Money in our lives. In our society, the topic of money still remains taboo - talking about money is indecent, inappropriate, vulgar. But this topic does not leave anyone indifferent. Money permeates our lives, and it affects our relationships with partners, with children, with parents, affects our health, intimate life, and causes a lot of feelings and experiences. Our modern society is a consumer society, and the topic of money becomes the leitmotif of our existence. Until relatively recently, we helped build communism, in which money would not be needed. Money was perceived as evil. The lack of money was not humiliating, and its presence was not a source of pride. Other values ​​took priority. During Soviet times, ideology successfully made the poor proud. It was believed that modesty adorns a person (by the way, then those who disagreed already added “if he has no other merits”), and money does not bring happiness. People lived in a world of fixed, inanimate money; prices for goods did not change for years. And suddenly, money burst into our lives, and we found ourselves defenseless against its power. It seems that all life revolves around money - constant messages about exchange rates, endless advertising, even intellectual games have become about money. However, having lived for many years in a society where the role of money was artificially devalued, we have not learned how to handle money. We have not developed a culture of investing money - there is still spending according to the principle “we spend money that we don’t have enough on things that we don’t need in order to impress people we can’t stand.” Those. our relationship with money is clearly immature. Often people, turning to psychologists, do not realize that money is at the heart of their problems. Families often have disputes over money - who earns it, who spends it and how, who should manage the family budget, etc. Money pathology spreads in the form of gambling addiction, shopaholism, and kleptomania. At the same time, people’s views on life in general, on themselves, on others, on relationships between people have changed. The place of money in the value system has changed. Money has become a measure of a person’s status, his position in society, and success. Money is an indicator of our professional achievements. Money opens up a lot of opportunities for us - getting a decent education, maintaining health and youth, traveling, making our lives more comfortable. Money makes it possible to become independent and, to a certain extent, free. And if we want to be masters of our own money and do not want it to control us, we need to understand why money plays such an important role in our lives, how we behave in relation to it, and how money affects our relationships with people. You just need to think: - how do I personally feel about money? - why do I need it? - how much would I like to earn? (not receive!) - do I spend it or invest it? - how much do I value my time? opening hours? day? month? - what would change in my sensations, feelings, needs, activities, attitude towards myself, loved ones, towards society if my income doubled? Five times? A hundred times? Clarity and intelligibility about yourself in relation to money will help you feel more confident in our society, in which there has been a serious substitution of prices and values. When there are no clear, generally accepted values ​​in a society, price comes to the fore. These concepts are confused: it seems to us that monetary value defines us, represents what we have achieved and what we can count on. And when our income grows, we feel our own value, and if it decreases, we perceive it very painfully - as if without it we are no longer worth anything. (from the category “Every zero in a bank account adds height to a man and makes him sexually attractive.”) And then it is appropriate to ask yourself the question “Am I money?” People who value money above all else, according to psychologists, are less satisfied with life and have a worse state of mental health, feel more.