Experiences with the Poverty Mentality

I've always thought I had a "chip on my shoulder" when it came to my socioeconomic background and struggling immigrant parents. It doesn't sound terrible but it's evolved into a struggle with a festering poverty mentality, an attitude that is focused and obsessed with money, or the lack thereof. It can easily prevent you from actually attaining any sort of wealth or happiness.

There are three warning signs:

#1: A constant fixation with money

#2: Anti-rich people attitude

and the most detrimental:

#3: Fear-based decision-making

A high school friend of mine, who is by modern standards very successful, forced me to face this fact a few months ago. I had finally ended my student life and started making money... but not enough to feel comfortable and certainly not enough to help out my family (#1). So every time we'd talk, I'd bring up how I felt out of place and different from the money makers around me in the Bay Area. 

I was obsessed with the contrast of my upbringing with those of the yuppies of SF and more honestly, my boyfriend. I envied all the excessive things that money could buy, like aerial yoga or rock climbing gym memberships. I was concerned with status. I was concerned with not measuring up to my Bay-bred beau.

I didn't realize it but I was becoming very contemptuous (#2). 

Recently, I was in Lausanne with Marvin (admirable for his steadfast and non-judgmental nature) when I decided to make a concrete change in this mindset. We were walking to Lake Geneva to see the sunset. The expenses of Switzerland weighed heavily on my mind--and thoughts about money proliferate naturally to thoughts such as my pedigree. I asked him about the degrees that his parents had and subsequently lamented over my own parents, whose life struggles prevented one from completing a bachelors. At that moment, I realized I was on the way to ruining a perfectly good evening by subconsciously "guilting" him for having had "more." Even if he didn't feel it directly at that moment, that kind of behavior could easily cause resentment on both sides. And resent can be so, so harmful to the health of a relationship.

At that moment, I said: "I have to stop being so hungup on this... I am where I am now, and worked for it, and where I am is awesome." In Switzerland, no less. With my round trip plane tickets paid for by UCSF.

My hangups about money in Switzerland are another example. The first time we bought train tickets there, my mood irrationally plummeted to the point where I didn't want to spend any more even though I had knew I had set aside enough money for the whole Europe trip. I am always afraid of spending and always afraid of losing, which is markedly different from being frugal and simple. The difference is an irrational fear of loss against a logical understanding of necessity.

It is such wasted energy and such a lack of mindfulness for me to feel this way. 

A chip on my shoulder is good fuel to get you started but let's be real. I'm at a pretty good place now and it's time to mature.

#1: Fixation on playing the my cards to the field is better than a fixation on what I don't have in play.

#2: I could be inspired by the success of others rather than harbor resentment.

#3: My decisions should be more motivated by love and a greater desire to make the world a better place.

Lausanne, Switzerland