When most podcasters talk about money and emotions, they talk about how people feel about their money. My approach is quite different in that I look at the emotions you are acting out through your money. In this episode, I talk about how what you feel when dealing with money is never about money – and what it is about.

Highlights:

• You can use your money feelings to understand your emotional makeup.
• If you are afraid of running out of money, that indicates that you are feeling alone.
• If you think you need more money, you are saying that you need more people because money is always attached to people.
• Feeling like there’s never enough means that you feel like not enough.
• The fear of losing what you have is often the result of abandonment stories.
• The idea is to recognize the feeling and express it.
• When you hear yourself thinking that you need more money, ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”
• How you were brought up – either in poverty or wealth – will affect your money emotions.
• If you let yourself deal with the feelings, you aren’t going to have to repeat the dramas.
• Learning how to manage cash flow can mollify financial fears.
• When you learn how to put off purchases, you can manage your money better.
• I talk about learning how to delay gratification.
• If you learn how to manage your need for gratification and your dopamine signals that you need more, you can feel better about yourself and your money.
• You can use the Covid pause to retrain your emotional responses.
• Focus on what you have, not what you don’t have.
• This is a good time to learn to recognize and deal with your emotions.

Small business owners and many practitioners have trouble talking about money. Yet, if you want to be comfortable financially, then you have to learn how to talk about money with potential clients, vendors, and financial practitioners.

Highlights

• Sex and money are the two hardest things to talk about. A lot of people would rather talk about sex than money.
• Both sex and money are about sharing personal energy, which can be scary especially when there is a lot of shame around both issues.
• Always remember, money issues are never about money. They are about the emotions you’re acting out through your money.
• People in every financial bracket don’t like to talk about money, especially how much they have or don’t have.
• It’s very freeing to be able to talk about money and to realize that you are not your money. It’s just something you use to interact with the world.
• How much money you have or don’t have doesn’t change your value as a human being. You have value even if you have no money.
• Having a lot of money is not necessarily easy because you have to make a lot of decisions and it’s not that easy to talk to people other than financial advisors for whom you are a source of their money.
• If you’re part of a peer group that struggles with money, when you start making more they might treat you like an outsider.
• People often feel validated when they receive money. But money is not the answer to anything.
• If you think you need more money, you actually need more people because money always comes from people.
• For people who are in business for themselves, there’s a lot of uncertainty about income and unless you train yourself otherwise, that causes a lot of anxiety.
• When you love, except, acknowledge, and appreciate yourself, you’ll make more money.
• It’s important to counteract negative self-talk. I talk about how to do this.
• Trusting and acknowledging yourself are important.
• Being comfortable asking for money is essential if you’re in business for yourself.
• How do you feel about talking about money?
• Understand the value of your uniqueness.
• Do you ever say, “ I don’t care about the money, I just want to help people”? As someone in practice or as a business owner you have to care about the money. That’s part of being in business.
• If you suffer financially commonly no one is going to rescue you. You have to rescue yourself.

Links

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Because of everything that’s going on in the world right now, many people are experiencing stress and its side effects on the body and mind. In this episode, I discuss the causes of toxic stress and offer a few suggestions for dealing with it.

Highlights

• Toxic stress often starts early in childhood and continues throughout life. This can lead to many physical and emotional problems.
• Most major diseases are caused by stress. I give examples.
• Stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are meant to be released for short periods. When you’re under constant stress it wears out body parts and systems.
• You can teach yourself to manage stress, but first you have to make the decision to do it.
• If you’re always trying to make things happen rather than allowing things to happen, that can cause stress.
• When you feel uptight that’s a signal that you are responding to the external world in an unhealthy way.
• Notice when you feel contracted. That’s when you’re under stress. Take a deep breath and imagine you’re expanding.
• It’s the pushing to make things happen and to reach specific goals that cause a problem.
• Wanting to be the best parent and being hyper-vigilant about your children’s activities can cause stress.
• You get to decide how you want to respond to the stressors in your life.
• If you decide to treat yourself differently and do things like eliminating negative self-talk, within a year or two you’ll feel entirely different from the way you feel now.
• If you’re taking responsibility for other people’s feelings or outcomes, that’s a stressor.
• When you’re with people, look for commonalities not differences.
• Having more money is not going to solve your problems. As a matter of fact, it often causes more problems.

Having body work done is a way of reducing some stress.