Your Money, Your Rules | Money Mindset, Money Management, Abundance Mindset, Budgeting, Spirituality

151 | What If Your Best Wealth Management Plan Starts Inside Of You?

• Erin Gray | Wealth Coach, Former CFP and CFO

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When we talk about wealth, the conversation often centers on external investments.  I believe the most important investment is the one no market can measure.

In this episode, I share my belief on the #1 investment we can ever make, it's within ourselves.  

In this episode, we discuss:

 • Investing in inner assets first over external instruments
 • How self-concept shapes your financial choices
 • Compounding awareness as the ultimate dividend
 • Reclaiming your intuition and building evidence for it

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The Illusion of Money by Kyle Cease


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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin:

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to create lasting wealth? No matter the ups and downs of the stock market, the real estate, the economy, what's going on in their business? The most powerful investment isn't something that you can buy that is outside of you. I believe it is something that you cultivate within yourself. And today on the podcast, I'm going to be sharing my number one investment belief, which is investing in yourself. Because what we invest in with our mindset, with our wealth consciousness, with our emotional regulation, the skills that we develop within ourselves, that is something that can never be taken away. Okay, so let's talk about why I believe that investing in yourself is the number one most best thing that you can do. If you think about, and a lot of this has come from, I think on purpose, a lot of it of like investing in the stock market, investing in in real estate or in other financial instruments. And while those can be beneficial and they are another form of building your wealth, and they can be a tool to increase your wealth, those are all external things that we are doing. They're going to fluctuate, they're going to be impacted by outside sources. I mean, if you just look at the stock market, um, so many people make decisions from fear. It is the market is highly manipulated. And I'm gonna do a podcast on that to educate you guys a little bit on that. But like we've been sold this bill of goods of to invest in things outside of us first before we're investing in things within us. And what I mean by that is like our wealth consciousness, our mindset, emotional regulation. And, you know, when you invest in your knowledge, your emotional intelligence, when you take your body out of fight and flight and you take it into that parasympathetic state of rest and digest and calm and peace and at ease, when you are working on your wealth consciousness, when you are believing things about yourself, when you are increasing your self-concept, that is permanent, that stays with you forever. And actually, I think it's actually something that increases over time, like you know, with stocks, you know, how you some stocks pay dividends. Like I think it's the dividend that just keeps on giving. And it once that you have that, that is something that you will always have, you will always maintain, and that no one can take that away from you. You know, your mindset, what you believe about yourself, like your self-concept, that shapes your financial decisions. It shapes how you look at the world, it shapes how you look and take different opportunities. And it also shapes like how you what you believe about yourself to be able to earn and receive money. But by growing yourself first, which I think is the first and foremost thing that we need to be doing, I think everything else flows and follows a lot easier from that. You know, I don't know where we got off. I mean, I do, because the education system right now, the college, I mean, yeah, primary education too, but you know, college, where we got off with the idea that if you go to college, that that is that's going to create a job. That that is not something that I don't even know where we came up with that. Uh probably to to further disempower us, right? When we think, oh, if we if we get a college degree, then we'll, you know, be able to have a job and we'll be able to make money. But here you go back to that's putting something externally in um versus you believing in yourself. We're not teaching kids these days to believe in this themselves. We're doing the opposite, actually. You know, we're not teaching um children that your self-concept, you know, we're not talking about money in schools, we're not doing a lot of um, you know, emotional regulation. Like we're not doing those basic things that we actually need to be doing for ourselves and our children to really grow our wealth consciousness and our concept of ourselves. And like I said, I think it's done on purpose. I think it's done to keep us disconnected from ourselves and our power. And I think that, I mean, we know that going to college doesn't equal money, right? Because look at how many kids now have so much student loan debt and they aren't making what even a quarter of what they owe per year. And so I think that that has been done on purpose. That might be another podcast episode that I release about, but you know, first and foremost, what we need to be focusing on is ourselves. You know, where the other thing that came to mind is how we have normalized as a society paying for college and going in debt, but we don't normalize working with a coach or a mentor, you know, we don't normalize emotional regulation, you know, spending money on that versus putting down, I don't even know what college is, 200,000 now. Um, and that's just has has been normalized. You know, when you think about the compounding power of investing in yourself, you know, just like when you put money in the stock market and it grows like with compound