If you had enough money, you’d feel better about yourself right? Not necessarily. Many times, I have found that my coaching clients use money to actually lower their self-esteem. It’s not often recognized as a tool we use to reflect the way we feel about ourselves.

You use money to lower your self-esteem…

When you…

• Keep increasing your debt.

• Spend money to relieve your guilty feelings.

• Forget to appreciate what you do have.

• Get angry with yourself over past financial mistakes.

I talked to two people this week who mentioned that they were tired of being nickel and dimed. This reminded me of a life coaching client I had years ago.

This hard-working mother of four children felt shame that she couldn’t give her children more. So we poured over her budget and I learned that every night she was buying fast food for dinner.

Clearly she was nickel and diming her money away. And the habit was costly in other ways. She was overweight and two of her children also were getting chubby. Easy fix, right? Tell the mother to stop the nightly drive-thru runs. But she worked long hours and coming home to cook – her least favorite thing to do –wasn’t likely something she would stick with very long.

I just heard last week that confidence in the economy is at the lowest level it has ever been.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed an underlying fear that seems to be growing. We are being bombarded by the media, hearing the reports of lay offs, banks failing and stores going out of business (not to mention the entire auto-maker industry), streets with less consumer traffic, and retailers just aren’t as busy as they should be this time of year.

For decades, we Americans have focused on the basic belief that MORE = HAPPINESS. People everywhere say, “If we could only get more, we’d be so much happier. A bigger house, closets of designer clothes, dining out every night, and giving our kids everything we didn’t have. All these things would make life better, right? We’ll have the American dream!”

It didn’t work. The more we got, the more we wanted. We started buying based on the assumption that in the future, everything goes up. Real estate values grow, our incomes rise, the stock market steadily climbs, and we have an endless ability to get more credit when ever we want it.

There is no doubt in my mind, we are going through the most challenging financial situation we have ever gone through in our lives and it’s not even close to the bottom.

The reason our financial situation will get a lot worse before it gets better is because we’re trying to solve it the wrong way. It’s not about money at all, the financial crisis is only the results of a belief most of us have that we gain at other people’s expense. Think about it – why are there so many reports of mortgages going into foreclosures and people being forced to declare Chapter 7? Everyone was looking for a short term gain. Lenders thought they could profit at other’s expense, and the lendees thought they could beat the system.