Reparenting the Inner Child with Dr. Nicole LePera - Healing, Resilience and Resilient Wealth

When Dr. Nicole LePera (the Holistic Psychologist), first appeared on the Holistic Wealth Podcast with Keisha Blair, listeners around the world connected deeply with the transformative conversation around trauma, healing, self-awareness, and emotional well-being.

Now, Dr. Nicole LePera returns to the Holistic Wealth podcast for a second highly anticipated episode — this time to discuss her latest book, Reparenting the Inner Child, and the urgent global need for emotional healing in an increasingly uncertain world.

The conversation follows the momentum of Global Holistic Wealth Month and its 2026 theme, “Resilient Wealth in an Uncertain World,” which continues to resonate powerfully long after April ended. The theme sparked global conversations about what true wealth really means in modern life — especially during periods of uncertainty, burnout, disruption, and rapid change.

Resources Used in This Episode:

• Reparenting the Inner Child by Dr Nicole Lepera 
• Holistic Wealth Expanded and Updated Book by Keisha Blair 

Why Reparenting the Inner Child Matters Now More Than Ever
In this deeply moving episode, Dr. LePera explores the concept of the “inner child” — the emotional self formed through early experiences, conditioning, relationships, and survival patterns. She explains how unresolved childhood wounds often shape adult behaviours, financial habits, relationships, self-worth, stress responses, and even our ability to experience joy and peace.

The discussion powerfully aligns with the foundational principles of Holistic Wealth — the globally recognized framework created by Keisha Blair that emphasizes wealth beyond money alone, encompassing emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, relational, and financial well-being.

Throughout the episode, listeners are reminded that healing is not a luxury — it is essential infrastructure for a resilient life.

What You Will Learn in This Episode
Listeners will gain powerful insights into:

• How childhood conditioning shapes adult behaviors, habits, and emotional responses
• Why unresolved emotional wounds can impact finances, relationships, health, and career success
• The meaning of “reparenting the inner child” and how it supports emotional healing
• The connection between nervous system regulation and resilience
• Why emotional healing is foundational to building true Holistic Wealth
• How to recognize survival patterns that may be keeping you stuck
• The role of self-awareness in creating sustainable well-being
• What “Resilient Wealth” means in a world marked by uncertainty and constant change
• Why inner peace, adaptability, and emotional stability are becoming the new measures of wealth
• How healing can transform the way we experience success, relationships, and everyday life

The Defining Question: What Does “Resilient Wealth” Mean?
One of the most compelling moments in the episode comes when Keisha Blair asks Dr. LePera:

“What does Resilient Wealth mean to you in light of the Global Holistic Wealth Month theme?”

Dr. LePera’s response reframes wealth in a profoundly human way. Rather than measuring wealth solely through accumulation or external success, she speaks about the ability to remain grounded, emotionally regulated, adaptable, and connected to self during periods of uncertainty and disruption.

Her answer echoes one of the central truths behind the Holistic Wealth movement:

True wealth is the capacity to sustain well-being through change.

In a world marked by economic instability, burnout, chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and rising anxiety, the conversation becomes larger than psychology alone. It becomes a roadmap for modern resilience.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Coming up next on the Holistic Wealth Podcast. When I hear resilient, I hear capacity, like the ability to be within presence without losing again, or reverting back to autopilot, more unconscious-driven live-in. When we're present, when we're grounded, when our body allows us to stay present, the next word that then comes to mind is choice. Right? So as someone who's very driven to achieve, right, assumably, right, with achievements could come financial security, right? That was again why I was wired to achieve in childhood.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

