Why Most Manifesting Advice Is Making You Broker

You can journal about wealth, repeat money affirmations, and visualise millions… but if your money mindset and money habits don't change, you'll stay stuck. 

This episode reveals how to ACTUALLY build a wealth mindset that works - and why most manifestation advice keeps you broke.

If you've ever avoided your bank account, felt suffocated by credit card debt, or wondered why manifesting money isn't working for you - you’ll hear exactly how to turn it around.

You'll also hear the messy, uncomfortable, but life-changing reality of going from financial chaos and drowning in debt to financial confidence, freedom, and rich woman energy.

Plus how combining money mindset + action + self-trust is what actually creates lasting wealth and abundance.

Tune in to discover:

✅ Why avoiding your finances is keeping you stuck in debt (and how to fix it today)
✅ The first step to getting out of debt fast… most people avoid this for years
✅ The truth about manifesting money and what manifestation actually involves
✅ How to rewire your relationship with money for real wealth creation
✅ Why "buying before you're ready" can level up your income and business
✅ The psychology behind paying in full vs payment plans
✅ How setting higher standards forces your life, income and lifestyle to rise

Key moments:

00:00  Intro
00:01:00 Manifestation Skeptics
00:03:20 The Debt Diagnosis Moment
00:06:40 Buy Before Ready
00:09:40 Pay In Full Energy
00:13:20 Living As If
00:15:00 The Business Class Standard
00:19:00 Clout vs Soul Spending
00:23:00 Reward Yourself Like Staff
00:24:40 Setting Non-Negotiable Standards
00:27:20 Manifesting Plus Action

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👉Find out more about how we can work together:

https://iconiccoaching.com.au/coaching/

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👉Here’s how to connect:

