My 24 beliefs about money
Happy Sunday, Soothers. I'd love to talk to you about money today. This is an inherently tricky topic because I don't think there is any other subject more triggering to folks, or one that people hold more different beliefs around. We live in a society that spans the range from billionaires with multiple yachts, to people who can't feed their children, and the gap is only growing. At the same time, we've been taught to engage with money in a very patriarchal, masculine, and Puritanical way, and I think this is limiting many of us from learning to create more abundance in our lives and so I'd love to talk about money from a different angle.
Below, I'm going to be sharing lessons and beliefs I've learned about and adapted around money in my adult years, especially as an entrepreneur (which is like going to Money Trigger Terror School, running your own business, pricing and selling offerings, paying taxes, managing business cash flow, etc, is like trial by fire ESPECIALLY IF YOU WERE AN ENGLISH MAJOR) and I'd like to talk about money from an energetic, subconscious and identity level.
Stay with me if that last sentence made you want to puke. A lot of the spiritual ways some folks talk about money can be very offensive and offputting, or totally bypass the economic realities of the world we find ourselves in. But there are elements of understanding money this way that can be extremely useful. In the below I talk about inner child healing, nervous system regulation, understanding our ancestors' money stories and lots more as ways of understanding our own money stories; and where we may struggle with trauma, wounding or beliefs about money that don't serve us.
It's useful to know, if somebody is going to engage in teaching money, a bit of their own money story, which is simple but also complicated. On my dad's side, his ancestors have lived in America for hundreds of years, having come from Western Europe originally, and mostly working white collar middle to upper middle class jobs (teacher, CPA, stay at home moms). On my mom's side, her grandfather was a college professor from Belgium and her grandmother was a French tutor; on her other side was my great-grandfather Otis, an American-born Chinese man of Chinese immigrants, one of whom came to America as an indentured servant. Otis married the white daughter of a Wyoming farmer and they opened a restaurant and pharmacy in Wyoming. My mom's grandfather started as a foreign service officer and eventually became an ambassador in the 1980s; both of my parents were government employees until my mom had me in 1980 when she became a stay-at-home mom. We had a very financially healthy childhood, going to public schools and traveling for vacation twice a year to see our grandparents in Massachusetts and Wyoming. Had good food, clothes, tons of safety, I had a math tutor and an SAT tutor, for example. All three of us kiddos went to a state school (UVa, wahoowa) and my parents paid for my and my sister's education (my brother was in Navy ROTC who paid for his college). I got an academic scholarship to go to Northwestern for my master's, but my parents and grandparents helped me pay off part of the student loans I took out for living expenses (about $30,000).
I spent most of my career climbing corporate ranks, ultimately in my late 30s making a salary of about $125,000 at my peak. Now, I'm in my 4th year of entrepreneurship and my business brought in about $300,000 last year. (I always think it's good to state that I don't get necessarily paid that; a third goes to taxes, plenty to expenses, etc). I have goals to have my business make $500,000 in the next two years.
So I had an excellent upper middle-class financial upbringing with a ton of privilege. My money story should have been great! And in lots of ways it was/is!
And then I became an entrepreneur. Holy wow.
I realized I had about 100 billion unhealed wounds around money, safety, my capacity to manage money, fears about my intelligence, my people-pleasing around selling, terror about being judged for being greedy or exploitative or a fraud, and more. Truly, becoming an eventually and currently relatively successful entrepreneur forced me to reflect on my money relationship like I never had before.
As I reflected, I learned beliefs and lessons along the way, and I want to pass them on to you today. If you're interested in the topic of money and what more I have to say about it, I'm teaching a masterclass on Increasing Your Abundance Mindset as a Highly Sensitive Person on May 8th at 8pmET (replay provided) inside of my Sunday Soother membership. Sign up here at Tier 3 for $44 (and you can sign up, attend the masterclass, and then cancel; no need to be in the recurring membership to gain access to this one class.)