You're listening to the Holistic Wealth Podcast with host Keisha Blair, author of Holistic Wealth and founder of the Institute on Holistic Wealth. And now, here's your host, Keisha Blair.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Welcome to the Holistic Wealth Podcast. And I'm your host, Keisha Blair, and today we have a great guest. We have Dr. Nicole Perra, and it's her second time on the podcast, and we're so delighted that she's back to share about her new book. It's now a New York Times best-selling book, Reparenting the Inner Child, and we're so happy to have her here. Let me just give you a quick introduction. And I know for many of our listeners, she needs no introduction, but I will just do a quick one. Dr. Nicola Perro is trained in clinical psychology at Cornell University and the new school for social research and studied at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She is a holistic psychologist whose work addresses the connection between the mind, the body, the soul, incorporating overall lifestyle and psychological wellness practices. She's the creator of the Self-Healers movement, where people from around the world are joining together in community to take healing into their own hands. And as some of you know, she is the number one New York Times bestselling author of How to Do the Work and How to Be the Love You Seek. Nicole, welcome back. It's so great to have you here.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I am honored to be back. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Absolutely. And let me just say, I've I've been reading the book. It's amazing. I can't tell you, Nicole, how much it's meant to a generation of women who've seen ourselves in the words, the pages of your book. Even from the introduction, I tell you, I read it and I was like, but this is my story. And I know for a generation of women who saw our mother's toil, you know, your experience, your one example of being at school. I think it was elementary school, and you worried if your mom would come back to pick you up. And I kid you not, same worries, same experiences. It's what led me to write holistic wealth in in part because I worried so much about that, about finances. What would I do if my mom died? My world would crumble. So I just went to get started with going back to you, going back to, you know, little Nicole, and in those moments. And I know that's where this journey begins. So I just want to take all of us back to that point where you had those thoughts. And your family was going through a lot at that time, having a six sibling. So can you just take us back, Nicole, in terms of what those moments meant and how that evolved into this work, into this new book and all that you've put into it.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for your kind supportive words. I lit up with chills of resonance hearing you describe it. It's such an interesting experience, spending so much time behind the scenes writing a book, and now it's finally living in the world. So any moment where I'm able to hear the feedback and the impact of the book that it's having means so much to me. So thank you for sharing that. And yeah, so my journey really began as that little girl. I mean, actually, as far as I'm concerned, my Janny, my journey began ancestors ago with cycles and patterns that were passed through generations that I think all of us end up experiencing often again as our or our family's best attempt at surviving the environment in which they were living. And so, without, of course, any of this understanding or awareness or the language that I have now, I was quite literally a child who was born to two older parents. My mom was 42, my dad was 45 when they had me or when they found out that they were pregnant with me. I was unplanned. I had two older siblings. So they, you know, I think from from all intents and purposes, believe that the family was complete. Um, and then I came along and again, I was born into an environment that had a lot of stress from stress inside the home with health-related issues, um, a lot of the mapping onto the reality of what was happening. Again, my older sister had a lot of really acute health crises in childhood to what was happening outside my home. Um, it was lost on me at the time, but not so much looking back that I grew up in Philadelphia, um, very much an urban environment with a lot of stress, um, always sirens outside my door, awareness of crime that was happening quite literally on my block. So, with all of the stress, while I didn't have the language at the time, because if you would have asked me up until my 30s, kind of how my childhood was, while I recalled very little of it, I would have described it as good. Yeah because my family always had a roof over our heads, right? My father worked very hard, my mother was in care of the home, my siblings myself. My father worked very hard for to create financial security for our my family. I did have a lot of opportunities. Both parents were present. They were even cheering me on at softball games. I got very involved in sports from a young age. So while I didn't have the language to understand, what I was lacking in childhood is I think what a lot of us lacked, which is the emotional attunement and the support that we needed to navigate, whether it's just standard development of growing up and learning how to navigate life to moments where there was higher stress involved. And it took me really decades into becoming a psychologist, which I always kind of wanted to be, to be able to look back now and see all of the ways that I had learned, as all of us will do as children, to adapt to the environments around us. Mine again, which lacked the emotional attunement that I needed. But in many ways, I developed very um societally celebrated, if you will, coping mechanisms that led me for a very long time to, to some extent, believe that quote unquote, nothing was wrong, though it was very confusing because I still continued to repeat a lot of dysfunctional coping habits that at that time I saw mirroring the habits that many of my clients were reporting that had brought them into my treatment room. So for me, it took kind of the moment of disempowerment, kind of wondering, what am I doing here in this talk therapy room and why isn't this working? And why am I still struggling with anxiety and not able to kind of get a hold on it while I have all of the tools, so to speak. I didn't realize how much I did not learn in terms of the human body, these survival-driven adaptations that will continue to unconsciously repeat until, of course, we learn how to bridge the gap between insight and awareness and actual change. So that's really what inspired this journey now of speaking at this time in my career about the inner child. Again, this part of us that stores all of those early memories that many of us revert back to in moments in adulthood that we can't seem to break the cycles of. Yet my hope is again with insight, understanding, and now accessible tools, we can begin to finally show up differently.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Yeah, no, that's amazing. And so I have another two-part question. So what does it mean to reparent the inner child? And then number two, you brought up something I thought that was very insightful a while ago. And I'm not sure about the exact words, but you mentioned these um societal coping habits. So is it possible to just get into like, okay, what do we mean when we say reparenting the inner child? And then what, what, what have we been doing like as a society, us collectively? Because I know we've all been doing it to some extent, you know, more so than others. But like, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 8:12

