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

124 | Feeling Shame About “Losing Money”? Try These Money Mindset Reframes

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

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Ever felt like you “lost money” on a course, coach, or investment that didn’t deliver what you expected? In this episode, I break down why money is never truly lost—it’s energy that circulates and always returns. I share my personal story of investing $8,000 in a program that fell short, and how reframing it as a powerful lesson kept me open to even greater opportunities. 

In this episode I discuss:

 ✨ Money is energy; it can’t be created or destroyed—it simply circulates.
 ✨ Saying “I lost money” feels final and heavy, while “I invested and learned” keeps you open and empowered.
 ✨ Every dollar spent is an investment in your growth, clarity, and self-concept.
 ✨ The way you feel when you circulate money impacts how quickly it returns.
 ✨ Our greatest “losses” often come right before our greatest gains.
 ✨ True empowerment comes when you decide what your investments mean for you. 


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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

Do you ever feel like you've lost money on a course or a coach or an investment that possibly didn't turn out the way that you had anticipated? In this episode, I want to reframe this idea of losing money, because money, I believe, is never truly lost. It's circulated and moving and I have the belief that it always comes back to me multiplied. Welcome back to your Money, your Rules podcast with me, erin Gray. I'm grateful that you are joining me for another episode, so let's get into it. So, first and foremost, you know I believe that money is really energy. So if money is energy and energy is never created or destroyed then it can't actually be lost. You know, when we say I lost money, it feels, I think in the body, like final, like it's gone, like there is this permanent decrease in our account and more like math, right, addition and subtraction, like it's gone or it's lower than what you had versus more, like a circle. And it can also carry this energy of shame and guilt around it, like maybe we were feeling or we think that we're bad with money or we did something wrong. And I want you to know that the truth is is money is always circulating, it's always flowing, and how we feel about money, how we circulate it, how we feel when we circulate it, will determine whether it comes back or it doesn't, or how quickly it returns to us. So we get to decide about the money that we have invested. We get to choose powerfully about every investment that we make. So in ourselves, in our family, in our business. However, we are circulating the money.

Erin Gray:

I always really like to think about investing money because I am, you know we are always. I think we're always investing money. I know we've been taught that we spend it or we've lost it, but I don't really. That's not a belief that serves me. So, whether it be in my business or myself, or clothes or houses or cars or vacations, it's all investing to me, who I am, what I believe I'm worthy and deserving of, and elevating my self-concept with each decision that I make. And this is why I hold the belief that any money that I circulate returns to me at least doubled. I've seen it in my life over and over again. You know that money returns to me, multiplied three times, not always in the same source, right that it in the way that I invested it, but it always comes back and continues to flow and comes to me.

Erin Gray:

It just when I, when I think about beliefs and just any belief, specifically, you know, as we're talking about here with money, is that as? Does it actually feel good in the body? Does it actually move me forward and it doesn't have me feeling more empowered? Or is it a belief that doesn't necessarily serve me and it leaves me feeling disempowered? So when you really connect to your body and you start to think about I lost money, how do you actually feel in your body? Do you contract? Do you want to hide? Do you not want to talk about it Versus thinking about what did I learn from investing that amount of money? So how we actually label it, how we narrate the story, how we talk about it, matters.

Erin Gray:

If you tell yourself I wasted $8,000 or I lost that $8,000, or that it was a stupid decision or a silly decision, or on you know I'm never going to get that back, that to me feels very heavy, very guilt-ridden energy that keeps you in that vibration. And this is some of the work that I do with clients to help them reframe how they see themselves as investors with their money and with their self-concept. So if you are wanting support as you unravel your relationship with money. I would love to support you. You can schedule a clarity call by clicking on the link in the show notes or you can head over to my website Generate a Life Well Lived and click on the link, work with me and schedule a call. I would love to see if we're a good fit for each other. So if you were thinking instead, maybe like I invested that $8,000 and I learned so much from my decision and list out what you actually learned and the impact of that $8,000 had and that you trust that it will come back multiplied, then what happens is you're keeping yourself open, you're expansive, you're in self trust, you're in self belief. Right In business and in life, we are going to make decisions where it's not going to go exactly the way that we think it would.

