Hi, and welcome to this episode of money with Alpha. Um, this week I wanted to talk about the concept of money flow. And I know this, it's sort of a bit of a possibly ambiguous sort of term, but when we think of the word flow, it's ease, it's calm, and money is something that seems to be more of a cause of stress and overwhelm and anxiety and confusion, which will get in the way of flow.
You cannot be in a state of flow when your whole body tenses up the concept of the thing that you want to be in flow with. And so I wanted to. I've got an event coming up which I wanted to share as well, which relates to the concept of flow and how you actually achieve it.
So it's going to start on the 28 October. It'll go for three days, only 1 hour sessions each day, and we'll look at money mindset as well as money management systems. Now, it seems like kind of a weird combination to talk about in relation to flow, but stay with me because I'll explain why it may sense so flow itself.
There's a book, and I cannot pronounce the gentleman's name, um, but it's called flow. And I've been really leaning into the concept of abundance and flow and faith and the universe and all of that manifestation. And a lot of it really just has to do with us trying to literally just calm down a bit and come from places of love and abundance and having faith that things will work out.
And I know that sounds very woo woo. And it can be very difficult when things are hard. And when I look at them at the moment, interest rates and, you know, paying double, if not triple, for your house, if you've got a mortgage and groceries are up. Like, there's so many things, and even the media, you know, there's so many things that are just unpleasant in the news, and it just impacts our energy, and that also interrupts the flow of life.
And money is an energy, and flow really, really revolves around the concept of flowing energy, which also then means that money flows in and money flows out. It flows in, it flows out. So it's a natural thing for money to come in and money to go out. What we then, uh, need to do is focus on the element of that that we want.
So having more come in and less going out. But in order to do that, we need to work on the stories and the beliefs and the habits that we have around money, which is where the mindset side comes in. But then also the mechanics of what to physically do to manage the money, to make sure that we're aware of what's coming in and going out.
Quite often, what stops us from shining that light on money is other stories that we've had in the past, and we retell those again and again because they're familiar and our brain likes familiarity. What's happened in the past has kept us alive, and it will continue to keep us alive, but that doesn't mean that we're going to thrive.
So we need to try and interrupt this pattern a bit so that we can get back in flow. A perfect visual analogy. If you've seen the movie finding Nemo and they're talking about the. Was it the. The eastern current? I've forgotten the name of it now, but there's this particular current that actually what goes along the eastern.
The eastern seaboard, um, of the. Of the Pacific. And we have. Animals will use that. We've actually sailed against it. So I know what it's like to sail against the current. Um, and I've also felt what it feels like to sail with it. And, oh, my gosh, obviously, sailing with the current is so much easier.
But then the animals as well, there were the turtles, and they brought Nemo. And, um, well, Nemo's dad, actually, because it was hunting for Nemo, but Nemo's dad and dory along on that. The east australian current, I think it was called. But if you imagine even being in a river, if you're in an inner tube and you're flowing along with the river, it just feels so beautiful and peaceful.
If you had to try and get back up again, oh, my goodness. Definitely not peaceful and definitely not easy. So they're just some visual analogies to think of when we think of the concept of flow in relation to anything specifically here. We're talking about money, though. So money coming in, money going out, in order to understand how your flow is even being interrupted or where it's being interrupted, because there's some way on that it's flowing in and it's flowing out.
Like that's. That's just the nature of energy. There's an interruption at some point in that flow. And in order to do. To understand where that is, you've got to look at it. And that's the first thing that we don't do. We don't look at it because we're afraid of what we're going to find.
We're afraid it's going to be too hard, that it's going to be too bad, or we're going to feel guilty, or we're going to have made the wrong decision. There's so many negative connotations around it. Rather than going at the moment, I'm going to try and look at this a lot more objectively.
These are numbers. I want to see what's going on, because until I do, I can't do anything about it. So whatever flow interruption is happening is just going to continue to happen, and it might even get worse because I'm not looking at it. So this is where the stories kind of come in.