So I'm gonna actually start with the second part of the question so that hopefully then I can map on what reparenting looks like and maybe in each of these examples. Because again, in childhood, when we need, we're completely dependent on someone to show up in service of our survival. Yeah. And this happens at a time while our brain is developing, when we don't have language, we don't have necessarily logic, maturity to understand what's happening, though what we have are the sensations that are happening in our body. And we have a developing nervous system which is always driven to protect us however it is is possible. And so as children, we'll be unconsciously so-attuned, scanning, absorbing all of the direct messages, indirect messages, the care that's available, the points in time where someone moves away or disconnects from us, and all of that will be what we learn. And what we're mainly focused on in childhood is right, when I have a need, when I reach for comfort or connection, what happens, right? Is someone there consistently to care for me, to teach me safety and security? Or am I lacking in attunement, care, physical, emotional care? And so we will then fit in to survive. So let me use a couple of examples because some of these I think become very celebrated coping habits. And so, for instance, for me, right, I learned very quickly that not adding any more stress to an already overwhelmed household was the way that I could keep myself somewhat safe. And I saw very quickly that I was good academically and athletically, which again, I think in most cultures, that is the belief, right? That school will lead you to the good job, to the financial security. So, from a very well-intentioned mindset, my parents pushed me, my mom in particular, to excel in those moments and what that looked or in those areas and what pushing looked like was when I got the A, when I, you know, was the star pitcher and I won the game. Right. My mom gave me attention. She validated me, she celebrated me. And anytime, right, I showed some aspect of myself that she disapproved of, she moved away. She didn't speak to me. She gave me the silent treatment. So I learned very early on that to maintain attention and connection that I need it, I had to excel. And that turned into in a society, right, which celebrates accolades and achievements and letters after your name, right? It wasn't just my mom that was celebrating me. It was my teachers, it was the good college that accepted me. It was all of the things. Right. So I continue to rely on those habits, gaining a sense of worthiness and overworking and perfectionism, trying so desperately to avoid even the mildest criticism because it felt like such an attack. Right. And so while to some extent I can just I, which I did, I came to the conclusion, well, this is just who I am, right? This drive is ambition, it's celebrated by society and it's good and positive, not understanding that in my childhood it was the only reliable way to secure attention and safety. Um, something else I think that can very much, if in childhood, right, we've learned to be an appeaser, a pleaser, to stay quiet, as some of us have learned, especially women. I think in our homes, we had to learn to stay quiet, just to do as I say, and you know, maybe even care for the home around me, the siblings that we were maybe left in care of. We learned to again suppress our voice, our needs. Again, in childhood, that was protective. It helped us stay safe, prevent conflict, prevent explosive behaviors or disconnection. But now in adulthood, and to some extent, that can be celebrated, right? We're easygoing. We're all of these things that I think some women are told to strive to be. Yet again, it might in other moments result in us betraying ourselves, not speaking up when we need to, shutting down in a difficult conversation when we do need to gain understanding from a partner who is actually safe. So just taking those two examples, right? Reparenting in general, though, first is breaking those habits, right? Is showing up in a new way. Showing up maybe for the first time ever with security, steadiness, consistency, care, right? Becoming essentially the adult that we needed at one time that we didn't have. So in real time, practically, it means noticing, right, when those old patterns, noticing when I'm attaching my worthiness to my performance, not expecting that that pattern goes away because my body has learned that that's the only way that I gain attention and safety and belonging. But now I have new choices I could make, right? I can choose if and when I put something out that could be of impact and not just feel driven to perform or produce. Similarly, right, I can learn how to speak up for myself if maybe I'm the people pleaser or the appeaser or the person who shuts down in difficult moments. So simply reparenting is seeing with a more compassionate standpoint or awareness, I should say, the old habits, understand that they once served me, but now showing up in real time and making new choices that better serve the adult that I want to be.

