Perceptions of Income – Gross v Net

We need to take a moment to discuss your gross income versus your net income.   In case you don’t know, your “gross” income is the full amount of a source of income (like your paycheck) before taxes or any other deductions are taken out.  After they take the taxes and deductions out of your source of income, you receive what remains and this is referred to as “net” income.  As an example.  If your hourly wage is $10 per hour and you work 40 hours during the week, your gross pay is $400.  But when you receive your paycheck, you notice that it is only $350. That is because they have taken out all of the taxes.  The gross pay was $400, the net pay was $350. Pretty straightforward, right?

Okay, so this is where a lot of programs leave this information.  There is money that is “taken out” of your paycheck and you should know the difference between “gross” and “net.”  But there’s some important information that is being left out, and in my efforts to eliminate our tendency to DISCOUNT the value of anything, we need to look at this just a little bit longer and perhaps from a slightly different perspective.

First, it is very important that when we look at our hourly wage or salary that we give it the total value.  For instance, in the example above, you earned the full $400 and we want to recognize the full amount.  But what happens is we tend to focus only on the net income because that is what you are going to use to pay your bills.  There is a tendency to think of the money we didn’t receive as being “taken out” – which is only part of what happens.  That money is taken out, but it is used to pay for something.  That is to say that you are actually spending that money.  You are spending that money on a lot of things.  Some of it goes to pay for roads, police, military, libraries, schools.  Maybe some of it goes to pay for your health insurance or a retirement account.  Maybe some of it goes to child support.  Wherever this money goes, it is you that is spending it and we want to recognize that it is our money that is leaving our possession.

The point of this discussion is not to argue whether your tax money is being spent well, or what is fair or right, or who is to blame for anything.  The point is to illustrate that the money between “gross” and “net” is money that is spent on goods and services.  It is money that you earned and we do not want to DISCOUNT the value of those resources by not acknowledging them.   So, yes, the money is “taken out” but then it is paid to someone else.  It is not something that is happening to you, it is a process in which you are actively participating.

 

The Perception of Income as “The Solution”

Earning more income can vanquish all of life’s trials and tribulations – true or false?  There is the tendency among many of my students to believe that earning more income can vanquish all of life’s trials and tribulations.  The notion that “when I make a lot of money, my problems will be solved” is an extremely common one. So how do we get more money?  Well, the only two ways that I know of to get more money are to spend less or find additional income.  That’s easy, right?  Wrong.  Why?  Because spending less and finding additional income take additional time and/or energy, and time and energy, like money, fall high on the list of things people would like to have more of, not less.  Ay, there’s the rub!  So the real question then is, how do we get more money without having to expend any additional time and/or energy?  And the answer is…more money is not the answer.  While I do agree that in certain circumstances more income can be beneficial, sometimes money can create more problems than it solves.  If earning more income was a cure-all, then seventy-eight percent of former NFL players wouldn’t be bankrupt or under severe financial stress just two years into retirement.  And the majority of lottery winners wouldn’t be right back where they started financially speaking within five years of winning the lottery. While financial health may begin with an increase in income, it does not guarantee sustained financial health.  Financial health is sustained through the creation and maintenance of assets.

 

 

The Perception of Money

A key concept in Meaningful Consumerism and improving your financial health and  is to understand our perceptions of money and how money operates as a component of our financial health.  However, most people who I work with tell me that they don’t have any money, don’t have enough money, can’t save money, don’t know how to budget their money, and/or feel stressed about money.

So before we can really get any deeper into the discussion on financial health, I recommend that we should probably have a little bit better understanding of this term “money.”  So I’d like to ask you…What is Money?

In all my years of teaching, I have never met anyone who wouldn’t like to have more money.  In fact, the vast majority of my students view more money as the ONLY solution to their financial troubles – their golden ticket to being able to stick to a budget, save money for the future, improve their credit, reduce the amount of stress they experience in their daily lives, and to have a good life.  So, what is money?  When I pose this question to one of my classes, the responses I get are typically verbalized with vigor.  Money is power!  Money is status!  Money is opportunity!  Money is evil!  Money is freedom!  Money is worry!  It’s bad, no, it’s good.  It’s paper, it’s electronic.  It’s imaginary.  It’s government conspiracy.  It’s control. It turns out to be a lot of things.

