176 | Money and Time Audit: Where Are You Leaking Your Energy?

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In this episode, we cover:

• Reframing spending as circulating money and energy
• Spotting unconscious spending triggers and repeat patterns
• Choosing implementation over endless learning
• Identifying urgency traps and buffering behaviors
• Replacing wasted-time shame with rest and intention
• Building self-trust by keeping small promises
• Exploring how working less can lead to more

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth

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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Chapters

• 0:00 Questions From The Energy Of Money
• 1:12 Time And Money Mirror Each Other
• 2:10 Journaling And Conscious Choice
• 3:35 Leaking Versus Circulating Money
• 6:30 Buying Patterns And Course Overload
• 9:30 Parallel Habits With Time
• 12:10 Run Advice Through Your Filter

Transcript

Erin Gray: 0:00

Today on the podcast, I want to ask you several questions from that are inside the book, The Energy of Money, by Maria Nimoth. I'll put this link in the show notes. And they have to do with circulating your money as well as what Maria calls it leaking money. And I so often recognize this connection between time and money. And I think sometimes we want to separate it, but if you pay attention to your time, it's probably very similar to your money and vice versa. So let's dive in. So I think that these questions are really powerful. I think questions are always powerful because it gives us an opportunity to really ponder and contemplate and really take a step back. You know, I always talk about that 30,000-foot view, and I think it's a powerful place to sit. So maybe over the next week, take a journal and write these questions down and then answer them and contemplate, you know, where are you consciously choosing some things and where are you still a little unconscious, which it's fine if that's the case? Now I don't think we're all conscious all the time, but I think that they're really important because of how she groups them with money and also with time. So what I'm gonna do is ask you these questions. I'm gonna read it word for word, verbatim, how she is asking it in the book, and then I'm going to give my two cents. Number one, regarding the way that I use money, what is the difference for me between leaking and she calls it spending? I would prefer to use called circulating A. When do I go unconscious about spending money during a particular time of day, a particular mood? So the thing that I would have you, instead of saying spending money, I would say circulating money. So when do you go unconscious about circulating money? I've had women tell me, like when they look at their PL or when they've had a bad day, they'll hop on Amazon. Like some clients are shoppers. I probably was an overworker or an excess traveler. So everybody has their own thing. So just notice when do you go unconscious about circulating money? Is it during a particular time of day or a particular mood? Like what are you feeling? B on which items do I spend most unconsciously? Are they items I really want at the time that I buy them? Okay, I want to say two things here that I didn't say ahead of time. One, I want you to be thinking about this from a personal standpoint with your money, like your personal life money, and then also your business life. So you can do two, two answers, one for personal, one for business. C, if the items are other than food, do I put them to good use? Do I get my money's worth out of them? Do they lie around unused? What do I see about this? Now, that whole like, do I get my money's worth out of them? I have a belief that I always get my money's worth because it doesn't feel good in the body to believe that I don't. But I do think that we can be a little bit more precise or clarified when we purchase things. Like you can notice that, you know what, maybe I didn't use it as much as what I did, but I always look at things of how do I, because I used to beat myself up like if I would buy a book and I wouldn't finish it, or I would start a course and I wouldn't finish it. Speaking of courses, I heard recently that I think only three to five percent of people finish courses. I don't know if that's correct or factual or not, but I was I was quite surprised. So I don't, I don't like to use the word, you know, that phrase of, did I get my money's worth? Because I always get what I came for. Like I have that belief and I always, you know, make my money back and I use my money wisely. But I think that when you are kind of in the beginning stages, if you are constantly buying the same thing over and over again, like sometimes, like I've had a conversation with a client and she's kind of a known course taker. And so what we did was slow down and we actually looked and said, Do you actually need to learn something new or do you need to implement what you already know? Right. So that takes slowing down, that takes thinking about things, that that takes you asking yourself, why do I feel urgency to purchase this? And you know how I feel about that. Anytime you're in an urgency, it's time to do nothing. D, where do I spend money consciously? How does this experience differ than from leaking money? And E, sorry, do I really value everything I buy? Does what I buy bring me pleasure? So here's where I would also take a reframe there. Because I don't know if it helps to believe that I don't value everything I buy. I think you just have to check in with your body and you have to understand, you know, how do you use this to empower you? But if you, let's say if you're buying something consistently and you're not using it, okay, well then why am I doing that? From a loving, from a curious place, not from a beat yourself up in a shame-based place. Okay, so here she goes on to question number two to time. Is there a parallel here with how I leak or I spend my time? You know, I've had people come to me and say, I don't really have much, you know, money stuff. It's just more so my thing is with time. And my answer to them is we all have money stuff. And probably how you feel about time is how you feel about money. And then when we coach together, what we find out is yes, that is correct, right? When we feel lack with time, we also feel lack with money. Like it's an identity that we carry. So really working on who am I, you know, an abundant person, a prosperous person, person that feels like is an inner sense of plenty of time, and it is also an inner sense of plenty of resources. Okay, so A, do I leak time with unimportant activities? If so, what is it? For example, do I waste time looking at television? Again, this is where I used to listen to people on podcasts, coaches, and I would take everything that they said and I would internalize it and I would make it, you know, like, oh, I'm doing this wrong. Like I remember one time a coach suggested that you continue to work through all the way up until New Year's. Like you, unless you have X amount of business, then you you don't need to be taking time off. And I just like went into this whole shame spiral. But for me, actually, the work for me was to take time off, right? I didn't need to work more. That wasn't growth for me. So you always have to run it through your filter. Take anything that I say on this podcast or anything else you hear from anyone else