How do you identify? What do you identify as Who do you identify with? What is your identity and spinner, for lack of a better term, or to state the obvious, this has been a very dynamic conversation as of late. And it’s always been an important one, it’s an important one now. And I’m not really that interested in going into certain aspects of it. And it’s not germane to my work, my work is obviously around money and personal finance. So I’m interested in talking about how you identify with money, how you identify financially. But I’m gonna take a step back and talk a little bit about the greater conversation about identity and the purpose of it or the point of it. It’s how we see ourselves. And that’s a really important thing, our self image, how we personally identify, that then translates into how we present ourselves, ourselves to the world, that then informs how we conduct ourselves. If you are, if you were the class clown, versus if you were the valedictorian, versus if you were the jock, you were the athlete, if you were in the chess club, you were in the band, human beings love, we love to categorize. And it just helps us make sense of the world live in very chaotic world. And so who is this person? Okay, I think I understand I got to put them into this category. So we do it other people all the time, we, whether they want us to or not, we’re constantly making assessments, making judgments, and then putting things into what we believe their proper place to be or the role. And so other people are doing it to us. And a lot of the time, or sometimes we are doing it to ourselves, we are selecting into our identity, obviously, we have immutable characteristics that I have zero control over. So I don’t get that excited about that. In fact, I think it’s silly to identify as something that I have no control over. But that is your prerogative, if that’s something that you’re interested in doing. If that’s something you want to spend time and attention on, well, then, so be it. But I think that so much of why we do things, the choices we make the clothes that we wear, the activities that we participate in the work that we do, the food that we eat, the places we go, the people that we associate with the kind of music we like, it’s because of the way that it makes us feel, and the way that we feel about ourselves the way that identifying or being, or doing certain things makes us feel. And so it’s a lot of personal preference. A lot of that is informed by your upbringing, and there’s a lot of DNA going on. It’s nature and nurture, and all of this stuff. And then it changes over time you your preferences, grow and evolve, how you view yourself grows and evolves, sometimes on a hourly basis, sometimes an annual basis. Who knows we have different experiences in life, we meet new people, we things happen to us, we just thinks things change. And the way we see ourselves the way we think about ourselves changes. Think about how you saw yourself as kid, what did you identify with? What did you identify as? Then maybe you thought of yourself as one of those categories? From like, 80s movies, those? What was the name of that guy, John Hughes, a John Hughes movie, like the Breakfast Club, where you had all of the different archetypes mixed together in detention, or whatever it was. So how did you identify back then? How do you see yourself now? Why did you change? You know, it’s like some things. They were priorities that I had as a child, and then a teenager and then a young adult, and now a middle aged adult, an old person. And I just wonder, wonder why it is that you let go of certain things and you let go of other things that maybe you should have held on to? Because there’s certain certain things that I think that we probably should have kept going. Like if you thought of yourself as an artist when you were a kid, why not keep that going? Why not? Why let the world beat that out of you. If you are an actor, why not keep that going? You’re an entertainer, you were a chef. You were whatever. You stopped doing it because it’s not grown up. That’s that’s childish. It’s childlike behavior. It’s immature. Maybe Maybe not, and whose terms he lives in under anyway. So f that s, maybe some of it probably good to leave behind your Dungeons and Dragons time, or your goth, or your emo or your death metal phase, maybe that’s probably better left in the past, but some of the creative stuff, some of the artistic stuff, why not keep that going? Life is way too short. Life is way too short to worry about what other people are thinking of you not to say that you’ve stopped doing certain things that you really love and enjoy, because other people would look down on you if they found out. But there’s probably some truth to that. Think about the people that we respect most that you respect, most that you enjoy. Most. Think about some of those people. You know, it’s the people that are most, themselves most authentic, most true to themselves. Why not be that? Why not do that? Life is way too short, to worry about what other people are thinking, and it’s probably hurting you. So transition into what the point of this whole thing is, as opposed to just encouraging you to put on a pirate costume and to, you know, go plunder, or do whatever it is the pirates do just go drink some rum, say are like that. Who knows. But it could be that the things that we left behind are in fact hurting us. They’re damaging us. So here’s an example. If you identify as an athlete, you’ll probably do, you’ll probably do athletic things. So did you play sports in high school? Do you play sports today? Well, what what is good about sports? Well, first and foremost, I think just the exercise of it. There’s so many wonderful things, I just just released a podcast on what sports gives us what Sports teaches us on the lifeblood podcast. But there’s so many great things. For me, personally, I can tell you that I stopped identifying as an athlete for a really long time. And I don’t know why that was. But once I hit the age of sync 42, or 43, I thought to myself, is this the body that I want to take with me and to the next stage of my life. And I made the decision that it wasn’t, I was while I was exercising, it wasn’t that consistently. And I wasn’t that serious about my diet, my nutrition. And so therefore I was overweight, my body hurt, I had aches and pains that wasn’t flexible. And I’ve got young kids and I wanted to be able to I want to be able to keep up with them and have the energy to play with play with them for as long as they’re interested in how to meet to do that. And then beyond that, just as my role is apparent and want to be and compete and have fun. So that’s just that is for me. But think about this. Again, if you identify as something you will do, the things that that identity does. So if you identify as a good dad, probably going to work hard to be a good dad or a good husband or a good neighbor, good community member. If that’s your identity, if that’s near and dear to your heart, you’re probably going to give it attention. You know, that famous Jack Kornfield quote says that, you know, 10 of the parts of your garden that you can reach. So, so much is out of our control, how we identify how you identify is probably the most within your control thing that is out there. How you think and feel about yourself. It’s one of the most controllable things, Locus of Control scale, that’s 10 out of 10. If you fancy yourself a compassionate person, you’ll probably be doing compassionate things. If you’re a hard working person, you’re probably going to work hard. If you’re a lazy person. If you identify as being lazy and shiftless. If you think of yourself as cheap, you’re probably going to be cheap. If you think that you’re thrifty, you’re probably going to do thrifty things. If you’re a committed person gonna be committed, if you’re wishy washy, if you’re funny. You get the idea. All these things are right there within our control. So we try to land this airplane here. What about money? What about your finances? I think this is especially true, they’re specially true there. Is their value.