So let's jump into it! Here are (a few) of my money beliefs (I honestly could have written 100 but let's just start here):
Money IS an energy AND there are systems designed in place to prevent people from accessing, receiving, understanding how to work with that energy. Both can be true.
By learning, sharing and teaching more how to work with the energy of money, we can work outside of harmful and oppressive systems and bring more money into everybody's lives, ESPECIALLY those who are actively oppressed by harmful systems and cannot long-term sustainably succeed WITHIN those systems anyways.
Money is a renewable resource. It sounds weird and gross and perhaps harmful, but it is true. Humans made money up out of nothing. It is entirely created by our thoughts and our belief systems. Therefore, when we shift our thoughts and our belief systems we can create more money as well.
Our ability to hold money is like a garden hose. Money naturally wants to naturally flow through us like water through a hose. But trauma, oppressive systems and harmful beliefs will put kinks into that hose to stop the flow, and we mistake those kinks for our inability to hold money. But when we can discover the kink, and take the time to shake it out, money will naturally begin flowing again.
Speaking of flowing, money does want to flow. It doesn't want to stagnate. This is why hoarding is so anti-ethical to the very nature of money. It wants to come to you, be appreciated, directed, and flow back out into the world. Think of a stagnant pond. Is that where healthy life happens? No, that's where disease cultivates. We want a healthy creek, stream or river of money — giving life to those who need a drink or water for their garden, but then always moving.
And speaking of hoses, some of us are naturally hoses that could have 20,000 gallons of water flow through them a day. Some of us are very narrow garden hoses. This is not good or bad. Some people desire and want a lot of money and that's awesome. Some people are quite satisfied with a smaller amount of money. The important thing is to touch in and see what feels true to you about the amount of money that really helps you support the life you want to live; bigger is not always necessary or better (though sometimes, it's true, that some of us will claim we are okay with very small amounts of money but that's not our truth either, we are just staying small out of fear, so with this question, you truly have to tap into your authentic desire.)
Money loves to be used with INTENTION and CLARITY and PURPOSE. If you were to say, "Gosh I wish had more money," but not name the amount or purpose for that money, that money would not necessarily be easy to come to you. On the other hand, if you were to say, "I wish I had enough money this month to buy this dress I've been lusting after for a year; pay off this month's car payment; enroll in my community center's pottery class, and also donate $150 to my local abortion fund," and you totaled it up, and it was going to be that you actually wanted $897 specifically for all those purposes, you would find that that specific amount of money would more easily come to you.
This is why intention in money and knowing yourself is so important. Ramit Sethi has the best model for this I think, which is naming your "rich life," as he calls it. When you design your rich life, you're getting in touch with what really matters to you. For example, I drive a nearly 10-year old Honda Fit and I will until I need to replace it, no matter how much money I ever earn. A fancy car is NOT part of my rich life. Nor are designer clothes, handbags, or haircuts (I learned to cut my hair during the pandemic and it shall remain this way.) However, travel, the mortgage on my 250-year-old nature witch cottage, the ability to walk in nature every day, not work more than 30 hours a week, buy books and Tarot decks whenever I want (which is, uh, a lot) IS part of my rich life. Figure out your rich life, figure out what it would cost to get there and then start building that vision. No rich life is right, no rich life is wrong, no rich life is better than another's. It will all be extremely unique and individual.
When you use money to support creation and life, more will flow to you. That which supports life will always be supported. This is a mantra I am using over and over again as I continue to build my business. If I pay contractors, I am supporting life, so I will always be supported. If I always tip well, I am supporting the livelihood of the people I tip, so I will always be supported. If my business creates more healing in the world, that then allows others to go out and live their purpose, then I will always be supported. I use plenty of my money on my garden, my land, and feeding the birds around me; I am supporting life with my money. Money is attracted to people who help support life out in the world because the universe wants to grow and expand and flourish. If the way you spend money will support others, more money will circle back to you.
