High Holidays

Post # 4 of 10 in "The Frasier Series"

Season 11, Episode 11

Air Date: 12/09/2003

Episode 7 in Variety's Top 25 Frasier Episodes

WARNING: There will be episode spoilers in this blog series.

This series mostly aired in the 90's so, I think it's on you if you've found anything "spoiled" for you. Anyways, fair warning - I'm not holding anything back for your viewing surprise. 

Call to Action: 

Rebel!

Continue reading to take a journey through this Frasier episode,

"High Holidays",

or skip ahead to dive right into the details of this Action Call!

Episode Description:

" Martin gets high on a pot-laced brownie and Frederick visits the dark side. "

Where the Episode Starts

It's a Christmas Episode!

Martin enters Café Nervosa, greeting Frasier and Roz.

Immediately after, a barista from the café offers them all complimentary, "Holiday Cookies?"

Martin moans and reluctantly declines. He explains that his girlfriend has been making holiday-themed comments about his belly size.

Frasier is waiting for a meeting to start. He is about to star in a Seattle Tourism Board commercial, due to his popularity as the city's Radio Psychiatrist.

Plot

The next scene brings us back to Frasier's apartment, which is absolutely drenched in Christmas decorations. Martin and Frasier are extra joyful in anticipation for Frasier's son, Freddie, to be flying in from Boston to stay for the holidays. 

As Freddie enter the apartment from the elevator, we see he's now a teenager and he's leaning in hard to the "Goth" look. The initial greeting is a bit awkward with Freddie, Frasier, Martin, Niles and Daphne. 

Fredrick's current style choices prompt the adults to discuss the natural developmental stage for teenagers to rebel. It's part of finding and asserting our independence. 

We quickly learn that Niles never rebelled.

Martin explained it just never happened:

"You were one of those good kids. One time I found a bag of something that looked suspicious in your dresser. But it turned out it was just something to make your sweaters smell nice," he moaned with disappointment. "You just didn't have it in you to be bad."

Later on,

Niles shares with Frasier that he was really bothered when he learned he never rebelled. 

"What kind of self-respecting psychiatrist, not to mention Father-to-be, completely misses one of life's prime rights of passage?" Niles asks Frasier.

"So I decided to rebel tonight."

"I'm getting high on reefer." 😎

He's really impressed in his act of "crotch-grabbing brazenness."

Roz comically enters after Frasier asks where Niles would even find "reefer."  She throws a small package at him, and deadpan: "Ok Niles, you're hooked up."

Even though I'm using Variety's Top 25 Frasier Episodes as structure for my money commentary, I would definitely have this episode in my top 10. From here, unless I give you a play by play, I can't do the comedy of this episode justice. In as few words as possible: Martin ends up accidentally eating the pot-brownie, while Niles stay sober only thinking he ate the brownie. Eddie ends up being the star in the commercial for the Tourism board, who speaks with Frasier's voice over. Hilarity ensues. Freddie and his father bond over heartbreak (yet we can still laugh about Frasier's horrific love track record). 

Money Lessons

There's a lot to talk about from this episode, for sure including talking about cannabis. 

This episodes airs in late 2003. Decriminalization was mostly between 1970s-1990s, while the plant still remains a Federally classified Schedule I drug. The medical movement was not even a decade deep, starting in CA in 1996 for this episode's air date. Recreational laws begin in 2012. Obviously, cannabis culture has radically changed, but during this episode, weed was still fairly underground. Of course the 60s casualized smoking weed, and hell, the 80s was A-Ok with coke, but we're talking about Niles, a very uptight Psychiatrist, Seattle-elite. Niles deciding to "partake" is funny enough, and the episode takes it to funnier places. But the episode doesn't address the privilege Niles has, and even though he's very nervous about the new experience, he knows he'll be fine, as does everyone else. 

Now, I'm saying I choosing to focus on rebellion and not cannabis, even though there is enormous content I'd love to discuss about cannabis: economics, personal finance, racial disparity, legal systems, and on and on.... that's a post for another day.

Call to Action:

Rebel!

Why is Rebelling an important area to review for our personal finances?

It's all about intention.

Let's back up.

There's two ways we can rebel: either knowingly, or unknowingly.

Knowingly, I'm thinking of protests, civil unrest, wearing pants when your supposed to wear a skirt.

Unknowingly, I'm thinking teenage angst, emotional suppression and immaturity, accidental outbursts, and numbing with addictions.

In this episode, Niles is intentionally "rebelling" because he honors it is a natural part of human development. However, he skips over the important end-goal to rebelling. 

