A lot of money talk can be boiled down to “managing risk” — two of the most boring words tbh, yet ones that deserve consideration.

Some of us are great at managing risk – some folks, like me, who’ve experienced trauma end up hyperviglilant to risk. A core self-protection function kicks in, and we seek to understand and get ahead of things that can go wrong, to create less uncertainty around us. 

Vigilance is a gift in scary times, including in scary economic times

The truth is, hypervigiliance can’t prevent things from going wrong, but it can help by having a plan for when [not if] they do. While I wouldn’t necessarily wish all the experiences of hypervigiliance on anyone, I would like to honor the gifts of this approach: consideration, preparation, intuition.

It gets you to ponder the question: What might happen, and if I wanted to prepare for it, what could I do, today?

The best parts of vigilance are about wisdom, honoring intuition, and caring enough for yourself to create a safety plan with what’s available to you. Not spinning out on everything ever, not getting down because you can’t buy this or that. Instead, you are learning and assessing and calculating. 

This is strategy, my friends. Strategy is how we create paths to a win.

This is also the energy I want you bringing to your finances: I perceive, I consider, and I take action to care for myself.

Now is a moment to call in that energy, because the last few weeks [early Fall 2022] have seen a lot of economic changes and turbulence, which I talk about here. 

 I perceive, I consider, and I take action to care for myself.

Perceiving: It’s choppy waters out there, and we’re all in this boat. In a way, everyone in our current systems is surviving trauma: the nonconsent of work, the gaslighting about our environmental decimation, the exhaustion of all the decisions to be made about money.

Considering: You can’t change it all. You can change a few things. Which would you like to work on first?

Taking action to care for yourself: If you’re reading this, you know how to take action and how to care. Take it one step at a time. You got this.