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

97 | Tired of Having a Scarcity Mindset? Your Spleen Center Might be the Reason Why

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

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Ready to work through your scarcity mindset?  Your money fears may not have as much to do with your bank account as they do with your Human Design.  Have you ever wondered why financial anxiety follows you regardless of your actual financial situation? The answer might lie in your spleen center.

Our spleen center in Human Design profoundly influences our relationship with money, potentially keeping us trapped in scarcity thinking even when financially stable. Understanding this connection allows us to transform our financial mindset from fear to trust by recognizing whether our money fears originate from within or are absorbed from others.

In this episode I discuss:

 ✔️ How the spleen center governs instinct, intuition, survival, immunity, and our relationship with time

 ✔️ Common signs of money scarcity include feeling "never enough," hoarding, avoiding financial decisions, and anxiety about expenses

 ✔️ How the 7 specific gates in the spleen center correspond to different financial fears 

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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?

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

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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:

So in today's podcast, we're going to explore how our spleen center might affect our relationship with money and how to shift it from scarcity to trust.

Erin Gray:

Because what I have noticed is if you are constantly feeling worry about money, even when things are financially stable, or you might be feeling like there's never enough, no matter how much you have. Scarcity isn't just about the numbers. It's often rooted in some deep subconscious beliefs and fears. And if you have an undefined spleen center in human design, you may be absorbing financial fear that isn't even yours. And I will say, if you have a defined spleen center, you're probably having some financial fears and recognizing that. And so how can we work with our spleen center instead of letting it kind of drive the bus? Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money? Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to finances. 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. I also wanted to say if you're feeling stuck in that cycle of money scarcity, even when things are stable, and you feel unable to kind of shake that fear of never having enough, it's time to dig deeper into how your spleen center and human design affects this and how that's actually influencing your money mindset. If this resonates with you, I really want to invite you to schedule a one-on-one call. Together we can uncover how your spleen center is playing a role in your financial fears and I will help you develop practical, personalized strategies to help you shift from a place of scarcity to one of sufficiency and to trust. You can click the link in the show notes to schedule a call with me, or you can simply go to my website, generatealifewelllivedcom and at the top click on work with me and then support and mentoring and you can schedule a call.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so let's talk about why we feel scarce with money and and when I talk about human design, I use it as a tool. It's not an end-all, be-all, and it's really fascinating to see how these different parts, these centers in human design, play out with our money Scarcity mindset. It's not just about income and assets, right, it's about how safe you feel with money. I think a really misperceived if that's a word I want to use um idea that we have is that people with money don't have any money fears, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm sure you probably relate I know that has been my story and it's really that at the end of the day, like how do we feel? Like, do we feel safe with money? That's actually what's creating that scarcity mindset or not. So I want to kind of go over first some common signs of money scarcity and then I want to talk about the spleen center in human design and go over the gates. So when you're listening to this episode, you can pull out your human design chart. You can go and get that on my website, generatealifewelllivedcom, and it's called human design chart calculator. You could put in your information and you can get your human design chart. So pull out your human design chart, look at the spleen center it's the one on the far left If you're looking at your body graph and I'm going to go through the different gates.

Erin Gray:

So common signs of money scarcity is feeling like you never have enough, right, no matter your income or the amount of assets you have, it's never enough. Like this was me to a T, it, it, no matter. I mean, I just remember, no matter how much we had, I would just keep moving the goalpost because it never felt like enough, right, because I was putting my security in some external number, which that never right. Security, safety it has to be an inside job. Holding onto money tightly or, in my case, fear of spending and really more so hoarding, we can avoid financial decisions out of fear we can have and feel a lot of anxiety around unexpected expenses, even small ones. I've talked to several women who work with financial planners and their CPAs and all this, and they have a budget, but when there are bills that they receive and they are not part of their budget, it's almost like they go into this freeze response, right, because it's unexpected, and they just feel so much fear. And this fear often comes from some type of external conditioning, like I constantly talk about what was our childhood, like what kind of past experiences, whether in relationships that we were in or our societal conditioning, you know for sure. I believe generational trauma is a thing and that gets passed down from generation. Hence generational trauma, right, like gets passed down in our DNA and until we transform it and transcend it, we will continue to repeat those patterns.

