110. A felt shift on money

From anxious away-ness to calm toward-ness

During his sessions with patients, psychologist Eugene Gendlin noticed that their breakthroughs often came paired with sensations they felt in their bodies, e.g. a release of tension. He coined the term “felt shift” to describe this bodily sensation. I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but in the past few weeks I’ve felt a shift in my relationship toward money.

If I think back to where I was a year ago, my thoughts looked like this:

In order to justify quitting my tech job, I must figure out how to make the same amount of money that I used to make (or more). Otherwise, this was pointless!!

Thinking about money made me tense. Even when I was able to finally shift my attention towards creative pursuits, that money goal was still there, just compartmentalized.

More recently, I haven’t felt this looming pressure. When I think about my next steps, it’s more along the lines of:

It’d be cool if I had enough cashflow to enable me to do X!

No flinching or teeth grinding. Just a curiosity towards how I’ll figure out the money piece.

My felt shift in this area didn’t come about through a therapy session. Instead, my recent trip to Asia probably provided me with experiences that nudged me toward the shift.

Before the trip, the bare minimum required to survive in a coastal American city intimidated me as I thought about how I would make money outside of tech. Meeting a diverse set of people in Asia opened my eyes to a variety of attainable and attractive lifestyles.

It’s a stupidly obvious thing to write out: news flash – there are more ways of living than just working in tech or being a starving artist!

But that’s the whole point of the felt shift: some problems aren’t an intellectual puzzle you can solve in your head. You can read a million books and watch a million videos on a subject and still be stuck.

Sometimes, you have to provide the space to feel it.

me + Naoshima