.
To judge is to take observation of the world and turn it inward. For example, if you say, “This weather is awful,” you have just made a judgment about your own feelings—meaning you are now observing yourself (and assigning a negative mood to something outside your control).
Making judgments about the world is normal and necessary; we need to do it in order to make cost-benefit decisions. However, many judgments are unhelpful and gratuitous. Do you really need to decide that the song you just heard is stupid? Try instead to observe more around you without regard to your opinions. Start by making more purely observational statements rather than values-based ones. Reframe “This coffee is terrible” as “This coffee has a bitter flavor.”
3. Stand in awe.
In his research, the UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner focuses on the experience of awe, which he defines as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.” Among its many benefits, Keltner has found, awe diminishes the sense of self. For example, in one study, he and his colleagues asked people to consider either an experience in nature that was very beautiful or a time when they felt pride. Those who thought about nature were twice as likely as those who thought about pride to say that they felt small or insignificant, and nearly a third more likely to say that they felt the presence of something greater than themselves.
Spend more time enjoying things that amaze you. My friend and fellow happiness specialist Gretchen Rubin visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art almost daily. I listen to Bach’s music every single day and never fail to feel awe. Incorporating awe into your daily life might mean making sure you see the sunset as often as you can or studying astronomy—or whatever it is that blows your mind.
One last exercise you might try if you have a free day: Use it to wander. In one famous Zen koan (a story that requires philosophical interpretation), a junior monk sees an older monk walking and asks him where he is going. “I am on pilgrimage, following the wind,” the senior monk says. “What are you on pilgrimage for?” the junior monk asks. “I don’t know,” the elder answers, adding, “Non-knowing is most intimate.”
Some of the most intimate experiences in life come when you can observe your journey without expectation of some external payoff. Dedicate just one day to being like this senior monk. Start the morning by saying, “I do not know what this day will bring, but I will accept it.” Go through the day focusing on things outside yourself, resisting judgment, and avoiding anything self-referential. You could get in your car and go on a day trip with no set destination. But if you buy gas, do remember to put the hose back on the pump.
A self-absorbed person is someone who is only concerned about themselves and shows little interest in or care for others. As licensed marriage and family therapist Shane Birkel, LMFT, explains to mbg, these people “have a hard time with empathy and compassion for other people and other people’s perspective, and they’re much more focused on getting their own needs and wants met.”
According to clinical psychologist Perpetua Neo, DClinPsy, we see this behavior in children between the ages of 2 and 6, who are going through something called the pre-operational stage, which is very egocentric. It’s to be expected in children, she notes, but for adults who are self-absorbed, “it’s almost like they never outgrew that stage—even if they have great scripts and can mask their self-absorption.”
While there are many types of narcissism (and varying degrees), a lot of qualities and behaviors of a narcissist will overlap with someone who is self-absorbed. For starters, Neo says, narcissists are very entitled, as are self-absorbed people. “You have to be pretty entitled to always want to bring everything back to you,” she adds.
And even if a self-absorbed person may not qualify for the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), Birkel says, they can still have narcissistic tendencies like manipulation, controlling, and a general lack of empathy or concern for others. Just as a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn’t a square, a narcissist is self-absorbed, but a self-absorbed person isn’t necessarily a narcissist.
7 common signs to look out for:
1.They call all the shots.
One of the more obvious signs of self-absorption is when someone is always calling the shots. Whether it’s where you’re going for dinner or when you have sex, Birkel says this kind of person wants everything their way and will probably not appreciate your thoughts, ideas, or recommendations.
2.They make everything a competition.
Is this person always trying to one-up you? Or in some cases, “one-down” you? Neo explains that self-absorbed people always make everything a competition. They may brag about an accomplishment right after you shared your own exciting news, or in the case of “one-downing,” she adds, “they’ll want to compete with you about how they’re suffering more” when you’re upset about something.
3.They use manipulation to get their way.