Let’s use our imagination for a moment.  Imagine you had a hammer sitting on a table.  Does the hammer have any use just sitting there on the table, without a human to interact with it?  No.  The hammer can’t get up and start pounding nails into the wall on its own. All it can do is sit there on the table, patiently waiting for a human to pick it up and use it.  On its own, it has no use.  Sitting there on the table, the hammer merely represents the ability to do several things – some good, some not so good. It could put nails in walls, take nails out of walls, knock something loose that was stuck or push something into place.  On the other hand, it could also smash your thumb, knock a hole in a wall, make dents in things, or potentially seriously injure or even kill someone.  The hammer is simply a tool.  You get to determine how to use it and until it is being used it is neither inherently good nor bad.  It just is.

Money is really no different.  If left sitting in the wallet, it will do nothing.  If left sitting in the bank account, it will do nothing.  It might draw some interest, but until it is used, the interest will do nothing too. By itself, money doesn’t do anything, and it doesn’t do anything to us.  It does not move without us “willfully allowing” it to leave our possession, a behavior commonly referred to as spending.  In order for money to leave your possession, you have to willfully allow it to do so – always.

If you have a $10 bill in your pocket, it can represent many possibilities – but it is neither inherently good nor bad, it just is.  If you have $100,000 in the bank, it might mean a lot of different things to you, but until it is being used, it is neither inherently good nor bad, it just is. That $10 or $100,000 can be used to make purchases that will be beneficial, or it can be used to make purchases that are not beneficial. In the same way that you get to determine how to use a hammer or any other tool, you also get to determine how you will use your money.

So, as a reminder, money is simply a tool.  Money might come in many different forms, like paper, coins, or electronic information, but ultimately, it’s still just a tool and we get to decide how to use it.  All of those other things that we think about money, they are just reflections of what money represents to us.  And it is good to know that about ourselves as well.  But we will come back to this point over and over, money is a tool and it is a neutral object that we use.  Money does not use us.

 

Creating Perceptions Through Marketing – Part 4 – Turning Wants Into Needs

Successful marketers know that one of the most effective ways to get customers to spend money, time and energy consuming their products and services is to convince the customers that they need a particular product or service.  Most often they accomplish that by either creating a need where one did not exist before, or by turning a want into a need.  For example in 2011, Dove introduced a new deodorant purported to give women “softer, smoother underarms in just five days.” Hinging on the idea that women’s armpits are unattractive, the sales campaign for the product included ads portraying women joyfully cutting the sleeves off their shirts, as if they’d just been liberated from a shameful deformity and survey results asserting that armpit dysmorphia is a pervasive problem plaguing the majority of women worldwide.  By pinpointing a problem that most consumers didn’t even know they had, exacerbating anxiety about the problem, and then selling the cure, Dove’s powerful marketing formula successfully creates a need where one did not exist before.

The computer and mobile phone industries have been successfully turning wants into needs for decades.  People are really adamant about needing their computers and cell phones.  Remember when internet access used to cost like a hundred dollars a second, when you actually figured out what “Wi-Fi” meant, or when only grown-ups carried a cell phone?  I thought needs were about survival.  “Yeah,” people tell me, “I know.  I need them to survive.”  And they’re not kidding either.  Just try telling someone you’re taking his or her cell phone or computer away for the day and you’ll get one of two responses.  One is, “Oh Hell no, you’re not!”  The other is this unbelievably sad, scared look, that I think is best described as panic, sometimes followed by whimpering and, on occasion, cowering in a corner in the fetal position.  Ok, so we need them.  Why?  Because we’ve been told over and over that we do, we believe that we do, and so we do.

The pervasive message that marketers spend as much as $200 to $400 billion a year on, and bombard consumers over 3,000 times a day with, is, our lives, as they exist right now, are not enough.  We are not successful enough, pretty or attractive enough, or rich enough.  We don’t drive the right car, support the right cause, live in the right neighborhood, or eat the right foods.   We don’t smell right, don’t dress well, and we don’t belong to the right groups.  Our teeth aren’t clean enough, our clothes aren’t clean enough, and our houses aren’t clean enough.  We’re not efficient enough, productive enough, or well enough connected.  We need to work harder, exercise harder, and play harder.  We need to be better friends, better spouses, better parents, and better providers.  We need $1.5 million to retire, we need to take our families on vacations, and we need to pay for our kids’ 155 different activities. We need more money, more money, and more money.  And if we just had a little bit more money, more success, more status, more shoes, whiter teeth, if we just had the right product or service, our life would be nothing but sunshine and happiness, just like all of the excited, smiling people on the billboards and in the television commercials.