Erin Gray:

So let's talk about understanding what is the spleen center in human design, and then I'm going to talk about whether if you're defined or undefined, and then I'm going to go over the gates. So you may have to listen to this episode a couple of times, but I think it's really. It's packed with a lot of information and I think it will be really helpful for you to see where are your gates and where are you defined or not, because it's going to give you some, it's going to illuminate for you maybe why you're having such fear around money. So the spleen center if you're looking at your body graph chart, it's going to be on the far left-hand side, it's going to be the triangle and the gates are going to be 48, 57, 44, 50, 32, 28, and 18.

Erin Gray:

And the spleen center is the center for instinct, for intuition, for survival, the immune system and time. And it's an awareness center, meaning that it operates in the now, like we have an alert relationship with fear, think about like, oh, my goodness, I'm getting this hit, like don't go down this dark alley in the moment. Right, that's that spleen center. It takes in information within the environment via our five senses and it discerns if there's something to alert us or not. And so if you are defined, if you're looking at your chart it's going to be colored in. So if you're defined, you are probably going to have a more stable sense of security and trust in your instincts, your hunch, your intuition. And this is obviously with the caveat like if you are in tune with your body, you might be experiencing fear, depending on the specific gates and channels that you have. Now, if you grew up with a parent who was very fear-based and you are conditioned by them, okay, well then that might change some things right.

Erin Gray:

So take what I'm saying as a loose understanding of your spleen center. It's just not a hard fast rule, end, all be all. But I wanted to kind of illuminate for you and give you some examples of how this might show up. If you are undefined or open, it's not going to be colored in and you're going to probably more than likely absorb fears from others and you might struggle to feel financially safe. Like this is true for me, like after I saw my body graph chart and I saw my dad's because I really hung out with him a lot when I was younger I am undefined in my spleen. He is defined in his spleen and he has a lot of gates in his spleen and so absorbing, like the thing. If you have an undefined or open spleen center, the thing to keep in mind is that are you allowing this energy to move through you or are you taking this energy on and thinking that it's yours? So there are seven primary fears that come from the center.

Erin Gray:

Gate 48. If it's, if you have this gate, it's going to be colored in, so it might be colored in once, or it might be kind of like colored in and have diagonals, like if, if you have the gate, all of these gates that I'm about to go through, if you have them, they will be colored in. I only have gate 57 and gate 32, but I just want to go over each of these gates and how it shows up for money and then that way you can get a little bit more clarity. So gate 48 is the fear of inadequacy. So this might show up of the fear of not having enough money or it can show up, which I've seen you might be purchasing programs because you feel like you don't have enough information, right, like the person that's constantly buying more programs and more programs, to understand better, to get better, to. Oh, if I just take one more thing that comes from that fear of inadequacy, gate 57, which I have this gate three times is the fear of the future, basically the unknown Right. And I can tell you so much that this is so true for me. Like my brain is constantly thinking about the future, right, thinking about what I might. So it might show up like and you might want to save, save, save, because you're trying to protect yourself from that unknown, or you might restrict or hoard, which was me big time. So really recognizing like, okay, the fear of the future is coming from that place of the unknown and and really there we don't have any control over the, over the future, over the unknown. When I say we don't have control over the future, yes, you can decide to create what you want in your life. And also there's the part that's like we're co-creating right With the universe or God spirit source, like your timing might be a little off than what you expected it to be. So really just recognizing that we create that safety within us.

Erin Gray:

Gate 44 is the fear of the past. So like fear that the past is going to repeat itself. So maybe when you were growing up, and possibly like generationally, you have evidence of what maybe happened to your parents or your grandparents or your great grandparents, so you might hoard that money, you might save a lot to not repeat the past or make certain decisions so that you don't get in that same position that you were in. Think about it from a way of like are you moving towards something, like I want to save because I want to invest and I want to grow my wealth? Or are you looking at it more like, oh, I want to save because I never want to be like how my parents were? Right, very different energy. Are you moving towards something or away from it? It's like where's your energy focused?

Erin Gray:

Gate 50 is the fear of responsibility. So we might care too much or maybe not enough. Right, like we're going to have these dualities of you know too much or not enough. So feeling responsible for all the people right, we might be providing for others when we are ignoring taking care of ourselves. So making sure that you're taking care of yourself, that you have enough money, first before you start trying to take care of everybody else right, we got to put our oxygen mask on first before we start taking care of everybody else. You also might be like an ostrich, right, you stick your head in the sand, you ignore, you abdicate responsibility, like I see this as well.