https://www.instagram.com/tellmeaboutit__podcast
https://iconiccoaching.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have you ever been so deep in debt that you couldn't even open your banking app or look at your emails? Like genuinely avoiding it like it was a toxic ex? Me too. If you listened to my episode two weeks ago, you would have heard how this was me for years. I simply could not deal. And now I'm a girly who fires business class. We own everything except our house. And this glow-up wasn't magic. It was messy and comfortable. And it started with me looking at my financial disaster directly in its face. But this week I'm basically following on from my debt story a couple of weeks ago and breaking down exactly how I genuinely trust the universe with all of my finances and how I lean into that bad boy to manifest everything I want and have in my life. Tell me about a podcast is being recorded on Gubby Gubby Land today. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land, our country and elders, past and present. I am Kate Muir and thank you for tuning into this week's episode of Tell Me About It podcast. Today's episode is basically all about the power of manifesting money and trusting the universe to get you to what you want. So before you roll your eyes and think, oh my god, not another manifestation girly sitting here telling me to journal my way to a Porsche, hear me out. I know the manifesting spaces become oversaturated with people making it sound like you just need to light a candle, write in your little notebook, and suddenly Jeff Bezos is sliding into your dance with a blank check. But that is not what we are doing here today. What I actually want to talk about is the real messy, sometimes chaotic journey of completely rewiring your brain and your relationship with money. I'm not really going to talk too much about my story of debt because that happened two weeks ago. So if you haven't listened to that app, go back and listen to it. But I do want to talk a little bit, I guess, touch on my own story of going from absolute disaster with money, like genuinely drowning in debt, to actually transforming my financial reality. Manifesting played a huge role in that, but probably not in the woo-woo way you're expecting. So I'm not going to spend too much time telling you what I'm going to talk about. I'm just going to crack in. First of all, I just want to highlight that conquering debt became my superpower. And 10 years ago, 12 years ago, whatever it was, when I was financially a fucking hot mess, genuinely concerning levels of mess, credit cards, max, personal loans, business loans, every pay and fall known to mankind. My debt was giving me absolute suffocation. It was giving me anxiety spiral overnight. I wasn't sleeping. It was giving me avoiding my bank account for literal weeks. The thing that nobody talks about with debt is that it's not just numbers on a screen. It follows you everywhere and it affects every part of your life. It affects your brain. It affects your mental health. It affects your relationships. It affects literally every part of you. And you can even be like out having brunch with your mates and you're having a great time and suddenly your brain goes, Oh, you have a$17,000 tax debt and now you can't enjoy your ex Benny anymore. Like it's fucking exhausting. And you just can't get out of that until you actually get out of it. So the turning point came for me when I finally did the thing that I'd been avoiding for years, which is sitting down and actually writing down all the debt. Every single one. And the total made me generally want to throw up. But the plot twist that I the plot twist that I didn't see coming was that once I actually faced the music and I wrote down that dollar amount and I like saw actually how much debt I was in, I kind of felt this like weird sense of relief because suddenly I wasn't just this vague thing and I was just assuming the number was higher than what I expected to, but it wasn't like this like terrifying monster lurking in the shadows. It was like actual numbers, concrete figures. I knew exactly what I needed to do. And I guess this is like a medical diagnosis. Um, you know, it was like the day that I found out that I had an endo. And for years I was just gaslit thinking that, like, fuck, I've just got heavy periods, I'm being a sook, I can't be in this much pain. This is not normal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the day I got the diagnosis, I was like, oh, that's what it is. Now I know what it is. Now we can work on a plan of getting better. The same as you can work on a plan of getting better and getting out of debt. Sometimes their diagnosis is fucking horrible. Like endo is a horrible thing to have, but it's also now I'm like, cool, now we know the pathway, now we know what we gotta do. So that's when my brain sort of started to rewire and did a complete 180. I started seeing the debt as not only, as not as like proof that I was a failure at adulting, but as an opportunity. Like if I can dig myself out of this absolute crater that I put myself in, it was no one else's fault but my own, conquering this debt became my superpower. My villain error, but make it financial literacy. Like every payment I made, every time I said no to something I couldn't afford, every tiny win, it was building this muscle that I'd never had before. And I started really trusting myself with money. And that trust, that's where the real manifesting begins, babe. Because manifesting isn't just about making vision boards and hoping for the best. It's about becoming the person who you can actually receive abundance and who actually calls that shit in. And I couldn't receive anything good when I was drowning in debt and shame. That had to go first. The problems, you have to get rid of the problems before you can move forward into the enjoyment. So if you're listening and you're in your if you're in debt right now, I just want you to hear me when I say this. You're not broken. Being bad with money is not a permanent disability trait. You are a person who made some choices that didn't serve you, and you have complete power to make different choices, starting literally today. Face