S01E17 The Wealth Money Can't Buy

This episode reframes building wealth beyond money, focusing on passing down humanity, vitality, and consciousness. Laura draws parallels between financial planning and building inner wealth through three steps: assessment, habit-building, and transmission.

We must apply the same rigor to your inner life as you do to finances. Staying awake and living fully isn't a luxury, it’s essential. Without it, even financial security feels hollow.

Transcript

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I have been thinking about generational wealth lately. I know everywhere online you see everybody's talking about money all the time, right? How do you make more money? How do you create passive income side hustles. How do you set yourself up for financial freedom and pass it down to your kids? We're all so fixated on money, which is fine. I'm glad we're openly talking about money, it's important, but I'm wondering what that fixation is doing to our inner lives, When you're so focused on one thing. It's so easy to lose track of the rest of the things. And when we talk about generational wealth, do we just mean money? When we talk about all the things that we want our kids to inherit, I don't know that we're just talking about money. Aren't there so many other things that we want them to receive from us and carry forward? Their sense of self. Their ability to feel their feelings, their instincts, their creativity, living with agency and meaning. So I've been sitting with that question I realized that the same steps that are required to build financial generational wealth. Apply to other things too, like humanity and vitality and consciousness. What if we approach those things with the same rigor as we do our money? The same intentionality and the same seriousness. What if we took our humanity as seriously as we take our finances? What kind of world would that create? What would be the downstream effects of that? I'm not saying money and humanity are the same thing. What I'm saying is the way that we handle what matters to us follows the same logic. The way that we handle money follows the same logic as handling our legacy of humanity. So today I wanna talk about how we apply those same practices, the same structure and discipline to our inner lives. It's not, instead of caring about money, it's a long sided, it's like the other side of the same coin. Together that coin makes up our whole selves, our whole set of assets that matter. Before I go any further, I wanna get really clear because I know the word humanity is being thrown around a lot right now. There are a lot of things happening around the world that make people say like, where is the humanity? Where has it gone? And I'm gonna use that word in this episode today, but when I use the word humanity, I'm not only talking about compassion and kindness, I'm talking about the full range of what makes us human, our emotions, our opinions, our desires, our capacity for delight and grief, and anger and creativity. Our vulnerability and our moral fire. Humanity, to me is the ability to feel, to choose, to care, to disagree, to imagine, to live from the inside instead of by default, literally lighting up all of your colors on the inside, all of the colors that make up a human being. Okay, let's start with something familiar. If you wanna build financial wealth, everyone pretty broadly agrees on three basic steps, Step one, you assess your current situation. You have to look honestly at where your money's going. You have to examine income versus expenses, and look at anywhere your money is leaking. You notice patterns good and bad. You're not supposed to judge yourself. Panic doesn't help anything. You just have to get really, really honest about what's happening because you can't manage it if you can't measure it. If you haven't measured it and you're not aware of it, how are you supposed to manage it? Step one from a humanity perspective, from a vitality perspective, step one is the inner work, You're building awareness. You have to do that assessment So just like you can't fix your finances without understanding where your money's going right now, you can't build aliveness or vitality without understanding where you're numb. Where are you just going through the motions? Where are you performing? Instead of actually living, where is your energy leaking out without your consent? Where did you learn to dim your light or doubt yourself? Which internalized rules and roles and expectations are running your life? This is the honest assessment. It's like an audit. You can't skip that because you won't have any understanding of where you're starting from and where you need to go. I couldn't skip it either. Everybody has to do this step. For me, this showed up when I realized how numb I was becoming in my corporate life. I had spent 20 years building a career in ai. At large and small companies and on paper everything looked great. I had a good title. I was making lots of money. I had respect, I had security. But something felt off. It was almost like something was turned off inside of me. I would sit in those meetings where we were making decisions that were affecting big groups of people or organizations are spending a ton of budget on something and I would feel, nothing, I would feel nothing. I wouldn't get angry, I wouldn't get excited, barely even bored. I just felt flat like gray and going through the motions. I was performing, competence, I was performing. Engagement in the meetings and pretending that I cared, but inside I was numb. And here's the thing. I did not wake up one day and suddenly feel that way. This happened really slowly and gradually Over time, it took years. I didn't even notice it until I was so far gone that I barely recognized myself anymore, and I had learned without even realizing that I was learning it, that my feelings were inconvenient. I didn't trust my intuition because at work it was unreliable, The way to succeed was to override what I actually wanted to do and just do what was expected, and I got really good at going numb. I excelled. And I didn't even know I was doing it That realization, that moment of seeing really