Erin Gray:

Gate 32 is fear of failure. Right, this is afraid of taking risks, or if risks we take don't necessarily turn out like we wanted them to or we expected them to. This might show up as being like super ultra conservative when it comes to money, right, going back to like the saving, the hoarding to prevent any type of failure, like not investing in yourself, in your business at all, like so avoidant of risk. Or it might be like the flip side is, like you might invest in everything because that, hopefully, is going to help you feel safe, right, so just notice, you might swing along the pendulum. You might be, you know, depending on your gates. You might be really heavily maybe hoarding in one area and then you might be over-investing in another. Gate 28 is the fear of death. Like literally fearing getting to the end of our life and then it doesn't have any meaning. So this can show up in addictive behaviors, like maybe overspending because it gives us that dopamine hit in that momentary meaning versus really getting clear on what we actually value and then investing according to those values. And the last gate is gate 18.

Erin Gray:

This is the fear of authority. This could be parents, critics, the government, think about this comes into play, like the IRS or like I think about how the 401k industry, things of that sort. Like maybe growing up, you were chastised for spending your money in a way that was fun and valuable to you, but your parents didn't think so, and so now you might feel shame and guilt on how you spend your money. When I say, like the government or critics, things of that sort, this is fearing that someone's going to tell you what to do with your money. Like think about 401k, government changes or tax law changes, the financial industry and how they have made changes, so this might modify your behavior as to how you invest. So three ways to shift from scarcity to trust. Number one is identify if the fear is actually yours.

Erin Gray:

I think this is a great question to ask, regardless of whatever center, wherever you, you know, whatever center you have, defined or undefined. Just in general, like a lot of times, I'll ask when I'm feeling something like is this energy even mine? So really starting to slow down, pause and ask yourself these questions Like what evidence do I have that I'm actually unsafe financially? Like make your brain answer these questions, because a lot of times we're just running these programs that we've ran for however many years and we're not questioning what this is actually like. Is this actually my belief, or is this somebody else's belief, that I picked up, or is this my energy, or is this my fear, or is this somebody else's? A lot of times that when I'd asked myself these questions, the answer was it's not mine, it's somewhere I picked up along the way, and a lot of times it came from, you know, from my childhood. So you can journal right on your biggest money fears and question where did they come from, and you don't have to like spend lots of time on going down the rabbit hole and trying to figure out like cause. Sometimes I don't think that's really productive, but I do think it can be helpful on like is this even mine? Did I inherit this from like a family or generational stuff or past experiences, or is this actually something that I believe now? And the more that you slow down, the more you tap in, you tune into your body, the easier that this is going to get.

Erin Gray:

Number two is strengthening your own sense of security, right? Instead of relying like I talked about earlier, how I used to rely on and think that some number was going to make me feel secure, we keep relying. We're taught like this is a societal thing that we are taught that you know our financial security is based on how much money we have, or if our mortgage is paid off, or if you know our 401k has X amount in it or whatever it might be. Versus that building that internal security, right? And I define security by no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay, I'm going to feel, and I can feel any emotion, I am resourceful and I can figure it out, because really, at the end of the day, the thing that we're trying to to feel secure about is avoiding feelings, right? The reason why we want to try to latch onto some external things is because we don't want to feel whatever we think we might feel if that were to happen.

Erin Gray:

And the moment that I really started to be like okay, so what would happen if my brain is like, oh, you have no more money, it's like okay, I would feel disappointment, I would feel embarrassment, I would feel probably like a failure. And when I really started to tap into those emotions. When I started to tap into those energies and I started to put my hand on my heart and say, even if that were the case, I still love you anyways. Even if that were the case, I would be proud of you because of what you've done and that you are resourceful and that you could figure it out. There was that sense of safety that no external thing could ever bring me. So, really getting clear on what are those emotions that I'm trying to avoid feeling by trying to get something externally and I don't want to say practice feeling those feelings a lot, but really the reason why we're avoiding them is because we don't like the vibration that it creates inside our bodies. But the more that we can feel disappointment, the more that we can get practice that feeling embarrassment or shame or guilt the less heavy that they feel in our bodies and the quicker that they move through us. So I always say practice.

