Did Black Friday leave you in the Red?
Oh the pressure! What to buy, what to buy?!! The list gets longer as our families grow and friends become more numerous. Amazon Wish Lists become a project manager’s dream – or nightmare.
Yes, the pressure. From society but mostly from ourselves. That’s right. Have you ever thought that maybe the need to buy bigger, better, more gifts comes from within you, and not from friends and family? From your “money story”? After all, they all have their own pressures too. Their own money stories.
“But that’s just the way I was raised!”
“That’s how I am, I am a generous person!”
“Giving gifts shows them how much I love them!”
“It’s just once a year!”
“I want to make it a nice holiday!”
The Downside of Giving
Although the stories may be different, the result is the same. Debt. Come January, the bills stack up before us, demanding payment for … what was that charge for again? What did we buy there? Did I really pay that much for ___ ?
Let’s take a deep breath right now.
Did you know there are two kinds of debt? It depends on how you feel about it. Investments that grow in value or create income, like a home mortgage, probably represent good debt for you. It can also include student loans, but only if you think of your education as a good investment (even if you aren’t yet earning what you expected) and feel neutral or even positive about making those loan payments.
Bad debt represents the dark cloud that comes over you when the bills come in, or when you think about the balance you owe. It’s the overwhelm, the feelings of panic and anxiety, the nausea that you experience whenever you think about your debt.
Chances are, you think about it a lot. You can’t get it out of your mind. You toss and turn at night, wondering how you’ll ever get out from under this situation you’ve gotten yourself into.
All of these feelings, plus the guilt and embarrassment (shame) become so pervasive that they impact your ability to manifest the money you need to get out of debt! Your stress response is triggered multiple times day and night, and your self-esteem spirals down. Your health starts to suffer, you’re cranky and find yourself picking fights with the people you love. You’re not enjoying this holiday at all!
You start looking for ways to ease the pain. Over-indulging, in drink and food, are not surprising but also, there’s more buying! Have you ever heard someone justify an unneeded purchase because it made the buyer “feel better” or alleviated their bad day? Yay! More debt! It’s the downward spiral from which there seems to be no escape.
Guess what? Debt reflects what we feel about ourselves. It represents our deepest, darkest thoughts, our inner critic.
It is also the mirror of how we feel about money in general – our money story. Let me repeat that. The amount of debt you have is directly connected to your relationship to money.
What?!?! Some of you might be nodding your heads and others are thinking they should stop reading right here. Bear with me.
Let’s Get Clear About Our Debt
Here’s a quick exercise to determine how you feel about debt.
- Write down the total amount you owe on a piece of paper. Make it big! Include everything you owe, from credit cards to car loans.
Look at the number and say out loud, “I owe $____ in debt.”
What are you feeling as you say that? Write down the first 2-3 feelings that come up.
Using those feelings, write down this sentence for each emotion: “I am programmed to feel ____ about money.”
The emotion that first came up is probably your programming about money in general. If it’s fear, then that is the emotion you operate from when you earn, handle, and manage your money.
In other words, every time you want to go for a job that pays more, or increase the amount you charge for your services, or budget the percentage to put away in savings, your decisions will be determined by the fear (or panic, anxiety, whatever) running in your nervous system.
Can you make good decisions in that emotional place?
- Look at the number again, and say this sentence out loud: “This means I’m ________”.
How true does that feel to you, on a scale of 0-10?
This is the connection of money to your self-worth, to your own personal power. A common response among my clients is, “this means I’m a loser.”
If you are moving through the world with that feeling of “I’m a loser” running in the background, how on earth are you going to manifest what you want? How are you going to show your brilliance, your creativity, your inspiration to the world? What kind of a money mojo magnet can you be?
Take a deep breath. Give yourself a tiny bit of compassion for what you just discovered.
Next Step
What’s next? Well, now that you’ve identified these emotions it’s so important to clear them. The quickest and easiest way to change your money story, to Magnetize Your Money Mojo, is through Tapping/EFT.
If you are familiar with Tapping, you can tap on the feelings and emotions that came up for you in this exercise. If not, then I encourage you to discover Tapping/EFT through my video on YouTube, or Or maybe you have another way to clear negative feelings.
After Tapping or clearing, take a deep breath.
Check in with your number from above. Say again, “This means I’m ______” How true does it feel to you now? Keep tapping until you can get that number down below a 3.
New Money Story, New You!
Do this exercise and tapping before you make your gift list, or go shopping. See if giving gifts from a feeling of empowerment over your money instead of fear and anxiety changes your relationship to shopping and the need to give to receive love from others. Maybe next year Black Friday will be black, not red.
Until next time…
Yours in Wealth and Health!
Linda
Your Money Mojo Mentor
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Linda J. Wells, MSEd, is a Success Coach, and Authorized Tapping into Wealth Coach, who works with heart-centered people (especially spiritual entrepreneurs) to Magnetize Their Money Mojo, changing their money stories so they can do what they love and earn as much as they want — without having to work too hard!