Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Freedom, Money Management, Abundance Mindset, Budgeting, Financial Planning

118 | You Don’t Need More Money—You Need Nervous System Regulation: Heal Your Scarcity Mindset and Redefine Financial Freedom

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

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Feeling financially secure on paper yet still stuck in scarcity inside? Many high-achieving women experience a disconnect between external financial success and internal emotional abundance.  Traditional financial freedom focuses on numbers but misses the essential foundation: safety in your body.

In this episode we'll discuss:

  • Why financial freedom isn’t just about numbers but about creating safety in your body also
  • How survival-based nervous system patterns impact your money mindset and financial management
  • Common responses like avoidance, guilt around spending, and overworking from scarcity mindset
  • Practical tools like breathwork, grounding, journaling, and affirmations to help regulate your nervous system with money
  • How cultivating nervous system safety transforms your relationship with money and empowers better financial decisions
  • Why true financial freedom means living empowered and secure with money every day—not just reaching a dollar goal


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Step 1: Join my FREE Facebook Community.

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

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

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

From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

And today I am going to be talking about how many so many of us might actually feel secure on paper, like we look really good on paper and yet feel so much scarcity inside our bodies, and I'm going to be sharing my take on what we have been taught what financial freedom actually is, although it doesn't always feel free in our bodies, and what to do about it.

Erin Gray:

Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money? Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to your 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.

Erin Gray:

If you've been listening for a while I want to say thank you. I think podcasting is such a sacred thing. I'm in your ear twice a week and I just want you to know that I really value you and if you're new here, welcome. My intention for every episode that you listen to is to become more self-aware. And then take one thing, just one, because I used to be like the ultimate consumer, but just take one thing that I have discussed in this episode, or in each episode, and use it to transform your life. Knowledge is amazing, but it only gets us so far. It's when we actually take action. That is when our life changes. So, if you have been feeling disconnected from your money, maybe you it looks like you avoid QuickBooks, or you don't, you know look at your books as often, or you don't look at your personal finances as often. You might be skipping meetings or like pushing them back with your financial advisor. Or maybe you're just feeling like you should feel better than you do, which, should you know, is very much coming from the mind. But if you know in your body that you want to feel better than what you actually do with money, I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with you. This is what so many of my clients have actually faced when we first work together and they come to me and if this resonates with you, I want to be able to support you in the one hour one-on-one coaching sessions that we would do to. Together, we will work on healing the emotional and the nervous system responses that are keeping you in that cycle of feeling the shame and the fear or the avoidance, so that you can actually enjoy your money, like the whole point of having money is to enjoy our money, is to circulate, it is to invest, it is to have fun with it, is to spend it on things that we love, is to allocate it. And so all of the strategies and the how to's in the world, they don't matter if you don't deal with the deeper cause that is creating this in your nervous system. And ultimately, it is to feel safe and to feel sufficient and abundant with your money. And in doing so, when you feel safe and you feel abundant, right, we have shifted the identity of who you are, your beliefs, around money, to be someone who feels safe with their money. You can schedule a session by heading over to my website, generatealifewelllivedcom, or you can click the link on the show notes and I would love to support you. So let's talk about nervous system and financial freedom.

Erin Gray:

I love talking about the nervous system with money. I think a lot of money mindset you want to call them coaches, I don't know what to you know like a lot of the, the self-development with money mindset. Money mindset is just one, really one third, of changing your relationship with money. I think a lot of it comes from the other third is you know your spirit, god, source, universe, divine, whatever you want to say, like your relationship with that, and then also your body and so many women that I work with. They've technically created what the world would define as financial freedom. So, on paper, excellent net worth, high net worth, right, they've got the income, the investments, the net worth, and yet they still operate from a place of fear. And many of them actually feel like that. There's this, like they're like one step away from losing it all, like that is the undertone that they feel, or that, like some of them have shared with me, like when is the shoe going to drop? It's like this lack of trust, this lack of knowing, and this is typically a belief that they picked up. You know, we all pick it up somewhere along the way, because in order to you know, feel this way, we have to have this belief somewhere, and we typically gain beliefs from parenting, societal conditioning, and then this creates their lived experience.

Erin Gray:

So I believe financial freedom, yes, it is about numbers. Right, it does matter Having more money it's a lot more fun to have more money than to not have money but financial freedom is not about the numbers. Initially, this is about safety in the body. And how do we know this? Because if it was about the numbers, like everyone tells us and sells us on this idea that it is about the numbers, what I call the circumstance then everyone that had millions of dollars would feel free, safe and abundant and they would have no worries. And we know that this is not true. This is not factual, because we know of people myself used to be this way, many of people that I work with when they come to me initially be this way, many of people that I work with when they come to me initially, many of my circle that I am aware of, or you know, people in my circle that I used to hang out with, or even currently, that that is not true. That is not what their experience is. And so if you're listening to this and it is resonating with you, it is because what I am saying is probably very true for you as well.