Our parents heard it before us, and their parents before them.  Our families are surrounded by it. It’s all around us, all the time. It is a never ending, around the clock message.  We are lacking, we’re not good enough, not yet.  Out with our friends and colleagues, at work, even at our schools and places of worship – we are bombarded by it.  And based on the figures, we’ve marketed the heck out of it, we’ve bought it, and we’ve even gone into debt for it.

 

Creating Perceptions Through Marketing – Part 3 – Data Mining

Now let’s take a moment to consider all of the ways in which marketers and advertisers are able to access information about the individual consumer’s spending habits and personal shopping needs.  Google is a marketer/advertiser gold mine.  Spend a few minutes surfing your favorite Internet sites and they know a lot more about you than you probably would like for them to know.

Target, who has been credited with being able to find out if a customer is pregnant, even if she doesn’t want them to know, has been collecting vast amounts of data on every person who walks into its stores for decades.  Each Target shopper is assigned a unique Guest ID number that not only keeps tabs on everything you buy but is also linked to demographic information such as your age, marital status, number of kids you have, which part of town you live in, your estimated household income, how long it takes you to drive to the store, whether you’ve recently moved, what websites you visit, and what credit cards you carry in your wallet.

Acxiom, the leader in the multi-billion dollar database marketing industry, was featured in a June 2012 New York Times article by Natasha Singer and was said to have databases containing “information on about 500 million active consumers worldwide, with about 1,500 data points per person…and knows things like your age, race, sex, weight, height, marital status, education level, politics, buying habits, household health worries, vacation dreams – and on and on.”

Wait a minute – did they say “multi-billion dollar database marketing industry?” When I first read it, I just kind of read on by, and then about a paragraph later, did a double take.  Database marketing Industry – in the words of my three-year old daughter – “What does that even mean?”  It means, folks, that there is a whole industry dedicated to gathering as much information about you and your behaviors as possible and selling it to others who then use it as a tool to try to manipulate what, where, and how you consume goods and services.  Now I promise I’m not going to go all 1984 on you.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  All I am saying is, if you ask me, that is kind of creepy.

So, what is the purpose of all of this marketing anyway?  In layman’s terms, marketing is an effort to get consumers to behave, i.e. spend their money, their time, and/or their energy, in ways the marketer would like for them to behave.  Retailers want you to spend your money, time and energy consuming their products and services.  The Humane Society wants you to spend your money, time and energy supporting their philanthropic efforts.  Politicians want you to spend your time and energy voting for them.  Anti-drug campaigns want you spend your time and energy not doing something – “just say no.” Even awareness campaigns and health campaigns want you to spend, or refrain from spending, your money, time and energy in a particular way.  They all want you to do something, to behave a specific way.

Successful marketers know that one of the most effective ways to get customers to spend money, time and energy consuming their products and services is to convince the customers that they need a particular product or service.  Most often they accomplish that by either creating a need where one did not exist before, or by turning a want into a need. That is to say, by changing our perceptions.

Creating Perceptions through Marketing – Part 2 – Neuromarketing

In our last post we were talking about how we are being bombarded by messages from the media and marketers.  And we noted how we keep trying to find ways to tune the marketers out, but then they find a new way in. One relatively new and innovative solution is “neuromarketing.”  Neuromarketing is a quickly emerging field, whereby advertisers market to our subconscious so that we don’t even know we’re being marketed to.  Based on the theory that human behavior is driven by 90% subconscious brain, the neuromarketing industry is focused on figuring out how best to appeal to consumers’ subconscious.

Have you ever walked into a mall when you weren’t at all hungry and found that after walking past the food court and the Cinnabon store you are suddenly holding a 2 ton cinnamon roll in your hand chock-full of enough calories to last you six weeks?  That’s because the franchise pumps their smell out into the air to attract customers’ attention.  This is a form of neuromarketing.