As Birkel notes, things like emotional manipulation and controlling behavior are certainly signs someone is self-absorbed because someone who cares for the people in their life won’t be constantly exhibiting those types of behaviors. This is where you want to look out for other signs of narcissism, such as gaslighting and emotional abuse.
4.They always respond to your problems with toxic positivity.
There are some self-absorbed people who know what they should say in certain situations, even if they don’t really mean it. Keep an eye out for toxic positivity, Neo says, in those moments when someone says something that seems nice but isn’t really helpful and is actually dismissing your concerns or problems.
5.They know how to mask their selfishness.
Similar to toxic positivity, there are other ways a self-absorbed person can “mask” their self-centeredness. According to Neo, a lot of people like this “tend to be able to pick up the right things to say or know to praise you.” But once they’ve said the right things, she adds, they’ll weasel in some competition or bring the conversation back to themselves.
6. They’re always the center of attention.
Simply put, “They want to be the center of attention,” Birkel says—and they’ll make it so. Neo echoes this, adding that a self-absorbed person knows how to tailor the conversation to them and can always bring it back to them. And when they’re not the center of attention, she adds, they may appear visibly bored or uninterested with their body language.
7. Their openness might be charming at first.
Self-absorbed people can be very charming or interesting at first, Birkel notes. “They can come across as emotionally intelligent initially,” he explains, adding that because there’s a lot of closed-off people out there, it can be refreshing to hear someone talk openly about themselves. But you want to be mindful of this, he says, and pay attention to whether they show interest in you, too, by asking questions and simply listening.
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We asked a theoretical physicist, an experimental physicist, and a professor of philosophy to weigh in. During the 20th century, researchers pushed the frontiers of science further than ever before with great strides made in two very distinct fields. While physicists discovered the strange counter-intuitive rules that govern the subatomic world, our understanding of how the mind works burgeoned.
Yet, in the newly-created fields of quantum physics and cognitive science, difficult and troubling mysteries still linger, and occasionally entwine. Why do quantum states suddenly resolve when they’re measured, making it at least superficially appear that observation by a conscious mind has the capacity to change the physical world? What does that tell us about consciousness?
Popular Mechanics spoke to three researchers from different fields for their views on a potential quantum consciousness connection. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a theoretical physicist, an experimental physicist, and a professor of philosophy walk into a bar …
Quantum Physics and Consciousness Are Weird
Early quantum physicists noticed through the double-slit experiment that the act of attempting to measure photons as they pass through wavelength-sized slits to a detection screen on the other side changed their behavior.
This measurement attempt caused wave-like behavior to be destroyed, forcing light to behave more like a particle. While this experiment answered the question “is light a wave or a particle?” — it’s neither, with properties of both, depending on the circumstance — it left behind a more troubling question in its wake. What if the act of observation with the human mind is actually causing the world to manifest changes , albeit on an incomprehensibly small scale?
Renowned and reputable scientists such as Eugene Wigner, John Bell, and later Roger Penrose, began to consider the idea that consciousness could be a quantum phenomenon. Eventually, so did researchers in cognitive science (the scientific study of the mind and its processes), but for different reasons.
Ulf Danielsson, an author and a professor of theoretical physics at Uppsala University in Sweden, believes one of the reasons for the association between quantum physics and consciousness—at least from the perspective of cognitive science—is the fact that processes on a quantum level are completely random. This is different from the deterministic way in which classical physics proceeds, and means even the best calculations that physicists can come up with in regard to quantum experiments are mere probabilities.
“Consciousness is a phenomenon associated with free will and free will makes use of the freedom that quantum mechanics supposedly provides.”
The existence of free will as an element of consciousness also seems to be a deeply non-deterministic concept. Recall that in mathematics, computer science, and physics, deterministic functions or systems involve no randomness in the future state of the system; in other words, a deterministic function will always yield the same results if you give it the same inputs. Meanwhile, a nondeterministic function or system will give you different results every time, even if you provide the same input values.