Erin Gray:

So let's talk about the nervous system, why this happens and then how to move through that. So, really, your brain, your nervous system, is really designed to keep you alive. Right, it's not necessarily made to feel abundant. If you think about where we have come from, over the eons, it was really of a survival mentality. It was get up every day. Where are we going to find our food, you know, where are we sleeping tonight? If we were nomadic, you know all of those things. It was very much based on survival. And if you've experienced any kind of stress or pressure or trauma around money, your body might still be running on those old programs, aka belief systems, even if your circumstances have changed. And this is exactly who I was. Even though I changed the money in my bank account, I didn't change who I was as a person, my belief systems. Right, our identity is based off our belief systems, our nervous system. And because I didn't change my nervous system and my belief systems, the numbers increased, but who I was as a person stayed the same. So this shows up as it could. It's not all inclusive, but it could show up as like avoiding your finances. Even when there is money in the bank.

Erin Gray:

You might be feeling guilt when you spend on yourself. This is very prevalent in a lot of my clients, where they feel guilt. It's okay to spend money on your kids or you as a family vacation and this also shows up as time as well but spending it on yourself and I don't even want to say spending, I want to say investing, investing time and investing money in yourself for you, not because you've earned it, but just because you are worthy of having it that is something that clients I don't want to say struggle with. But in the beginning that is a little bit more effort for them. It might look like you even over-preparing, maybe even over-saving or overworking, because you don't trust that the money is going to last.

Erin Gray:

So you are in this perpetual like have to keep going, pushing mentality because you think if you let up, that the money will stop, or possibly you never feel like and I'm air quoting enough is enough, is truly enough. Now I want to say, on the one hand, it's always enough and on the other side of it is like it's never enough, but not from a place of inadequacy or an unworthiness. It's never enough is because we are constantly evolving and growing right. So when we are coming from the place of not enough, of like what I am, who I am, what I have isn't enough, that feels very different in the body. I want you to pause and I want you to really check in with your body right now. That feels very different in the body than what I have is absolutely amazing. I love my life right now and I can't wait for all of this abundance to continue to come my way. Very different energy in the body. So this is why I think emotional regulation, nervous system regulation, whatever you want to call it, is so important.

Erin Gray:

Because when we bring this awareness, this compassion to how your body is actually responding, when we can actually almost kind of like rise above or like float above and watch what our body is doing, and recognize like float above and watch what our body is doing and recognize like. This is where I go back to when I said originally you know it's really one third, you know, of your um mindset, because the other third is like the spirit. It is probably even more. It is probably not a third, third. Third, it's really like spirit, soul led. When you can look at your human experience from the soul, soul led. When you can look at your human experience from the soul, from this higher perspective, and recognize that your body is just working from these programs and that it is this little child who feels fear or scared, or you know it was. She was doing the best that she could with what she had. You get to have more compassion and you stop judging where you are.

Erin Gray:

So I would say, first and foremost, come from a place of curiosity, love and compassion, stop making how you feel wrong, like the more that we resist, the longer that it stays. You know. The saying is you know what you resist persists. So as long as you continue to judge how you are feeling, it's hard to move through that because you're not, you're looking at it through the lens of it's wrong, it's not good, it's not bad, it just is. So when we can see that our bodies have been doing these things from a place of protection and a place of survival, then we can look at it from a place of love and we can learn to choose differently. You know we can change our beliefs, entire belief systems, and we can really start to decide how do I want my nervous system to feel right? How do I want it to feel safe and supported? We know what it looks like right now, so what do I want it to look like? So, some simple practices. And you're always going to always say with every client, with you listening, you're going to have to do what feels good for your body. We have been a society who has outsourced our power to everyone outside of us, and one of the things I love helping women do is to return to who they are in their innate power, their sovereign power.

Erin Gray:

And when you start to check in with your body, like sometimes, breath work, for me it feels amazing. Sometimes I'm like I'm not digging it today. You don't. There is no prescribed checklist that you need to do. It's how do you want to get into your body and how do you want to feel supported and nourish. So I'm listing some ideas for you to take, for you to play with, for you to see if it feels good for you to also try other things besides what's listed here. So breath work or orienting, which is basically if you're sitting down to do your money.

