Do you find yourself at dinner with friends and feel like you’re the only one worrying about the bill?
Do you enviously see other women booking into spa days … while you’re squeezing the last bit of face cream out of a tube you bought 2 years ago?
Or maybe you LOVE to spend money – as long as it’s on OTHERS & not on you..?
No matter how it shows up, a money guilt complex is no fun.
But although it can feel really isolating, I want you to know:
You are NOT alone!
Here’s how others have described it:
I feel bad just for wanting to spend money on makeup and look after myself.
I happily invest in the stock market, but I’m too afraid to spend any cash on myself.
I’ve been frugal for years and just realized what an unhealthy relationship I have with money.
I had a bad experience with money in the past. And even though I’m financially okay now, I’m still afraid to spend.
I’m afraid to buy a designer handbag I’ve been saving for – but meanwhile, I bought six other bags and spent more money in the process!
These are common stories. … Always saving for the next thing. Afraid to spend money… not knowing why.
In this episode, we’ll give you some insight into what causes this – so you can change it.
And I’ll share my favorite HACK to liberate you from money guilt FAST.
But first – let’s talk about where this guilt complex & fear of spending comes from.
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Let’s talk about the power of stories:
Stories are powerful. Humans have shared information through stories since the dawn of time.
And stories are HYPNOTIC! We hypnotise each other (& ourselves) with the stories we tell.
But do you remember some of the stupid stories your parents told you as a kid?
I noticed a lot of them were about our eyes:
- Reading in the dark is bad for your eyes.
- Sitting too close to the TV is bad for your eyes.
- If you don’t eat your carrots, it’s bad for your eyes
- If you cross your eyes, they might get stuck like that.
- And if you keep your eyes open while sneezing, your eyeballs might pop out.
A rather disproportionate level of concern for the welfare of our eyes, I think…..
And there’s more:
- Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis.
- Swallowed gum takes seven years to digest.
- Swim after eating & you’ll drown. (I would’ve drowned so many times by now!)
- Swallow watermelon seeds and one will grow in your stomach.
And of course everybody’s favorite: Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice!
You’ll notice these stories are about trying to control our behaviour through fear.
As children, we believed them and fell in line. As we grew up, we realized they were just stories and not true.
But ask yourself:
“If I still believed those stories I was told as a kid, what would my life be like?”
Stories are powerful and hypnotic. And what’s even more powerful is the UNCONSCIOUS STORIES we pick up through what we hear, see & experience.
If we see our parents stressed and worried about money, constantly tired from working too hard, we tell ourselves a story and we start to believe it.
You take on unconscious stories about your parents’ experiences… or YOUR PERCEPTION of their experience.
So your job is to make sense of what’s true and what’s not true – what’s resourceful and what’s not resourceful – what’s going to help you in life – and what’s going to hinder and hold you back.
If your parents told you there’s monsters under the bed, will you let it ruin your sleep for the rest of your life?
As we start to recognize the stories that our parents told us, it’s important to bring a sense of compassion.
Because they were mostly trying to keep us safe. They passed on stories they believed or that were based on their experience. They meant well and they were trapped in their own stories.
When you recognize that it was just THEIR story, you can liberate yourself and decide to tell a new story.
Take a minute and think about some of the money stories your parents told you – or that you took on based on what you saw or heard.
- What did you OBSERVE your parents do?
- How did you HEAR your parents say about money?
- And what did TELL YOU about money?
Here are some MONEY STORIES I was told:
Do you think we’re rich?
Money doesn’t grow on trees.
You’ve gotta have money to make money.
Must be nice for rich people.
I wonder what they did to get THAT?? <insert suspicious look>
As you look at the things your parents told you about money, you’ll recognize THEIR fear, THEIR guilt.
Maybe they told you not to be too greedy because when you asked for something, it triggered their fear and lack mentality. Maybe they felt bad for not being able to provide it and just wanted to make you stop asking, so they told you “Don’t be greedy!”
So none of it is REALLY about the money… it’s mostly about feeling safe!
This is why compassion and forgiveness will heal your old money stories – yours and theirs.
But there’s more to it than just ditching money guilt & feeling ok about spending money on yourself.
Because not only do these old money stories make you feel bad and stop you from spending money that you’d really like to spend…
They also BLOCK your flow of abundance!
Because if you believe that money’s bad and that it’s not okay to want more, you will unconsciously block money from flowing to you.
But it gets worse, because:
If you stop money from flowing OUT, you’re also blocking more money from flowing IN!
Just like blocking the OUTLET of a hose stops more from flowing through the INLET, by being unwilling to spend money, you’re blocking more from flowing to you.
Which means you need to expand your comfort zone around spending money.
An easy way is to use token gestures:
Next time you go shopping, don’t compare which toilet paper is cheaper – just buy the one you want.
Go to the deli counter and buy the cheese you like – not the one on sale.
Little token gestures like this make a HUGE difference because they disrupt neural pathways.
Token gestures help you start to create a new story and expand your comfort zone around abundance.
They challenge old stories, which starts to break them down.
This is a muscle you need to exercise.
A great place to start is to decide what you want your new story to be.
If you were telling a story about money & abundance to your child, what would you want to say?
What story would you want them to take forward through life?
Gift yourself that saME story!
Tell yourself a story that’ll EMPOWER YOU, that opens you up to possibilities and makes you feel more abundant – right here, right now.
Because YOU get to choose your story!
Here’s a hack that will help you wire that new story in faster:
Look for EVIDENCE of the new story being true!
The more you look, the more you’ll find. And that will help reinforce the new story and wire it in faster & deeper. It will help your conscious & unconscious minds to get on board with the new story faster.
Now of course you still want to save money, right? But WITHOUT feeling guilty…
So it’s important to find a happy balance between being smart with money – and having an abundance mindset. You want to be thrifty, but you want it to feel empowering.
And you want to feel GOOD about spending money on yourself – when you choose to.
That’s what the episodes linked below are all about. So be sure to check those out next.
And in the meantime, find out what your Money Habit Archetype is! You can TAKE THE QUIZ HERE.
That will help you uncover more of those old money stories.
Enjoy!
xx Miriam
READY TO GO DEEPER? TAKE THE MONEY QUIZ!
Discover your Money Habit Archetype and use it to clear your biggest money block.
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