The Missing Piece Nobody Puts in a Financial Plan

Do you feel fine about money - until you actually look at it? Or maybe you have a plan, you trust it, and somehow money conversations still make you tense. You're not broken. You're just missing one piece. This episode is about what that piece is, why it matters more than anything else in your financial life, and what it looks like when all three finally click into place.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Hi guys, I am so excited for today's episode because it is really just the core essence of my whole philosophy around money. And I'm genuinely excited that I get to share it with you all today. So buckle up. We are going to be talking about our nervous system. And I promise you, I'm not gonna go deep into technical language or anything like that. But I do think that when we think about money, we tend to not think so much about our bodies. And I feel like it's only been until recently that we've actually even thought about like our mindset and the things that we were taught about money. Historically, financial conversations were purely driven by the numbers. And I feel like we've learned so much about how people relate to money, why people make decisions the way they do, but there's so many layers to this conversation. And so I'm sure this is gonna be a recurring theme on the podcast that will come up consistently. But this is, you know, our first foray into really the intersection of financial strategy, money mindset, and our nervous system. So let's get started. Let's dive in. I am going to paint a picture for you. All right, so here we have let's call her Elizabeth. And Elizabeth doesn't really stress about money, she's pretty relaxed about money, you know, it's just the kind of person that's never really thinking about it too much. But Elizabeth also isn't really doing much. She's, you know, she spends what she wants to spend on, she earns money, but there's not any real strategy behind the scenes. So if there's ever any crisis that comes up, Elizabeth is going to have to contend with that because she hasn't put a lot of thought into financial strategy. Next up, we have Juno. And Juno has really good financial strategy, right? She has been looking at her numbers, setting money aside, and all of the places where she thinks that she should be setting money aside. But for some reason, she feels guilty whenever she wants to spend money. She can't really make herself invest in the things that are gonna move the needle because there's this undercurrent of fear. Um, she just can't stop feeling like even though she's doing everything right, it's not enough. Kind of like waiting for the other shoe to drop. And finally, we have Jenny. And Jenny has done the strategy and she also understands why maybe she's made different financial decisions in the past and why she's making better financial decisions now. She really has done this mindset work and the strategy, but for some reason, she still feels anxiety whenever it's time to meet with her financial advisor. She still feels dread whenever she goes to check her accounts. Not because she knows that something bad is happening, but it's just something that keeps coming up in her body. Um she thinks that more strategy will make it better, but for some reason, that doesn't actually ever take away this anxiety and dread. So we have three different women, three different places on the same path. And by the episode, by the end of the episode, uh, you are gonna know exactly which one you are and what your next step actually is. So stick with me while we talk through these three people. So if we zoom out, we can see that none of these scenarios is really about money. A lot of the time, the relationship we have around money is about control, it's about self-soothing, it's about positioning ourselves or how like our identity, how we view ourselves, how we want the world to view us. That's usually what's behind most of the things that come up in our brains and our bodies around money. When we're experiencing financial anxiety, it's not because there's a knowledge gap, it's not because there's a strategy gap. It actually is a somatic pattern that exists within our bodies. And somatic patterns are different, right? They're not the they're not the type of thing that you can just change through a spreadsheet. It really requires some introspection and the ability for us to look within and understand what we feel, when we feel it, where we feel it, and why we feel it. Not necessarily to heal it, but just so that we create a general awareness. Now, most people have like dysregulation around money. I mean, if if you think about conversations around money that you have with people, usually it's like complaining about the price or something of something or being disappointed or upset when you get a medical bill that's more than what you think it should be. Um, it could be, you know, any number of things that really come up when we have conversations around money. Some like people who have money who maybe aren't doing good things with it and we feel like that isn't right, or maybe it's feeling uncomfortable about the fact that we have so much money and feeling like other people would judge us if they knew what our resources were. There is so much dysregulation around money. And because of that, we tend to normalize that that's just how money is. Money is just something that we feel uncomfortable around. Like, like that's just what the weather is, and we can't really do anything to change it. Um, but that doesn't have to be the way that it is, right? If we can understand how to regulate ourselves around money, then we can opt out of those conversations where we complain about money or complain about the prices of things, and we can enter a new reality where money goes back to what it once was. Just a tool, a conduit of exchange. And that feels so much better. We give money this whole personality and we make it mean something and we make it make us feel a certain way. And in reality, it's just this tool. So the feelings in our body that we have around money are not permanent, but we can't think our way out of them. We have to feel our way through them. And so when I started my financial planning firm, I, you know, I would help people with their money, I would give them the strategy and the tools and the spreadsheets. And sometimes I would notice that I would tell somebody to do a certain thing and they wouldn't do it. Shocking. Has this ever happened to you? You see some financial advice on the internet or in an article, and you're like, oh, I should do that. And then you don't do it. And initially I was convinced that this was a mindset problem, right? We grow up thinking a certain way about money. We learn about money from our communities and from our parents and from our friends. And so if we can rewrite some of