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MINDFULNESS AND YOUR MONEY

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Sir,

I have been wondering why when I was young, in kindergarten, E10 seemed to be a lot of money. when I got to the first grade, E50 was, unthinkably, a lot of money. When I was a teenager, E5 000 could have been a fortune. But, dare give the same E5 000 to my father, or any adult, the same fortune could not have had the magnitude of gleeful reception that it had from me. At first, I thought it was childishness, or just me being a teenager. However, come to think of it, E5 000 would have been a fortune to a middle-aged homeless beggar as well.


So tell me now, was it childish? In my quest for knowledge I treaded many different paths and dabbled in concepts that have challenged and revolutionised the way I think. I’ll say this anecdotal to my life, I realised that all the things that I have been taught and that I know, have drawn me into a cosmos governed by mindfulness. It is a simple concept that I would, hazarding a guess, say is quintessentially the ingredient to financial success. Yes, I said it, the ingredient to financial success.


Awareness


Mindfulness is awareness; it is paying attention, shifting focus onto something, or narrowing down your concentration. It is a concept applied in almost everything in, virtually, all spheres. It is so dominant that we all are its subjects in oblivion.
We narrow down our day and have a schedule, we have a timetables, or syllabi, in schools,we have start and finish times at work, we even budget our money, and all these are applications of mindfulness: narrowing down, focusing and paying attention to something. The reason why the E10, E50 and E5 000 are all received differently by people, in their respective stages above, is simply because we grow and be mindful, narrow down or focus if you may, of something that becomes our priority. Suffice to say, we have less priorities when we are young, and it’s the quite the antithesis when we are just adults.


Limit


We limit ourselves to our priorities and we chastise ourselves if we can’t meet them. We use negative labels or phrases like the African time, the always behind the syllabi phrase or the never on budget label. We find solace in these labels which, simply, laser in on our shortcomings, and dare I say ignorance.


Simply put, we are not doing it right. I believe that for any concept, as broad as mindfulness, to be extrapolated successfully in large scale, it must start its streak of success while it is small.
So, drawing a symmetry between the crude concept of mindfulness meditation and its application to your financial budget is one way of connecting the dots to dissect our rights and wrongs. In mindfulness meditation, which is where the concept of mindfulness is said to owe its genesis, there are many facets of the concept but, applicable to our finances are two of these: attention and awareness, and control.
Attention and Awareness


In the concept of mindfulness, attention precedes awareness. Attention is concentration, observation, knowing, and then, consequently, awareness.
It is observing your mental state, why you’re practising mindfulness and how to go about being mindful. If budgeting is, more or less, an application of mindfulness, in a large scale, then paying attention and knowing is, as well, the first step to a successful budget. That means knowing how deep your pockets run, how deep your financial reservoirs are, and your spending habits and/or saving capabilities. Awareness is the central piece to the concept; it is indispensable. Awareness of what is known and of the existence of the unknown. As such, one also ought to be aware of their needs and wants,goals and reasons to create a budget.


Budget


There is a plethora of reasons why one might create a budget, but one needs awareness of the existence of the tandem nature of attaining goals; one can’t achieve all at once. They have to be broken down and narrowly defined; that’s mindfulness too. It is, ultimately, vital that one knows how to budget. It is not just about drawing boarders around spending, and living off a tight budget like we usually say, for future purchases. It is about budgeting, saving if you may, and still living comfortably within the circumference of your standards. Having this kind of knowledge will lay the first brick to a successful budget.

Thabani AK Banda

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