SPEAKER_03 13:16

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, Nicole, as you're talking, I'm thinking about like different triggers in our lifetime that can help us see that we actually need to go on this journey. I remember for me, it was when I was in grief, deep in grief, after I'd lost my husband eight weeks after I had my first child. And that, you know, brought me back to those childhood moments of feeling so vulnerable, so scared. Can you shed light on how people listening in can know that okay, there's some aspects in my life that I just need to go back to? I need to start this journey and kind of what are those, not necessarily triggers, I wouldn't call them triggers, but you know, what are those moments or those, is it that I am hyper-vigilant? Is it that I'm overreacting to these small little slights by maybe, you know, people around me, my spouse? I don't know. You know, what what what are those tiny little um, you know, moments that we can sense that, okay, yeah, this there's definitely some work that needs to be done here.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

So I think those moments that we can really become aware that something older, our inner child, right, so to speak, is activated are exactly like you're describing, right? The moments where we feel a disproportionate or a bigger reaction. And now bigger can be in two different directions, right? It can be an over-reaction where we're acting out of character, we're raising our voice, we're doing something kind of amplified to an event that maybe doesn't necessarily require that level of a reaction, though an overreaction can also look like where we're shutting down completely, right? Where we are so overwhelmed that it becomes an under-reaction. We're not speaking up where we need to be. To simplify, right, an inner child usually or indicators of an inner child moment, reactionary moment, are where the reaction we're having is urgent. Right? It feels overwhelming, immediate, like there's no other choice but to instinctually react in this way. Um, a lot of times it maps on to if we're connected enough to our body, of course, overwhelming sensations, right? Our heart starts racing, we start to feel all of this tension, our face turns red, or we become really cold and numb, and we kind of can't, we can't motivate into action. We feel almost couch-locked in a sense, right? So moments again in our body, sensations, I should say, in our body can feel overwhelming. And in our mind, it maps onto that very much all or nothing type thinking, black and white, right? Where we get very like good, bad, right, wrong, every time, always, never, we start to hear that wording. Um, those again are the moments that we can typically begin to identify. Oh, okay. And I want to be clear here nothing is wrong in those moments. Physiologically, what's happening from a psychological standpoint is we are in a stage of what is called emotional flooding, right? The physiology, our nervous system. And I'm emphasizing this because some of us can carry a lot of shame around those reactions. We might even have well-meaning loved ones or bystanders that are looking at us like, whoa, why are you reacting that way? It's not that big of a deal. And it's not to say that they're wrong or we're wrong. It's all of it is the case because in our body it is that big of a deal, right? The physiology, the activation that's happening is making us react as if the event is way bigger than maybe the way someone else is experiencing that same moment.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

Yeah, no, absolutely. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about the nervous system. Like, can you take us through that, Nicole? Because I feel like, you know, and the nervous system is taking us back to that childhood, you know, incident, that moment, even though it's not happening in the present, it was in the past, but our bodies are, you know, is it that remembering? Can you walk us through what's actually taking place and why it feels so big and huge, and why we tend to, you know, have less control over these emotions?

