What happens when you tell yourself that you’re bad with money? Or when you don’t believe you’re worthy of more? Nothing good! Find out how to identify and overcome the money stories that are holding you back.

Ready to feel like you’re not bad with money? Visit NotBadWithMoney.com to learn about our financial coaching service that’s mostly practical and a little magical.

Got something you need advice about? Ask us here: ForcesOfEqual.com/Advice/

Transcript

Pam: [00:06] You’re listening to Not Bad Advice, where our goal is to offer perspective that helps you improve one aspect of your life at a time.

[00:00:13] I’m Pamela Lund.

CK: [00:00:20] And I’m CK Chung.

Pam: [00:00:21] And we hope that after listening you’ll think, “Hey, that’s not bad advice!”

[00:00:25] A quick programming note before we dive in today: we are going to dedicate our next several episodes to money topics. We’ll go over everything – from how to uncover the unconscious money stories that are sabotaging your goals, to practical advice, like how to actually set up and use a budget that works for more than a month.

[00:00:55] As with all of our episodes, the advice you hear can be used on its own right away, but if you’re ready for more, we’re also announcing our newest coaching service: Not Bad With Money – a one-on-one personalized money and budget coaching program designed to heal your relationship with money, so you’ll feel calmly in control of how it flows through your life.

[00:01:14] Visit NotBadWithMoney.com or click the link in the show notes if you’re ready to feel like you’re not bad with money.

[00:01:20] We all have stories we tell about money, whether we realize it or not. We tell ourselves stories through our unexamined, unconscious thoughts. And we tell other people our money stories through our actions and behaviors.

[00:01:38] These narratives affect how we engage with the world in wide ranging ways. From whether you fund your 401k, to how you negotiate your compensation, to how much you spend on your clothes.

[00:01:50] They also affect how highly we value ourselves in non-monetary ways. Uncovering, evaluating, and releasing your money stories can positively impact literally every area of your life. Even your sex life.

[00:02:05] Creating personal narratives about why we are the way we are is just a human thing. We all do it, and we do it about everything – big and small. We say things like, “I can’t cook” or “I’m bad in relationships” or “I can’t write a book” based on past experiences or based on something someone else put in our heads. Like, maybe a parent who told you you couldn’t sing when you were a kid.

[00:02:33] We develop these narratives as defense mechanisms. If you say you’re bad at something, you have an excuse to not try to do it, and therefore, to not fail. But none of these things that we tell ourselves are true about the future, because the future isn’t written.

[00:02:50] Your stories are only true about the past, if they’re true at all. You have the choice every day to continue believing and living by whatever story you’ve been telling, or to change.

[00:03:03] If you had cooking failures in the past, you can still learn to cook. If you had volatile relationships in the past, you can learn from them and change how you behave and the partners you pick. If you’ve tried to write a book before and didn’t succeed, you just haven’t done it yet. You still can with the right plan.

[00:03:22] There are of course circumstances in which people physically, or literally cannot do certain things, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about imaginary barriers that everyone builds based on past experiences and the choice you have to allow those invisible walls to constrain you, or not.

[00:03:40] Stories that specifically relate to money are no different than any other stories. They can come from anywhere like trauma from childhood, lessons we received from others unintentionally, or from patterns we developed simply because we didn’t know better. Some narratives are really easy to see where they came from and to deal with, but most are more nuanced and layered.

[00:04:03] After all, we are complex beings living in a complex system where we interact with other complex beings. So it gets pretty messy. I’ll give an example from my own life to illustrate the idea.

[00:04:16] I grew up middle-class we always had enough, but my parents worked really hard to make sure we did. When I was a kid, my dad worked seven days a week to get their car repair business off the ground. He and even had a car in his shop so he could sleep there.

[00:04:31] My mom was very resourceful and could really stretch a dollar. There was this inherent feeling of pride in our struggle. Like, my parents worked so hard for everything we had, so they really earned it.

[00:04:43] As kids, we were taught from an early age to save money, to be responsible with credit, and to be self-reliant. My parents made sure that we were comfortable and happy, but they wanted more for their kids. So they put us all through college so that we could earn more than they did.

[00:04:57] And at the same time that they were setting us up to make more than they did, there was a constant message about rich people being bad in some way. If you had money and spent it in a flashy way that was unacceptable to my parents, I can actually hear my mom saying “rich bitch” right now. That was a phrase that she used a lot, and she didn’t really swear, so you knew she meant it when she said it.