on their podcast or YouTube or whatever you're hearing or mentoring or taking information in from and run it through your filter. Like, is that actual, is that message for me? What would be my growth? Because Aaron's growth might look different than somebody else's growth. My growth is to put the laptop away, to not bring it on vacation, to say no after you know a certain time that I've decided not to work. Like that's where my growth is. It was to work less. It wasn't to work more. So, in terms of wasting time, I don't think any time or money is ever wasted. Do I think that we use it in the most effective way? Maybe not. But I think that feels very different in the body than I wasted time and I wasted money because I know a lot of women have come to me and they feel really bad and have a lot of shame and guilt around wasting money. And I don't think money is ever wasted. Like it's energy, right? So is time. Like it can't be created or destroyed, it just circulates around. So do I really want to think that like it's gone and it's never coming back? No, that's not helpful. So maybe you could say, instead of, do I waste time looking at television? You could say, Am I watching television when I'm avoiding something else? Because I also think like watching television is an okay thing to do as well to relax. Like I had to learn how to actually sit on the couch and not work. I had to sit on the couch and allow someone else, like my husband, support me and do stuff in the kitchen versus me doing it myself. So don't take just everything that she's saying, these questions in the book, and apply it to you literally. Like you have to run it through your filter. So I would say, like, am I watching television when I know I have set aside something else in my calendar? Maybe that's the question that you need to ask yourself. Do I leak time by compulsive activity? Do I spend hours and hours exercising, organizing, or fixing? And I would think here too is that we can do this with our mind as well. Like I'll be the first. Like, I am a walking, what would I call it? I'm not above this, right? Like I'm constantly sharing with you guys where things are coming, you know, like where I'm continuing to evolve and grow. And I would probably say the last day, maybe the last 12 hours, it was yesterday afternoon, is kind of when it started. Is my mind was getting so loud about money. And I was like, what in the world is happening here? And typically when it starts to get really punchy like that, really bully ish is what I would call it. It's like next level time. And so I'm sure that there's next level coming. And, you know, this morning I was doing some tapping and then I sat in meditation and I was like, you know what? F this. Like, no, like yesterday I needed to cry it out. Yesterday I needed to feel, I needed to process it. But today it was almost like a sternness with my brain and my mind. And I was like, no, we're not gonna sit here and we're not gonna ruminate in the same thoughts that you keep trying to feed me. Like I almost had to be like, you know, mean older sister to it a little bit because I had to tell it, like, no, you're not the boss of me. We're not doing this, we're not gonna sit here and have this conversation over and over again. We're not doing it. And so I think you have to, again, you know, put it through your filter, but like, where are you not utilizing your time most when I say effectively, that's all relative, right? But like if you are choosing to do something, if you have it on your calendar to sit down and look at your books, and then you decide that you have to organize, which I've had a client do that too. And I'm like, at some point, maybe the desk just needs to be really messy and you just need to get to work, right? Like if every time we sit down and we think we have to clean our desk, but we're not getting to our work, we're actually buffering. We're not actually addressing what needs to be addressed. We need to sit down and we need to feel those feelings because by organizing or by cleaning our desk, we're actually having that dopamine hit. Okay. C, when am I most likely to leak time? How does this contrast with time that I spend consciously? D, do I make promises to myself or others only to become distracted with meaningless activity? And again, I don't think it's helpful to think that I have meaningless activities. I just think that there are other that there are certain activities that add more value to my life than others. So again, choosing empowering language, I don't necessarily like all of the language that she's using here, but I think the biggest thing here on that one is do I make promises to myself or others? The thing that I would really start to think about is where are you eroding your self-trust? When you say you're gonna do something, do you do it? Do you schedule it on the calendar and do you get it done? Or do you say maybe later or that's inconvenient right now? Let me do something else. And maybe that's not exactly what your brain is saying. It might be like, oh, I need to go get XYZ or oh, I need to clean my desk. Like it's gonna say something a little bit more sneaky because our brains are on to us. But I think the thing here with this question is really building self-trust because that goes back to also being a good steward of your time, good steward in your business. And, you know, the more that you build self-trust outside of money in your business, the more that you begin to trust yourself in business and with money. So if you say, I'm gonna do X, Y, Z and you do it, and that's the relationship that you have with yourself, then when you say, I'm going to create X amount of my business, then you know it's done, right? We don't know the timeline. That's not our responsibility, that's God's. But you know you're gonna get it done because you trust yourself. And so I think that is a really, really important question to sit with is do I make promises to myself? Mainly, I would focus on myself or others, only to become distracted with, she says, meaningless activity. And I think another word could be used there. Okay, E. Do I spend as much time as I want with friends and family? And then question number three is if I fix the way that I leak money, what will happen to the time I use to earn it? And number four is is it possible for me to work less and have more of what I truly want? And that has been a question I've been asking myself as well. You know, really when you start asking yourself some of these questions, you start to get really clear on like what is important to you? Where are you leaking or not utilizing your time most effectively? You know, one of the things that I realized is that when we care about ourselves, when we care about our money, when we care about our time, when we value ourselves, let me start there. When we value ourselves, we value our time and our money differently. And so often some of us will whittle away our time or we won't use it as effectively because we don't value ourselves. So I would also ask that question. And she doesn't have that here. That's just that's just an errand question of like, am I valuing myself? You know, do I treat myself like numero uno, best person ever? Not better than somebody else, but just best person ever. And am I valuing myself and my time and my energy? Okay, that's all I have for you today. I love you. I'm rooting for you. I'll see you in the next episode.