What about in the grocery store?  Have you ever grabbed for that container of Ice Breakers, pack of Trident, or current issue of InTouch magazine featuring the latest celebrity split, at the last minute, while waiting in line at the cash registers?  Or had to manage frequent and persistent requests from your children for the brightly colored, kids’ products strategically placed at just their eye level?   Layout and placement of “impulse” and kids’ products are other examples of neuromarketing.

Now here’s something to think on, if you go out and look at all the books and blogs about neuromarketing, you will find that they are not put out there to help the consumer understand how they are being targeted.  The information is for marketers, telling them how to utilize these techniques to help them with their marketing strategies.

 

 

Creating Perceptions Through Marketing – Part 1

Perhaps you’ve heard this one from David Foster Wallace.  I find it totally amusing.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Really quickly, think about what influences you when you are trying to determine your wants and needs?  Is it your biological needs, your family, your friends, the people at work, you spiritual community?  Perhaps it is your ever-growing social network, or perhaps it’s the government?  As I have mentioned already, and as I am sure you already know, our environment and community can have an enormous impact on our ability to change our behaviors or to grow economically.

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at an aspect of our culture that impacts all of our different communities. Marketing!  Over the next couple of posts we’ll dive more deeply into this topic and how it impacts us.

Before we dive right in, I feel that I must preface this section. The point here is not to place any sort of judgment or blame about the environment in which we live or the players involved in creating it.  Nor is it intended to prescribe measures to be taken to change it.  There are plenty of people out there who are infinitely smarter and more qualified than I, who have much better strategies and ideas about how best to change the environment in which we live.  The point of this discussion is merely to describe, as objectively and neutrally as possible, the “water” in which we all “swim” so that perhaps we may all begin to “swim” with a tab bit more awareness.

You, my friend, are being bombarded.  In 1971, the average American was subjected to approximately 560 advertisements a day.  Today, that number is over 3,000.   That’s over 1 million advertisements a year. In his book, “Buy – ology” Martin Lindstrom asserts that “by the time we reach the age of sixty-six, most of us will have seen approximately two million television commercials.  Time-wise, that’s equivalent to watching eight hours of ads seven days a week for six straight years.”

According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American, including children, watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, this so-called average person will have spent 9 years staring at a box.

In addition to the good ol’ day stand-bys of television and radio, we now have computers, the Internet, smart phones, cell phones, tablets and gaming devices.  Our televisions now frequently have 6 million channels and the Internet is open 24/7.  The plethora of places accessible to and frequented by marketers, advertisers and consumers alike is incredible.  And it continues to grow – fast.

Hold on, I know what you are thinking.  “But I record/TIVO most of my shows now and I can just skip over the commercials or I can just change the channel or get up and leave the room when commercials come on.”   Yes, we all use these little tricks in an attempt to escape the seemingly relentless grasp of advertisers, but guess what?  They know that we are skipping commercials and TIVO’ing shows.  They know we turn the channel or leave the room when commercials come on.  They know all of our tricks and they have ways around them.  For every new trick we come up with, they come up with another effective solution.

More to come…

Stress Part 4 – Perceptions

If you have a child, you’ve probably had this conversation:

Child – “BUT I NEEEED IT!!”

You – “You don’t need it.  You just want it.”

Child – (While lying on the floor screaming and in tears) III NNNEEEDDD IIITTT!  I need it!  I need it!  I need it!  NOW!

Ah, the joys of parenthood.  If you don’t have children, please feel free to laugh out loud.  And if you’re planning on having them, then your day is coming!

I need a haircut.  I need to get an oil change.  I need to get my nails done.  I need a drink.  I need a vacation.  I need a new car.  The list could go on and on.  Are these really, as we say, needs?  Or are they wants? If I were to tell you there’s a big difference, you would probably be offended.  Of course you know that, but the fact is that people tend to use these two very different economic terms interchangeably as if they have similar, or even identical meanings.  So what is the difference?  When I ask my students this question, they almost always say that a need is something you can’t survive without.  A need can either be physical and objective, like food, water, clothing, and shelter or psychological and subjective, like security, autonomy, and self-esteem.  A want, on the other hand, is something you desire, but could go without if you had to.  A need is survival based.  A want is not.

