The Problem Of The Economic Mindset

We live our lives through what I call an Economic Mindset. By this I don’t mean that we equate everything to money. I mean that money is a reflection of the way we look at life.

We put values on actions or inaction’s and use this as the basis of our decisions.

Often I look around at people’s decisions and their rationalisations and it seems that many people are scared to give too much of themselves. The cultural equation for the ideal life seems to be the maximum you can get for the minimum you give. Yet study after study demonstrates that the more we do… the more we give… the more active we are… the better we feel.

You can see the Economic Mindset demonstrated when we feel we have to do or have something in order to be happy.

It is because of the Economic Mindset that we believe if a small amount of something is good, more must be better. And so we become addicts or over-indulgers.

Take for example our diet. Today we eat far more than we actually need. If

the whole world ate the same amount as the U.S.A, we would need 3 more planets to sustain us. In 1960 a McDonalds portion of French-fries contained 200 calories. Today it has 610 calories.

Yet it is this mindset of overindulging is killing us. 280,000 Americans die every year from Obesity.

We hate to exercise; yet we feel great afterwards.

We love to sit in front of the television; yet as an action, it generates among the lowest levels of happiness.

The Economic Mindset is clearly seen in our relationships. The expectation is that if you do X, your Partner will do Y. Then when your Partner doesn’t do Y; perhaps they never even knew it was expected... you feel cheated.

This feeling of resentment creates that same balloon we spoke about earlier between you and your Partner. The longer it stays there, the more distance, bitterness and unhappiness you will experience with your Partner.

The Economic Mindset is particularly destructive in personal relationships. First of all, before the couple even get together it has set up a fairytale image of romance. Then boy meets girl and they fall in love. Sooner or later the novelty of the relationships fades. Probably one or two issues have by now come between them.

Meanwhile both individuals are still receiving the images through newspapers, magazines, people they see, TV programs and films of the ideal Partner. 

Now the media exists to sell products. There is no other reason. Sure they inform and entertain, but they are businesses. And they make money from advertising. So the information and entertaining is there for the purpose of distracting audiences so they can sell them things.

There are different types of advertising, but one of the most prevalent is aspirational. This is where the man wears a certain deodorant and suddenly women start throwing themselves at him. Or the car that gives you instant respect. 

We take in all these images. Lots of people say to this, ‘ Yes, but I don’t pay attention to adverts’. Studies show that even when people think that advertising doesn’t influence them, it does. If it didn’t companies wouldn’t spend the millions that they do. 

We make sense of the world by putting together everything we see and hear and coming up with our own interpretation of how things work.

This is very important in relationships.

Why?

Because in our head we hold two images of our Partner. What they should be and what they are. 

What they should be is based on all the examples we see of Husband’s and Wives around us. As an example here’s how a woman (And, yes of course men will use a similar process) might use images as a benchmark for her relationship…

 the Neighbour’s husband bringing home flowers

 the Friend being whisked away for a romantic weekend

 the charismatic lead in the film we saw last week

 a Colleagues humour and caring

 the physique of the man you see at your gym

 the wealth and power of someone else

 the dress sense of another

 the intelligence of another

 another who is nurturing

and if you add up the total of all the best of all these images, this is the total value of men to our fictional woman. Now this represents 100% of her ideal Husband/Partner. 

Now she’ll have some kind of idea of how much she believes she deserves. Now she’ll rate herself in terms of her self-image. Specifically she may use;

 How attractive she perceives herself to be

 Her housework abilities and effort

 Her personal qualities that you bring to the relationship

 Her intelligence level

 And so on.

Each of use has our own unique images of potential partners and what we deserve. So when you are assessing a potential partner you may unconsciously think, I’m worth about 60% of my ideal picture. 

Then once you have begun the relationship initially you show the best side of each other. Not just that, but you will also tend to look for at the more positive features of the other.

In time the relationship settles down. Both put less effort in, because they get distracted by other things and also because they feel less need to. Each is more comfortable with the other.

It’s now that words, thoughts and actions will start to pass unresolved between the couple. This creates that balloon. The longer between resolution, the more distanced they become. 

It isn’t really the things that your Partner does that causes you to be upset with him or her. If you feel happy, what they do may be easily shrugged off by you. But if you have become ground down and irritated, you have far less tolerance and patience and so what they do affects you far more. By working on being happy, you therefore are more accepting of your Partner, and so you allow them to be as they are to a greater extent. Without any loss or cost to you.

When you feel distanced, feelings of resentment and bitterness will creep in. All of us are whole people. We have an enormous range of qualities some you will feel are positive, some negative. No one is completely positive or negative. We are each capable of experiencing all emotions and acting on each of these emotions. If you feel bitter about someone, you will look at the aspects of that person that justify that bitterness. If you feel loving about someone, you will see those aspects of the person. However you feel about a person determine what you see in them. 

This is why some people love someone, while others cannot see any redeeming features in the same individual.

So the more distanced you become from your Partner, the more aspects you will see that you dislike. As you do this you re-rate your Partner against your ideal rating. But now the score is much lower than before. And so you feel cheated.

The Economic Mindset demands that you get as much as you give. 

So you either;

 reduce the effort you put into the relationship,

 feel bad,

 have a relationship with another to top up the gap between what you feel you give in and what you get.

 or change your Partner. 

Money is very important to the Economic Mindset because it is a way of putting value on people, their time or their creations. We do not think through the Economic Mindset because of money; we have money because it is the physical manifestation of our Economic Mindset.

We grade people’s worth by the value we ascribe to their creations. We sometimes determine our own self-worth by the value others place on us. Being paid more than our neighbour makes us feel that we are more highly valued and so we relish status symbols. Being bought expensive presents and taken to expensive places makes us feel that we are treasured and so influences our self-valuation.

The problem with this perspective is that the value is inherently hollow. It is only a symbolic shell for the real valuation. And so no matter how much surface value we gain, it will never be enough because it has nothing real that can nourish us.