Last week I shared the origins of the narrative that most directly harms my relationship with money. The narrative is that I should be a martyr, but with really nice clothes. Today I want to share how I’ve reframed this narrative into something positive and helpful. 

The first step is to determine whether there are any helpful nuggets hidden in your not-so-helpful narrative. Even though my narrative conflicts with itself and made it difficult to make financial decisions that feel aligned with who I am, there is a lot of good in there. 

Once I’ve identified the good, which in this case is: (1) doing good things for others and (2) appreciating things that make me happy, I’m able to rewrite the phrase into something that aligns with my values. 

My new narrative: I do good for the world, and for myself. 

There are still times when I struggle with maintaining the positive, reframed version of my narrative as the one that steers my relationship. I notice that when I’m particularly stressed, tired, sick, or not in tune with my emotional state I fall back into my old thinking patterns. I think that I should help others in ways that directly hurt myself or break my own healthy boundaries. I think I need to live a lifestyle that puts wealth on display (but, you know, in a classy way…). 

On my better days I catch this thought pattern and I’m able to stop it. I have to disengage from whatever I’m doing (get off the phone, get off my laptop, leave the room) and take some deep breaths. I then have to repeat my new narrative over and over again. Sometimes I can do this in my head and it’s plenty. Sometimes I have to do this out loud. Sometimes I have to emphasize the first part of the sentence: “I do good for the world”, and sometimes I have to emphasize the latter: “and for myself”. 

There are other days when I don’t even realize that the negative pattern is running in my brain. Those are the days when I end up making decisions that feel prickly because they are misaligned with my values. I know they don’t feel good, but it is often that I can’t pinpoint why until the next day, or sometimes the next week. 

I know it is a cliche, but this process is truly a journey. I promise your path won’t be a straight line, and it’s impossible to say how many loop-de-loops you’ll end up doing. My path feels a lot like this: 

As long as you continue to move forward, continue to reflect and continue to work toward alignment you are going in the right direction. Wherever you are on your journey, I’m here for you. 

XOXO

Last week I shared a personal struggle that I’ve been working on since the start of the pandemic: how to comfortably continue to sell my services when I know that paying for anything “extra” during a time of financial crisis is hard. Part of my struggle stems from the money narratives I’ve held since childhood. Today, I’m going to dive into those and ask you to try doing the same!

1st you will need to dive into your past! Use the following questions to get started, but feel free to go in whatever direction the process moves you in. I share some of my takeaways below. 

• What are your earliest money memories? 

• Were there any money expectations that your family or community put on you? 

• What money values could you see around you? Was it clear that money was important? Not important? Evil? 

My Takeaways: 

I was raised in a strict, Southern Baptist household. I was also raised in a liberal Chicago suburb (Oak Park). This was simultaneous, and just as those two sentences are direct juxtapositions, so were the money values I left my home with at age 18. 

I like to think of it as being raised to be a martyr, but with really nice clothes. 

Let me explain by giving a few examples:

1. When I was graduating high school and deciding what I’d do with the rest of my life (as you do), I remember telling one of my best friends that I wanted to work with disadvantaged kids in the poorest parts of the world. Remote would be good. Someplace where I didn’t have running water would be ideal. His response? “You won’t do that because then you won’t be able to afford those pants”. Brutal. And very accurate. For reference, I was wearing a pair of 7 For All Mankind Jeans. They were not cheap and they were my favorite. I had zero concept of how many hours I would need to work in the kind of job I was describing to be able to afford those pants (they were probably about $150).

2. Every few years my mother would say that they had a rough year and therefore we wouldn’t be having a big Christmas. Those were the years that my sister and I tended to get mostly joint gifts. My personal *favorite* was the year they bought us a sewing machine. My sister was and is a gifted seamstress. I can manage a button. I interpreted this gift to mean that I was either less loved or that they thought if I wasn’t distracted by other presents I would finally get my act together and fall in line with the long line of seamstresses in my family tree. Even though these “small Christmases” were less extravagant than other years, there wasn’t much of a difference, and they were often followed up with random January sales shopping trips that would have more than made up for what wasn’t spent in December. 

3. My dad worked for an international bank and made good money. I never did find out what his salary was. I remember asking a few different times over the course of my childhood and I was always berated, told that was an incredibly inappropriate question to ask and told that we were “fine”, but not “rich”. This meant nothing to me then and I think would still mean nothing to me now. Also, in retrospect, we were rich. Telling me that we weren’t meant that I had a very hard time as an adult living with less than what I grew up with. I thought what I had was normal and since I was working in a career that my family approved of, then it would surely pay me enough to live that same lifestyle I was accustomed to. It did not. 

Learning about your money narratives can be an incredibly empowering experience. By diving into these memories I am able to make connections with my present life and question the reasoning behind my beliefs. The next step in my process is to create new narratives that are accurate, empowering and fit my lifestyle goals. I’ll share how I do that next week!

As always, I’m here for you and your money goals. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. 

XOXO