SPEAKER_02 17:25

To speak to your very wise point, it is our nervous system that's driving what's happening. We all have an unconscious process that's happening in our brain and our body, right, in so many ways, where we're kind of surveilling, scanning, we're assessing the given moment. And we're doing this again outside of our own awareness. And what we're really assessing is we're we're questioning is this moment, if I'm simplifying it, of course, safe or unsafe. Right. Right. And so we, to some extent, right, we might like to believe that we experience a reality objectively, but we don't. Right. We even learn what's safe or unsafe based in again what happened in childhood. And more so, or less so, what happened, more so how much support we had. So two individuals, right, might experience silence very differently. If you're like me and silence meant your mom is mad, right? She doesn't like what you have done. She's now giving you the silent treatment. I'm gonna have much a different reaction to someone that did not have that messaging and child. And so for me, right, silence meant rejection, abandonment. I don't have the support I need in that moment. Whereas someone who didn't have right that kind of silent treatment or silence wasn't attached to that disconnection, might love silence and might be like, oh, I'm at peace, I'm at ease. Noise is what stresses me out. If, again, that person grew up in a home where loud noises, right, resulted in a lack of safety. So that system that's scanning and obsessing, uh assessing things isn't objective. It's based on what once happened to us. And then the moment, right, it's seeing or experiencing something similar. So the silence for me in childhood, right? When I'm not getting the text back from my partner and it's like, oh, why aren't you responding? Right now it's as if I'm brought back in time. My nervous system has assessed, oh, threat is happening because silence, I've learned, right, means disconnection and abandonment. And all of us need connection. All of our nervous systems need connection at every area or every stage of our lives. So now our nervous system gets involved. And of course, that process I just described happens out of my awareness. All I notice is me obsessively checking for the response as my heart rate begins to elevate, my breath begins to quicken, my muscles begin to tense. And before I know it, I'm doing the same thing that I once did, right? Which is I'm firing off seven different texts, asking if you're mad at me, overanalyzing my last text to understand what I did wrong to make you not respond. Yeah. Right. So that's the nervous system. We become activated, and then all of our bodies go through a sequence of survival-driven responses. The first of which is right, all of that elevated energy, the tension, the quickness of my breath and my heart rate mobilizes my body for action, one of two actions. I fight, I become overreactive, I start screaming and yelling and you know, kind of going outward with all of that energy. Or I flee, right? I use all of that energy to avoid the situation, run away from the conversation, escape in my mind, keep myself busy. If and when we determine that we can't overcome the threat or to keep ourselves safe or remove ourselves, flee the threat, then we will go into the shutdown stages, right? We will begin to be immobilized, unable to act, as if like an animal were playing dead. That's when we enter the space, right where we know we need to remove ourselves from something unsafe, and we can't. We can't speak up. And this is again a trajectory or a cycle, I should say, that all human nervous systems go through. But again, what most of us learn and begin to then favor are the habitual reactions that worked in childhood, which is why these moments are a bit out of character, and we could even say, just from a developmental standpoint, a bit immature, right? Because it in a way we're regressing to a time where screaming and yelling and striking first was the only thing that we could do. We have more options now, but in that moment, we're quite literally repeating these more regressive reactions.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Yeah, no, absolutely. And relationships tend to bring out these in so many ways, like as you're talking, so many ways, right? And now I'm thinking, okay, what's in the toolkit? What can we use, you know, both for ourselves in our relationships with our partners? Uh, you know, because it it it seems like in many relationships is like two um children coming together. And I think I remember one of your posts on Instagram where you Address that, and I was like, Yeah, this is amazing. Two children coming together in you know, this relationship, this partnership, you know, this marriage, and how can we do this while we're working on ourselves or inner cells together in a relationship as well?

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Great observation and very accurate one, which is that yeah, most of us become aware of our inner child in relation to others. Simply speaking, why? Because at one time, this is where those reactions were formed. You know, as a human infant mammal being creature, right? We are born so underdeveloped that we are in a complete state of dependency. It's not just us, even if we live in the West and we kind of pride our culture on being individualized, we are never able to just be a singular creature in childhood. We need someone else to show up and physically care for us, and more so, we need someone's nervous system to co-regulate with. So we are always then impacted by relationships, which is why in our adult relationships, all of those old habits come to play. And so the goal is not only to be aware of what are the things that we each do when we're overwhelmed. So I'll speak to what I do when I'm overwhelmed, which is I can quickly shut down, right? I can remove myself from connection. Either it's when I know I need to reach out for support, I feel too vulnerable doing it, I'm overwhelmed, I will be the one to just like my mom, as much as it was painful for me to be on the receiving end of the silent treatment, I have that habit because I didn't have attunement when I needed it. I learned how to be overwhelmed and alone. I did not ever learn how to open myself up for the support, the comfort, the attunement that I needed. So learning and understanding without judgment, right? I understand why I did that because when I reached out, no one was there to help me, right? They were all distracted and overwhelmed themselves. Even if they were present, right, trying to comfort me, their body was telling me how stressed they were in that moment. So without judgment, uh the kind of practical what to do becomes to know, right? To be able to observe and not say, oh, something's wrong with me, then I'm lashing out or pulling away in a moment of overwhelm. That's what I've learned to do. We can also then extend that grace and compassion to our loved ones, right? Where instead of taking their reactions personally, and of course, this is within reason. This is not continuing to show up in abusive or you know neglectful relationships, which is some of the pattern for some of us, myself included, that we have to learn to break, but we can extend compassion in those moments. In the next step, then becomes I do want to learn how. We all then can learn how to show up differently, which begins not by just knowing, oh, okay, Nicole, I know I need to reach out for comfort and care and connection and right assert myself when it's appropriate. I can't just wave the magic wand and become that. For the first step for most of us is we just need to interrupt the old pattern. We need to learn how to pause when we would otherwise react. Because as our body gets overwhelmed in physiology, right, as our heart rate begins to quick, quicken and our breath begins to quicken and our muscles begin to tense, we become driven to repeat those same habits. So while we want to, right, be able to show up calmly and maturely and do the new thing, the first step on the journey really is just breaking the habit of doing the old thing. And maybe not in real time, maybe somewhere after the fact, right? Coming back down, feeling more grounded, and then giving our self-compassion, apologizing maybe if our action caused hurt to someone else around us. But I'm emphasizing this because we can't just shift into new action, especially when our body is too stressed. So for most of us, it just means breaking the habit of reacting, slowing our breath, allowing our heart rate to go back to normal, releasing the tension in our muscles before our body allows us to then make that new choice. And for some of us, it takes a few minutes, for others, a few hours, for others, a couple days, right? But every time we give ourselves a new experience of coming back to the moment or calming ourselves down or not letting ourself get to that point of no return, we're finishing the story in a new way.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