clearly what was happening inside of me changed everything. Because again, once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. And I started noticing all the places that I was flattening myself, and I started to resent that. then I started to notice everybody else around me was doing the exact same thing The rest is history, So that's what step one looks like. You don't have to build a spreadsheet and create metrics, And you're not even trying to fix anything yet. You're just noticing. You're seeing more clearly and honestly what is going on in your inner world, because you can't change it if you don't see it. Awareness alone doesn't change anything. In finance. Knowing where your money is going doesn't build wealth. Habits do. Step two, you build habits around accumulating wealth. You budget, you automate your savings, or you invest consistently. It's not big dramatic, like you can achieve this goal all at once. Wealth can't be built in one giant move like that, It's built through consistent practices every day. Really small decisions that you repeat time after time, and those compound. In that same way, if you are wanting to build a life that is full of colorful humanity, then you have to set up a set of habits and practices that you are inhabiting that set you up for long-term success in this way, that looks like. Trying to create magic in mundane moments that looks like stopping to appreciate the view or the moment or the way you feel, or checking in with yourself and noticing something doesn't feel right or that you feel tired and you need to say no to something, or that you desire something. These small habits of keeping yourself alive moment to moment in your days add up, they compound and then all of a sudden your life feels different and you are fully awake and alive no matter what's happening around you. These are not enormous gestures or like big, giant, expensive things you have to do. You don't have to go to retreats or make enormous changes in your life, nothing has to be perfect. Perfect is not the goal. These are just small, repeatable acts that restore presence and meaning over time. It includes serious practices like journaling, boundary setting, working with difficult emotions, learning embodiment. But it also includes joy and playful ones like playing music during breakfast or creating rituals around anticipation like Christmas Eve or anticipation of a big vacation, Creating family games, sensory, noticing like what are your favorite events, your favorite places and spaces and people, what does everything smell like, sound like, feel like? Noticing those things. The key is this. These are not one-time activities. These are tiny deposits that you are making that matter more than any occasional windfall. In our house, this looks like things that might seem totally crazy and insignificant from the outside. So, for example, in my family, we have Friday dinners. It's not just my husband and my son's. We go to my parents' house or we go to my sister's house. But every Friday night we get together. And we've been doing this for decades. It used to be Sunday nights. Even when I was a kid, my grandparents would come over on Sunday nights and we would have dinner. Now it turned into Friday nights because we just all really like ending the week that way. And sometimes these are late nights and it's easier to do a Friday night than a Sunday night when you have kids in school. But we sit at the table, we sit with the same people, we have the same rhythms no matter where we are. we all stay really connected that way. The cousins get to see each other. We usually have a really laid back dinner. Sometimes whoever's hosting will cook something, but usually we all just bring our own food or order pizza or whatever. But it's something we all look forward to all week long. My kids look forward to it. We all know that Friday means family. The week ends with connection, and there is a rhythm to our life, It's not just chaos and it's not just all the days bleeding together with nothing to mark the end of the week. Yeah, that's a deposit. We also have something called the pizza cloth. In my family, this is from when I was a kid, we have this horrendously ugly tablecloth from the 1970s. Like it is dark green with brown and blue flowers all over it. And it's one of my. Most treasured possessions, because what we do is, even as kids, we spread that tablecloth out on the floor and the whole family would sit there and eat dinner in front of the TV together on the floor, like a living room picnic. it's called the pizza cloth. Because as kids we would use. Pretty much exclusively for when we would order pizza and we would eat that on the floor while we were watching. I don't know who's the boss in the evenings all together. But now my kids use it. It has its own special drawer that it lives in. Everyone knows how to find it, and it is something that I cherish. That's a deposit it. That is something that reminds all of us that things can have a sense of continuity, That we're part of something bigger than just this moment and that tiny little mundane things can be really special. So that's step two. Small consistent deposits repeated over time that build something valuable. And then step three, you create a situation where you can pass down your wealth to future generations. You're not just leaving your children money, You have to teach them financial literacy and show them how to manage what they inherit. Because if they inherit that and they don't have that wisdom of what to do with it, the wealth doesn't last. And all of your hard work will have been for Naugh. And then step three is the transmission of those habits which turn into generational wealth. This is where everything gets really powerful. You are not just building aliveness for yourself, you're building something that others will inhabit someday. Just like you wouldn't leave your children money without teaching them how to manage it. You can't just hope that they'll figure out how to stay awake in the world on their own. You have to teach this and you do that by modeling the behaviors, living consciously in your own life, creating a culture around rituals that resist numbness