interest or um the impact of investing in yourself compounds over time. It is the dividend that keeps on paying. You know, as your awareness begins to increase, you expand on that previous awareness. So it's just like this snowball effect that just keeps on growing and evolving. You know, your self-concept, like what you believe about yourself is so important. Like I truly believe like that is the North Star of what you will be able to have and receive in your life is like what you believe that you're capable of children honoring their intuition and their knowing. Like so many of us, myself included, that actually was like conditioned out of me, right? Like I knew we all come into this world. Like I believe that children are the closest babies, are the closest thing to source. And slowly over time, right? Us as humans, we condition source. We all have source within us, but we conditioned this knowing, this intuition out of uh out of out of them, right? And there have been so many times that I just knew, right? Intuition is a knowing, it is not a logical, let me give you the reasons why. It's just a knowing, it's a sensing, it shows up in different ways for different people. But there were so many times that I knew something, and my parents wanted me to give them the logical reason and I couldn't. And so then they made that seem or made me think, right, that it wasn't happening or I was off or I wasn't, I was off base or something like that, right? And coming back online to my intuition, knowing that and trusting that, because that is the fastest way from point A to point B. I mean, sometimes it'll skip, right? Point A to point B, it'll go from A to A to D or something like that, right? Because the intuition, it isn't this linear thing. And so the more that you can hone in your intuition and that you get to know yourself better and that you get to trust yourself, you know, and you will become and you will have more evidence that your intuition does actually work out for you better than your logical mind does. And so think about also like emotional regulation, you know, when you think about when you are have actually come out of that fight or flight state, and when you're what I call that recovery period, that it's not that the more emotionally regulated you are, the less things or obstacles or challenges are gonna happen to you. What I actually think happens is you just become quicker and faster at moving through those challenges. They don't have you, you know, laying in bed for a couple of days feeling sorry for yourself. You're like, okay, what is this teaching me? What is the lesson here? You know, how did I create this? How can I do this differently next time? Like you're just it's it's to me in the body, it feels more like a speed bump than like a huge hole in the road, right? And so really thinking about instead of how where do I need to put my money? It's it's how do I need to invest in myself? Like that's the question that I want you to be asking yourself. Like, do I want to be investing in my mindset, right? Um, and I think all of these that I'm going to talk about are all important of investing in, but like think of it as different little uh boxes or vessels, however you want to think about it. But like, are you cultivating each of these areas of your life? So think about, and and I don't mean just financially with investing. I mean investing in your time, where your attention goes. So think about your mindset, like daily reflection. Like, how often are you just spending with you and your thoughts? No podcast, no radio, no being in other people's energy, just being with you and your mind and listening and thinking and pondering, you know, start questioning everything. Like, does this belief, you know, when you hear something, when you are working towards something and you hear that I call it negative Nancy in your head, right? Tell you things. Where'd this belief come from? Is this belief even mine? You know, does that belief that you have actually, does it even serve you anymore? Like I like to think of beliefs like grocery bags. We might have carried them along the way and we've been able to have them serve us a little bit, but now that we're a different consciousness and a different person, we can choose to just drop the grocery bag. You know, how often are you journaling? How often are you pondering or what comes out of your mouth? Is that actually an empowering thought and belief, or is that more of a limiting one? Whether it be around money or be around what you're capable of or in your business or at your work or with your kids or your spouse, your parent, whatever it is, like every word that comes out of your mouth, is it empowering? Or are you on autopilot? And yes, I don't do this perfectly. We're going to have days where our human is, we're more on our human than we are in our, you know, spiritual being. But it's it's to come back to that, right? It's to notice that. You know, I always say, like a lot of times in the beginning with clients, like we kind of sometimes have to take everything out of the pantry. Like we want to believe new things, which is great. But if you're still believing, if your self-concept is still one of that it's hard and it's challenging and I can't do it. And well, we got to work on your self-concept first. So, what do you actually want to believe about yourself and start practicing that? When I say skills or your toolkit, like what do you have in your toolkit that you are investing in, right? Are you receiving coaching or mentoring? Are you actually doing the somatic work? Because I truly believe that there are three parts to this. There is the mind, mindset, there is the body, which I think is the somatic, the emotional regulation work. And then there is the spirit, there is the spiritual part of this of like you actually having to believe that there is something bigger than yourself, being connected to God's spirit source. And so all three of those need attention and need to be