“I think that’s why cognitive sciences are looking toward quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, there is room for chance,” Danielsson tells Popular Mechanics. “Consciousness is a phenomenon associated with free will and free will makes use of the freedom that quantum mechanics supposedly provides.”
However, Jeffrey Barrett, chancellor’s professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, thinks the connection is somewhat arbitrary from the cognitive science side.
“It’s really hard to explain consciousness, it is a deep and abiding philosophical problem. So quantum physicists are desperate and those guys [cognitive scientists] are desperate over there too,” Barrett tells Popular Mechanics. “And they think that quantum mechanics is weird. Consciousness is weird. There might be some relationship between the two.”
This rationalization isn’t convincing to him, however. “I don’t think that there’s any reason to suppose from the cognitive science direction that quantum mechanics has anything to do with explaining consciousness,” Barrett continues. From the quantum perspective, however, Barrett sees a clear reason why physicists first proposed the connection to consciousness.
“If it wasn’t for the quantum measurement problem, nobody, including the physicists involved in this early discussion, would be thinking that consciousness and quantum mechanics had anything to do with each other,” he says. At the heart of quantum “weirdness” and the measurement problem, there is a concept called “superposition.”
Because the possible states of a quantum system are described using wave mathematics — or more precisely, wave functions — a quantum system can exist in many overlapping states, or a superposition. The weird thing is, these states can be contradictory. To see how counter-intuitive this can be, we can refer to one of history’s most famous thought experiments, the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox.
Devised by Erwin Schrödinger, the experiment sees an unfortunate cat placed in a box with what the physicist described as a “diabolical device” for an hour. The device releases a deadly poison if an atom in the box decays during that period. Because the decay of atoms is completely random, there is no way for the experimenter to predict if the cat is dead or alive until the hour is up and the box is opened.
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Treating the cat, box, and device as a quantum system with two possible states—“dead” or “alive”—before the box is opened, means it is in a superposition of those states . The cat is both dead and alive before you open the container.
The problem of measurement asks what is it about “opening the box” — analogous to making a measurement — that causes the wave function to collapse, and this superposition to be destroyed, resolving one state? Is it due to the introduction of the conscious mind of the experimenter? Early quantum physicist Eugene Wigner thought so until shortly before his death in 1995.
Physical Body and Quantum Mind?
In 1961, Wigner put forward a theory in which a mind was crucial to the collapse of a wave function and the destruction of superposition which persists in one form or another to this day.
Wigner and other physicists who adhered to the theory of conscious collapses—such as John von Neumann, John Wheeler, and John Bell—believed that an inanimate consciousness-less object would not collapse the wave function of a quantum system and would thus leave it in a superposition of states.
That means placing a Geiger counter in the box with Schrödinger’s cat isn’t enough to collapse the system to a “dead” or “alive” state even though it is capable of telling if the poison-release atom had decayed.
The superposition remains, Winger said, until a conscious observer opens the box or maybe hears the tick of the Geiger counter.
This leads to the conclusion that there are two distinct types of “substances” in the universe: the physical, and the non-physical , with the human mind fitting in the latter category. This suggests, though, that the brain is a physical and biological object, while the mind is something else, resulting in so-called “mind-body dualism.”
For materialists like himself, Danielsson says the collapse of a wave function in quantum mechanics is a result of an interaction with another physical system. This means it’s quite possible for an “observer” to be a completely unconscious object. To them, the Geiger counter in the box with Schrödinger’s cat is capable of collapsing the superposition of states.
This fits in with the fact that quantum systems are incredibly finely balanced systems easily collapsed by a stray electromagnetic field or even a change in temperature. If you want to know why we don’t have reliable quantum computers, that’s a part of the reason—the quantum states they depend on are too easily disturbed.
Additionally, as Barrett points out, there are a number of ways of thinking about quantum mechanics that don’t involve the collapse of quantum superposition.
