ScreamFree Articles

My Fellow ScreamFree Parents,

“It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” That’s how Dickens might have phrased his most famous opening line if he were witnessing our current state of affairs. We’re facing a global economic crisis that isn’t likely to end soon and everyone is scared. Now, when it’s more difficult than ever, the world needs to be ScreamFree – not just in their parenting, but in their pocketbooks as well. Monumental times such as these call for people to step up, in the midst of the chaos, and speak some calm, and calming, truth. So, get ready. I’ve got a personal challenge and invitation to you at the end of this message and I really want you to take me up on it. Until then, I encourage you to sit down, take a deep breath, and allow me to introduce you to a few truths (from some unlikely sources) that you probably haven’t heard before.

1. “We Are Spirits in the Material World.”

Yes, I’m quoting a 1982 song by The Police. We as people, first and foremost, are spirits in this physical world. And that means whenever we try to cling to material promises, we are eventually left grasping at the wind. This is not just a religious teaching held up in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism; it is a truth preached by Socrates, Plato, and most likely, your grandmother. The things of this world can never deliver the results they promise. Never. That’s because things, even things like money, are not what we really want. What we really want are the feelings that we believe money will give us: security, peace of mind, validation, and happiness. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the loss of money is not what’s driving us crazy these days. What’s keeping us up at night is the loss of our sense of security, which we believe is dependent upon having money.

George Burns once admitted that “Money does not buy happiness. But it can relieve a lot of anxiety.” Of course, having money can definitely ease a lot of worries, but having money is not the only way to relieve your anxiety. Let me say that again: Having money is not the only way to relieve anxiety—that’s good news when your anxiety is created by not having money!

So, how do you relieve your stress about money? Count your assets and calculate your net worth.

You have probably been doing a lot of bean-counting already, calculating the value of your home, your current 401K balance, your credit card debt, and the like. That’s great. What I want you to is to go one step further. On a sheet of paper, begin with your tangible assets (no matter how bleak they may be) and then start listing your intangible ones. List your age and health status. List your educational accomplishments. List your job and professional experiences. List your qualities that are actually productive and helpful to your company, your community, and your family. Now list your friends. All of them. Now your family, name by name. For those of you with the smallest ounce of faith, list your relationship with God. Every religion preaches that God is concerned for people and can be counted on as a provider. Trust this God and these promises. These are your real assets in this battle against the insecurities of the material world. So, how does your bottom line look to you now? Share this list with your spouse or your best friend, and ask them one question: Do you think I have a positive net worth?

2. “It’s Times Like These You Learn to Live Again”

This line is from a Foo Fighters’ song written just after 9/11, and their statement is just as true now as it was then. For years now, most of us have not been really living. We’ve been working hard to pursue “a better standard of living,” but that has usually meant financing our fantasies on borrowed money. The truth is that pursuing this fantasy living isn’t really living—it’s chasing. We’ve been chasing an ever-moving target, like a greyhound tailing a plastic bunny around a racetrack. Sure, we feel like we’re keeping up with the rest of the pack, but we’ve never actually caught the prize - the feelings of security and peace and validation we talked about earlier. All the while, the greedy gamblers in the stands (Wall Street firms, mortgage companies, and speculative investors) have been making money on our exhausting chase. Of course, what’s now happened is that we’ve run ourselves to exhaustion, and now, even the gamblers are crying for help.

The only way out of this mess is to see the race for what it is—an illusion. Like the rescued few in the movie, The Matrix, we are beginning to see that what we thought was real is only a false image in our minds. It’s time to look around us for real and reevaluate what life is all about. “Learning to live again” means calming down, growing up, and getting closer to our families and friends. It means thinking more about serving our neighbors and less about keeping up with them. It means putting down the debt shovel that’s created these problems and picking up the phone to ask for help. But that step is a difficult one to make. It can only take place if we learn how to admit that the rabbit we’ve been chasing just isn’t getting us anywhere.

3. “It’s Hard for Me to Say I’m Sorry.”

It pains me to quote this cheesy Chicago song from 1982, but I can’t get around the fact that it’s just so true. Talk show hosts, newsy TV commentators, and even presidential candidates are all trying to pin the blame for this crisis on somebody. It’s either the Bush administrations’ lack of regulation or Alan Greenspan’s continual rate cuts. It’s either Wall Street’s greedy and misleading financial packages or mortgage companies’ near-sighted and opportunistic promises. The real answer is “yes!”, all of those are factors in this financial freeze we’re in. But no one really want to talk about the elephant in the room: we’re all guilty too. Yes, we were all, to some degree, hoodwinked by the experts we’d been told to trust. But the hard truth of the matter is that we are all culpable for the problems we’ve created. All of us who’ve built our present material life on future, hoped-for income and estimated home value-escalation—we’re the ones who dug our holes by signing all those mortgages and credit card applications.

Most of us have pursued financial means to obtain a certain peace of mind, but the truth is that it usually works the other way around. Peace of mind usually leads to financial success, and peace of mind begins with acknowledging, accepting, and admitting the truth. Out loud.

And I’ll start. I, like a lot of you, have financed far too much of my life on borrowed funds. And now I’m hurting because of it. I’m not bankrupt by any means, but let’s just say I’ve learned that the parenting principle of “letting the consequences doing the screaming” applies in the financial sector as well.

Yes, like you, I’m angry at others for this situation. I’m angry that our government financed a trillion dollar war with money America didn’t have, all the while warning about potential financial calamity and doing nothing about it. I’m angry that the credit market has targeted us relentlessly with repeated offers of “free money.” I’m angry at the inflation of the housing market that drove up, artificially, the price of our home. But, who am I angry at the most? Myself, of course. Too many times, I acted against my gut, ignored my principles, and thus compromised my integrity by making choices that have exposed the financial stability of my family.

And I apologize.

I apologize for not leading myself better, and thus “mis-leading” all of you. It is “mis-leading” not because I’ve been deceitful, but because I have not been leading you all the right way, toward counter-cultural, common-sense, delayed-gratification message that I so often preach when it comes to parenting and marriage. The truth is, I have not been developing and delivering such a message to all of you because I have not been living it. Period. And for that, I apologize…and vow to work very hard in turning that around.

If you’ve read ScreamFree Parenting, you know that there is freedom in letting go of blaming others, whom you cannot control, and taking hold of owning up to your own choices, which you can control. The same is true in all walks of life. All you have to do is acknowledge the choices you’ve made, and then apologize to yourself and others. That’s it. The only thing holding you back is pride, and now is the time to let go of it. I promise you, freedom feels far better than pride.

So here’s the challenge for you. Ask yourself these questions: Am I ready to change the way I’ve been doing things? Am I ready to admit that I am culpable for the state of my relationships, my work life, and my finances? If you are – that’s great news. I want to hear from you and I want to help. Email me at hal@screamfree.com and let’s talk. We’ll talk without any shame, any blame, or any self-pity.

No matter how bad it is for you right now, your family needs you to remain ScreamFree. Your children deserve to know that regardless of the numbers in your account, they can trust in your calm leadership. You must rise above the chaos and the fear and reach a level of calm you didn’t even know could exist. And I promise to help you do just that. If you’d like to talk about coaching from me or one of our other ScreamFree trained professionals, I promise that we will make whatever financial adjustments necessary during these tough times to make that possible for you. In fact, I’m expanding my own coaching practice for the first time in five years in order to help in preventing this financial crisis from becoming a crisis within yours and other families as well. So, please, email me so that we can work through this together with our heads held high and our dignity intact.

Take care, Hal