those stories around money, then we can make different decisions around money. So I spent a lot of time diving into the mindset work around money. I did a program with a financial therapist, a mentorship program, where I learned about how she helps her clients when it comes to different ways of thinking around money. And I kind of thought I had it figured out. So then when I would meet with clients, we would talk about their family history around money, the messages that they received growing up around money. And that did a lot to resolve, you know, these decisions around money. It helped people really understand why they might be stalling on decisions, why certain things felt uncomfortable. But I quickly realized that that was not the whole story. I remember specifically meeting with a client, and we had done the mindset work. We had gone into her great-grandparents' feelings around money and how those trickled down to her grandparents and her parents, and we understood some of these patterns that were coming up for her. But I remember distinctly sitting on a Zoom screen with her, Zoom screen with her, and talking about Roth IRAs. And I just saw her eyes completely disengage, her brain went elsewhere, and she was no longer a participant in the conversation. And I realized that something deeper was going on. I realized that her nervous system was checking out. And the more research I did into this, the more it became clear to me that if we're not resolving things that are happening in our nervous system, then we're always gonna have these feelings around money. We're always gonna have these experiences with money that don't feel great. So in that moment, she was in fight or flight mode and she flew. She flew completely out of the conversation because her brain was telling her that this is a dangerous topic. It's too much for her to handle, it's unfamiliar territory, and it's better for her to just completely disengage. So then, of course, I, as I do, I read the books. I did a teacher training with a somatic therapist to understand how to support my clients through the nervous system experiences that come with money conversations. And from there, I really was able to help people make progress in their financial journeys. So once we can approach money with this regulated state, with the ability to be present and feel calm, not only are we able to make good decisions around money, we're able to feel good about those decisions. I'm gonna try not to get ahead of myself because I have so much I want to share with you guys today. So, you know, we talked about the three women earlier, and you know, if we just have strategy when it comes to our money, if the only thing we show up with is strategy, we have our spreadsheet, we have our plan. I had a client like this as well. She would show me her spreadsheets, and her partner would tell me that she is always anxious about money. She has hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash because she's too anxious to invest the money. She's always worried about her next client because she's stressed out that money isn't gonna come. The strategy itself on its own is not enough to regulate this dysregulated state. That being said, if you have done the mindset work and you know, I meet I also meet so many people, especially when I run kind of group programs, I meet so many people who tell me, you know, I've spent so much time on my money mindset. I have done so much work around why I have money blocks, and yet my bank account hasn't changed. So they've done the mindset work. They're open to receiving money. They understand that it's possible for them, but for some reason their bank account's not changing. That right there is mindset without strategy, right? You have to actually implement strategy. I mean, there are a lot of millionaires out there who are completely dysregulated and have terrible money mindsets. So having a money mindset, having it like, you know, doing money mindset work is not the solution to actually having money in your bank account. That is just a way to feel better about money coming in, but you still have to have the strategy. And finally, there's the person who's totally regulated, totally calm. You probably know this person doesn't really stress about money. These people actually rarely ever become my clients because they don't they don't really feel worried about money, but they also are not actually building wealth. They just, they, they fly by the seat of their pants, they don't worry too much, they feel good. And I'm not saying this is a bad thing, right? At the end of the day, we all just want to go through life feeling good. And so they have the nervous system, but without the strategy, they're not gonna be able to build that kind of generational wealth that gives them security and stability and freedom and impact. So it really is when you combine all three of these things, when you understand how to view money in this world, when you have the backbone of strategy, when you are able to feel calm and regulated and grounded, then you have the resources to build impact in this world. And that's a really, really exciting thing. So one thing that I want to kind of throw in here is you've probably heard of lifestyle creep. Tell me if you haven't, but lifestyle creep is essentially where you make more money and in sneaky ways your life gets more expensive. Maybe you start to make more money and you have a second car, so then you have this other car payment coming out of your account, and you um, you know, have more streaming services. You're no longer sharing with your brother, so you have more things you're paying for there. Um, you sign your kids up for more classes and lessons, you go on more vacations, um, you start having things delivered instead of going to pick them up, and all of a sudden you look at your bank account and it kind of looks the exact same way it did before you were making more money. And that is a symptom of lifestyle creep. And essentially what's happening is you uh you have not actually decided how you want this extra money to serve you. So you've used this extra money to kind of pad the edges of your life, and you don't really feel that much richer, that much wealthier. You just kind of feel like someone turned the volume up slightly on your life. Lifestyle creep. I don't typically use that term because I don't know. To me, it seems like you're it's more of like an unconscious behavior. It's not that you know life is creeping up on you, but it's really just not being aware of how your money is flowing. And once you bring awareness back into it, and once you become aware of what actually makes you feel rich, then you can eliminate this lifestyle creep, and your money is actually going to feel like more money. Right? So it's like when you kind of I I did an Instagram post on this recently, actually. Um, but it's