The most famous, Hugh Everett III’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggests that when the experimenter makes a measurement, the wave function doesn’t collapse at all. Instead, it grows to include the experimenter and the entire universe, with one “world” for each possible state. Thus, the experimenter opens the box not to discover if the cat is dead or alive, but rather, if they are in a world in which the cat survived or did not.
If there is no collapse of superpositions, there is no measurement problem.
Clearly, with Noble Prize winners like Wigner and Roger Penrose persuaded that there may be something in a possible quantum-consciousness connection, however, the idea can’t be entirely dismissed.
Kristian Piscicchia, a researcher at the Enrico Fermi Center for Study and Research in Rome, Italy, certainly agrees. He is part of a team searching for a more profound understanding of the mind and the relationship between consciousness and the laws of nature.
This team recently set about testing one particular theory that connects consciousness to the collapse of quantum superposition — the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (Orch OR theory) — put forward by Nobel Laureate and Oxford mathematician Penrose and Arizona State University anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff in the 1990s.
Testing Quantum Consciousness Theories
Orch OR theory considers quantum collapse to be related to gravity and argues this collapse actually gives rise to consciousness. According to some approaches to Orch OR theory, the superposition collapse mechanism underlying it should cause the spontaneous emission of a tiny amount of radiation. This distinguishes it from other quantum consciousness theories as it makes it experimentally testable.
“When a system is in a quantum superposition, an unstable superposition of two space-time geometries is generated which determines the wave function collapse in a characteristic time,” Piscicchia tells Popular Mechanics. “The mechanism takes place at the level of microtubules in the brain.”
Microtubules are a key element of eukaryotic cells that are critical for mitosis, cell motility, transport within cells, and maintaining cell shape. Hameroff’s theory sees microtubules in brain neurons as the seat of quantum consciousness, maintaining quantum effects just long enough to conduct computations giving rise to consciousness before collapsing.
“A sufficient amount of microtubule material would be in a coherent quantum superposition for a timescale of between half a second and ten milliseconds until a collapse event results in the emergence of a conscious experience,” Piscicchia says. “We designed an experiment being sensitive enough to unveil eventual signals of gravity-related spontaneous radiation, at the collapse time-scales needed for the Orch OR mechanism to be effective.”
He adds that the results the team obtained place a constraint on the minimum amount of microtubulins needed for this form of Orch OR theory. This limit was found to be prohibitively large, meaning the results indicate that many of the scenarios set out by Hameroff and Penrose’s quantum consciousness theory are implausible.
Piscicchia points out that the team’s work can’t rule out all possibilities, however, and further testing is needed.
Yet, the existence of the quantum consciousness concept itself—and the way it is represented in popular culture—could present a threat to further scientific investigation.
The mind-body dualism suggested by quantum consciousness can be a potentially slippery slope that has led some proponents away from science and into the supernatural.
The concept has also been seized upon to explain the existence of the soul, life after death, and even the existence of ghosts, giving rise to a cottage industry of “quantum mysticism.”
“There’s lots of literature that uses the authority of physics and in particular quantum physics in order to make all sorts of claims,” Danielsson explains. “You can earn a lot of money by fooling people in various ways to buy not only books but also various products. It gives the wrong view of what science is.”
“Quantum mysticism makes it very difficult for serious scientists to think about problems like quantum mechanics and consciousness.”
The physicist also believes that it is definitely the case that the rise of quantum mysticism is hurting legitimate research. “Quantum mysticism makes it very difficult for serious scientists to think about problems like quantum mechanics and consciousness,” he adds. “This is because there is a risk that you might get associated with things which are not so serious.”
Danielsson doesn’t rule out that even if the mind is a purely emergent property of the brain, and thus completely physical in nature, the phenomenon of consciousness may require new physics to explain it. He doesn’t necessarily think that this needs to be quantum mechanics, however.
