Welcome to today’s voice note — it’s the first where I’ve sourced a question from you, my community, and I’ve loved hearing from you. So if you have topics you’d like me to dive into, hit reply or comment on the podcast topic page right here:Pick your podcast topics this month
I’ll dive into the question and then, at the end, share my own experience with this exact issue and the three steps I took to go from believing (and taking action from) “Money is dangerous” to “Money is beautiful!”
The question:
I have a mental gap between “wow, I’m amazing, I CAN ask for more money and I AM worth it and this income CAN be sustainable” and “but it’s a crisis, the market, be real bla bla bla”. I know where the latter comes from, but it’d be cool to have a magic wand to fight these kinds of thoughts away.
The bullet points:
* Self-belief and motivation — how are you actively protecting and rebuilding both?
* The word “fighting” — any time we’re fighting a belief, we’re using up a lot of energy, all the time. Instead, we want to make space to listen to the emotion behind the belief, process that emotion, create safety for it, and THEN think about what we really believe once we can get to neutral curiosity.
* Our idea of “more money” is subjective. Instead, think about what you are creating, how you are positioning yourself, and how you see yourself.
* How we relate to money — so many of us use money, like time, as the villain for why we can’t have or be who we want to be. It’s the perfect way for our brain to keep us stuck. So you can ask yourself: if money or time isn’t responsible for creating my results, what is? And into this space often appear collaborations, innovation, and creative solutions.
* Pause to actually work out what sustainable is. There is a market for everything and everyone — the key is to align yourself so that your person can find you.
* How do you best work? What pricing supports you in prioritising your energy? The Don Draper calibration is helpful here.
* How are you valuing yourself? A fast, “cut the b******t” question I ask is: what would my male counterpart be offering? That usually tells me if I’m undervaluing myself.
* What do you want for your clients? What are you modelling for them?
* What’s driving your current thoughts about “more” money and sustainability? Are you comparing yourself to others? Are you not taking responsibility for what you can do? Are there parts of your offer that feel unclear or that you don’t feel good about?
Emma’s case study — tool to apply:
I called this episode Money Is Beautiful because my own relationship with money has changed from money is dangerous to money is beautiful, and I want to share that as a case study to walk you through the steps of this evolution.
* Identify a problem — e.g. you don’t have the money or relationship with money you want.
* Identify the root cause — usually a belief you picked up in childhood.For me, money was always present when there was conflict or friction in my home, so my little brain associated money with a mysterious monster that hurt people I loved. It was scary, and yet we seemed to need it. So while I never had any difficulty earning money, I would magic it into something safe and good as quickly as possible — education, food, others, even paying for people to look after animals I found in the Spanish countryside.
* Heal the rupture.This is where you get to work identifying reality by zooming out, then picking language that works for you. I tried money is energy, money is a tool, money is neutral — all the things I’d heard from other people — but it didn’t click. Then, as I was thinking about the things money, in partnership with amazing humans, could do — ending homelessness in our city, creating safe spaces for animals in shelters while working on longer-term problems, conservation, small businesses, art and creativity, research for the pure curiosity of it — I heard the phrase “Money is beautiful.” And that felt like a full-body, yup, this is true.
Then practise.
Books I’d recommend for deeper belief work (if it interests you):
* The Soul of Money — Lynne Twist
* The Art of Money — Bari Tessler
Next steps — work together:
If you’d like to learn about working with me 1:1 to dive into this work more deeply, you can find the link in the episode notes, or just hit reply to this email with the word JOY and I’ll share the page with you.