Take a moment to jot down five things that you need, and five things that you want.  Easy, right?  Seems like it should be, but people frequently have difficulty with this little exercise.  We’ve usually heard a lot throughout our lives about the concept of want versus need, but rarely have we ever taken the time to sit down and really think about it from a personal standpoint.

Want	Need
1.	1.
2.	2.
3.	3.
4.	4.
5.	5.

Now imagine that you make your living as a hair model and have an upcoming audition for a new Clairol commercial.  You haven’t had a job in some time and landing this gig is absolutely necessary if you are going to maintain your current lifestyle while continuing to pay all of your bills on time.  The audition is in two days and on your way to the salon to get your hair cut and colored, your car breaks down. Without your car you can’t get your hair done.  You need to get your hair done if there’s any chance you’re going to land that audition.  You need your car.  So after you call the salon to reschedule your hair appointment for the next day, you call up your insurance company, get the car towed to the nearest mechanic, and pray that whatever it is can be fixed quickly.  After giving the car a once over, the mechanic informs you that it’s going to take three days to fix the car.  You need to be at that audition.  You need your car sooner than three days.

Using the distinction outlined above, is the word need used accurately in this scenario or should we have used want here instead?  Let’s take a look at what’s being threatened.  Security?  Autonomy?  Self-esteem?  All three seem like likely possibilities.  Are security, autonomy, and self-esteem things that we can survive without?  For most of us, the answer is no.  Not for any length of time anyway.  So if security, autonomy, and self-esteem are necessary for survival and are in fact being threatened by the loss of access to your car, then based on the distinction outlined above, the use of the word need in this scenario is correct.  What if, however, you were able to avoid the threat to security, autonomy, and self-esteem by renting a car, taking the bus, or getting help from a family member or friend?  In that case, the loss of access to your car becomes an inconvenience as opposed to a threat to survival, and use of the word want is more accurate.

 

Earlier, we discussed the role of perception in the initiation of the fight or flight response during episodes of acute or chronic stress.  We determined that a threat to survival, whether actual or perceived, was necessary for the initiation of the fight or flight response and concluded that one way to reduce the harmful psychological and physiological effects of stress and the fight or flight response might be to focus on changing our perceptions of situations that are not truly life threatening.  So how is that related to our current discussion on wants versus needs?

 

If needs are things that we can’t survive without, then any time a threat to one’s needs is present, whether physical or psychological, actual or perceived, the result will be acute or chronic stress.  Any time we convince ourselves that we need something, whether we actually need it or not, we place ourselves at greater risk for suffering higher levels of stress in the event that something threatens our ability to meet that need.  When you consider how often people use the terms need and want interchangeably, as if they have similar, or even identical meanings, this initially seemingly small and insignificant human tendency, now has some pretty serious implications.  Might it behoove us all to pay a bit more attention to the stress we may be inadvertently adding to our lives by thoughtlessly mis-classifying our wants as needs?

 

 

 

External Barriers to Change – Stress Part 3

Since the chemicals released in the body during the fight or flight response are the primary culprits in much of the psychological and physiological damage associated with stress, let’s have a closer look at the situations which typically cause this type of response.  The fight or flight response is triggered in circumstances of both acute and chronic stress, in response to a stressor that (1) is a real OR perceived attack, harm, or threat to survival, and (2) is perceived as being beyond the control of the person experiencing the stressor.   Well that’s interesting.  Perception seems to be a key ingredient to whether or not the fight or flight response is triggered.  So then, what is perception?  Well, according to dictionary.com perception is the result or product of becoming aware of, knowing or identifying by means of the senses.  Ok, then my next logical question is, is it possible to change perceptions?  Of course I always ask this question to my students and to this day I haven’t found anyone who does not believe that perceptions can change.  So if perception, specifically perception of threat and lack of control, is necessary for the initiation of the fight or flight response, then doesn’t it make sense that if we practice changing the way we perceive stressful situations that are not truly life threatening and focusing on the areas where we do have control, we can begin to reduce the amount psychological and physiological damage associated with stress?  Change your perceptions and take back some control.  Simple.  Not easy.

Next steps – How do we change perception or take back control…?