“That doesn’t mean that there might be many interesting phenomena new to quantum mechanics that might appear in the living world, including in our brains,” he concludes. “One shouldn’t say that quantum mechanics is trivial and that there is no mystery to it.
“It’s just another fantastic property of the world that we are living in. It’s not mystical in a supernatural way.”
Mel H. Abraham, the host of The Affluent Entrepreneur Show, often hears clients tell him, “I’m having some money issues because …” What follows “because” could be any number of reasons, but in Abraham’s book, money issues are often a symptom and not the actual problem. “The fact is your current financial situation is a result of your past decisions,” he explains.
So, when his clients take a moment to honestly examine their decisions and habits surrounding money, he often sees some of the seeds of where they are today — things like how much they did or didn’t save, what they typically spend their money on, and whether their relationship with money is toxic.
The reality, says Abraham, is that we are often conditioned to have limiting beliefs about money from a very young age. Money is not something we talk about or are taught about in school. And unless you intentionally seek to learn about money, your primary source of learning is observation. “The question, though, is: Who are you observing?” Abraham asks.
Most of our money education comes from our surroundings, aka parents, friends, and neighbors, as well as conversations we’ve overheard or what the media has told us. “Were they the best source of financial information and financial education?”
Based on these observations, we unconsciously create beliefs about money, and these beliefs form what Abraham refers to as our “money identity.” That identity could spur from things as simple as hearing a parent say, “We can’t afford that,” which could lead you to start believing that money is scarce and that you need to be afraid of spending any money at all.
You could have grown up hearing that “people who have money are greedy,” which might make you not want to work as diligently, or that “money is not important,” which can lead to brushing off the financial side of your life.
As you get older, these limiting beliefs can intensify. And Thomas Creel, the founder and owner of Creel Financial LLC, says these common toxic money thoughts can lead to everything from preventing you from asking for a raise you deserve to overspending, putting off saving for retirement, or staying in debt. He shares the following as examples of limited money beliefs:
• “I’ll never be good with money, so why even try?”
• “My friends seem to be doing well with money; something must be wrong with me.”
• “As long as I can pay my bills every month, I can spend the rest on having fun.”
• “Life is too short; I’ll worry about retirement when I get older.”
• “Only going out with my friends and spending money is when we have fun.”
• “My friends wouldn’t want to hang out with me if we did something for free.”
• “My parents never talked about money, so I guess I won’t talk about it either.”
• “If I lose all my money, then my parents will just give me more.”
• “Money is the cause of all the world’s problems; therefore, I never want to be wealthy.”
When it comes to money conversations, Dr. Elizabeth Dunn, the chief science officer for Happy Money, sees many parallels to the evolving conversation about mental health. “In the past, there was more of a stigma that kept many from sharing openly about their mental health struggles,” she says.
“Thankfully, that is changing, but when it comes to conversations about debt, income, and other money topics, it seems that we are still very reluctant to discuss our finances.” Getting in tune with your financial beliefs is one of the very best ways to start repairing your relationship with money.
Here are some expert-backed ways to begin repairing your relationship with money:
View money as just a tool
Creel likes to look at money as a tool in the same way that you would view a hammer as a tool. “You can either use the hammer to build a useful shelf for your home, or you could use the hammer to break things. It’s the same thing with money,” he explains. And just like how you have to learn how to swing a hammer, you have to learn how to use money to build the life you want.
Let go of the belief that “money is complicated or confusing”
“This often leads to not trying to learn about money because you believe it is beyond you — which it isn’t,” says Abraham. But if you don’t do anything to increase your understanding of money, you cannot feel better about your relationship with money. “All money skills are learnable, but without effort, we can fall into complacency, and complacency with money, which is the first step toward crisis,” Abraham explains.
Creel says it’s likely that you weren’t ever formally taught how to handle your money, and this is probably the reason you aren’t managing it correctly. “No one is taught how to use their money, and that’s what gets us into trouble,” he explains. “So, give yourself grace and know that wherever you’re at in your journey with money, there’s always something you can do to get better with it and improve your situation.”