And if we think about the patterns in our history as our own individual family, like our family history, um, but we also look at gender, we look at religion. If there is a culture, geography, there's so many things that go along with that. Like, my dad, for example, grew up in a.
He was the youngest of five in a house that were in a hm home. They didn't live in a house. They lived in a one bedroom apartment where all six of them lived with their mum. Um, you know, obviously a very poor upbringing. I still remember the stories my dad would tell me, that a treat for him was to have, you know, they.
If they had sausages and they got the dripping of the sausages and they let it cool and they would spread that on bread and that was a treat for him. If he had a piece of bread, again with water and a little bit of sugar on it, that was his sweet treat.
There were no ice creams. There was nothing. There was no chocolate. There were no treats like that. That's how he grew up. So when he came to Australia as a 25 year old, he was fully baked. He was born there, grew up there, educated there, lived there, worked there, did everything, came to Australia and, oh, my goodness, the abundance of things, I think, completely overwhelmed him.
Um, but having a certain ability to then go, okay, well, I'm going to need to make the most of my situation here. And then growing up, too, we had very simple food. So I grew up hearing the stories, living life, or I. Little bit with a bit of those stories.
And then I had my grandmother, who was born in Vienna in 1920, so lived through the Great Depression, um, well, grew up during the Great Depression, lived through World War two, came to Australia in the 1950s. Like, there's just so much in that story, and once you kind of delve into it and understand it a bit more, you can see where behaviors and responses or reactions to things kind of come in.
And I say reaction. Reaction is usually when we're not aware of it. It's more of a response when we're aware of it. So awareness is key. So that flow, that's what that is about, is understanding where in our flow, when the money is the flow interruption, when the money comes in, are we resisting money coming in because we've associated it with, you know, it's evil to have money, or we're only bad people have money, or, you know, bad people are rich or whatever, whatever the story is.
And it doesn't matter how real or not it is, if it's something that you believe, then it's real. Our bodies will respond and our energy around us will respond in a way to make it real. So we get that reinforcement to say, yep, see, I, uh, told you that's what happens.
Um, and we have to catch ourselves in those patterns as well, because a lot of the time we're not even aware of it. It's helpful to have other people who work with us on this and they can go, well, a, they can help us see the patterns, and secondly, they can actually help us see, well, we've already broken the patterns, but we're not aware of it.
I tell you, the amount of times I work with women and they tell me their story and they tell me what they've been doing and where they're at and where they feel they're stuck. And I was like, well, you do realize you've already broken that belief, but you haven't been aware that that belief has been broken because, uh, the belief itself is so deeply ingrained and you've worked really hard.
Like, it's interesting that what we believe is reality, etcetera. There is a little bit of, uh, a pattern interrupt there, but unless we're aware of it, it doesn't matter. We will keep believing it and we will keep seeking out opportunities to reinforce it as well, even if in some areas of our life we've disproven it.
But it might not be in the right area of your life. Like, it might not necessarily be in your finances. It might have been in something slightly similar, but not exactly the same. And because it's not exactly the same, our brains haven't connected the dots to go, oh, wow, that doesn't make sense anymore.
I've. I'm not that person. I'm I'm not like that anymore. I've already, like, look at this other part of my life where I'm not doing this. So this is where it's really handy sometimes to have a third party come in and, uh, give you a little perspective. And we all need it, trust me.
So all the flow might be in the expenses side. Um, so back on the income first. I've had so many women say to me, oh, I feel like I've got an income ceiling. And this isn't about gender pay gap or anything like that. This is just the earning capacity.
And I remember I used to think this as well. I was like, oh, I had such trouble trying to break into six figures. But once I did, I didn't just break into six figures. I went way beyond. I was like, well, okay, right there was this invisible limitation, um, I placed on myself.
And as soon as I broken, became aware of it and then broke free of it. Wow, okay. It made it a lot easier. That's not to say I don't still have to work on things because. Yeah. It's a constant journey of working on what our limitations or what we perceive our limitations to be.
