If you oscillate between preparing all of your savings for a rainy day that never comes, feeling scattered, anxious, and like you don’t really know what you’re doing with your finances or just doing what everyone else says and completely avoiding looking at your bank statements…
By the end of the episode you will:
- Learn how to eliminate the stress response that hinders productive financial conversations.
- Discover a powerful tool to feel and navigate conflicting emotions without falling apart.
- Understand and heal the deeper traumas influencing your financial mindset for long-term change.
Next Episode: 17: The Money-Mind Connection: Exploring the Impact of the Nervous System on Financial Freedom. Click here to listen.
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] If you oscillate between preparing all of your savings for a rainy day that never comes and feeling scattered and anxious, like you don’t really know what you’re doing with your finances or just doing what everyone else says and completely avoiding looking at your bank statements because ooh, this episode is for you., you’re going to go beyond just understanding what your stress response with is with money as an entrepreneur. You’re probably coming to this episode like, yeah, okay, I understand kind of the fight, flight, freeze and phone a little bit. Um, but I’ve done all of the work and I am ready to change it.
[00:00:47] We are going to go into exactly how to change it. I’m going to give you an action item at the end of this episode so that you can go forward and change your stress response with money as an anxious entrepreneur starting from [00:01:00]today.
[00:01:00] Okay. Quick recap. Your stress response as an entrepreneur is the way that your body’s sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system respond to conversations about money, activities about money, the idea of money, money to our body, to the, our subconscious and to our nervous system represents so many things that become inherently activating for it, such as your belonging, your identity, your security, the roof over your head.
[00:01:28] Therefore, when our body perceives that our money is threatened, it goes into a stress response.
[00:01:35] And that’s kind of smart because we don’t want something so important to us to be so threatened. And I don’t want to totally be like, we’re going to eliminate that goodbye forever. No, what we want to eliminate is the part of that stress response that stops us from having constructive conversations related to money, whether that [00:02:00] be a sales conversation, or maybe you’re speaking to your employer about your future in the company, or maybe you’re speaking to a client about your future with the company.
[00:02:09] Working with them, maybe you’re speaking to your landlord or you’re negotiating a deal. , maybe you are just on the phone to the bank and like, there was a problem and you got to figure it out or you want a better interest rate, something like that. Ideally, we want you to be engaging in these conversations, whether they are sales or the bank, or something’s happened with your car loan payments, or your car was broken.
[00:02:33] I don’t know, something awful happened and you just need to like, figure something out with the insurance company. We want you to be engaging in them from a place of collaboration with the person who’s on the other side, simply because it’s just going to be more effective. You’re going to get more done.
[00:02:48] I. I want you to still be able to advocate for yourself and so I want you to be able to have a healthy level of stress response but not one where it’s making you over regimented or you’re [00:03:00] unable to connect with the person inside of you or you’re unable to enjoy and spend money on nice things or you’re You’re not looking at the details of your money so that things fall through the cracks and you end up spending so much more money on something that you didn’t need to, or you feel overwhelmed when you’re looking at your money or you avoid conversations about sales.
[00:03:19] So you never sign more clients or you just do what everyone says and look towards financial advisors or your dad or your partner to tell you what to do when you never feel in control of and empowered around your finances. These are the things that we’re avoiding. So how are we going to do it? We need to understand.
[00:03:37] Like deeply understand, you know this, why you’re having such a big stress response. So there are two things here. There’s kind of the in the moment regulation as always, the first pillar of body based business, right? There’s the in the moment regulation, and then there’s the deeper trauma healing. And then there’s the application of that and structuring your life and your systems.
[00:03:58] And then there’s the, [00:04:00] in to support you, right? So let’s look at it. I think of the regulation here as the ability to hold two things in the body. So how can you notice your stress response without it letting you take over? So what that looks like is let’s say that we’re having a sales conversation, um, and somebody I don’t know.
[00:04:22] Let’s say that I’m like, really, it’s the last day of the month and I’m really aware that I have a certain sales goal that I need to meet, and for whatever reason, either I need the money or it would threaten my identity of who I am if I wasn’t to meet it. And I am in this call and I start to feel kind of a bubbly energy in my belly and it starts reaching its way up to my chest.
[00:04:43] And it’s almost like in my throat and. A part of me is getting maybe perhaps impatient or frustrated with the client and I start having thoughts of like, Oh, I don’t need to prove myself to you or don’t worry. Oh, let’s just talk about this another way or you day or you’re not a good [00:05:00] fit when they ask questions around why is the pricing like this?
[00:05:05] What I want you to be able to do is to say, Oh, it is like this because of X, Y, Z, this makes sense, in a very neutral way, as if you were describing why a certain type of potato is better than the other type of potato. We need to be able to hold, okay, I’m noticing that response in my body, but I’m able to Experience it, but still maintain connected to the other person.