cultivated. So, you know, when you think about your tools and your toolkit, like, are you doing somatic work, EFT, breath work, grounding, um, emotion code, shaking your body? Like what ways are you doing to move energy and release energy and not just yours? Because this is what I have also realized is that we hold a lot, we inherit a lot of emotions, right, from our from our parents. And so are you also doing some of that? And then the spiritual practice, right? Like how connected are you to God? What is your spiritual practice? What do you want it to look like? And not like whatever somebody else is doing, but how do you want to connect to God? How do you want to spend time alone with God andor source whatever it is for you and really become connected to God? And then I think that there's the part of like being financially literate or conscious, right? Understanding how money actually works, understanding, not necessarily spending a whole bunch of time on this because I really believe like where you put your attention, it grows. But I do think that there is some validity and value in understanding that these systems are not necessarily systems that have been set up to have us prosper. And the more of us that wake up to this, the more of us that get on board with this, the more of us that say, you know what, no more. I'm not playing this game anymore, the more these systems are going to crumble and they're going to shift. And which is a beautiful thing because then we get to rebuild them from a very higher conscious place, from a place of love instead of greed, instead of fear, instead of disempowerment, which actually looks like overpowering, but that's not really power. And so, you know, think about the banking, the financial markets, the school system, like all of those medical system, all of those systems have been set up on purpose to keep us from our power, to keep us from our knowing. And the more of us that understand this, the more of us that say no more, the more of us that say, we're gonna do this differently, these systems will change. They'll have to change, right? Because we they don't have the buy-in anymore of all of us that have gone along for however long that we have gone along with it for. So to cultivate, to to figure out what is your path for you, and then also being aware of like how those financial systems and how our consciousness around money, what what we've been taught, like start questioning all of that. And I I really believe that, you know, there's this book, um, The Illusion of Money by Kyle C. So I'll put this in the show notes. But he talks about these three different women, he calls them Helens, and he gives it as an example, just but like if Helen A received a million dollars and she just partied with it, what would she have at the end of, you know, the year? Maybe not much money, a lot of partying, but she really hasn't increased her wealth consciousness and her mindset and things of that sort. Helen B might be, which would have definitely described me several years ago, of like she would have taken it, she would have invested in the stock market and the real estate, she would have maybe bought some business, a business. You may not be able to buy a business. I mean, I know you can buy a business for less than a million, but you get the point. But you know, she's invested in in some assets that are outside of her. And although her maybe at the end of the year, she might have more than a million dollars, her wealth consciousness may not have increased. Her concept of herself, what she believes her value is, may not have actually increased at all. And then you take Helen C, and he describes her as like, okay, so then she starts maybe traveling and she starts a podcast and she starts to work on her mindset and her self-concept and increases her wealth consciousness. And so even though at the end of the year she may have actually less money than the million dollars that she started with, what she has internally is something that can be regenerated over and over and over again. And so I want all of us to be like Helen C. I want us to see that we are the value, we are the asset, and everything flows through us from that place. So it is an investment, you know, when you think of it like that from Helen C, it is an investment that can never be taken away. You know, like I said, you know, the stocks, the Helen B, if she was invested in the stock market and she wasn't paying attention, she didn't see how the stock market was going to move, then that million could have gone to half a million, right? Because of what happens with the stock market. But going back to Helen C, that invested in herself and her belief about herself and what she can bring to the world and her joy and her abundance. And I don't mean just money, right? That knowledge, that self-concept, the trust in her intuition, the confidence, the financial awareness, emotional regulation, right? Those would be hers, aka ours forever. That is what we are doing when we are investing in ourselves. And this is what I believe actually creates real freedom, right? The freedom to move throughout the world without feeling fear, the freedom to know that you can always make more money, the freedom to make empowered decisions from your heart, not your head, to act on opportunities that are aligned with your intuition, not of like what's going to make me money, right? And moving from certainty. And certainty is something that happens within us, not outside of us. So if this is something that has resonated with you and you want some support, you want to just have a conversation, see if we're a good fit, I would love to and be honored to have that conversation with you. Just click the link in the show notes and we can have a conversation. As always, I am rooting for you. I want us to see the amazingness that we are, that our that we are the number one asset, and that everything else comes because of that, not the other way around. So until next time, I'll see you.