the fucking monster. Write it all down. Because once you do, you'll realize it is way less scary than the version that your anxiety has been giving you. And the process of conquering it, it will change you in ways that you cannot even fathom. I'll just use this as an example. Uh, I don't know if you guys know who Dave Ramsey is. He's a little bit churchy for my liking, and I have a credit card, which is would probably make him roll over. But Dave Ramsay is a financial guru coach person over in the US, changed hundreds of thousands of lives, like absolutely incredible person. And he speaks about this a lot. He went broke when he was like in his early 20s, had millions of dollars of property, literally had to go bankrupt and literally had to start again. And he speaks about how that changed, how he manages money, how he deals with money, how he creates money, how he does business, changed everything. That story is the same for me. If I had not gone into debt at that early, early age, I would not be the person that I am today. I wouldn't have the business I had, I wouldn't have the clients I had, I wouldn't have the life that I have because I would probably still be living on the edge and doing all those stupid things and making all those stupid decisions and buying all these stupid things for clout instead of like for actually for soul. So don't always look at these situations as these negative, nasty, horrible things that you're stuck in forever because you're not. There is a lesson in this, and you need to take the lessons. I actually believe you learn more from the lessons than you do from the things that go well. So on that, onto the manifesting part of this. I truly believe in buying things before you're ready. And I know that sounds absolutely fucking unhinged, especially after I just talked about getting out of debt and how important that is. But stay with me because there is a really crucial difference here. Once I had my debt handled and I was in a much healthier financial place, I started doing something that completely shifted my money game. I started committing to things financially before I felt ready. Buying things, investing in things, signing up for things that required me to show up and actually make the money to support them. So let me give you an example. A few years back, I actually signed up for a business mentorship that was just wildly outside of my comfort zone price-wise. We're talking multiple tens of thousands of dollars. And at the time, I did not have that money just chilling in my account, but I knew this program was aligned with where I wanted to go. It was run by someone who I wanted to be like. He was amazing and he had things that I wanted in my life and in my business. And I just knew I needed to invest in this. I knew it was gonna level me up. I committed, I signed up. I had to make it work. I had to. I was in. I was all in. I did it. I made that money. Not through some strategic magical universe deposit appearing in my account, but because I had committed to something, I showed up completely differently. I pitched harder, I worked smarter, I grabbed opportunities that I would have let slide before. Because now there was something on the line. Skin in the game changes everything. Everything. And this is what I mean by buying things so you have to make the money. It's not about being reckless and going back into debt. That's definitely a big no-no. It's about strategic commitment. It's about putting your money where your mouth is and then rising to meet it. I knew from the social proof of this person that by doing the things and investing in this, I knew that I would make my money back. I knew that it was gonna happen, and it did. The universe absolutely responds to commitment. When you make a decision and back it up with real action, with actual financial investment, something shifts. Opportunities materialize, doors swing open. Not because of magic, but because you're operating as a completely different version of yourself. You're showing up as someone who is fucking serious and fucking invested, balls deep all in. And I can't stress this enough. This only works if you're being real with yourself about what you can handle. This isn't about throwing yourself into financial crisis for the sake of manifestation experiment. It is strategic stretching. Knowing the difference between scary but manageable and genuinely reckless and irresponsible, you know where that line is. I also want to kind of highlight the paradox that, which is that it's also important to understand the difference between ego and soul. Ego is that devil on your shoulder that you can't have that, you don't deserve that, you won't do that, you won't make it work, blah, blah, blah. Energy. Whereas like genuinely irresponsible is like putting your family at risk, putting your finance at risk, like really putting yourself back into your debt position that you're in before. So just know the difference there. I also want to talk about another manifestation technique, which is that paying in full is how you show up. Now, this is one that people don't talk about enough, and it's been absolutely game-changing for me and for my clients. The energetic difference between paying for something in full versus paying it off over time is massive, like genuinely night and day. So I have a high-ticket closure in my business, and we speak about this a lot because she'll always try and encourage people to pay in full opposed to paying on membership on like payment plans. The reason for that is they commit more, they do the work more. We actually make less money out of it if you guys pay in full. We make more out of it if you pay over time. But it changes the way that the client shows up. So think about it. When you put something on a payment plan, there's this lingering energy attached to it. Every week or every month, when that payment comes out, you're reminded that you don't fully own this thing yet. Hello mortgage. There is a subtle undercurrent of obligation, of owing, of not quite being there yet. And that energy affects how you show up with whatever you're invested in. When you pay in full, something completely shifts. You walk into that room, that course, that