This is why, it bears repeating, money doesn't like to be hoarded. A lot of us will use the belief we're being "responsible" or "thrifty" with money when we're actually embodying hoarding energy (or you could think of it as 'unhealthy' thrift). The real question is, how can you become more generous, at the level that feels right to you? I'm not saying you need to go out and donate, tip or spend beyond a level that would financially incapacitate you. But ask yourself, are you being generous with money, with how you spend it, direct it? Or are you a person who will email somebody to try to get $5 off something, when it wouldn't materially impact you, truly, but you feel you have to get the "deal" or you're scared to spend even a few dollars more? Of course there are people out there for whom that $5 matters, but for many of us we're embodying hoarding energy or unhealthy thrifty energy. Learning to discern this energy and shift it to a more generous energy will help repair our money relationship.
If you were to describe your relationship with money as if money were a person, you'd get an excellent starting point into your view of money overall. Try it right now, use 5 words to describe how you think of money. Now, if you were to describe a person in your life with those words, would that be a healthy relationship or... not so much?
You can also begin to shift your relationship with money by simply identifying, how would you LIKE your relationship with money to feel? Name 5 ways. It won't happen overnight, but even just naming that desire is a great starting point.
Money doesn't just come through our jobs or in relation to the amount of work that we put in. This is a big one to wrap our heads around, because capitalism wants us to think we have to 1. work to get money 2. work hard to get MORE money, but it's really not true. Think of 10 other ways right now money could come to you (IRS refunds, gifts, a friend paid for your dinner, investment gains, etc) — it's a fun exercise that will expand your ability to receive money because you won't be thinking you can only get money through one method.
Most of us understand that we have attachment styles and attachment wounding in romantic relationships. But we also have it with money. Take Dr. Diane Poole Heller's attachment quiz and run through it as if money was the person you were doing the quiz around. Then begin to read and research books and resources to help you heal that attachment style.
Many of us will have a "money thermostat" energetic level — a level beyond which our systems don't think it's safe to make more (but probably we also won't make much less). My energy healer, Missy Toy Ozeas, said my energy money level was stuck at "government employee" level. Not a surprise, as like 90% of my family is government employees. And you can make good money as a government employee, obviously. But I wanted to make more, but it was feeling unsafe, so I did work to consciously increase the safety of the amount I wanted to begin to make, and therefore reset my 'money thermostat.' One day I'll hit that, and if I want to increase, I'll have to do more work to reset it again.
A lot of our money issues are because it will feel unsafe to have more money because our family and loved ones will judge us. Just say you magically got $5 million tomorrow. You are now a millionaire. What would happen in your family unit? Would members judge you, try to take advantage of you, start saying particular phrases about you? It's an interesting exercise to play out.
This is why money work is often also inner child work. Your inner child is terrified to be judged or left, and because our society is so wounded around money, that's often the reaction we get when we have more money. However, when we heal our inner children, we can naturally hold more abundance because we'll naturally feel safer and worthier.
Speaking more about safety, money is a nervous system game. If we go back to the concept of a garden hose, when we have a dysregulated or burnout nervous system, it's like a hose that's frayed with tons of holes in it. Not much can be contained, held, processed in that sort of hose. It's the same with our nervous system. When we expand nervous system capacity and safety around money, we will be able to hold more of it. Frankly you'll never see me teach a course on any topic that doesn't involve some amount of nervous system and inner child healing because these two things are so critical.
The way you judge others spending, having, using money is a way you were judged once as a child and is now a way you are judging yourself. It's a projection outwards on somebody else of an inner part of you you have rejected and are ashamed about. "Frivolous" spending, or being "selfish" or "entitled" is one I see my clients judging others for. Sure enough, do we have a "silly" or "frivolous" part that somebody shamed us for in our youth?
