Lessons from Scrooge

Ebenezer Scrooge, the infamous miser of yuletide lore, can teach us a lot about money -- specifically how to change our views on how we deal with it.

For me, the Christmas season doesn't seem complete without Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." This tale is captivating, as it chronicles the transformation of the coldhearted and calculating Scrooge, the goodness of Bob Cratchit and the visits of the Ghosts of Christmas.

As a student of Dickens' fable, I've been amazed at the wisdom and truths contained in that seemingly simple story. Scrooge isn't merely the villain he's often made out to be, nor is Cratchit the straightforward hero.

How ironic that what Dickens unveils is a powerful process for financial transformation (or any desired transformation). Dickens outlines steps anyone can employ to change destructive financial behaviors:

- The first big event in the story is the visit of the ghost of Scrooge's old business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge takes to heart Marley's warning to change his ways: The old miser opens himself to improving. Psychologists call this an intervention. The first and most important step toward transformation is a personal realization that something is amiss with your behavior and it's you who wants to change.

- What is the key to developing an internal desire to change? Addiction recovery programs call this "hitting bottom." It is becoming convinced that change is crucial and that you are passionately ready to take action.

- On that Christmas Eve, inexplicably, Scrooge was finally ready to consider the message his old friend Marley had delivered to him on many Christmas Eves previously. Scrooge was willing to consider that his firmly entrenched worldview might be skewed and to consider seeing things for what they were, not as he assumed they were.

- We may not be misers like Scrooge, but when it comes to our beliefs around money, we have as many delusions as he did, such as "I work hard so I deserve to spend money."

Becoming willing to consider change is half the battle to free ourselves from destructive financial behavior based on these delusions.