experience, as someone who has fully backed themselves. There's no lingering debt attached, no monthly reminder that you're still paying this off. You're not operating from a place of, I hope this is worth it because I'm going to be paying for it for the next 12 months. You're operating from, I have invested in myself completely and I'm here to get everything I can out of this. So I noticed this massively when I started paying for courses and mentorships in full instead of doing payment plans. When I was always on payment plans, I would sometimes slack off or not shop fully because subconsciously there was this energy of, well, I haven't really committed yet, have I? I'm still in the process of paying. But when I paid in full upfront, absolutely not. I was in every call, I was doing every bit of homework, I was doing every task that was sent to me, and I was extracting every single drop of value because I had fully committed with money, and that made me fully commit with my energy. I also want to highlight that if you're a bit of course coin, so if you're somebody who just buys courses left, right, and center and does nothing with them because they're always on payment plans, perhaps that's why. Also, the pain of seeing so many weekly, monthly payment plans come out is actually really like little, just makes you feel like shit. So, anyway, I think this is the same with anything. When you pay for something outright, a car, a course, a holiday, whatever, you respect your own investment and you like value it more. You don't just let yourself slack because you know what you put into it. There's like a completeness to it that payment plans just really don't give you. Now, obviously, this always isn't possible. Sometimes payment plans are genuinely the only way to access something, and that's completely fine. I'm not saying never use a payment plan ever again. What I am saying is that when you have the option, when you can stretch it to pay in full, do it. Just notice how differently you do show up when you do it. Notice how your energy shifts when there's no lingering financial tie to something. It's just a level of freedom and commitment that genuinely changes the game. I believe it also, because money is energy and it's always moving. I actually believe that when you pay for something in full, all of a sudden there's that want to like replenish that savings again and to like put that back in. And I feel like that tends to show up differently to how it did before. So when you pay in full, you're sending a massive signal to yourself and to the universe that you trust yourself to have that money. You're not hedging your bets by spreading it out just in case. You're saying, I have this, I am this person, I can do this. And that kind of self-trust compounds over time. It builds this unshakable belief and your own capacity to generate and to hold wealth. My next manifesting tool is called Living Like You Already Have It. All right, we're getting into the really juicy manifesting content here. Living like you already have the life that you want. This is one of the most powerful tools, but also one of the most butchered concepts. Living as if does not mean pretending you're a millionaire when you are not. It does not mean going on unhinged luxury shopping sprees that you can't afford or posting about your lifestyle and lying to people. That's not manifesting. That's fraudulent, it's delusion, and it will absolutely catch up with you. What living as if actually means is making decisions from the energy of your future self. And it's like asking yourself, what would the version of me who already has this do right now? And then doing that thing within reason, obviously. Don't be chaotic about it. So, one of my favorite things, and one of the easiest ones to do is dressing like you're already a rich person or an XYZ person or whatever. If you want to be a WA, how would a WAG dress? What would they wear? And again, this doesn't mean going and buying like the most luxurious things in the planet, but it means dressing in a way that makes you look and feel a certain way. It might mean doing your makeup a certain way, it might mean doing your hair a certain way, it might mean wearing high heels, it might mean wearing matching underwear. It can mean so many things, but dressing the part and looking the part, looking like you already have it, is a huge one and a very, very easy. A personal example that a lot of people also find interesting, and I don't care if people think this is a brag, maybe it is. A few years ago, seven years ago, actually, I made a commitment to myself that I would never fly achotomy again. Now, at the time, that felt like such a bold and ridiculous statement. I mean, who the fuck did I think I was? I wasn't wealthy. I had paid myself out of debt, I owned my car, I didn't own a house back then, nothing like that. But who did I think I was? I didn't have unlimited funds for business class, but I made that decision because I wanted to start treating myself like someone who valued her own comfort and experience. I was done settling for less just because I thought that's what I deserved. Fun story about this. I was at a conference, um, we all went out for dinner the final night, and then we all got really drunk, and then we all ended up at a nightclub until someone got the hour of the morning. And I mean, like, I'm out at a nightclub with like 50, 60 year old men and women, right down to like young early 20s startups. Like it was the best vibe. We had the best fucking night, and I missed my flight, it was so bad. And I was flying back at like 8:30 in the morning, I think. And I think my first client was at 11:30 because it was only from Sydney down to Melbourne, and I was like, fuck. And so the only flight I could get was a business class flight, and I was like, fuck, and it was like$750, right? It was so expensive, and I just paid for it. I thought, fuck it, I don't care. Well, fuck me. From then I was like, I am never, ever flying eco ever again. This was such a good experience. I got to go and sit in the lounge. All my friends made their flight, so I'm in the fucking airport by myself. Um, and sitting in the lounge, and then I get on the plane