So that's on the income side. If you think of the outgoing side, you know, expenses, you're overspending. Um, I saw a lot of this happening during, during the, um, pandemic, you know, where, you know, they see something advertised on Instagram and they like, click on it. To be honest, I don't get a whole lot of buy now posts because I don't click on any of them.
So the algorithm doesn't necessarily show me that, but they'll show me people that I know who are sponsoring things. So it's, it's a really interesting, you know, do you, it's like food, even. Do you eat when you're stressed or do you not eat when you're stressed? I discovered that I am not a stress eater, but I'm a boredom eater.
So I will, you know, if I'm sitting and I'm a little bit bored or unclear, I'm procrastinating, I will be more likely to go reach for something. So I need to make it harder to get at. And working from home makes that really, really difficult because when I'm out and about, I can go for an entire day.
I don't even think about food. But, um, if I'm home, I'll be like, okay, all right, let's just go get a piece of chocolate. You know? So we do the same sort of thing with money. If we're bored or if we're feeling frustrated or we're like, you know what?
I need to. I've done something good, so I need to reward myself. Um, and that's okay, too. But as long as the thing has the money set aside for it as well. And that it's a goal you set yourself and that you're rewarding yourself for achieving the goal. And you know what the reward is.
So if you can identify the goal, identify the reward, and have already put money aside for it, go for it. And I realize that that might sound very boring because, you know, there's no spontaneity in that, but, you know, there's, we can have spontaneous spending money as well. But again, you put your money aside for that, so it could be in the outflow as well.
And then you look at the triggers behind that. Was it because there was lack. Like, I look at my father, he was quite a spender because there was so much lack in his life growing up. My mum had that as well. There was so much lack in her life growing up too.
I mean, my grandmother was a, ah, real scrooge when it came to money, which was good in her later years, but in her early years it really kind of, it messed with how my mother's relationship with money developed and I had seen that and then I saw my mum spending a lot, so I saved, so I kind of, I did the opposite because, you know, I walked home one night and the house was darkest.
Um, my mum had forgotten or whatever to pay the electricity bill. And I was like, oh, okay. But in my mind that created a, ah, oh, you could never not do that. So I pay my bills straight away. I'm like, even now if I've been on a holiday and I know I'm going to get a big credit card bill or, you know, because I put car hire and whatever else on there and accommodation, and then I'm like, oh, I don't want to get a big bill, so I actually pay it so that when the bill comes, it's like zero.
So there's so many mind things that we do to ourselves. Um, but I'm aware of it and I've put money aside for it and I chuckle at myself now because of it and I don't see it as a particularly bad, like, that's not a destructive trait, but I'm aware of the, um, illogic, illogical ness of it, if that's a word.
So there's things like that. So we just need to start to pay attention to what's happening with the money inflow, what's happening with the money outflow and the mindset that goes with that and the blocks. And where they're happening and why they're happening. But then once you are clear on that, you need to then actually put a system in place to help you manage it.
Like, just as I did with the, um, travel. If I wanted to pay off that credit card before I even got the statement, I'd have to have the money there. If not, I'd go into a sense of panic and then I'd get the bill and I'd be like panicking even more because, and you can see my whole body is just tensing up because I would get this bill of thousands of dollars or whatever and I'd be like, crap, am I going to pay that?
Like that? That level of anxiety is just, it's making me tired just acting it out. So it's, it's a really interesting thing then. So if you have your money system, like I've, I've got a system in place. I've been using this system for years. I've been tweaking it. I work on clients for clients.
I work with clients on it. And that's what this money flow program that I'm, that I'll be, um, I'll be running in a couple of weeks is going to help with as well. Looking at that mindset, becoming more aware of things so that you can manage it ongoing. It's not about, here's what you do.
That's it done. You're good. No, there will always be stuff that comes up, which is why we need the tools that we can replicate again and again whenever the next thing comes up, because we'll up level our mindset. We're like, okay, I'm good to hear. And then something else will come up and you're like, oh, um, I'm being challenged again.