Challenge your upbringing
Creel asks clients to take inventory of their childhood perceptions of money and question any limiting beliefs that they may have formed about it. “Ask yourself, ‘When it came to how my parents handled money, what did I learn from them?’ Talk with close friends and see what answers come up,” he says. This will likely bring up some common themes, like “money is hard to save” or “only people with X type of job have the ability to have a lot of money.” Next, ask yourself, “Am I sure that these beliefs are true?” “What are some other possible outcomes that could be true?” asks Creel.
Create some positive money affirmations
Come up with several empowering affirmations that you can say to yourself every morning that can help change your thoughts around money. Creel suggests the following:
• “I am capable of overcoming any money obstacles that stand in my way.”
• “I’m not poor; I’m just low in wealth right now. That is changing.”
• “I can conquer my money goals.”
Realize that your money situation can change
You might be strapped for cash at the moment, but a new job, a period of diligent saving, or a raise could change all of that, and quickly. “Remembering that much of what feels overwhelming in life, and with finances, is temporary is a good first step to overcoming anxiety when managing your finances,” explains Lauren Anastasio, a certified financial planner at SoFi. Try to shift your mindset and remind yourself that debt doesn’t have to last forever. “Keep your eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel,” Anastasio says.
Find a budget buddy
Understanding that the emotions you are going through are very real, and most likely have been felt by people you know, can be a comfort. “Talking to your partner, a close friend, or family member about what is going on may help you let go of guilt, shame, and financial anxiety,” says Anastasio.
Your budget buddy can be your cheerleader when you need it and motivate you whenever you get frustrated or discouraged. “Whether this person is a financial professional or a trusted friend whose financial choices you admire, he or she can also offer tips to help you be savvier with your money,” Anastasio adds.
Don’t compare yourself to others
Nobody is perfect, and comparison, says Anastasio, is the thief of joy. “It can be difficult to avoid making assumptions about how others are faring financially based on our social-media intake, but just because a friend is posting about their exotic vacations or a neighbor seems to be doing one luxury home renovation after another does not mean they’re experiencing success while you’re not,” she says.
Find the joy
While making money technically involves work, it doesn’t have to be a miserable, nonstop hustle. “Part of healing our relationship to money is not only believing that we are capable of making it, but believing that pursuing money and pursuing happiness, balance, and peace are by no means mutually exclusive. In fact, they’re mutually constitutive,” says Rachel Rodgers, the author of We Should All Be Millionaires and the CEO of Hello Seven.
While it’s true that “money can’t always buy you happiness,” it can definitely fund things like travel, new classes, and other passions you may have, enriching your life, and it can ease stress and increase your freedom. So, as you work through your limiting beliefs and grow throughout your financial journey, Rodgers says to remember to have fun and enjoy yourself along the way.
Tune in to your spending emotions
“Track what you spend and how it makes you feel so you can decide what’s worth it to you and what’s not,” suggests Dunn. Pay attention to how purchases affect your mood in order to identify what Dunn refers to as your “happy and sad spends.” By understanding how your money choices impact your mental and emotional well-being, you can start to shift your spending toward what makes you truly happy — such as paying down debt, savoring a treat, investing in an experience, or helping another person. “This mindfulness approach will help you get even more joy from your happy spends,” Dunn says.
Focus on your goals, not the dollars
When it comes to priorities, money can help you get there but shouldn’t be your primary focus. Robin Saks Frankel, a personal finance expert at Forbes Advisor, says it’s important to take time to evaluate what your goals are, not just with money but also with your life as a whole. “If you want to have a partner and children, for example, or you want to make a career change, those goals cannot be attained or measured by how much money you do or don’t have in the bank,” she says.
Nicole is a freelance writer published in The New York Times, AARP, Woman’s Day, Parade, Men’s Journal, Wired, Emmy Magazine, and more. Keep up with her adventures on Twitter at @nicolepajer.