Erin Gray:

We have expectations, we have ideas, but that doesn't necessarily mean it always goes the way we think it would. And the growth, I believe, is to love ourselves anyways. It's to not make it mean anything about ourselves and to just keep moving forward. So when circumstances happen in our life and I don't mean happen as in like oh, it just happened, but like when you invest money and it doesn't go the way that you want to. What is the narrative that you're going to choose to tell yourself and keep moving forward?

Erin Gray:

You know, I earlier this year, I invested about $8,000 in a program that didn't deliver on what I thought it would. It was very masculine. You know, I had ridden my wave. I had talked to the sales support staff. I'd asked all my questions and then when I got into the program, how they said that they were going to help me create my YouTube channel, create my YouTube channel. There were some parts that they left out when I asked my questions and you know, on their sales page and and things of that sort. So I could have been mad at them, I could have been mad at myself, I could have been frustrated with myself that I invested 8,000, or I could have done what I did, which was I looked at it from the lens of so much clarity on how I actually want to run my programs in the future that I really do lean into the feminine side of business along with the masculine side and continue to trust myself. You know, I learned my lesson. One of the things that I'm grateful for is I learned my lesson at 8,000 instead of 80,000. And I'm sure there probably will be a time that I learned the lesson at 80,000, because I'll be making that much more money and that is where my investing is at that time, right, so it's really all relative.

Erin Gray:

It's how we see every decision that we make and then what we make that mean about ourselves. And the final thing that I want to discuss here is I always take it back to the body and the nervous system. So when you view money as gone forever, it triggers this survival response, the fight, flight, freeze, which there is no space for creativeness, and it really lowers our vibration. Now, lowering our vibration temporarily it isn't a problem, right, that's just part of having a human experience, having a human mind. But when we are there, when we stay there and that is what I see with some women is that we beat ourselves up for extended periods of time. That is where I'm referring to of like, staying in that lower vibration. So the goal is to move quickly or quicker through what we encounter, to not stay in the trough and beat ourselves up.

Erin Gray:

And I'm not talking about bypassing what we feel, and I'm also saying that we don't have to make it mean anything about us. We can feel, maybe that immediate shame or guilt comes up. We can feel it because, really, what that is telling us is where do we already have that within ourselves, what you know? Where did we maybe do something as a child and we felt shame and guilt from maybe someone saying something? So that is allowing us to process what has been suppressed, but we don't need to continue to pile on more shame and guilt. And so when you view it as an investment, an energetic circulation, then what happens is you are more in that creative state, your body relaxes, you feel powerful.

Erin Gray:

You, you know, you are open to more or other ways to create money. In order to recap, you know the, the investment that you made. And so I always just like to use things from an empowering. I always just like to use things from an empowering standpoint versus using it to beat myself up, like there's nothing good that comes from beating ourselves up. There's, I mean, when we are in judgment. There is no learning, there's no place for curiosity, there's not a place for love. And I think that is where, in the times where I would say and I'm air quoting that we make a mistake, that it didn't turn out the way we thought it would. That is where we need more love, more compassion, more curiosity, so that we can learn and that we can evolve and grow.

Erin Gray:

So, to recap, money it's never lost, it's always moving, it's, it's supporting us, it's circulating. You know, how you interpret an investment really shapes how you feel and what energy you're going to bring to your next decisions. And this, I believe, is everything you know trust that money returns, often in ways that are even better than what you expect. You know one of my mentors says that the greatest losses come right before the greatest gains. So how would you feel about an investment that you made if you believe that that was actually true? You know you get to decide what that investment meant for you.

Erin Gray:

That, I believe, is feeling truly empowered. That is, embodying financial empowerment. Thank you for tuning in today, for being here, for sharing your time with me. If you are ready to receive support along your journey, I would love to guide you. You can schedule a clarity call by heading to my website or going to the link in the show notes to schedule a call. My website is generatealifewelllivecom or you can click the link in the show notes, like I mentioned. Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.