All right, let's do the work. I've got my tools. I need to implement them now. And then I can move up to here, but then there'll always be levels. So having those tools at hand is really handy because you're going to need them again and again, and you get really good at them when you practice them over and over, trust me.
Um, and then comes the system itself. And setting it up to start with does take a little bit of work and the program itself will actually, if you want to, you can have the template. Otherwise, I will just show you the system itself and you can create it yourself if you'd like to too.
Um, and then specifically for connecting business and personal finances, but you can do it just for business finances. You can also do it just for personal finances because the two systems are the same. It's then the linkage part, and I'll show you how to link them as well. And you customize it to how you want.
Like, not everybody needs a fun fund. Well, sorry, no, everyone needs a fun fund, but not everybody needs a school fees fund. For example, your kids might be older, or your kids might be going to a state school, and you don't need to pay for school fees. You might not want to be saving for a new car, although I highly recommend everybody has a new car fund rather than taking out debt for it.
Um, investing is another thing that you need to do alongside your retirement. So there's all these parts to the system and figuring out how to carve up your money to fund everything in your personal life and how to make your business fund that in a way that's sustainable for both your business and your personal life.
Excuse me. So that's, that's where I find it imperative to connect the mental state with the actual practical state, uh, of how to link all those together. And if you don't have a, if you have a system right now and it's working, fantastic. Amazing to me how many people don't businesses sometimes have a little bit more structure?
Maybe not necessarily a system, but that's because an accounting system will help create some of that structure, but it's not always usable information. Um, again, that concept of going in and getting a report out of accounting system, I have not yet found one accounting system that gives out decent enough reports to allow you to actually do something with them.
From a cash flow management perspective, they're attempting to do it and maybe they'll get better at it in time, but I don't find this there yet. So that's a little bit about what money flow is and the concept of it, because I really wanted to bring that concept in and help you visualize it.
And if you can see me right now, my arms are just like moving around and around, because that's what it is. Our life is energy. Things grow. If you're a gardener, I've only become a gardener in the last maybe, ah, five to seven years. Um, it's about life. Like, I've got, we're spring here at the moment in Brisbane, so I'm planting things.
I've had, I've got some lettuce that's gone to seed. I've got other things like my, um, my peas have now had their time because they're more of a winter vegetable for us. So I'll pull them out. I'm planting tomatoes and basil and some other things. So there's a life cycle to so many things, just like there's a flow to life.
And if we work with the flow, we plant for the seasons, we harvest for the seasons, we try and work with it. We keep our humaneness. We don't try to question or get paranoid or think the worst of everybody. We try and just live a little bit more in the flow, trusting our intuition and working in with the energy of the world.
It's so much more pleasant a way to live. And then money factors into that because it's just part of our flow, whether we like it or not, now part of our world, and we have to recognize the energy that goes with it and then how to actually turn that energy into something that gets the outcome that we want.
So we can't just think good thoughts, we can't just wish, we can't just go, oh, this is what I'd like. I'll create a vision board for it, but then not actually do anything with it. And this is where the system part comes into it as well. But you have to have that vision first too, because otherwise what are you heading towards?
It's very easy for money to just flow out. If it doesn't have a purpose of, it will flow in, and then if it's like, oh, well, uh, there's nowhere for me to go. All right, well, I'll just keep going, but if you have somewhere for it to go, that makes all the difference.
So I will leave you with that. I'll put a link to. To the event. It's going to start on the 28th. It'll run for the 28th, 29th, and 30 October, 1 hour a day for each of the days. You'll get a workbook, the replays if you can't attend live.
Um, and then there's also the option to actually. To get the template itself, too. Um, but, yeah, so money flow is coming, and the reason I've done that, actually, at the end of October is because Halloween comes, which is sort of the natural state when harvest happens and we start to reap the benefits of our harvest.
And also the concept, you know, Halloween is in the modern era, has been associated with sort of things that are more spooky. And I was, like, trying to take the spookiness away from money and make it a little more joyous and flow. So there's a number of metaphors built in there as well.
So with that, I will leave you for the rest of your day and have a lovely week as well. And I will see you again next week. Bye.
