Executive Summary
Severe overspending habits can be highly resistant to change because they share many characteristics of addictions.
Prochaska's Stages-of-Change Model has been used effectively in treating addictions and has been helpful in debt counseling. This article explains the Stages-of-Change Model using language easily accessible to financial advisers and their clients.
Five Stages of change are described in this paper: denial, ambivalence, preparation, action, and maintenance-along with the client's potential slide into relapse.
The article provides guidance for assessing the overspending client's readiness to change and describes techniques for moving clients toward lasting success in controlling overspending habits.
I'm currently listening to David Rock's 'Your Brain at Work' in which he uses the metaphor of a stage and actors against a narrative of a typical day in the lives of two protagonists to explain neuroscience and how our brains function.
In doing so, Rock explores what we can do to maximise our finite energy and be more mindful of how we are using our brains.
This is a compelling book that has already spawned several AHA moments for me - and the two characters are still only half way through their work days!
So far, the biggest take-aways for me include:
- our mental 'stage' only has room for a few actors at a time
- there are times of day that are better for complex tasks than others
- by paying attention to your mental processes, you can control the factors that impact the way your brain functions
- being 'mindful' and paying attention to your physical surrounds can give you a much-needed break from the narrative processes that would have you dwell on planning and scenarios.
Am enjoying this journey immensely and will be sad when it's over. Am looking forward to learning more about how to get the most out of my 1.3 kilos or so of grey matter at my disposal.