[00:05:23] So the story that I internalized was that I was supposed to work hard and make a lot of money, but I was not supposed to enjoy it. So I struggle with feeling guilty about buying things that I want instead of saving the money, even when I’ve met my savings goal for the month.

[00:05:42] And when someone asks about a new purchase that I’ve made, I immediately say that I got a great deal or shopped clearance, or I justify why I needed what I bought, even though I work for my money and I have every right to spend it however I want. I always feel like I have to justify spending money on myself.

[00:06:01] So that’s a story that I’m working on releasing, and it’s a process. And putting this narrative in my subconscious was not intentional on my mom’s part, and she would never want me to have that internal conflict. But intention doesn’t matter. The end result does.

[00:06:17] I debated quite a bit about whether I would include that story or not, because I don’t want my mom to feel it, but ultimately I decided to include it because this is the work that we all have to do. And it’s not easy, but it’s necessary.

[00:06:31] We pick up stories through observing how people around us behave, especially our parents or caregivers. And our caregivers have their own stories. So they are passing those stories to us, their kids, who will then pass those stories onto our own kids, if we don’t do the work to release them.

[00:06:50] So it’s very important work. Even if you might hurt some people in the process.

[00:06:56] CK, do you think you have a money story that you picked up from your parents that you’re willing to share?

CK: [00:07:01] Yeah, I’m not really sure. I mean, I definitely have money stories and issues stemming from my childhood, but it would take a while to kind of think through it.

[00:07:15] In general, we grew up middle class as well, and my parents didn’t buy me many toys. So I was always jealous of my friends, toys and video games and cool bikes and all this stuff that they were getting, while I was only getting books and science projects like chemistry sets and electric boards and stuff like that. So, I’m sure some of that has had an effect on how I spend money now in terms of buying toys, per se.

[00:07:51] At the same time, my parents didn’t really make me work through high school or when I got to the age when some kids started working, so I didn’t really have any motivation to go out and make money. My parents were providing me with everything that I needed, so I maybe fell into a sense of comfort in thinking that I’ll always be provided for.

[00:08:23] So, yeah, I’m not sure. I’m just kind of thinking through this now, but…

[00:08:26] Pam: Yeah.

CK: [00:08:26] Yeah, there’s a lot that could probably be sorted through there.

Pam: [00:08:30] Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, there’s endless stories that we can have about money and you could look at almost every instance in your life see how it has affected you as an adult. So, there’s a few more examples that I can list to see if any resonate with our listeners.

[00:08:44] For example, people who grew up in poverty might feel like they shouldn’t strive to earn more than their parents because their parents will completely, unconsciously, give them a message that they’ll no longer be like their family, if they have money. That they’ll be turning their backs on their people by changing their economic status. This can cause students to pass on scholarships or adults to not go after higher paying jobs all because they don’t want their family to look at them like they’re different.

[00:09:14] There’s also the case where there are people who feel like every time they get a little bit of a financial cushion, something happens that wipes out their savings. So they stop saving because they figure it’s just going to get taken away, so why bother?

[00:09:29] Or people who saw their parents fight about money or who have gone through, maybe, a bitter divorce that centered around finances, may develop a story that money ruins relationships, whether you have it or not. So they don’t share their financial life with their partner, which can create distrust or the fights that they were trying to avoid in the first place.

[00:09:51] There’s also cases where people believe that they’re bad at managing money, so they neglect to manage their money, which results in overdrawn accounts, maxed out credit, and even bankruptcy, which all confirms that they’re bad with money. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[00:10:08] And I could go on and on. There’s so many ways that money stories show up in our lives and they affect everything else that we do. When we aren’t aware of our money stories, we self handicap or even self-sabotage because we have to prove our story, right. If we don’t prove it right, then we have to admit we’re wrong. And people hate being wrong. Especially about themselves.

[00:10:30] But here’s where it gets really insidious. When you believe a story, you behave in ways that support that story, and you may even tell other people your story. Like, you might tell them you’re bad with money, or can’t be trusted to save, or that you don’t want a promotion that you think you don’t deserve because of your money stories.

[00:10:50] So now, other people believe these narratives about you. And that affects how they treat you, which reinforces your beliefs about yourself and affects the opportunities available to you.

[00:11:02] So it’s a cycle within yourself and it brings other people into the cycle. And it’s, very, very hard to break out of that cycle. And it can have extreme effects if your money stories are negative.

[00:11:14] But as I say in just about every episode, awareness is how you start to make change. And really getting to the root of where your money stories come from could take a really long time, like years even.

