Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Planning, Budgeting, Scarcity Mindset, Financial Freedom, Online Business

85 | Disconnected from Your Money? Try This Money Mindset Shift

• Erin Gray | Financial Coach, Former Certified Financial Planner and CFO

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Feeling disconnected and out of control with your finances? 

It's not just you. Join me as I share my own experiences of struggling with feeling disconnected from my money and the societal norms that often leave women feeling overwhelmed by money matters. In this episode, I share how focusing on curiosity can empower women to take control of their money, explore limiting beliefs, and ultimately create a more confident financial future. 

In this episode I discuss:

• The importance of approaching money with curiosity instead of guilt 🤗🔍
• Starting with what's working to foster a positive mindset 🧠🌱
• Challenging limiting beliefs around work and money 🚫💭

Want to learn more? Here are your next steps:

Step 1: Join my FREE Facebook Community.

Connect, share, and learn how to master your money with other women just like you.

➡️ Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/941450038160915

Step 2: Grab your FREE Human Design chart

Curious what your Human Design chart reveals about how you're uniquely designed to make aligned financial decisions?

➡️ Get your chart here: https://generatealifewelllived.com/receive-your-human-design-chart

Step 3: Ready to transform your relationship with money and build true financial confidence?

Let’s create a strategy that feels aligned, intentional, and empowering—just for you.

➡️ Schedule your 1-hour Money Mastery Call here: https://generatealifewelllived.com/11-support

Money doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Let's create a strategy that feels nurturing and custom to you.

From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

Do you ever feel disconnected from your money? Maybe you're avoiding your finances, or it feels like you are out of control when it comes to your money. This is such a common thing that I see with women, and one that I have actually had to work through myself. The learning curve of balancing business and personal finances can leave us feeling, most times, overwhelmed and possibly unsure of where to focus, and one of my favorite emotions is curiosity, and I truly believe that it can be the key to shifting out of disconnection, and this episode is all about using curiosity to empower your relationship with money. Do you want is all about using curiosity to empower your relationship with money. Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money? Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to finances.

Erin Gray:

Welcome to your Money, your Rules. I'm Erin, a former certified financial planner and CFO, and yet I used to avoid my money and had fear, no matter how much we had. I can't wait to teach you how I overcame my money avoidance and started consistently managing my finances in a really simple way. It's time to get comfortable with money. If you're ready to take this work deeper and speed up the process, I would love to support you. In just one hour, we'll uncover the clarity that you need to craft a clear plan for moving forward and help you feel more confident in your next steps. Whether it's navigating your business finances or creating a sustainable money strategy, I'll guide you toward a more empowered relationship with money. You can schedule a call with me by heading over to generatealifewelllivedcom, and I'll put the link in the show notes and just click on the tab work with me, and then you can schedule a call.

Erin Gray:

You know, I think as business owners, and especially as female entrepreneurs, we wear so many hats. We wear the business hats right, like CEO, cfo, marketer, client service rep, manager, sometimes even bookkeeper, if you're starting out, and then I think also too, you know, as if you are a parent and just in your personal life all of the hats that we wear in our personal life as well and it's easy to feel and become disconnected from our finances, especially when you're trying to juggle. You know if you are a mom mom life and at home life and you know being a daughter and friend, and all of that along with being a business owner, and maybe you find yourself, you know, avoiding those financial decisions, because what I have recognized with women is we really second guess ourselves a lot, and maybe this also comes from some underlying money blocks that you might have, that you may not, may not even know about. Or maybe it's because you know you feel stress and are stressed when it comes to money and so then you avoid, feel disconnected and don't look at your money. You know, I was thinking about this the other day when I was the CFO of my family's construction business. It was very just numbers to me, um, like money would come in. I would write huge hundred thousand million dollar checks. You know money would go out. You know paying bills, all all of the things that I did. There was no emotional tie to it. But when I started my business, what I recognize is there was right, because I had money stories around myself, around what I, what I made. It mean if I made money or how much money I made.

Erin Gray:

And I think a lot of women feel this way and I think the financial industry, the business, I mean I didn't take any type of financial course until I was actually in college, studying for my CFP, and that is a requirement in order to, you know, sit for the exam and if that, if that is when I got my first dose of financial education. Yes, my dad taught me how to you know, balance a checkbook when I was in high school, but there there's not, like you know, at high school there there's not a a lot of classes around money, around financial education and business, unless you go to, maybe like an entrepreneurial high school, which back when I was in high school, I don't even know if they had those, and so there's a lot of challenges that I think that we face because one of lack of education to we think we're the only ones going through it and newsflash, you aren't, you are the norm. This is what I see. Women that I talk to, women that I've worked with um that experienced this, when they come to me, we really almost, in a way, we hold this close to our vest and we're not sharing and we're not talking about this with other women business owners. But this is rampant, at least in the U S that I have noticed, and we feel like we're, we're alone, right, but the more that we can talk about this, the more that we can say and normalize. You know what we haven't received the education, education and all almost to the point of on purpose to keep us in the dark. But we do have access to lots of things where we can choose to become involved, to learn, to learn.

