As I write this, the memory of the recent Women’s month is still fresh in my mind, with its activities, functions and days, designed to put women and women’s issues at the centre.

Throughout the month of August, several articles hit my inbox, some kindly forwarded by clients who wanted to show me ‘what we were dealing with’. I noticed a pattern in the articles I glanced over… I’ll share a few excerpts to illustrate… Pay and pension gaps leave women financially vulnerable… Tips for women to close the retirement readiness gap… Mind the gender pension gap… Gender retirement equality gap tarnishes golden years… (I admit that I got to a point where I was no longer reading the article but just looking at the headline and thinking, another one)… A friend posted a video of herself talking about women and the retirement readiness gap… Another article - SA women retire with 21% less than men… Are women saving enough for retirement… Women face greater retirement challenges.

I did not internalize a single one of those articles because I have different beliefs about the capacity and capabilities of women when it comes to their finances.

Segue to a story I heard over 20 years ago, that I actually shared with a colleague just this week… In India, elephants are not kept in cages or enclosures. They are simply restrained with a rope. Once the rope is on its leg, the elephant does not leave. It will be there when its owner returns. How can a creature as massive as an elephant be successfully restrained by such a small rope… The answer is ‘mental conditioning’.

When the elephant is young, the rope is strong enough to restrain the smaller elephant. It does try to escape and run off, but the rope is too strong and may eventually even cause bruising. Over time the young elephant gives up and accepts that once the rope has been placed around its leg, there is no point in trying to escape. The elephant, in effect, starts to restrain itself. In an extreme case, the rope doesn’t even have to be put around the elephant’s leg. The rope only needs to touch the elephant’s leg, and the elephant will stay put.

Even when the elephant has grown into a mighty and imposing adult that could rip the rope or simply walk away and take the fence with it, the elephant stays put.

There are several real life situations that this mental conditioning could be seen to apply to. I won’t get into those. You can ask yourself the questions that you need to ask yourself about any realisations or epiphanies that you had while reading that story… Coming back to the articles and headlines I saw during Women’s Month, could the repeated exposure to news articles highlighting the supposed plight of women, be accidentally exacerbating the problem? Might the information, though well intentioned, be conditioning women (and men) into accepting that a woman will earn less than a man and will therefore be less able to save, with the final result being that the retirement gap will persist or possibly widen?

I cannot answer that with certainty, but I’d like to offer three counter measures…

First, bombard yourself with, and consume, positive news about women and money. Find those who are succeeding and read those stories. I can think of several female clients who have their hands firmly on the reigns of their finances. In my experience, they’re not the exception. You can choose what you immerse yourself in…

Why not choose mental conditioning that leans more towards the results you would like to see for yourself? Anti mental conditioning…

Second, believe you are stronger than the rope and take action. You may surprise yourself. Even when (or especially when) it seems counterintuitive, persist in testing the rope. Persist in challenging the boundaries that women have perhaps been conditioned to believe are real. It won’t necessarily be an easy change. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our power to do has increased.’ That can only happen after you make the decision and then take that first step.

Finally, condition-proof your children (not just your daughters). Help them to so fully understand and believe in the limitlessness of their potential, that they cannot see or accept anything that contradicts that belief. There is no rope. A little homemade inattentional blindness if you will.

En Vogue sang the lyrics, ‘Free your mind, and the rest will follow’. The Matrix taught us that there actually is no rope.… And a recent popular KPop movie taught us that with that knowledge and refusal to accept the limiting beliefs, we can only go up and we’re gonna be golden.