3 Ways to Know If You’re a Short Cough

Hello friends!

Hard bread, for those who don’t know, is that person who prefers to eat old, hard bread, instead of buying new bread. Not that the taste is for hard bread, the reason is financial, that is, to save money. It’s a perfect image for a miserly person. Avarice, one of the seven deadly sins, is a word that came to us through the Latin breakdown, and has the following meanings of excessive and sordid attachment to money; immoderate desire to acquire and accumulate wealth, stinginess, stinginess.

Like everything else in life, we can speak of degrees or levels of intensity, going from zero degree – a total material detachment – ​​to the maximum degree: a total inability to get rid of acquired objects.

This theme is dear to psychology because it can represent an important symptom in the psychic structure described by psychoanalysis: obsessional neurosis. The vocabulary of psychoanalysis by Laplanche and Pontalis defines obsessive neurosis as: “A class of neuroses defined by Freud and which constitute one of the main frameworks of the psychoanalytic clinic. In the most typical form, psychic conflict is expressed by so-called compulsive symptoms (obsessing ideas, compulsion to carry out undesirable acts, fight against these thoughts and tendencies, conjuring rites, etc.) and by a way of thinking characterized particularly by mental rumination, doubt, scruples, and which leads to inhibitions of thought and action”.

This does not mean that a miserly person is an obsessive neurotic. The link made by me here is just a justification for studying this way of looking at life, which can, in a sense, be laughable or lead to pity.

Some time ago I wrote this text – Psychology and Prosperity – about what each person might think about having or not having money. Evidently, prosperity is broader than having money or not, however, the objective was to show some aspects of what we can call the psychology of money.

In the case of avarice, of cheapness, the central thought is that there will be a lack of resources or goods, that it is necessary to be careful, that it is necessary to be careful and save for an emergency. With this excuse, many, many people end up leading a mean life and, as we will see, this separates them from others.

For example, a parent may have to pay child support. Child support will be set by a judge and will be compulsory. Many parents will then be forced to pay, at the risk of being arrested. Although the calculation of the monthly amount is fair (raised by criteria of justice), it is very common to see parents complaining about having to pay the pension. Well, the pension, as the name suggests, is for food. Nothing prevents the father from contributing with other aspects of the care of his son or daughter in addition to the pension, right?

This is an example of how, deep down, it is about the belief that if the person donates (for a child!), he will not have it for himself. In fact, it is always about selfishness.

Form 2: How do you feel about what you have?

In a capitalist universe, we often see excessive consumption. As several authors in psychology and psychoanalysis have already pointed out, capitalism is based on consumer demand, instigated by the feeling of lack, of emptiness, of incompleteness. Marketing knows this and creates campaigns to show – in one way or another – how you will feel better having that product, not just for the immediate benefit, but for the feeling of being better than your neighbor or to be more desirable to others or to have status. Finally, the logic lies in the lack.

Thus, the person is able to buy a car for 100,000 reais (which is not even worth 25,000 outside Brazil) to feel better and is unable to donate a basic basket per month.

3rd Form: How do you behave?

One day in the afternoon, when I was on vacation, I was going through the open TV channels and there was an auditorium program on the air, one of those in which the objective is to create a shack among the participants. The theme was the same as this text and, in the end, after several testimonials from guests who lived with misers, the psychologist made a synthesis that I thought was brilliant: “Instead of saving toilet paper, why don’t you use this energy to earn more? ”

It was a perfect reframing for a participant who had the habit of complaining to his wife and children about how much toilet paper was used. Well, saving toilet paper isn’t going to make anyone richer, right? So why not change the focus and worry more about finding new sources of income?

To conclude, I would like to indicate a video: What do you think when you see a beggar? and Kalil Gibran’s wisdom thought: “Money is like a stringed instrument; anyone who doesn’t know how to use it properly will only hear discordant music. Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully those who retain it and encourages those who turn it to their fellow men”.

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