and flatness and dullness. Colorful rituals in your own family, in your own home. Documentation. Who doesn't have scrapbooks or some sort of old letters or old pictures that you cherish from previous generations. I make it a point to also create memory books and shared language around what it's like to be in this family and our favorite memories. We do that through conversation. We talk about our values. We talk about how important it is to both be aware of the rules and the boundaries of whatever situation you're in, but not to overvalue compliance. And then we use all of these things as tools to teach them to notice, to question, and to make choices in their own lives. That is generational wealth. That's what I'm talking about. It's not just assets, right? It's consciousness. It's like the other side of the coin from financial, generational wealth. When I think about what I want my boys to inherit, it's so much more than just security. I want them to inherit the ability to live freely without losing themselves, and to know that their feelings matter. That their information, their feelings are not a problem to be solved. That's data for them to use to know themselves better and make decisions from that. I want them to trust their own instincts, even when those instincts run completely counter to what everybody else is saying or doing. I want them to be aware that they have the instinct and to listen to that. So important to me, and I want them to know that they don't have to optimize every moment of their lives. That rest is not laziness. You don't have to earn rest. Rest does not make it a problem because there's something to be done, Play is not frivolous, and that beauty matters even when there's no productive result. And I want them to be weird. I want them to be themselves and idiosyncratic, and I don't want them to flatten themselves and. Fit into someone else's idea of normal. My family is weird and I'm weird. And we are creating weird children. And I wear that like a badge of honor and I want them to do the same thing. And here's the thing, I can't just tell them these things. If I just tell them, I want you to do this and this and this. It goes in one ear and out the other. Just like when I tell them to clean up their shoes. I have to live this for them. Our kids are watching us. They don't learn from what we say nearly as much as they learn from what we do. And if I want them to trust their instincts, I have to model trusting my own if I want them to say no, when something doesn't feel right. They need to see me setting boundaries and saying no to things even when it's uncomfortable and they can see that. It impacts someone else or it causes discomfort in some way. They need to see me upholding that boundary, and if I want them to value play and beauty and joy, they need to grow up in a house where those things are prioritized and not just talked about. That is transmission mission. It has nothing to do with lecturing or trying to control them. It's just literally building a life that's worth inheriting and then living it consistently enough that they can't help but absorb it. Here's what that looks like in practice for me. My older son is now 11 he's in fifth grade, and I have noticed that the social awareness and social drama has really ratcheted up this year. But he recently came home from school and he was upset because his friend had said something mean to him, and instead of immediately telling him what to do. I said, what does your gut say about this friendship? he paused and he thought about it and he said, I don't think he's being a good friend right now. And I said, okay, trust that you don't have to be mean back. And this doesn't have to be any statement about your general friendship, but you also don't have to keep trying with someone who's not treating you well. You get to choose. If you had asked me two years ago if this kid could be making those kinds of decisions, I probably would've said no. I would've thought that I would need to manage that for him a little bit more hands-on. But he's learning, I think because we've modeled it, he has agency. That his feelings matter. He gets to choose who he spends time with based on how those people make him feel, rather than how he's making other people feel. that's not something I can teach through a lecture or even a single example that I set. It is something that he absorbs by watching my husband and me make those same choices in our own lives. that is our deliberate transmission of what I want for him in his life, for his future. why am I using these financial metaphors? Why does it matter? Why can't I just lay out those three steps? When I'm talking about aliveness and vitality, I have three reasons that I'm doing this. So, first. It makes this work feel essential instead of feeling frivolous when I say things like, make life more magical, some people hear oh yeah, that would be nice to have. Maybe someday when I have no other responsibilities. I'll think about that it like it's a luxury or a bonus or something that you do in your spare time. If you have energy left over after all the real work is done. But when I say build generational wealth for your humanity, people hear responsibility. We don't treat financial planning as optional. You don't wake up one day and think, maybe I'll start saving for retirement if I feel like it. No. You have to make a plan and you have to automate it, and you have to do it whether you feel like it or not, because you know that the stakes are real. This work deserves that same seriousness because staying awake is not a luxury. It is survival. It is the ability to feel and choose and live fully without that, what is the point of what is the point of financial security, If you don't have anything that makes you excited to wake up in the morning and weighs to inhabit your day, that fill up your cup and make you feel things, all the financial security in the world isn't going to satisfy you. The second reason is the metaphor creates urgency. People who ignore their finances end up broke. Everyone knows that, right? But what happens when people ignore their aliveness, their inner life, their emotions, motions, they end up numb