And another way inner child work is so important: We are often afraid of becoming our parents with money. If they had a wounded, unsafe, or struggling relationship with money that affected you as a child (and how could it not?) you will view money as unsafe and even dangerous. Sometimes TOO MUCH money is unsafe because they were workaholics to get money. Sometimes NOT ENOUGH money is unsafe because the family home was foreclosed on when you were 14. These wounds are indelible and I can promise you there is absolutely a direct correlation to your current relationship with money. When we heal our inner child we show them we will always keep them safe; that it is safe now to have abundance; that we trust ourselves to use money joyfully, wisely, thoughtfully, with play, with desire, with intention. That we trust us, and we trust those young parts, too.
Let's go back beyond our parents. Our ancestors' lives play a huge role in our present-day relationship with money and abundance. I'll be leading you through an ancestral lineage exercise in my May workshop to explore more of this, but you can simply start but reflecting on what might have money meant to your ancestors, how might it have helped them, how might it have hurt them, what role do you imagine it played in their lives? I had a huge breakthrough when I went into a deeply triggered state around money after buying my home when I realized I WAS THE FIRST SINGLE WOMAN EVER TO BUY A HOME FROM HER SOUL'S PURPOSE WORK. Woah. Everybody else was married and all the men were the ones making the decisions, earning the money. No wonder it was so scary to me. I had no precedent for it.
Money is a mirror for where we are wallowing in passive energy in our lives. I can't tell you the number of times I hear, "But I can't afford it..." "But I can't make that amount of money..." "But that's too complicated and I don't understand it" or elsewhere around money. How you engage with money, your ability to create it and steward it, will reveal where you have imbalances in understanding your own personal agency and power. Say something tragic happened to a loved one and they needed, within 48 hours, access to $10,000. You would absolutely be able to figure out a way to get that money. You would move heaven and earth. And you could DO IT. Now, it's not a sustainable way of engaging with money of course, but it would be a wake-up call that you are infinitely powerful, infinitely creative, infinitely resourceful, infinitely capable. Learning to create and manage money is a beautiful lesson in our capabilities and power here on earth.
There is nothing in life, NOTHING, that will help you understand and heal your own shame more than your relationship with money, because money is one of the final frontiers of shame. It's one of the last ways in society (thankfully) where it is absolutely acceptable to shame and judge others openly, to be condescending, to think there is a "right" way to be with money. And one of the strongest ways in which we judge ourselves, too. Now you have to understand that there's a difference between holding somebody accountable to do better, vs. shaming, so I'm not saying we just give up on getting billionaires building empires on the back of exploitative working forces to do right. What I am saying is that when you lose all fear of anybody judging you for your money, your desires around money, the amount of money (low or high) that you have... then you are free. You are liberated. Because if nobody can shame you for money, then you have done so much inner work of loving yourself, of having your own back, of not caring of others' perceptions of you, then you really are free of the shackles of shame and judgment. Healing your relationship with money and your desires for it will go a long way towards healing your shame. This alone has been so healing and powerful for me to realize.
There is no "right" amount of money you can earn or have or spend that will keep you safe and virtuous, and this is way scarier for most of us than we're admitting. Many of us want more money... but not too much. Many of us want to spend a certain amount of money on something but are terrified of others' judgment. So many of us carry such shame and guilt for the fact we have so much more than others do in an exploitative society. So we try so hard to be "virtuous" around money but try to make enough to give ourselves little pleasures and sustenance — but never too much! Never anything too showy! However, the reality is, somebody will always have less money than you. Somebody will always have more. And somebody will ALWAYS think that the amount of money you have or are spending (or what you are spending it on) is wrong, bad, shameful, distasteful. You will never be safe when it comes to money. And finally embracing and accepting that; realizing you WILL be judged, criticized, that there is truly no getting it right; that's some more liberation right there. Your safety exists in you and in that.
What are your money beliefs? I'd love to hear. And make sure to sign up for Increasing Your Abundance Mindset as a Highly Sensitive Person on May 8th at 8pmET (replay provided) inside of my Sunday Soother membership. Sign up here at Tier 3 for $44 so we can talk about this more. That purchase will get you access to 30 days of a private community where I'm offering money coaching right now and breakthroughs are already happening.