Erin Gray:

You know I always put my hand on my heart when sometimes the mind just rattles and it goes down the crazy train lane. You know, practicing deep breathing that tells your nervous system that you're safe, that you're here, that you're present, and really putting your hand on your heart and giving yourself, like so much love, what's maybe a money mantra that you want to kind of go to when the brain starts to to chatter or those fears start to come up, like a couple of mine are I'm safe in this moment, I'm here right now, you're okay right now. I'm always supported and I always have enough. Like. Those are some for me. Those might resonate with you. You might need to, you know, come up with your own. But like, what are some things that you can tell yourself, just like you would a five-year-old little kid. If they were scared, what would you tell them? Those are the. Those are the things that you need to start telling yourself and start talking to yourself and your body to create that safety.

Erin Gray:

Also, recognizing and this is, you know, something that I had to kind of build an evidence list for is like recognizing past evidence of financial resilience right Times that I did figure it out, like we've always figured it out, we've always had more than enough and you know the those. I think that sometimes that those scarcity thoughts arise I've noticed this with myself. I would love to hear from you if this is similar for you, if this resonates with you. But sometimes, when I'm having an air quotes too much fun, like when life is so simple, so easy. It's kind of like this capacity, right. What is your capacity to have fun and ease and joy in your life? And when you get outside that comfort zone is when those scarcity thoughts start to creep in, right, it's like we're so used to, or we have been used to, feeling scarcity that as we expand our nervous system for love and joy and abundance and flow and ease, when we've gone too far outside that comfort zone, then our brains, our body, serves us up that scarcity, right.

Erin Gray:

So really expanding your capacity to have more ease and flow and joy in your life, right, and thinking about you know how many times that, when that thought arises, how you've always figured it out, and going back to peace and joy and love, right, those scarcity thoughts arise, reframing them with the statements of like I trust myself, I trust my body, like I'm, or I'm learning to trust my body, I'm learning to trust myself, right. So really really starting to calm the nervous system when it starts to go a little bit outside its comfort zone, and then the biggest thing is not taking action, but really, what I have found is the only way to prove that fear was what they call it. You know, false evidence appearing real is that you have to take action even when that fear is present, because it's the only thing that allows us to move through that fear, the spleen center. It fears the unknown right. But that doesn't mean that the fear is valid or that it's true. And if you think about what you're trying to create in your life, you are creating it from the unknown Cause. If you were to create it from the known, you would just be recreating what you already have Right.

Erin Gray:

So part of the process is us feeling that fear right and, instead of waiting for the fear to dissipate, ask yourself like what small financial action can I take today that builds trust? If I wasn't afraid, what decision would I make? Or if I knew it was going to work out, what decision would I make today? I think we don't give ourselves enough trust, enough confidence, enough attagirls, you can do it. I mean, if we constantly came from the lens of it's going to work out, I'm going to figure it out, what decisions would we be making differently? I think so many of us are taught to wait, or you know, and that just keeps us more in the energy of waiting versus if we knew it was going to work out. If we already scanned to the very end of the of the road and we knew it worked out, what would we be doing differently and starting to make decisions from that place?

Erin Gray:

So think about what is one financial decision this week that you're going to make from a place of trust, or leaning into trust instead of fear, whether it's spending or it's investing, or it's having money investing in yourself, in your business. What's one step that you want to take this week so that you can show yourself and your body and your nervous system that, even when you feel fear and you do it anyways you're still alive, you're still okay, you're still safe. And if you're tired of letting the money scarcity train run the show, I'm here to help you. You can schedule a call with me and together we'll explore the fears that are holding you back and create a personalized plan to shift from scarcity to more sufficiency and trust. We can work together to break free from the fear and help you build financial confidence that you deserve. To schedule a call, you can go to my website at generate a life Well livecom. Click on the link, work with me and then click on support and one-on-one mentoring and schedule a call. I'll also include the link in the show notes, as always.

Erin Gray:

I appreciate you spending your time with me for listening. I want you to take action. So think about one specific thing that you're going to do this week. Even though you're feeling scared, even though you're feeling unsure, I want you to know I support you and you've got this 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.