Yeah, no, absolutely. And so, Nicole, I just wanted to ask you this before we go on, just in case I don't again, because I feel like, you know, and and I'm going back to everything you mentioned, you know, how it starts with getting attention, the accolades, the achievements, the titles. And that was something too that spurred me to write holistic wealth and to be on the journey with this, you know, because I realized that that was causing significant pain and it held us back when we needed to heal and take the right steps to heal. Um, so Global Holistic Wealth Day, our theme for this year is resilient wealth. And I just wanted to get your perspective before we go on about what that means to you. Because as we're speaking and we're talking about relationships, we're talking about healing ourselves or relationships or the inner work. You've been through this amazing journey, this amazing community that you've built. What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Anytime I hear the word resilient, um two things come to mind and they're connected. When I hear resilient, I I hear capacity, like the ability to be within presence without losing again, or reverting back to autopilot, more unconscious driven, live-in. That means to be with the positive, the negative, the neutral, all aspects of life, discomfort included. Because when we're present, right, grounded in a much more powerful part of our brain, though the limbic system, all this emotional hardware that I've been describing will override this powerful prefrontal cortex. But when we're present, when we're grounded, when our body allows us to stay present, the next word that then comes to mind is choice. Right. So as someone who's very driven to achieve, right, assumably, right, with achievements, could come financial security, right? That was again why I was wired to achieve in childhood, so that I could live a more secure life and not quote unquote have to work as hard as my dad, who had to work at one time three different jobs to support the family. Right. So this idea that certain things in life, the good school, the letters after my name would give me the financial security that we all need to some extent to exist and survive. However, right, I've had to decouple for myself the overfocus on performance to just earn the letters or even the finances. Because what I'd come to realize is when I got to the end of my journey, right, and I had the private practice and I had the letters and I had the relationship and I was living in the city of where I grew up and I thought I wanted to live there forever, I felt so disconnected from that life. I felt so unfulfilled. I was driven, right, to create security through achieving, getting wealth, included, but I wasn't feeling connected to that life or fulfilled by it. Yeah. So, and I think a lot of times, right, our relationship with money, as you beautifully described, right, is so often right connected to the desire for security, the inability to be secure with what we have or to experience with what we have, or even the ability to get in our own way and not be able to achieve the finances, the financial success that we deserve to have. So with resilience, right, with my own journey comes now choice, right? Being able to be selective and check in with myself and my capacity and my desire to take on projects, to like put out things, right, that would give me a certain level of financial security where I don't just feel driven to do it because that's how I've learned to feel worthy, but where I feel connected to what I'm doing because now it's become a passion and a purpose of mine. And with the kind of byproduct of this financial security that it earns me being a byproduct, being not just what drives me. And I see this a lot if we come from a financially insecure childhood, right? We tend to then driven to try and undo that and create financial security, right? We can create all of these dysfunctional relationships with money where we're exhausting ourselves with 17 jobs so that we don't ever go back to lack or not having, or where we're getting money and we don't know how to save it and we're then blowing money so quickly that we're so with all of these dysfunctional habits, again, I think connected to childhood, protection, worth. So resilience again simply means to be able to be present to our current relationships with money, with success, whatever, with other people, but and to show up with capacity and therefore choice, being able to choose what we do instead of just feeling driven for all the different reasons that we had once been.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Yeah, no, and that's amazing, Nicole. And before we go, because we brought in the financial security piece, which I think is great, and so many people are struggling through that piece today, especially now with like rising gas prices and everything's through the roof. And so I'm wondering if you could give us just a few final tips. If we're feeling hyper-vigilance around money and we're just feeling the stress around it and the trauma, are there any small daily techniques that we can use to just calm ourselves down and really just, you know, take it one step at a time as we go on to try to kind of deal with the financial security part of it?