and I have a wine before we take off, and it's and it was great. And so I made that decision. I thought, you know, business is sometimes not even double the price of eco. I work really hard, I don't have any debt now. Like, I'm gonna make this a thing. And that's what I did. I made it happen. I haven't flown eco since. So now I look at strategic ways of doing that. I'm a points junkie. I always fly with Qantas, I shop at BP, I use their online shopping tools to order things. I'm very strategic about how I get my business class flights. I also make sure that I allow in my budget to do that. I also make sure that when I'm traveling to see someone, I put that in their fees, they pay for those flights. Overall, I started making that decision and I made that happen. And if you work as hard as I did and you flew 57 times last year, like I did, it's it's really nice to have the extra leg room, the priority boarding, and to not be jammed in with a whole heap of people that you don't know that you can't even share an armrest with because they've got bigger arms than you. Facts. So sometimes that means being strategic and looking for specific bookings and things like that. Sometimes it means shopping at specific places to get the extra points to be able to do that. But I hold that standard because it represents something bigger than a seat on a plane. It represents my commitment to treating myself well, waking up fresh at the other end, or arriving at the other end fresh because my legs aren't swollen from being jammed or anything. I'm not a super short girl, so it helps. But living as if is about the energy you bring to your everyday life. Feeling abundant, even when your bank account hasn't caught up yet, making decisions from worthiness instead of scarcity. And when you do that consistently, your external reality starts matching your internal vibe. Please use discernment here. You don't need the designer bag to feel abundant. You can feel abundant watching a sunset. You can feel wealthy by taking time off for yourself instead of constantly grinding. Living as if isn't just about spending money you don't have. It's about embodying the energy of your future self in ways that actually serve you. I promise you, dressing the part is one of the best things you can do. It might even mean waking up earlier every day. You just want to wake up every earlier every day. You maybe you just want to wear active wear because that makes you feel more active. Those things help to actually find the motivation and to actually manifest those things into life. I guess that all like, you know, not overspending and that type of energy probably leads well into my next point, which is buying for clout versus buying for soul. This is a part where I need you to get really honest with yourself. Why do you actually buy the things you buy? I reckon about 90% of purchases people make these days are for clout, straight up. They're buying things to look good to other people, the car that'll impress the neighbors, the outfit that'll get compliments, the holiday that'll look incredible on the grid, the designer bag that signals to the world that you've made it. And look, I'm not judging. I have absolutely done this. We all have. I had a marriage that was falling apart for a very long time. And so I bought so many designer items. It was insane. I bought Gucci shoes to wear to one event, and I never wore them again ever, and they were like$1,500. It was crazy. I did that looking back now because I was filling a void, right? I was trying to feel good with stuff. I was trying to look on the outside like my world wasn't falling around, falling apart around me, and like my in my life was so great. My life was fucking horrible. Horrible. Being in an abuse situation, trying to hide all that shit is just a fucking terrible way of living your life. And I admit that. And I know that there is a lot of people that feel that too and have done the same thing. So I like I said, I'm not judging. I've absolutely done this, I don't do it anymore. We've all done this. We live in a society that's constantly screams at us that our worth is tied to what we own and what we display. And it's almost impossible not to internalize that on some level. But here's the T about buying for Clout: it never actually fills the void. You get the thing, you get the five-minute dopamine hit, maybe some likes and some comments, and then nothing. The emptiness is still there. So you chase the next thing, hoping maybe this one will finally make you feel like enough. What I've learned is that the purchases that actually bring the lasting joy are the ones made for the soul. The things you buy, not because everyone else will see them or care about, but because they genuinely light you up. They align with your values, they support the life you actually want, not the life you want people on Instagram to think that you're living. For me, This looks like experiences. We love going on a date night every single week. We love going on one or two holidays a year. We spend money on health and wellness. We're both very invested in our health and wellness because we both genuinely feel like when we say we both, I mean me and my husband, because we genuinely care about feeling good in our bodies. I like buying physical books, even when Kindle version is cheaper, because I love having an actual library and I love having like I love the feeling of like flinging through a book and I like the pages and the glossiness and you know all of that. It's for a feeling. And I pay for business class, not because anyone online cares, but I genuinely value being comfortable on long flights and flying all the fucking time. And most of the time I fly, I don't even post about it. The shift from clout to soul is game-changing for your money relationship. When you're buying for soul, you're not desperately chasing you like you're not desperately chasing validation that never satisfies because you never get the validation you need from other people. You're investing in genuine happiness. The kind that spending feels good. No buyer's remorse, no credit card shame. Disalignment. So next time you're about to buy something you want, pause and be brutally honest. Am