Steps Toward Finances

I’m sharing one of the very first exercises we use with participants in the Enchanting game “Catching the Money Flow” for initial self-diagnosis in the financial sphere. May it help you too!

1.Write three associations for each of the following words:

Wallet
Work
Stress
Money
Rest

PleasureYou’ll have 18 words. Write each on a separate piece of paper.

2.Shuffle and randomly draw two pieces of paper. You’ll have 9 pairs of words. For each pair, find a common association—a word that unites the two for you personally. Look for the association that feels uniquely yours. Listen to yourself and your body. Does the word resonate with you? Is it the right one, or can it be phrased more precisely? Use nouns, verbs, and adverbs.

How to help yourself if you can’t find a unifying association:

Visualize—imagine each word in the pair as an image, step back mentally, and look at them from a distance. What connects them? Perhaps they are (or aren’t) part of something bigger? Maybe there’s a common piece or element in each image? What is that image? What one word describes it?Pay attention to bodily sensations—straighten your back, relax your shoulders, and shift your attention to your lower abdomen and legs. If visualization is difficult, search for the unifying association through sensations: What feelings does the first word evoke in your body? And the second? What do these sensations have in common? What do they remind you of? Describe it in one word.

3.Write these 9 words on separate pieces of paper, then draw 3 sets of 3 words. Find one unifying association for each trio.

4.Now you’ll have 3 words left. Derive one final unifying association from them.

The final word is your deep association, and the trio of words it emerged from may represent strategies for solving your query, key issues to address, or choices you need to make regarding your financial situation.