Oh my goodness, there are so many ways to screw up our finances, there are so many ways to make mistakes about money. Is that? Didn’t you learn everything you needed to know about finances when you weren’t school? Didn’t they teach that, like really early on about budgeting and filing our taxes and starting investing and the different kinds of accounts and the different options that we have to invest? And what the difference between a mutual fund and a exchange traded fund and stock investing? Didn’t they teach you all that? No, they didn’t? Oh, well, then how are you supposed to know all of it? And then once you know, how are you supposed to put all that to use? So anyway, a lot of us have shame around money, certainly, myself included. I am fond of telling people that I’ve made lots of great financial decisions over the course of my life. And I’ve made lots of terrible financial decisions over the course of my life. So particularly in my 20s, I was excelled at making bad financial decisions. The unfortunate or fortunate result of, of poor financial decision making is shame. And I say that with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, shame is never a good thing. For the most part, chronic shame is never a good thing. That one, I’m 100% sure of the shame that I experience when I eat an entire container of ice cream. Well, that’s not so bad. Shame I have when I miss a workout, I’m not the end of the world. Carrying around shame with me, carrying around shame about money and my finances. It’s not a healthy thing. And I want to talk to you about how to how to address it, how to move on from it how to how to overcome shame, because I do not necessarily think that it’s serving, most people could be serving you. And I’m going to let you make that termination. But if you are feeling shame, feeling shamed about money, stakes of your past, whatever it might be, that’s really what I want to talk is getting over it moving past it, or moving through it working with it. So when you think about shame, what do you think about? What kind of comes into your mind? Are you experiencing it now? Do you carry shame around with you today? When you were a kid? Did a big tall person a grown up teacher, a parent family member? Did they ever say shame on you? Shame on you. I know I think I heard that. Not every day, but probably probably fairly frequently. Shame on you. Shame, shame, shame. And, you know, probably had a lot of things to be ashamed of or about. Anyway, so are you carrying around right now? Again, something I’ve experienced, I made lots of financial mistakes in my 20s. You know, and fortunately for me, I’ve been able to overcome my financial missteps, my financial screw ups, and moved on to, you know, be on the path to realizing every financial goal that that that that I have, and share that because that’s available to you too. Because while personal finance is complicated and vast, and a lot, it’s very, very knowable, it’s very, very doable. You are perfectly capable of becoming financially successful and doing all the things that you need to learn and all the things, knowing all the things that you need to become financially successful. So I just want to throw that out there. Because I don’t want you to feel like this is something which is unattainable, or a mountain too high, or a hill too steep or whatever. So I think that for a lot of people money, shame comes from a lack of understanding. So it’s a lack of just financial literacy, which is a term I’m not in love with, but it’s a lack of understanding how the different vehicles the different things work, because again, it’s a lot. It’s a lack of paying attention, because a lot of this stuff, I’m busy, you’re busy, you’ve got a lot of cool stuff going on. You’re pulled in a lot of different directions. It’s easy to lose track of our money. It’s easy to make mistakes and missteps because they’re everywhere. We’ve got to pay attention to taxes and there’s deadlines and the stock market is confusing so it’s easy to make mistakes. Perhaps you are carrying around shame because of family history with money. Just the socio economic status that that you grew up in the place you grew up in. I don’t have any idea in a lot of ways we have a cult as a culture have have shifted from being ashamed of are passed and celebrating it. But that’s it’s all variable and dependent on you as an individual. But we make poor spending decisions to having a conversation with somebody the other day, and she referred to toxic spending habits. It’s her language. And we all make bad decisions. We make emotional money decisions and spending decisions, we have the ability to buy things, and have them show up at our house almost immediately. So that doesn’t lend itself necessarily to good financial habits or good decision making. Many of us are living paycheck to paycheck, we’re not saving any money, we’re not saving enough money. And to exacerbate this already perfect storm of financial difficulty. We have these weapons of mass destruction in the form of social media accounts where we’re able to compare ourselves to everyone else’s perfect and idyllic life that we see on line. So what’s to be done? When you are experiencing shame around money? What do I do? What do I do? Well, I’m glad that you ask glad you taking the time to, to watch slash listen. Step number one, step number one, gotta recognize and acknowledge your feelings, recognize and acknowledge your shame. This is something that we need to lean directly into steer into it not avoid, because like most things that we are worried about, that are real, they do not get better. in isolation, they do not get better when we brush them under the rug, they do not get better when we close our eyes and Allah Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, they’re not going anywhere. So we need to address them, we need to acknowledge. So that’s a really, really important thing. Next, thank you really need to think about how you currently feel about money. Obviously, some shame around it. But when you think about money and personal finances and investing, what do you think about? Is it make you anxious? Are you afraid of it? Is it interesting to you? This What do you feel about money? What do you believe about money? Many of us have limiting beliefs about money. He could simply just answer this, this this question. Money is blank, you can answer that a million different ways you could say money is a tool that I use to have a great life. Or you could say money is the root of all evil. So both very viable answers, but both giving you sort of instructing you or informing how you think and believe what your what your sort of core beliefs are about money. Put it a different way, if you feel that you are somebody who’s bad at money, I’m just not good with money. Well, you are limiting yourself, you’ve created a glass ceiling for yourself that you will have a hard time breaking through. Versus if you feel like I’m somebody who is fully capable of becoming financially successful, then you’re probably going to be financially successful. So I would spend a little bit of time thinking about how do I really feel about money? Where do these feelings come from and trace them back as early as you can. So next, I want you to decide how you want to feel. So we talked about you thought about how do you feel? How do I want to feel? I think it is a human superpower that you get to choose, you have choice. I don’t have any control over the circumstance, many of the circumstances in my life, and neither do you. You can’t control the weather, the stock market or things that are going to happen to you. But you do have absolute control over how you think, feel, and respond to whatever life throws our way. And that is a superpower. One that we fail to exercise a lot of the time because we just feel the way that we feel. And I think a lot of the time we think, Well, this is the way I feel and so therefore, this way that it is, but that’s not the case. You feel the way that you feel because of conditioning and life to life experiences from when you were younger. That’s where a lot of our core beliefs really come from. And the good news bad news is that you have the ability to choose and change how you feel about everything in your life. And specifically when we talk about money, you have the ability to change how you feel about money. So you decide how you want to feel about money. From there, I want you to spend some time thinking about what it is that you want in general. When we are contemplating making changes, if you look at your life and you say