Wray, L. Randall (2012). Modern money theory: a primer on macroeconomics for sovereign monetary systems. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 45–50. ISBN978-0230368897.
Mises, Ludwig von. The Theory of Money and Credit, (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1981), trans. H. E. Batson. Ch.3 Part One: The Nature of Money, Chapter 3: The Various Kinds of Money, Section 3: Commodity Money, Credit Money, and Fiat Money, Paragraph 25.
Black, Henry Campbell (1910). A Law Dictionary Containing Definitions Of The Terms And Phrases Of American And English Jurisprudence, Ancient And Modern, p. 494. West Publishing Co. Black’s Law Dictionary defines the word “fiat” to mean “a short order or warrant of a Judge or magistrate directing some act to be done; an authority issuing from some competent source for the doing of some legal act”
Tom Bethell (1980-02-04). “Crazy as a Gold Bug”. New York. 13 (5). New York Media. p. 34. Retrieved July-18-09
The Bank Credit Analysis Handbook: A Guide for Analysts, Bankers, and Investors by Jonathan Golin. Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (August 10, 2001). ISBN0-471-84217-6ISBN978-0-471-84217-0
The last few years have seen a lot of discussion about a ‘replication crisis’ or ‘credibility crisis’ in psychology. Various scientific findings, it seems, don’t appear to be repeatable when other scientists run exactly the same experiments.
Most of the focus in this crisis is on how scientists behave: were the original experiments biased? Was the work sloppy? Was someone gaming the system or even cheating? But perhaps a more pernicious problem is deeply rooted in how people think.
Many people who practise, use and report on the science of psychology assume that thoughts, feelings, behaviours and other psychological outcomes are the result of one or two strong factors or causes. This is called a ‘mechanistic mindset’.
Typical experiments attempt to isolate one or two variables, manipulate them and observe moderate to strong effects that are easy to replicate.
For example, if we cause people to feel angry by showing them a film clip that violates their deeply held values, a mechanistic mindset says that they should scowl, their blood pressure should rise and they should be more likely to act aggressively.
According to a mechanistic mindset, you should be able to plop this simple experiment into any scientific lab and produce very similar results.
It shouldn’t matter what time of day the experiment is run, what country it’s run in, what sex or gender the researchers are, what culture the participants come from, what they ate for breakfast or how much they slept, whether any of them are taking medication, and so on.
Such factors are treated as noise and their influence is ignored. If the experiment doesn’t produce the same observations over and over again, then the logical conclusion is that the original study was flawed and the finding is false.
A more realistic assumption, however, is that psychological outcomes do not arise from a few simple, strong factors in the first place. They emerge from an intricate web of many weak, interacting factors.
This is called a complexity mindset. The brain and the body are complex, dynamic systems. Any single variable in the system will have a weak effect. More importantly, we can’t manipulate one variable and assume that the others remain unaffected.
If we treat the brain and body like simple mechanistic systems, targeting one or two variables and leaving the rest unmeasured, then the impact of that fuller web of weak factors masquerades as a failure to replicate.
The absence of replication may, in fact, be the presence of meaningful variation. The structure of that variation can be discovered and modelled only when scientists design experiments to measure and observe it.
As such, psychology’s most cherished experimental method – the lab experiment – may need a major overhaul in order to observe and account for complexity.
Even when scientists carefully design experiments with complexity in mind, their results, when reported in the popular press, are often explained in mechanistic terms. News stories about science are simpler and more digestible when they have a pithy headline such as, “Brain circuit X causes fear” or “Gene Y causes depression”.
Is there a credibility crisis in psychology? Perhaps, but not the one that tongues are wagging about.
Psychological science may need to get its act together, not because its findings are unreliable, but because variation is being dismissed as noise rather than being investigated as something meaningful.
Psychological phenomena arise out of complexity, not from simple, mechanistic cause-and-effect.
Studies have shown that meditation can change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate.
