Soul Joy: Ditch Burnout and Fall in Love with Life

Healing Your Money Story and Inner Peace

• Dr. Julie Merriman

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What if your financial beliefs are unconsciously impacting your well-being? Join me, Dr. Julie Merriman, as we unravel the intricacies of your money mindset in the latest episode of SoulJoy. We embark on a journey to uncover how our childhood and family history shape our "money story," which often operates beneath our conscious awareness, much like hidden emotions in therapy. By understanding these hidden influences, we can transform our relationship with money and enhance our holistic self-care, particularly during the demanding holiday season. Discover how aligning your financial beliefs with your root chakra through practices like yoga can lead to improved wellness and even open the door to financial abundance.

Throughout this episode, I guide you through introspective exercises designed to help you reflect on your money beliefs and the root causes of any fears or resentments. Utilizing tools like superpower models and body scans, we delve into your personal financial narrative, offering you insights that can prevent burnout and compassion fatigue—a common occupational hazard. This conversation is an invitation to explore your financial schemas, encouraging you to take control of your money mindset for a healthier, more balanced life. Don't miss the chance to transform your financial story and boost your overall well-being. Be sure to subscribe for more enriching episodes and engage with us for further exploration.

Speaker 1:

Hey y'all, I'm Dr Julie Merriman and welcome to SoulJoy. In today's episode, I'm going to talk to you all about your money story. Well, your money mindset, I call it money story. This is a necessary I mean necessary component of holistic, sustainable self-care, also known as wellness. Okay, friend, thank you so much for dropping by today. Again, today's story, or today's episode, is all about your money mindset and money story. I really appreciate you taking a minute out of your day to drop by and hang out with me as we chat about this really important topic.

Speaker 1:

I think this topic is so important but before I get there, it has dawned on me as I was getting ready to record this podcast. Y'all, the holidays are upon us, we are in November, it's just, oh, it just goes by so fast, so fast. So as I was pondering about that, I realized our Thanksgiving is going to be a bit quiet, which is fine. I'll go ahead and cook a traditional meal, because I really like cooking the holiday meals, and then I think we're going to invite some folks over who maybe don't have a place to go for the holiday. And then after well, no, even before I do that, y'all, it's time to order Christmas cards, If you use pictures to. You know, do the mail outs. You know their traditional Christmas card with the family pic. So it is time to start getting that together.

Speaker 1:

Okay, professional helpers, this podcast is dedicated to preventing and overcoming the occupational hazards of this career that we've chosen. Chosen man, I can't talk Specifically burnout, compassion fatigue and those vicarious traumas Y'all. Our brain does not know if a trauma is ours or someone else's. We are good therapists, we're good professional helpers, so we're attending and listening and our body is responding as we're listening to other people's traumas, which I mean that's what leads to our burnout and compassion fatigue and secondary stressors. So, anyway, it's important we're taking care of ourselves. So you might wonder why in the world, Merriman, would you lump your money mindset into self-care? And I'm going to tell you because the way, the relationship we have with money, that impacts everything in our life.

Speaker 1:

I grew up in a family where my daddy had been raised by an alcoholic. His daddy was an alcoholic. He was from a very wealthy family in Virginia. He was the youngest of many girls. Everyone else in the family were lawyers and doctors and my dad's dad actually was a pilot in World War II, but the war was not a friend to him. He came back. He was a terrible alcoholic and daddy saw him squander huge sums of money. He'd get a lot of money and then blow it in a day and they'd be struggling on having a place to live and food and all that's to say. Daddy had a very neurotic for lack of a better word relationship with money, and I've heard my mother say more than once that the way he poorly managed money was a huge factor in their divorce. So you can imagine I had somewhat of a neurotic money story myself before I really did my work on it, and y'all that's why it's so important to me.

Speaker 1:

I realize how a healthy money story leads to healthy self-care, wellness. So it's important to do the work, to know your mind, your mindset around that, and y'all it's also surprisingly, this is also ruled by your root chakra. Can you believe how many of life's necessities are ruled by our root chakra? It's really important that we take the time to balance this chakra, and I think for the last four weeks I've been talking about issues that come up when our root chakra isn't balanced. So if you've missed those podcasts, I invite you to pop back to some other episodes, because it's important to understand the things that are attached to our root chakra and, again, getting yourself grounded, doing some great yoga, knowing how to balance that root chakra, is very important. So everything I share with you in the podcast are things that can help. But, but getting yourself enrolled in a great yoga class would is always a good thing, okay, so so? So here's what I have for you today what you believe about money determines your relationship with it and how money shows up in your life.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of like, I think it's kind of like counter-transference in a session. I mean, it happens a lot of the time outside of our awareness. Counter-transference that is money story too, but it's happening outside of our awareness. We realize there's something kind of jicky about that session. So, being a good therapist, being a good helper, we go and seek supervision to help us be even better, and then we realize where that counter-transference was lying. Well, y'all, this is what I want to help you be even better. And then we realize where that counter-transference was lying. Well, y'all, this is what I want to help you do. I want you to help you find that money story and realize how it is impacting how you're showing up in life.