[00:11:27] But you don’t have to fix them all at once. Working on one is more than most people do. So you’re already ahead of the game just by listening to this show. And you can take a couple of different approaches to find where your money stories started.

[00:11:42] You can start by looking from the past forward to see where your money issues are rooted, like CK and I just did by talking through things from our childhood. And you can do this by journaling, or talking with a friend, or just reflecting on the money messages you received when you were younger.

[00:11:59] You can think about phrases your parents do used, like “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “we can’t afford that.” And think about how you remember thinking about money as a kid.

[00:12:09] One of the best ways to do this process is, if you have siblings that you can speak openly to, ask them what they remember about how your parents or caregivers dealt with money. This has two benefits. One, that you can hear their perspective, which helps you uncover things that you may not remember, especially if they’re older than you. And two, that you get to bond over the shared experience, and you can start to heal together because, likely, your money stories are the same, if you both grew up receiving the same messages.

[00:12:38] And the other way, that you do this process is start by looking from now backwards. If you have a money story that you’re already aware of, journal or talk about that, and then try to find where the root of the story is by looking back to when you first remember feeling that way. Or if you’ve confined messages that you received when you were younger that planted that seed.

[00:12:58] And once you have a narrative or two, work through, if they are even true. Or if there is another explanation for why you repeat that pattern.

[00:13:08] This is a big part of what we do in the, not bad with money coaching program, because it’s not always easy to uncover the source of the stories, but once you do, it’s so powerful. And people can literally change the way they think about money overnight, just by finding the pattern, realizing that it’s not true, and changing how you think changes how you act.

CK: [00:13:32] Yeah, sounds like it all basically comes down to stuff that we talk about a lot, which is self-reflection and mindfulness. the thing is these days, It’s easy to be mindless about money because companies are always, basically distracting us to get us to buy whatever they’re selling without thinking about it.

[00:13:56] So, yeah, it all comes down to being mindful about how you’re spending and why you’re spending that way and figuring out the narrative or the story behind that.

Pam: [00:14:07] Yeah, it definitely is. And as we’ve talked about before, money is so personal and so emotional that finding those stories can bring up a lot of painful stuff, and it can also relate to so many other areas of your life, where being mindful about other parts of your life may not be quite as knotted and tied into other pieces of your life.

[00:14:31] Money is so embedded in everything that we do. And so embedded in how we feel about ourselves and who we are and how we present in the world. There’s so much tied into money that it’s a much harder thing to be mindful of because it brings up a lot of anxieties and a lot of insecurities.

CK: [00:14:48] Yeah, that’s a good point. And that may go towards pointing out why money has such a strong hold on us because it is so emotional and we engage our primitive brains and we don’t think with our evolved brains and we don’t think rationally. it’s more driven by emotion.

Pam: [00:15:13] Alright, so let’s transition into the part of the show where I shuffle a deck of Oracle cards and pull a card to see how that card can relate to what we talked about today.

[00:15:50] I like doing this because it gives me a visual to associate with the topic. And when I have a visual, it makes it easier to remember the perspective, so I can more easily integrate it into my life.

[00:15:58] So let’s see what the Nocturna Oracle deck has to offer as a visual for investigating our money stories.

[00:16:05] So the card that we got today is the Datura, which is a flowering plant, and it is in the night shade family. So night shades, some of them can be used medicinally. So if you take a little bit of the night shade, it can give you visions and have medicinal properties. But if you take too much of it, it is poisonous.

[00:16:47] So I’m going to relate to this night shade plant to our money stories by thinking we can have stories that can beneficial. We can choose to believe things that benefit us, but if we get too deep into stories rather than what is reality, we can poison ourselves with these negative thought processes.

[00:17:13] So, when you are thinking about the stories that you are ingesting, consider if they are beneficial and what the dose is that you are taking, and if they are not helping you. Choose not to believe them any longer. Don’t ingest your negative stories, your toxic stories.

[00:17:35] Alright. So, if you identified with what we covered today and are feeling called to take action of your finances, don’t forget to visit NotBadWithMoney.com to learn about our new money coaching service that combines practical and intuitive advice, just like this show.

[00:17:54] And if you found yourself thinking, “Hey, that’s not bad advice” while listening today, we’d love it if you shared the episode with your friends and rated the show in iTunes to help other people find us.

[00:18:04] You can get in touch with us on Twitter, where I’m @Pamela_Lund and CK is @cKdisco. If there’s something you need advice about, visit ForcesOfEqual.com/Advice , where you’ll find a form that you can use to get in touch . Both links are in the show notes.