[00:05:30] So it’s not like you’re compartmentalizing, you’re fully embodied, but you’re like, Oh, I’m noticing this thing here. And depending on the context, you could name that and connect with the other individual. If you guys are having a conversation, maybe it’s a personal conversation of like, you know, I’m noticing that this is bringing out kind of some, some anxiety for me or, or kind of triggering something inside of me.
[00:05:53] And just want you to know that I’m bringing that to the conversation as we have this. Um, you know, just to be really open about it. [00:06:00] And you’re still able to connect with that person and collaborate to something together. I would say that’s regulation in the moment. You can use things like deep breathing or belly breathing to do that.
[00:06:09] But I found the most, the thing that’s most successful is a tool that I use to teach my clients to feel two things at once without, Collapsing in on themselves and criticizing themselves or without dissociating and dysregulating. It’s just this ability, and you just have to practice it, of feeling two opposing experiences at the same time, being fully present with them and moving forward.
[00:06:36] The second thing we want to do is we want to look at, okay, like, why? Why is this so big for you? You guys know that it’s probably because of some trauma. Right. Have you thought about that trauma? Probably. Have you journaled about that trauma? Probably. Have you really sat and felt it without questioning it or trying to get rid of it in a secure way with the support of another nervous system?
[00:06:58] Maybe a little bit, but probably [00:07:00] not enough. Have you had the nuances of how all of your past experiences of trauma, and what happened with your mom, and what happened with your dad, and in the culture that you live in, how that applies to money? Do you understand the depth and the nuances behind it, or are you in your experiences, and therefore it’s impossible?
[00:07:18] You probably can’t, because you’re in your experience, right? So we want to understand what are the depths and the nuances and little sticky pieces of this trauma, not from an analytical point of view, but like, I can just feel this like very specific thing inside of my body. And it just like this like cute little thing.
[00:07:37] And it just, it just, all that makes sense. And then we move it through and we create what we call reconfirming experiences with money. Your body is having a stress response with money because it’s perceiving that, Money, a certain amount of money or a lack of money is going to create X, Y, Z when we can pinpoint what that thing is and we can give the body evidence that it’s not true, [00:08:00]the intensity of your experience severely diminishes and you create what we call money neutrality where you can have these conversations the way that I’ve described it.
[00:08:08] From a regulated space and that brings us to application. So it’s like now that we have this information and now that we’re practicing these tools, how can I structure my life and the way that I engage in money and what am I going to be on the lookout for that is going to reinforce this new experience that I have with money?
[00:08:27] So for example, if you think that you need to prepare for a rainy day and it gives you anxiety to have your, your savings go down a certain number, I might challenge you to invest that money. Go and put that in the stock market. Go and buy an ETF and be there. Within reason and make sure you still have savings for like, you know, a good amount of time.
[00:08:50] But Challenge yourself as well to maybe put some of that in a, in the stock market or invest it in something that is really important to you so that you [00:09:00] can show to your body that, Oh, we don’t need to just have cash because cash also depreciates so we can, we can, we can have less cash and be okay.
[00:09:10] Or if you really avoid the details or one, avoid the details to the point where it’s detrimental to you and things are falling through the cracks, then how would we set up your week so that you have space and time and resource you feel empowered and supported enough to look at the details of your business, you know, create a profit and loss statement.
[00:09:34] Maybe you don’t have one, but you need one. Look at your accounting with ease and make it easy for yourself. Make it something that you actually do all of your admin and accounting and bring pleasure to it so that it becomes a reconfirming experience. And your body begins to learn with like, okay, cool.
[00:09:53] It’s actually supportive for me to go into these details. If you are somebody who kind of freezes and just does what [00:10:00] anyone else thinks, how can we. Make more empowered decisions regarding your finances through your business. And then can we create and pick evidence for how they actually appear and work?
[00:10:14] Because on the other side of this, you just become this absolute freaking powerhouse that can bring in more money because you can have more conversations about it. You can receive it. You don’t collapse when we start talking about you receiving it. You don’t try to charge less. Um, You can also remain unattached so that it’s very easy for people to keep working with you.
[00:10:36] Nobody feels like they’re responsible for your well being and you become the one that has so much energy and creative creativity and innovation that you can keep going out and propelling your business and your vision forward and making the adjustments necessary in order to be successful in the market that you’re in.
[00:10:56] That’s how we do it. If this is
[00:11:00] of interest to you, you really need to make sure that you’ve listened to one of my most popular episodes, which is where I initially went into understanding your attachment around money. This episode is fundamental basics that everybody needs to have. However, I’ve just literally never seen anybody teach it in this way. It’s called the money mind connection. It’s episode number 17. We explore the impact of note of the nervous system on financial freedom. And we look at the different attachments dollars that the nervous system has to your money episode 17.
[00:11:32] You’ll find the link below in the show notes