Erin Gray:

Before you do that, what you can do is like name five things that you see in your room or wherever you are, that you're sitting down, because what that does is it takes you to the present and also nervous system wise you. You see that like your nervous system is able to feel like, okay, I'm here right now, um, so orienting grounding, like going out, walking in the grass, like we are nature, one with nature. We came from nature. So like doing things that are supportive to you, in addition to adding in the mindset and the spirit work. So this will help you to start create new experiences, right? So when you think about and I would also journal, you know we're so quick to be like, okay, I want to, I want to feel differently about money, but we're not really clear on how we feel right now. So how do you actually feel right now in your body with money?

Erin Gray:

Journal that then look at, okay, how do I want to be with money, you know, using affirmations, and you don't have to use them over and over again, because if you don't believe it, the more that you use the affirmations, you're just confirming the lack of it. But look at something like I can learn how to be with money in a different way. I can make choices from a calm place instead of making them from rushed or pressure. You know, I don't have to continue to live in fight or flight. So just start to journal and look at what are some of the ways that you are currently with money. What do you want to be with money? And then embodying that? It's one thing. To journal, it's another. To be like okay, this is a belief that I want to have. Now go take action on that Like.

Erin Gray:

If you want to feel calm with money, what would be the action that you would take when you would sit down with money? If you notice your nervous system getting a little bit heightened? You would then calm it down. You would put your hand on your heart. You would say I feel, you know, I'm learning how to feel calm with money. I'm safe in this moment, right now. I'm okay to feel my feelings in this moment.

Erin Gray:

So when your body feels safe, you are able to make, because you aren't in this survival state. You're more in this creative plane. You are able to make more clear, more grounded decisions. You begin to trust yourself again, or more. You spend with intention, because you have slowed down because you aren't in this rushed and pressured state, you're able to really receive without guilt. You start to experience money in a way that actually feels peaceful, it feels joyful, it feels calm, it actually feels what freedom financial freedom is supposed to feel like. I think, and this is why I always say, that safety in the body is the foundation for lasting financial freedom. You know, the goal isn't to get to some number to then be financially free. That's very conditional thinking. It is to live and breathe this every day as your money continues to grow and as you continue to grow.

Erin Gray:

So how fun is it to get, to generate and have all the money that you have if you're afraid to circulate it in ways that feel good to you and your soul? Like money is a tool, it is meant to circulate, it is. I heard this the other day I don't know if I'd ever heard it before and someone was saying like money's like manure, I'm just spreading it all around, and that I mean, what would we, what would we create in the world if we actually believed that were to be true, if we literally looked at money like manure, it's like oh, it's meant to just be spread around and enjoyed and see what comes from that investment. And when I say investment, I don't necessarily mean like investing in the stock market. I mean investing in yourself, investing in your children, investing in your community, like, how do we want to invest our money, circulate our money?

Erin Gray:

No-transcript has been a number versus a feeling in the body, and then the number follows because of it. Notice how you feel in your body, around your money and what your nervous system practices that you already have in place, that you are committed to doing on a daily basis, so that you can teach your body, your nervous system, to feel safe with money you know. Think about what are your triggering points, what are the things that you know that in this moment, right now, kind of get your nervous system a little bit heightened. What are those? Are you able to pinpoint those? And I would say and encourage you to start working on those. How can you bring more groundedness to it? How can you bring more calm? How can you bring more compassion and love for those parts of you? And if this resonated with you and if you know deep down that you're ready to stop managing your money from a place of fear or avoidance, I would love to support you.

Erin Gray:

Nothing changes until we actually change. In order to create a different experience, a different life for ourself, we have to take different action, which ultimately comes from our thinking and our belief systems. So, in our work together, I am going to teach you and guide you how to rewire your body and your mind to respond to money so that you can finally enjoy it and use it and circulate it like how you were actually meant to, and we'll do it in a way that feels so fun and simple and easy and true to who you are. You know, one of the things that I just love doing is really connecting with each client, because the advice that I might give for one client is completely the exact opposite that I would give for another and you for another and anywhere in between with other clients, and that is because it is based on who they are, what their soul is asking for, what their intuition is telling them, and so there is no one size fits all. This is the plan, this is the strategy, this is how we do it. It's really coming back home and connecting to who you are, your essence, like your most vibrant self. To schedule a session, you can go to my website generatealifewelllivedcom, or you can just click the link in the show notes and schedule a session and let's help you return to the essence of who you truly are.

Erin Gray:

You know a woman who feels calm and confident and clear with her finances. Thank you again for listening and tuning in today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you. I would love for you to share this episode with a friend of yours that could benefit from listening. You know my mission and my passion is to help women feel more calm and confident with their money so that they can show up as their biggest and brightest selves. I think it's a I don't want to say a trickle down effect, but it's just an outward of like in every way, when we show up as our biggest, brightest selves, we empower others to do the same. Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.