and depleted, and they're going through the motions in their own life, that living by default. It looks fine from the outside, but it feels hollow on the inside, and then you become malleable, When there are even seemingly innocuous systems out there that are trying to get compliance, because it would just make things easier. It becomes easier for you to fall into that because you're numb. You don't even notice it. I see this everywhere there are a lot of systems that are not innocuous, and there are some bad actors out there that are trying to do things just for their own gain. that's their decision to make. But I want everybody out there to be aware that this is happening, to be able to make their own choices about whether or not to participate in those systems, not because you're numb and you're doing it by default. I want you to make that decision consciously. People who have everything they're supposed to, good jobs, nice houses, healthy families, they're still miserable sometimes. It has nothing to do with being ungrateful. It's just they spend every day doing what they're supposed to do, so much so that they've lost track of what they actually want. I know this because I've been there. They've outsourced their lives to external expectations, and by the time they realize it, they don't even know who they are anymore. To me, that's the cost of ignoring this work. That is why there is urgency here. It is not immediately catastrophic. Sure. But it's a slow erosion of everything that makes life worth living. Thirdly, the third reason I do this. It's a framework that people already understand. It's as simple as that. I can spend 20 minutes explaining my three pillars of my work, or I can say it's like building wealth. You assess honestly, you practice consistently and you pass it on. It takes something abstract like aliveness and consciousness and staying awake, and it makes it concrete. It gives people a way to think about this work that doesn't require them to already understand mythology or philosophy or psychology. So where are you right now? Maybe you're at step one. Maybe you feel numb and something is off and you're going through the motions, but you don't know exactly what's wrong or where it started. You're just tired and you're disconnected and it feels like you're watching your own life from the outside. If that's you, you don't need to fix anything yet. You just need to be aware of that. You need to notice things and do an audit. Where is your energy going? Where are you pretending not to know things? Where are you performing instead of living? maybe you're at step two. Maybe you already see what's wrong and you're fully aware of what's going on, but you just don't know what habits you need to put in place to get there. What do you need to do differently day to day? Set one boundary and hold it. Notice one sensory detail. You don't even have to document it. One tiny deposit today and then tomorrow. Maybe you're already doing all of that and you just need step three. You're living consciously. You've done the work. You are awake, you are deliberately choosing things in your life every day. But you're wondering, how do I pass this on? Maybe you wanna pass it on to your children, maybe to your broader community or the people who come after you. How do you make sure that they don't have to start from scratch the way that you did, if that's you, you need transmission tools, You need to document things and create rituals that others can join in on. You need to have conversations with people to model what you want them to inherit it. Can you imagine if everybody was doing this, if everybody was living fully trying to spread that life, that joy, that vitality to all of the people around them, what life would feel like? it would be a completely different place around here. Around here being Earth. Here's what I want you to take with you. You wouldn't ignore your finances and hope things work out. you wouldn't wing it with money and expect long-term security, maybe you would, but it's not coming. So why would you do that with your own vitality, consciousness, your humanity? Why would you do that with your ability to stay awake and choose deliberately and live fully? It is at least as important as your bank account, maybe more so. We all know people that get to retirement age and retire and then they're suddenly lost. They've lost their identity. They don't know how to spend their time. they get bored or they're unhappy they go back to work or they're just miserable and they kind of waste away. And how tragic is that? You work your whole life towards this goal of not having to work anymore you achieve it, but then you've lost so much of yourself that you don't even know what to do when you have freedom. I find that to be so Frustrate. I was gonna say sad, but it, it makes me angry for those people, it's not their fault. It's because they were worn down by the conditions of their lives and they didn't have the tools to stay awake and to listen to their own desires and to remember how to feel delight. Let's not do that. Let's not become those people. you already know how to do this. you know how to assess honestly. You know how to build habits. You know how to pass things down. You've been doing it with your money now. You just have to apply those same principles to something deeper, and that is the work that we are doing here at a Life and Color. This is generational wealth for your humanity. I hope you know that you don't need permission to do any of this work. You don't need perfection. There are no perfect circumstances or conditions. You just need to start. Take a step, choose color, stay awake, start building wealth that money can't buy or. we're gonna stop there for today. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of a Life in Color. I hope you'll join us next time. As always, if you have questions or anything you wanna share, please send your stories and your questions to me at Laura L-A-U-R-A at a life in color.co. I read every single one that you send and come and check us out at a life in color.co. See what we're up to and join in on the fun. Thank you all, have such a great day, and we'll see you next week.