Erin Gray:

But I just want to say that you aren't alone and it's not your fault that you maybe haven't been taught about money and finances, and so when you are starting your business or you've been in business right, like sometimes it's learning by trial and error and you know so many, so many women say I don't know what I don't know, and I think this is true for a lot of us, because if you aren't educated about topics, then you don't even know the questions to ask. So the biggest point I hope that you take from today, above and beyond the curiosity and what I'm going to go through here in a bit, is to recognize that you're not alone. So many of us have been where you are and are there currently and feeling like that we're not in control of our financial situation, and the one thing that I want to say is that we don't have to stay here. Right, it's a decision and we can choose to move through it. One courageous step at a time can choose to move through it. One courageous step at a time. So let's dive into.

Erin Gray:

You know, how do we actually break the cycle of disconnection with our money? And I believe the answer, one of the answers right, is curiosity. I mean, I think there's lots of ways, but I really think curiosity is such a fabulous emotion because when you approach your finances with curiosity, you move from a place of stress and fear and avoidance to one of empowerment and growth. And I think that curiosity is a highly underrated and emotion. It's not really talked about much, um, because when we are in the vibration of curiosity, it's really hard to be in the same room as judgment, right? Um? So curiosity allows you to start asking questions that maybe you didn't have access to when you were feeling shame and guilt. If you think about, like, the vibrational scale, you know shame and guilt is at the very lowest, I think. I think shame is lowest in terms of where you are on the vibrational scale, but curiosity is much higher and so when you are feeling shame and guilt, you're almost in that survival state and you're not going to have access to some of those questions and openness that you might have when you're in that place of curiosity.

Erin Gray:

So I believe that curiosity allows you to explore your finances, like I mentioned, without judgment, and you get to see where you can improve. You get to see and ask questions like what is working in my business, what is working with my personal finances at home, and what isn't working? And the thing that I want to encourage you to do is to start with what's working, because our minds are already going to go to the negative. It's just how we are biologically wired. It's what kept us safe and away from the lions and the tigers and the bears way back when. So our minds are already going to look for the negative. So, start with what's working and really get your brain to start focusing on things that are already working, things you're already doing well. Your brain to start focusing on things that are already working, things you're already doing well. And this is a skillset that you, you know practice, and the more that you practice, the better you get at it. So, what's working, what isn't working? And then, what could you be doing differently?

Erin Gray:

And I think asking questions are so powerful and it really depends on how we ask our question. That's really going to determine what the answer is. So if we ask a question like, well, why can't I keep my word to myself and why do I continue to do what I do? That is very different energy than asking a question like well, what would it look like if I sat down weekly and looked at my numbers? Do you see? Do you feel the energetic difference of? It's almost like you know a parent or a coachal. Questions like what do I feel in my body when I look at my business income and expenses? Or you know, if you really want to dive deeper into your expenses, or even you know your income as well, but, like for your expenses, if I were to make this decision today, looking at certain expenses, would I keep these current expenses or would I choose differently?

Erin Gray:

And you always get to re-decide just because you said yes to something a while back, like I recently did this. There was a couple of there was one pod podcast community that I was in and at the time it worked for me. Now I've changed up some of the things on the podcast. I'm doing more solo episodes and I have enough in my network right now where I don't really need to be part of this community. So, yes, it was a decision that I made. Maybe it was a year ago, but I relooked at expenses the other day and I was like you know what I don't really need to. I don't think I'm going to continue or I'm going to put this on pause for a little bit and then I'm going to redecide. So re-deciding is always something that you get to do and you get to decide over and over again.

Erin Gray:

Another thing is, you know, tracking your spending with curiosity. So track your business and your personal spending with curiosity instead of guilt. Spending with curiosity instead of guilt. So often, that is typically, you know, the first emotion that we feel when we look at something. If we've been overspending, you know the shame and the guilt comes in. But that's a choice, and I remember I used to have a coach that would say shame is a choice, and I would literally my brain would explode because I was like what do you mean? Shame is a choice? Because it felt so real that this is just what happens when I do these things. But that's not true. Like shame is a choice, we do decide and, yes, shame might still come up, but for me, what I've had to learn is that it's a decision to stay there, versus feel it let go, and we're going to practice something new, which is curiosity, right. So tracking your business and personal spending with curiosity instead of guilt. So look at where your money goes and ask is this way that I am investing my money? And I like the word investing versus spending. So is this way that I am investing my money in alignment with my priorities in my business right? Are these decisions that I have made in line with my goals for 2025? And if they aren't, celebrate right, okay, great. They aren't Okay. Now what? What do I want to do differently?