Speaker 1:

You need to get crystal clear about the schema that are impacting you around your money story. You've developed these beliefs, y'all over your lifetime by observing people around us and how they reacted to money, Just like I said, with my daddy I mean, his generational daddy watched his daddy, I watched my daddy and you know how I saw my father reacting to money sure taught me a lot about money. Now I've had to unlearn some of those things and I have a pretty healthy relationship with money now and, it's funny, the healthier your relationship y'all, I kid you not you start manifesting money. Manifest and I I I don't mean to sound woo woo, I, just your, I, just your amygdala is listening to all that voice between your head and the linguistics you use to talk about money and the way your body reacts to these things, and it helps to make that a reality. Make that a reality.

Speaker 1:

So when you have a healthy money story, the reality is that you live with everything you need. You're manifesting, you're living life in such a way that you're creating the money that you need. It's mind-boggling, I'm telling you it's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling, I'm telling you it's mind-boggling, but you've developed these beliefs over your lifetime and watching how people in your life. React to money teaches you how you're going to react. So when we get it out of our, when we get it out of our, when we get it into our, awareness is what I'm trying to say we're able to see how we're reacting and change these reactions.

Speaker 1:

Y'all, watching how people reacted to money is where you learned if you believe money is good or evil, and it also is where we learn if we believe people with money are good or evil. Isn't that crazy? Because, see, money is just an ends to a mean. Money has no inherent value. The value is projected onto it. Money itself, a dollar bill, is not good or evil. It's just a tool that we use. Money.

Speaker 1:

However, y'all and I'm sure you can relate to this it can be a really emotionally laden topic, especially, I have found, in the helping professionals In this field. Somehow we've been trained to sell our services by the hour right, Instead of by the value that we bring, that we offer. I mean, think about it. We create an hourly fee instead of creating a package of value that is, quite frankly, in my opinion, priceless. What you do as a professional helper, y'all is life changing and uber valuable.

Speaker 1:

If you find any resistance around this topic, around what I'm saying. I'm going to invite you to consider there's a lot of work to be done with your money story so that you can alter your money mindset. Now I want you to start with body scans, that somatic work getting into your body. It has to be done. This work cannot be done if you don't do your body scans and utilize superpower models. You can't just change a thought. You've got to take care of your body as well. Body has to metabolize hormones, Body has to shift and move around some memories. We can't just do the brain work. It's the two together that I think are so very valuable.

Speaker 1:

Professional helpers y'all deserve to earn a living wage. More than a living wage, Y'all deserve to earn a good wage. You are super educated. Everyone out here has a minimum of a master's degree. That was not free. You bring deep value to your patients and clients. You deserve to be paid for your expertise period I'm going to put a period right there period. You have value, you offer value and it's time to work on your money story.

Speaker 1:

I take a really deep dive in this in my book In Pursuit of Soul Joy, if you want to go deeper than what I'm offering here in the podcast, Although what I'm offering is going to get you a good start. But before I share the activity this week, I want to invite, need to go to my website, wwwjuliemerrimanphdcom and sign up for my newsletter, and if you do that, I'm able to email these podcasts to you with the free PDFs that I create to go with the activities that I share each week. Okay, so let me grab a quick drink of water here. The activity for today I call it earn more money, but it really it's beyond earning more money. Again, before we can have the mindset to manifest money, we have to be able to examine that money story and see where we might be blocking energies. So I have just a few questions to ask you here.

Speaker 1:

First, I want you to ask yourself and it's not just about fees, y'all, but fees is a really good place to start? A really good place to start Because if you're not charging enough to have a living wage, then you are resenting your job. That's where I really want y'all to be careful about bringing people on for free, for free, Because what happens is we start to resent that they're taking space each day out of our calendar for free. Now I have some pro bono things I do, but I have worked that into my business model and I'm very cognizant about where I offer that. I offer some sliding fees, but it's worked into my business model and I'm very cognizant. I have had a practice where I was 10 bucks here, 20 bucks there, 30, but I was. I was starving because I wasn't charging a way, a fee that I could live on and that creates resentment. And again I had to look at the chickie poo in the mirror me and she's the one I had to blame and she's the one who had to fix things. So that's why I'm starting with looking at fees today.

Speaker 1:

So who determines your fees and how? I would just ask you that Do you know your overhead? I need you to list out all your expenses, from rent to internet, to computer, to your salary, to insurance, to I mean whatever Every item that you utilize in your practice. You need to know what your overhead expense is, Because what happens? We start setting fees without even considering the overhead, so we're in the red before we even start.

Speaker 1:

And then I want you to ask yourself is money good or bad? I mean, really write this down. I want you to write down the timeline. I want you to understand where and why and how you believe, what you believe about money and, finally, I want you to write about fear or resentment you have around money. That's an important item to examine and once you have these questions answered, I want you to utilize the superpower models and the body scans to really get to the root, the root chakra of your money story. It's there. It might be hiding in plain sight, but I promise it's there and it's worth the effort to find it. Okay, that's it for today. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. Contact me. I'd love to hear from you and until next time, take care of you.