External Barriers to Change – Stress Part 2

Let’s start at the beginning.  What is stress?  Defining stress is no easy task.  This little booger of a word is really hard to nail down, mostly because stress is a largely subjective experience that we all interpret differently.  What is stressful for one person may be pleasurable or have little effect on others.  Hans Selye was the first guy to really start using the term “stress” as we use it today.   His definition of stress is “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.”  That’s pretty wide open.  The American Psychological Association defines stress as “the pattern of specific and nonspecific responses an organism makes to stimulus events that disturb its equilibrium and tax or exceed its ability to cope.”  Not much more clear-cut.  I could go on, listing off several other definitions from various sources, there’s certainly no shortage, but the point is that all of the definitions of stress are quite vague and all encompassing to accommodate the multifaceted and subjective nature of this human phenomenon.

Let’s dig a little deeper.  What are the different types of stress?  Surely you’ve heard the terms acute stress, chronic stress, perhaps even eustress.  Any short-term episode of stress is typically classified as acute stress.  Acute stress can be unpleasant or thrilling and exciting.  Acute stress that is thrilling and exciting is often referred to as eustress and is typically experienced in response to a relatively brief, moderate level stressor in a setting that overall feels safe.  Roller coaster rides, a fast run down a challenging ski slope, or a passionate first kiss are all examples of eustress.  An auto accident, an imminent deadline, a child’s occasional problems at school, or a root canal on the other hand, while all relatively brief and moderate level stressors, are anything but thrilling and exciting and typically occur in a setting that feels much more dangerous, out of control and unpredictable.  This kind of acute stress is the well-known “fight or flight” response, and despite its unpleasant characteristics, is a good thing to have, because it helps keep us alive. By its very design, the fight or flight response leads us to fight or to flee.  When our senses perceive an attack, harm, or threat to our survival, the adrenal gland secretes adrenaline, glucocorticoids, and other stress hormones, triggering an instantaneous and simultaneous increase in respiration, blood pressure and heart rate.  Large amounts of oxygen are pumped into the blood stream and throughout the body, enabling muscles to respond both instantly and with immense amounts of exertion.  Once the fighting is over, and the perceived threat—which triggered the response—has been eliminated, our body and mind return to a state of calm.

From an evolutionary standpoint, the fight or flight response is designed to protect us from the predators that once lurked in the woods and fields around us, threatening our physical survival.  During times when our physical survival is truly being threatened, it is an extraordinary response to have on our side, but what happens when the exact same stress response gets turned on for purely psychological states?   When we’re worrying about bouncing a check or making the mortgage payment, having an argument with a family member or boss, or thinking about the ozone layer or mortality, even though it’s not life or death, our perception is often enough to trigger the exact same physiological reaction as if it was.  Our bodies release the same stress hormones, causing us to hyperventilate, our hearts to pound, and our muscles to tense.

Now imagine for a moment how often we Americans find ourselves immersed in this sort of psychological state. More or less frequently, do you suppose, than our ancient ancestors found themselves face to face with a saber tooth tiger?  Well, if our responses to the annual nationwide Stress in America™ survey are any indication at all, the answer is, more frequently – a lot more frequently.  So what’s the problem with that?  The problem is that the human body, while designed to withstand occasional extreme stress for brief periods of time, is not designed to withstand the sustained high level of chemicals released during frequent and chronic episodes of the fight or flight response.

While acute stress can in some cases be thrilling and exciting, chronic stress is not.  Chronic stress is the grinding stress of unrelenting demands and pressures that wears us down day after day, year after year. It’s the kind of stress over which we feel we have little or no control. It’s the stress of financial instability, of dysfunctional families, or of being trapped in an unhappy marriage or job situation. That which becomes old and familiar, which a person gets used to and eventually forgets is even there.  Over time, chronic stress causes a cumulative buildup of toxic and corrosive hormones that our bodies can’t properly metabolize.  Its long-term attrition depletes physical and mental resources, destroying our bodies, minds and lives; upsetting our immune and reproductive systems, impacting our behaviors, accelerating the aging process, altering our brain chemistry and fat cell storage, impairing cell communication and killing us through cancer, heart attack, stroke, suicide, violence, addiction, and a myriad of other hormonal, immune, and autonomic nervous system disorders.

Oh yes, and it has a tendency to disrupt our attempts at change, in case you missed that…