Money Honey

“Time wasted rationalizing the mediocre could be spent creating the magnificent.” -Jen Sincero

Money is the most powerful form of trade yet it doesn’t even exist in real form. Now read that sentence again.

While that statement can be perplexing to some, let’s revisit the Great Depression. As troves of people ran to their banks to withdraw money, it became apparent that the banks didn’t have enough currency to cash out their accounts. A single event in history that not only plagued our economy for decades to follow, it also left millions of people paralyzed by an implicit fear surrounding money. Even though this event was an outlier in our economic history, society realized that the majority of our currency only exists in theory. Yet somehow, money is powerful enough to build empires, influence political campaigns, destroy or influence marriages, and has the ability to dictate the quality of our lives. All while 8% of money actually exists in physical form.

This is why it’s crucial to think of money and energy as one entity. Just like energy, money is attracted to positive entities (Hello Law of Attraction). While existing primarily in theory, money and energy can often be interchangeable while being some of the most important resources of our lives. In my post Protecting Your Energy, I suggest treating our energy as if we’re spending our wealth. We must pay attention to who and what we’re giving our energy to as it ultimately dictates our return investment.

Money is an infinite resource, it is always available to us in an abundant amounts. No one is more deserving of wealth, in fact it is our birthright to live in financial abundance. Just as we are able to have an abundant amount of love and joy in our lives, our abundance is determined by our attitude + feelings of worthiness which eventually dictates the role it plays in our lives.

When we’re plagued with anxiousness and depression, it’s often fueled by negative feelings and a lack of worthiness and until we learn how to heal from these feelings, we won’t be able to attract joy and happiness in return. Money is no different: we attract what we put out in the universe. If we want to experience financial abundance, we have to change the way we feel about money.

For a long time I felt that money equated to greed. I believed the wrong people had money–with the rise of large corporations, venture capitalist firms, stock market manipulation and the ever growing political party committees ability to control society, It felt like it was a me vs. them. As a result, I had negative thoughts and feelings about wealth within our economy. Aside from the societal beliefs I had of money, my personal relationship with money was just as toxic & dysfunctional and collectively, these negative beliefs prevented me from attracting abundance.

What I failed to realize was how I viewed money, how I viewed people with money, + how I perceived my ability to earn money resulted in how I received money.

So what had to change? I had to challenge my negative beliefs surrounding money.

Most of us don’t even realize we have negative beliefs, so If you’re anything like me, I always recommend to start out by reading these 3 books (unless of course, you feel you have reached your maximum earning potential):

• Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill
• How to be a Bad Ass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
• Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Gikandi

Why read these books?

“Remember that your dominating thoughts attract, through a definite law of nature, by the shortest and most convenient route, their physical counterpart. Be careful what your thoughts dwell upon.” 

― Napoleon Hill, Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success

Outwitting the Devil teaches us the innate fears and money traumas we have in our lives as a result of societal beliefs. These fears may be the reason we went to college, studied our specific field, found a career in a certain industry and kept us in a job or industry that we don’t love. It may limit us from traveling, purchasing big ticket items or even retiring because we see money as a limited resource and let our fear of poverty foster negative beliefs which can significantly change the course of our lives.

How to Be a Bad Ass at Making Money sheds light on our own personal money traumas. What behaviors do we have that limit our ability to manifest abundance? For me, I lost everything in my divorce. I would hold on to anything I owned because if I didn’t have the money now, I believed I wouldn’t have money when it came time to replenish whatever it was, from furniture to shampoo, I felt that way about almost everything I owned. My divorce had left me with a scarcity mindset. My behaviors on how I received and how I spent money communicated to the universe that I was underserving of money and I would continue to face financial hardship. Guess what happened? As I desperately held on to clothing, furniture and things that no longer served me, as I stayed in a job that was hurting my mental health, as I avoided taking vacations–I also limited my ability to accumulate wealth. Just as I had done for my ability to manifest love and joy simply by my lackluster mindset.

But as most healing goes, I had to look within because my money traumas ran much deeper than just my scarcity mindset.

During my teenage and young adult years, money became the source of fighting with my family. When my grandparents decided to make me a recipient to their estate along with my father and aunt, my father was upset by their decision. This fight would not only impact our relationship, but it also affected his relationship with my grandparents, a fight that would last years after their decision to include me in their will. I understand now that this wasn’t entirely on my father; while this created a money trauma for me, it became evident that my father was consumed by his own traumas surrounding money. A prime example of why ending generational trauma is so important. While I can’t speak for his life experiences, I know money was a source for a lot of problems in his life. As it would turn out, my grandmother ended up outliving my father making this entire fight irrelevant.

In this moment, I began to dismiss money because I was felt an overwhelming amount of sadness I wasn’t prepared for, I was still young enough that I had been naive to learn the limit of time as I desperately wanted to trade all of the money just for another minute of time with them both.

I also developed a dismissive mindset surrounding money based on continued fights with my parents as they tried to teach me the value of a dollar. It was a self taught approach that allowed them both to save a significant amount of money from a young age, my parents felt this would give me financial freedom and teach me a strong work ethic. As a teenager, if I wanted something I was expected to work for it. Overall this taught me a ton of valuable lessons and if had I listened instead of fighting it, I’d probably be inspired to write something much different. Instead, as most teenagers do, I chose to spend the next decade fighting with them over money. Succumbed to feeling like an outsider, my friends’ parents would give money out freely meanwhile I was paying for necessities like gas for my car. I look back and know that this trauma was self-induced and I was entitled for expecting it–but looking back, I could have saved us a lot of time if I had only communicated my feelings.

These experiences collectively communicated to the universe that I didn’t want to attract money. I was emotionally exhausted from what role money played in my life. I never wanted money to come between myself and anyone I cared about, which meant I would overpay at group dinners, I didn’t ask my roommates for their share of the bills, I didn’t remind people to pay me back and eventually, I didn’t go to my parents about the financial debt I found myself in during my marriage because I was too afraid that it would cause a fight.

So how did I change?

I stopped living my life fearful of not having money. I began to change the way I looked at money, I chose to be grateful for what it does and what it can do for my life. I make sure I have gratitude for money every day. I no longer allow money to stress and give me anxiety and chose to love money instead. I stopped using words like “wanting” or “needing” things and instead replaced it with a sense of gratitude for what I have in the moment and am thankful for what is coming towards me.

I also stopped letting others dictate how I should feel about money. I bought new furniture for my place and donated things I no longer needed or used. When the time comes, I trust that I will replenish things as I need to. I believe money will flow to me effortlessly and I think about all the opportunities it can provide me but also how I use money to help others.

The last book I recommended, Happy Pocket Full of Money speaks to the 70-10-10-10 rule: Keep 70% of your wealth, invest 10% to create lasting wealth (401k, investments, residual income), give back 10% to charity without any expectation for repayment and then 10% should be re-invested in your personal growth. That’s when I decided to invest in repairing my mental health, knowing that investing in a coach, going to therapy and taking self improvement courses would be a return investment. So I chose to heal the parts of me that were broken, I began to set + work towards my goals, no matter how lofty they may be, and I chose to become the most successful version of myself even if I’m not quite that version of myself just yet. I practice gratitude + affirmations as I rewire my beliefs convincing myself each day that I’m one rich bitch.

This is just my story, but through this journey I’ve been able to learn from others with compassion and an understanding that most of us have an opportunity to heal our relationship with money. If we can, remember money is a gift and we just need to work on seeing it that way. We are deserving of our dream life, & with a little TLC and healing, we can all attract an infinite abundance in our lives.

+ before we know it, we can be a money honey–so go on Queen Bee, treat yourself.