Erin Gray:

Also, take a look at your beliefs with money. I talk about this in previous episodes, like the 3D of money, which that is the actual like. Looking at your expenses, looking at your income, looking at what is actually occurring. What are you doing to generate leads in your business? Those types of material playing things we need to do to get us to where we want to go. But then there's that 5D, that the emotions, the subconscious beliefs that we feel around money, and that also matters too.

Erin Gray:

So getting curious and uncovering and also challenging those limiting beliefs that you might have with money. You know, for example, I one of the beliefs that I really had to work through for a long time was you have to work hard for money and you, in order to make more money, you're going to have to work more like more hours, and that that took me. That didn't happen overnight, right. So I had to find evidence of people that were making way more money than I was and were working way less hours than I was, and finding evidence for your brain to latch onto that, because that's the belief that I wanted to create, right, building those neural pathways. So that's one that that I've had to overcome.

Erin Gray:

You know also, like is money, if money, if you have a belief around, you know you have to struggle with money, just getting curious and and recognizing what are some of these beliefs that I have that are having me take these actions. And then another belief that maybe comes up for you is like, oh, I don't want to. This was me in my family's business at first. Like, oh, I don't want to hire someone because I had the belief that I could just do do it better myself. And I think there's so many layers to this as to why we don't want to hire someone. It could be that it could also be because you know, we love saying that we are working hard. We love saying that you know we're so busy. Like there's so many layers to this, but just getting curious around your beliefs with money and starting to question them and looking at them from a very open place versus judgment.

Erin Gray:

So I've given you several questions you know to to ponder and, although the questions are great, I'm and that is one form of taking action I am a big believer in taking action right. Listening to this podcast is great, but no change is going to come from just listening. So you have to take inspired action consistently. And I say simply and small right, like taking small steps consistently, I think, does way more for you than taking these huge leaps. So today, decide on two things. Number one am I going to choose the area of personal finance or business to take action on this week? So once you decide that, then pick one area. If it's your business or your personal finances, whatever you decided to take a look at, to explore it with curiosity. So, for example, if you decided, okay, I'm going to look at business, then look at your P and L and get curious. Do you know where the income is coming from? Do you know you know if you have several offers, which ones are most profitable? Like? Actually do some digging with that. Look at your expenses and then, if you chose your personal, you could look at your budget, right Seeing if your your spending is aligned with your family values, and giving yourself permission to explore it with an open heart and mind. Right.

Erin Gray:

Nothing good comes from berating ourselves. It makes us actually not want to do the thing. Like for a long time I thought that, like if I beat myself up, then I would you know it would help me get to X, y, z, but what I found was is not really right it. It had me playing smaller, it had me not doing the thing because I felt so bad about myself. So I want you to become your biggest advocate and friend and when the voice in your head gets a little rude, ask yourself would I speak to my best friend this way? And if the answer is no, then stop speaking to yourself that way, because you truly really only deserve the best.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so, to recap, the power is in the questions. Right, curiosity, but the but the? What type of question? Is it an expansive question or is it a? Why didn't you do this question?

Erin Gray:

Start getting curious about your spending and where your income is coming from.

Erin Gray:

Also, start getting curious about your beliefs around money.

Erin Gray:

What are some money limiting, money beliefs or some money blocks that you might still have that you want to work through? And then what actual step? Like I mentioned, either you're going to choose personal, finance or business to take action on this week and get curious about that, and if you're ready to dive deeper into your finances and create a plan that truly empowers you and your business, I would love to support you. You can schedule a call with me and together we're going to look at your unique situation and we will explore what's already working, and also I'll help you create a game plan to address what's not and then move forward with clarity and confidence. And if you want to schedule that call, you can just head over to my website at generatealifewelllivedcom. I'll put the link in the show notes and you can click on work with me and book a time that works for you. We can work together to create a financial plan that aligns with your vision and goals.

Erin Gray:

As always, thanks for listening and until next time. Did you learn something today? Do you know another female entrepreneur who might be avoiding her money? Will you send this episode over to her for me? And if you have it in you, please leave me a review for this podcast. It helps the show grow and I love hearing from you. See you next week.