basically we normalize these things that are technically luxuries, and then we wonder why it never feels like enough. And so it's like, oh, going out and getting breakfast from somewhere instead of making it at home, that's just what I do. That's just a normal thing. That does that's not actually like a treat or a luxury, but in reality, it's like, no, you're paying somebody to cook eggs for you and to buy bread and to toast it and to cook meat and to melt cheese and put it all together and wrap it up for you, and you're just you're paying them money for that thing. Like that, you know, that that's an amazing thing that's happening. But we take it for granted, and so when we spend the money on it, it kind of doesn't feel like we're spending money on anything at all. The thing that was once this pretty little luxury, oat milk. Think about oat milk, you guys. Someone has to grow those oats and you know harvest them and press them and soak them and turn them into milk and package them and put them into a bottle and deliver them to the barista, and then the barista has to make sure it's you know in the refrigerator and she has to show up for work, and the shop owner has to pay their rent on their shop space. All these things have to happen for you to get oat milk in your latte. But when you think about it to you, it you know, it just becomes another decision, another little blip. So our whole lives, obviously, we can't go through life dissecting every single thing we're consuming and thinking about the underlayer of it. But when we have more money, we normalize these things that were once luxuries and then we stop feeling wealthy. And so I'm gonna introduce you guys to a concept that I came up with a few years back that has been so helpful for my clients, especially my high-earning clients, to really come back to themselves and to actually feel the money that they're earning. So it's called the lean luxe lifestyle. And what the lean luxe lifestyle is, and I might have talked about it on a previous episode, but what the lean luxe lifestyle is, is essentially we distill our lives down to the things that are the most important, right? We we take all of the extra stuff that's not really serving us, we eliminate it, and we distill our lives down to the things that are the most important, and then we aspire toward the most luxurious version of that thing. So instead of consuming and filling our lives with a lot of stuff that doesn't actually move the needle for us, we fill our lives with things, a few things that are really nice. And I definitely talked about this on a previous episode. But I want to emphasize it here again because the lean luxe lifestyle is not about deprivation, it's not about wanting less, it's about knowing the difference between what genuinely brings you joy and what your nervous system kind of just got used to. You know if your nervous system just kind of got used to having this very specific um conditioner and you're just buying it but you're not appreciating it, that is doesn't that doesn't align with the philosophy. You might as well be buying the cheapest conditioner you can find. But if you truly enjoy the experience of conditioning your hair and it feels good, and you actually look into the company and you appreciate their values and all those things, then all of a sudden that becomes a luxury, a luxury experience. So when you can tell apart the things that bring you joy and the things that you're just used to, that's when your money stops disappearing. That's when you stop being like, where did it all go? And that's when you start actually understanding how your money is supporting you and serving you. And that's also when you are able to amplify your impact because you're not spending money on the things that don't make you feel alive. So let's come back. Let's come back to the beginning, the three women, right? We have the woman without the strategy, and one of the first things when I started doing my somatic teacher training, one of the first things that my teacher said to us was that knowledge creates safety in our bodies, and I think that that is why strategy is so important, because it increases the level of safety we experience. It's fine to, you know, to not be stressful. Our goal is not to be stressed around money, but if we can also build strategy behind that, we're gonna be rocket ships, right? We're just gonna take off. Have the strategy that syncs with our nervous system, that allows our money to grow and actually experience true freedom. If we think about the woman who has all the strategy, but she still feels scarcity, still feels guilt when it comes to financial decisions, that really is understanding what your true desires are and cutting out the rest. If we know that the best part of our day is going to our favorite coffee shop and getting a cappuccino and has a heart on it and it brings us so much joy, then we are definitely going to value that more. And it's not going to feel like something that brings us guilt. It's going to be something that actually improves the quality of our life. And for the woman who has the strategy and has the nervous system and still feels anxious whenever she checks her bank account, that's when we have to sit and do the nervous system work, which is really the final piece of the puzzle. That's when it's time to pause and understand what's happening in our body and really look into tools that can help create calm and peace for us. And, you know, nervous system work, somatic work, it is kind of like a buzzy hot topic right now. So I'm sure there are a lot of resources. But if you're curious about what type of somatic tools you can use to ease anxiety, reach out to me. Find me on Instagram, Mira Sharene, reach out to me because I have videos and I have resources that really help you tune in to what you're feeling. Understand the relationship between the way you feel in your body and your money, and just notice what's going on. Because so much somatic work is really just noticing and understanding and being aware of how our body is responding in different ways. And once we build that awareness, then we actually start to feel excited about our money. We actually start to understand what's happening, resolve it, and move forward. If you recognize yourself in one of these women today, or if something clicked, I would absolutely love to hear from you. I have been having so much fun recording these podcast episodes. Um yeah, I'm so excited. I have so much more to share with you guys. I have so many people, so many amazing guest speakers as well. So if you are excited about guest speakers, let me know. Um follow, subscribe. I don't know, like, subscribe what all the cool kids are saying. Let me know. Um I'm here and I cannot wait to hear from you guys. I hope you're having an amazing day.

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Bye.