Is there value in going through life? Thinking that you’re not good with money? Identified as somebody who’s just not good with their finances, who’s not on top of things? Is there value in that? I suggest that there’s very little but there’s no bad Are you? In fact, I would say that it’s the opposite of that, I would say that thinking of yourself as not being good with money has without question a negative and highly detrimental effect and will limit your ultimate financial potential because why wouldn’t it? So, the reality is that money has time value, that simply means that the longer you wait to start pursuing your most important goals and objectives, when it comes to money, the harder it becomes to reach them. Whether you’re aware of this or not, you probably are. So if you started saving 100 bucks a month for or your parents started saving 100 bucks a month on your behalf when you were a baby, you’d be great financially today, if you started saving money at age 20 versus 30 versus 40 versus 50. It’s very obvious, it’s way easier to accumulate a lot of money starting earlier. So therefore, if you are somebody who has gone through a decade, two decades, three decades as an adult thinking you’re just not good at money and identifying as somebody who struggles financially, I can almost guarantee that you are somebody who struggles financially. So why not make that shift? Why not make the shift that say I’m good with money? I’m investor? I am somebody who’s going to be financially successful. Why not do that? Why not make that shift? Well, because I don’t really feel that way. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. First step in this is just being honest with ourselves. The last person I want to be us is me. I’ll be us other people, that I don’t want to be as or lie to myself. So take a giant step back, I want you to ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want my identity with money to be with my finances to be? Who do you want to be with finances with your money? Who are you currently? And of course that matters? We’ve been talking about? So can you just start being something else, all of a sudden, start doing something other than what you currently are? Well, yeah, you can, you can consciously do that. Consciously, and intellectually, just start identifying as somebody who’s financially successful, which is great, it’s way better than not. But problem is, we’ve got this entire subconscious or subconscious brain constantly running in the background, we have this operating system, just like our cell phones have an operating system. And it is the product of your entire life leading up to right now. Mostly, it’s the product of the first seven years of your life. So your experiences as a child from zero to seven, and the people that you were around and the things that you did and saw, that’s going to inform a lot of your operating system and wiring when it comes to money. So ignoring that, you ignore that at your peril. I think just subconsciously or consciously and actively with, with, with your intellectual mind, your logical brain, telling yourself that you’re good with money is a great start, but digging in, and investigating and trying to figure out what your operating system is telling you about money. That’s where the real work is. That’s where you need to roll up your sleeves, and get in there. And I talk a lot about this, talk a lot about negative or limiting beliefs that we have about money about our ability to successfully interact with money and have a good personal financial situation, all of these things. So that very much matters. So I would think, Okay, try to dig in and think about your earliest money, memories, think about when you’re triggered by something financially, you see a certain kind of car or a certain kind of person wearing certain kind of clothes or acting a certain kind of way, or you drive past a place, whatever it is that triggers you. When it comes to money, there’s your evidence that you might have some kind of a negative belief, thought process, about that kind of a thing. 1% How do you feel about that? Big companies, rich folks, designer clothing, all that kind of all those kinds of things. How does that make you feel? And that could be evidence right there. But we get to choose, we get to choose how we want to think and feel and be and identify with money. Super powerful thing. Super powerful thing. But like so many other things, we squander it. We don’t think about it when we’re not mindful or rather intentional about this is who I am. So identify identify As somebody who is financially successful, I invest whatever it is, however it is you want, wherever you’re at. The best time to start doing this work is, of course, today. I think that you and I have enough time to do most everything that we want. But we certainly don’t have enough time to waste come this far. Let’s start moving forward in the direction and the identity that is going to get you what you want. It’s going to get you the life that you want and in the context of our conversation, it’s going to get you the financial outcomes that you want. Finally, a friendly reminder, never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are. Your listener, act accordingly.