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Well, you've already beautifully answered the question to some extent, right? Which is uh underst first of all, I want us to all, and I hope you are hearing me when I say this, that finances, right, are a part of life, safety, security, right? We need money to keep a roof over our head. We we do need in this society in which we operate, right? Money is very connected to our ability to feel safe, to feel secure. So I want to normalize anyone out there who is feeling hyper-vigilant to money or overwhelmed by even the conversation of money, not to kind of diminish the reality that to some extent, at least in this society as it currently is, you do need money, right? So that desire, need, vigilance, worry, fear is natural. But then the beautiful wisdom that you've already kind of answered, the question then becomes not to uh criticize or shame ourselves if we're feeling worried about money, fearful of money, if we are in a situation of financial lack, not to shame ourselves, but to empower ourselves, while we might not be able to change all of our financial circumstances with a wand in an immediate moment, begin to ask ourselves, what small thing can I do to create safety and security now? And for some of us, the answer is not worry about 12 days into the future, right? Just keep focused on this moment. Because what happens when we're fearful, right, is we now look to the whole future in front of us and we go into that all or nothing or always or never rent that's due three weeks from now. Let me just focus on today, right? If I'm not feeling safe and secure today, what can I do now to either calm myself down physiologically, to maybe take one step toward whatever action we might imagine would lead us into the direction of financial security, right? Not everything, not get there immediately, right? Some of this is about shifting our expectation, right? What's one small step? Sometimes the step is again just calming our body down until our perspective can shift. And what once felt like it was inevitable, all or nothing, terrible, never gonna happen, might feel a little more manageable as your body calms or making one small step, right? Taking going and applying to one job or taking one step in a direction that will lead us to financial security. Not anticipating that things will immediately change, but knowing that the more consistently we check in for with ourselves and make those small shifts, the more consistently now we're moving toward financial safety and security.

SPEAKER_03 34:16

Absolutely. And so, Nicole, that was amazing advice. I'm so grateful that you were able to join us on this show because I know you're busy with the book launch, but thank you so much. And any last words for viewers in terms of where they can find the book, where they can reach you again with a book and any other journey with in terms of the community, the self-healers community that you have.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

Absolutely. Well, thank you for the work that you do. I first want to reflect back that gratitude. Um, I'm so inspired by you, by your work. I'm so honored to now have had so many years go by and to be able to reconnect with you and also to all of you listeners out there, you know, for beginning to unpack things. Like I know for so many of us, you know, financial conversations are very loaded or very shameful. So it is a very brave and courageous thing to begin to look at our own relationships with anything in life, um, especially kind of with our finances, and again, to empower ourselves to create those shifts. So my hope is for listeners, whether the shift comes because you have a new awareness of maybe some of your habits and patterns, that you can be a little less critical the next time they show up, as they will, or maybe some of you will take a slight practical, you know, kind of tool with you to be able to downshift your body or create a little movement where you were once stuck. Um, I'm so inspired because this is how all of us really begin to break the cycles that have been passed on to us. So, of course, um this book, as all my books are available, um, hopefully at this point where all major books are sold, hopefully also in your local bookstore. So if you'd like to support local, absolutely, I suggest you do so. It's also available on Kindle and Audible. The way if you listen, prefer to listen to your books. Um, also come find me on all the social media platforms, even if you cannot um invest in a book at this time. These are conversations that I'm having. The community is so incredibly supportive, whether it's on the Instagram account or the TikTok or YouTube channel that's that we just relaunched. Um, just come and you know hear this information and begin to utilize these tools. And of course, I do have a membership community, self healer circle. You can get more information, self healercircle.com, um where you can join together every month. We put out workshop content, workbook content, and there's a beautiful community in there as well of members from quite literally around the world that are doing this work together.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Awesome. Thank you so much, Nicole. I really enjoyed this. It was great having you back on the Holistic Book Podcast. And all the best for your tour coming up in England and you know, other stops along the way. Just amazing work. And again, everyone, just get your hands on a copy and join the community. It's a great community and lots of great information shared there.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

The Holistic Wealth Podcast with Keisha Blair is brought to you by Have you joined the Institute on Holistic Wealth?

SPEAKER_01 37:10

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