I buying this for me or am I buying this for other people? Am I buying this for me or am I buying it so that I look a certain way to other people? And if it's a second one, maybe you just don't redirect that money towards something that feeds your soul instead of your ego. I want to just kind of go on a little tangent here because we all know that I love a bloody tangent. But I I buy myself gifts when I achieve certain things in my life. The principle here is the same as what I teach my coaching clients to do, which is staff achieves X, staff gets X bonus. Does that make sense? So, like it's the same targets and bonuses system that you would have to motivate your staff to do more and to be better and to earn more and to achieve more. And I do the same thing for myself. I have goals that I have in place that every time I hit that goal for three months consistently, because we track monthly in this business, then I will buy myself a specific thing. And as the business keeps growing, the reward gets better. So for me, I love jewelry. I think jewelry is really beautiful. I think it's like something that I can keep forever. You know, it's the same as like I sold one of my properties recently. So I bought that was my first property that I kind of bought without a partner. So I um I bought myself a really beautiful piece of jewelry to commemorate that and to remember that and to be like, you fucking did that, girl, and you made so much money out of it. Like, snaps for you. You know, I I actually believe in if you've got something more substantial that you want, go and like set a goal for yourself. Be like, hey, I want that YSL handbag. I'm gonna do X, Y, Z, and when I do that, that's when I'm gonna get it, and it will feel better because I want to make something very clear. Wanting material things is not it's not toxic, it's not anything. I'm a fashion girly, I fucking get it. I really do. And if you want something and it makes you feel good, just go and fucking do it. Go and fucking get it. Make it a little bit of a challenge to get there. The next thing is, I guess, following from that perfectly, is setting the standards that hold you accountable. And this is the final piece of the whole puzzle today, or the whole episode today. It's not about it's about setting non-negotiable standards for yourself. And this connects back to the whole like never flying economy thing for me. When you set a standard, you're drawing a line in the sand. You're saying, this is who I am now, this is what I do now. And the standard becomes something that holds you accountable to keep growing. The business class thing is just a really good example. I know I keep raising it, but it's just an easy, tangible metaphor, but also real. There's so many reasons beyond comfort that I've made this my standard. When I'm traveling solo, especially as a woman, there's a safety element. I can leave my bags, dump them on a chair in the lounge, and no one will even touch them. I use the lounge access spaces that feel more secure. I can shower, I can rest, and so that I arrive more functional at the other end. There's charges there, there's Wi-Fi there, there's food and drink there. I don't have to pay for anything extra. So for me, that's like an all-inclusive thing. The service is better, so there's less stress. I can work on flights and I can shop ready to perform instead of arriving completely wrecked and like a fucking zombie. Also, sometimes when I'm flying like multiple times a week, like sometimes I've flown five, six times in a week, that is kind of my only rest time. So I can have a little snooze or I can whatever. So beyond all those practical reasons, the standard itself is powerful because once you've set a standard, you have to rise to meet it. That means making the money to support it, showing up in your business or in career in a way that maintains that standard. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have standards across my whole life now. How I invest my time, who gets access to my energy, how I show up in my work. Every single standard pushes me to be better, to grow, to rise, and to meet it. The key is choosing standards that align with your values and the life you genuinely want, not standards about impressing other people or keeping up with arbitrary expectations. Standards that are truly about you living your best and most authentic life. And here's the beautiful thing: your standards can and should evolve. What looks like a stretch goal now might become a baseline later. The standard you set today might look completely different in five years. That is literally the point. You go into your standards, then you set new ones, and it's continuous expansion forever and ever until the end of time. So, something I really want you to leave with is that manifesting money and trusting the universe isn't about sitting around and waiting for things to magically happen. It is about becoming the person who can receive what it is that you're asking for. It is doing the inner work, the practical work, and the uncomfortable work. Trusting yourself as much as you trust the universe. And it's about creating the things that you want. The delusion is, like I said, I think in my opener here, when you are, you're like you want a Lamborghini. You can journal all day about having a Lamborghini, but if you're not going to work and making more money and doing all the things you need to do to drive the Lamborghini, well, then you're not going to have a fucking Lamborghini, are you? So, yes, it's manifesting. Yes, it's action, but yes, it's also creating that person, that persona, and really embodying what it is that you want to become. Because when you genuinely do the work, the universe does meet you halfway. Doors open, opportunities appear, but they appear because you're finally ready for them, because you've done the work to become the person who can actually walk through those doors. Thank you so much for being with me today. I love you endlessly, and I really hope that you start stepping into your truer, realer, stronger, better, ideal dreamy self. Keep showing up for yourself and keep trusting the process and keep doing the fucking work. Sisters, I love it. Have a good one.