I want to make some changes, I want to lose weight. I want to get a new job I want to have a relationship, I want to become more financially successful or more financially secure. But change is necessary. Okay. So think about what it is that you really want another another superpower that we have that we squander is our ability to envision the future that we want also known as goal setting. You can literally think about or imagine any future you desire anything. And then you have the ability to make plans for bringing that desired future into your current reality and then execute on those plans. And you think about it like that it really is a super human superpower. So I’m not, I’m not interested in putting my values on you. You make your own decisions about what is right, what is correct, you do that, then you decide that if you feel like a change is necessary, then you need to go about making changes. So think about the future that you want. I talk about that, because I believe that it’s better to pull us towards something than to try to get our to push ourselves to do something. Think about it like it, if I’m just trying to cut, cut spending for the sake of cutting spending, it might work for a little while, but it’s not going to be sustainable. Versus if I’m cutting spending and service of helping my kids have a better life than I had. Or me having a better life than I had. Well, that’s more compelling. And that’s going to increase our odds of sticking to whatever it is that we’re trying to stick to. So that’s why it’s really, really, really important. The next thing is want you to really establish boundaries. And so how do we do that you can look at it as, as accountability. Trains run on tracks for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, is we just had trains running all over the place. So it’d be super dangerous. But it’s also just from an efficiency standpoint, there’s a lot less friction, it’s controllable, we can create schedules, it’s creating boundaries and parameters for where the trains go. How does that apply to this? Well, to degree, we’re creating boundaries for ourselves. So when we create a budget, we’re creating boundaries or a plan for our money. When we track our cash flow, we’re checking in on our past selves and seeing how we did and making sure that there’s nothing going on that shouldn’t be going on. And so setting a strong financial foundation means that you have a good handle over your cash flow, you have a good understanding of how much money you have coming in how much money you have going out the value of your assets, the amount of debt that you have, and that you do create a boundary or a plan, or a budget or a plan for your money. When you do these things. It also makes you feel for good reason, like you are more in control that you are on top of your financial situation. We get anxiety when things are uncertain, or just don’t know what’s going to happen. And again, I don’t have control over what’s going to happen. But I can position myself for success. And that’s really what we’re talking about. By creating a strong financial foundation, we are putting ourselves in position to be successful, and then we have to let the chips fall where they may. And from there, I want you to fall in love with doing fall in love with the doing. Instead of hand wringing about what might happen. I focus on doing what needs to be done in service of what I want. Okay, so did the goal planning, set some goals, you made plans for achieving those goals, you know, what you need to do on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, quarterly basis, annual basis, to achieve those goals. That’s the doing. And as you start doing that lots of wonderful things are going to happen for you. You’re going to develop confidence. You can develop self discipline, you’re going to develop habits and routines. You’re going to develop resiliency and grit, lots of virtuous things, lots of great things come from the execution comes from the doing. That’s why I want you to fall in love with the actual doing of things. Again, we don’t want to marry ourselves to the result. We want to marry ourselves fall in love with the pursuit and the actual execution or the doing and then wants you to pay close attention to what’s going on with just just between your ears. Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to also known as mindfulness. Think about what you’re thinking about. When it is you when you do feel shame, or anxiety, or fear, whatever it is. Acknowledge it, acknowledge it and then reframe it. Nope. I’m not going to feel shame about this anymore. I’m moving past it. I’ve thought about and I know what I want my life to look like going forward. I thought about and I know what I need to do to get there. And that’s what I focus on. So instead of me feeling ashamed of money, or stupid me, I made all these dumb mistakes. How could I be so dumb? No, I am on the path to financial success, I am going to be financially successful, I am good at money. That’s how I am. There’s this interesting thought exercise. And I’m confident that you’ll fall into this group of people that if you’re walking past a pond and you saw a child struggling to swim, almost drowning, that you would get in and save that child. I’m sure that you would. Would you extend that same help that same courtesy to yourself? Many of us are drowning. I know I was drowning, figuratively, drowning, financially experiencing shame and anxiety around money. Are you willing to jump in and do the things necessary to save yourself you are worthy of being financially secure and feeling however you want to with money you’re worthy of moving past moving beyond money, shame, or even deserving of it. But you are not entitled to it. The price of that is the work, doing the work finding the resources, thinking the thoughts paying attention, constantly doing it getting up every day and and doing it looking at right in the face saying that today. So you can do it. If you’d like a little bit of help getting your finances in order. We have financial coaching money alignment academy that you can check out I’ll put that in the in the in the notes of our time here. Also encourage you to pick up a copy of the purpose book. I think that that will help you to lead an examined life and get you look closer to the life that you actually want. So as always, do your part by doing your best