The reason why rebelling is a healthy part of growing up is because it's generally helping the teenager, or whatever aged person, develop their own separate identity, away from their parents and family.

Generally, if we do not find our own joy and values, but allow others to impose their interest onto us, we'll have a nagging dissatisfaction in our lives, with or without awareness of this. When we lead our lives aligned with confident values, the beauties of living begin to multiply.

Having a strong sense of identity is remarkably valuable. 

And our identity will produce attitudes, actions and behaviors based on what we think is aligned with who we are.

If I think I'm a stressed professional, without ever enough time, I will continue to be that person.

If I think I'm someone who is an outsider and disproving of "the system," I will stay out of the system.

This self-fulfilling identity of ours leads our way of life and also how we manage our money life.

Therefore, where are you with your own self reflection and awareness of your identity?

Have you reflected lately on how your life is, or is not, aligned with your identity?

Do you take pride in your identity, or are there parts you hide or want to transform?

I hope my broad point is clear at this point:

Your awareness over yourself and your identity will determine the state of your financial life. In order to produce a better, more meaningful financial life, increasing your awareness and appreciation for yourself, your own life and your community, is required.

I don't think I'm the first person to make these points, either, just to name a short random few:

• 5 Reasons You May Still Be In Debt
• How Your Self Image Determines Your Wealth
• 2 Weird Money Habits That Tune Your Brain to an Abundance Mindset
• CFP Board Adds Psychology of Financial Planning to Exam Topics

The Certified Financial Planning board only added a small section of Psychology starting with 2022 exams for CFP Professionals.

This area of discussion is still not happening enough.

Our emotional wellbeing is extremely important and takes priority compared to improving financial wellness. It must also be said that our financial wellness can enormously impact our emotional wellness. This is true for both emotional thinking (i.e., "I have multiple millions in liquid assets but I'm still afraid of money"), or very rational thinking (i.e., "I am a single-mother with multiple children, no support network, lost my job and don't have savings"). 

It is not always true, but often times when we find ourselves in debt, we're experiencing a lot of misalignment in our lives. We weren't being honest to ourselves about our reality or we want our reality to be something else. So we spend, and charge.

On the flip side, it's uncommon for someone to amass wealth and preserve it without exhibiting some emotional maturity and clarity on their own life values.  Don't get me wrong, there is an impressive list of mainly white men who have stumbled onto riches without maturity. Where they have weak values, their greed will provide misguided strategies. I would argue, if you are a good person, those strategies could help you collect wealth, but your soul will feel robbed. Further, you might be lucky enough to receive wealth, but can you keep it and feel good about it?

When we have confidence in ourselves, what we believe in and what makes us feel good, our actions follow that tone. And those actions impact our finances.

When I work with my financial coaching clients, we discuss the objective factual numbers, and the relevant emotional state both separately and together. Depending on your unique facts of finances, and your self-identity, you may or may not be able to clearly reflect on your emotions around your finances.

I've found just a little bit of structure can unlock a tremendous amount of clarity.

Therefore, again, I hope you walk away from this read either:

• If you are feeling confident about yourself and your money, 
  • Rebel! by using some of your resources to change society norms, or even simply norms within your own family you don't feel aligned with. Use your confidence to produce change, which will provide even more satisfaction when you can observe your results.
• If money is a source of stress for you,
  • Rebel! Flip the script - become someone different. Trust me, you have the power.
  • Do you have a system to review your finances? This is the biggest source of stress; the unknowing.
    • Burying your head in the sand prevents you from seeing the life around you.
    • Rebel against any old story you've been telling yourself that you aren't good enough or you don't know how.
  • Do you have any level of financial security?
    • If you don't have enough assets or income to cover your lifestyle, yeah, why wouldn't you be stressed? This is an unsustainable place to be. Action is your only way out.
      • Consider how rebellion and compliance each have their own strategic strengths and weaknesses.
    • If you do have enough assets or income to provide for your lifestyle, can you articulate what our stress is and feels like?
      • Decide if it's time to rebel against some of the limitations you put on yourself, or surrender to the fears that are out of your control.

If I were working with Niles as my financial coaching client, and he told me about this endeavor of his, I would understand and validate his feeling of needing to correct this issue. I would also propose that Niles is a successful happy productive man, especially in Season 11. What does he think he needs to learn about himself that he doesn't already know?

I hope for you that you stay dedicated to a pursuit of knowing and loving yourself. And as an action of loving yourself, you honor your finances and your own journey, and make space to nurture savings for your future self.

I'm here for you if you have questions on how to do this.

Love,

💜 Coach Jacque 

Next post: Episode # 6 (coming soon)