Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of Money with Alpha. This week, I wanted to delve into the mindset side a bit more. Um, I do talk about this quite a lot, but I wanted to really hone in on it because I feel like it's something that's constraining a lot of us in for taking action when it comes to money.
And I was having a conversation with a client recently and they were really like, I just. I love the way you do the mindset side. I'd like to really delve into that more. And I thought, okay, well, and there's a couple of other conversations I've been having recently, and mindset in general really comes into it.
Um, but it's. What does it mean? And how do you actually then work on it? Because. Excuse me, it's not one of those things where you can just set and forget, oh, yeah, I've done that. Tick done. I can move on to the rest of it. Things will come back on a regular basis.
As humans, we are very smart beings. Um, but there are some things that really do make us human, and that is we hang on to stuff. The things that are in our past, our belief systems, our stories, they sit there and they tend to fester and grow, and we apply a level of importance to them that isn't going to serve us.
So I really wanted to delve into that today, because if you're feeling stuck or you know what you want to do and you just can't get into it, or you don't know what you want to do, and you really trying to figure out what's holding you back, quite often it's the perception we have about ourselves and our ability to do things.
And as humans and women in particular, we often tend to underestimate or hold ourselves back from what we're actually capable of. And the other thing I've noticed too, over working with many, many women in relation to their mindset and their money, is we have often burst out of the beliefs that we have without even realizing it.
And I know it sounds a little bit contradictory or counterintuitive, and it took me a while to notice a bit of a pattern because we have our beliefs. And I'll get more into this, and I have a visual, which I'm going to show you as well. But when we get into, you know, we have our beliefs now, beliefs impact our behaviors and our thoughts, and then we have our habits and everything just kind of, you know, perpetuates from there.
Yes. However, life tends to happen Unless we take stock and we think and we reflect and we analyze and we look at ourselves and we look at ourselves more objectively. They're not. And quite often this is where having a objective person to reflect things back on you becomes really handy.
Because doing it ourselves is sometimes a bit tricky, um, because we will have a bias towards a self deprecation or, uh, negativity or, you know, trying to constantly push ourselves to do better, which is great. However, if that constant pushing and seeing the negative side is constraining us from moving forward, that's when it really becomes a problem.
If it's there to help us at a yardstick, to help us improve and grow, great. And we reflect back to look at the journey and how far we've come, Brilliant. But if we don't look at it in the right context, then sometimes we have left our beliefs behind in what we physically achieved, but we don't always recognize it, which means it feels harder to actually do the things we really want to do.
And a lack of clarity is also part of that equation too. But I've just as, just as an example, um, I've had a. Had a client who had done some tremendous things in, in her life, had achieved all sorts of success in business and in learning a foreign language and operating and living in that, in that country where there was a foreign language.
But actually not recognizing that the story she still had about not being good at math no longer applied. And as soon as I said that, I was like, well, you can't not be good at math to have done all these things because what we, you know, we often go through, well, history and where things are at and you know, what's, what's happened in your life and why do you think things are the way they are now?
And just by me saying that, she's like, literally, I could see the wheels turning. And if you could see my face right now, if you're just listening to this, you won't see this perplexed look on my face. But that's what it was. It was a complete nutter. Uh, m.
Whoa. Okay, well, if I don't believe that anymore, then what do I believe? And then it became a matter of, well, I. Okay, so the belief about not being good at math, if you connected that to your ability to succeed with money and business and everything, then that's busted.
If you connect it to something else. Because that's the other thing too. We have to figure out, like, we can have all sorts of beliefs, but they can be contextual. So if we believe we're not good at math, unless we connect that to not being good at money, it might just have its place in other areas.
But what we do tend to say is, okay, math and money are hand in hand, and to a certain extent, yes, but the concepts around managing money are pretty simple. And you don't actually have to be overly great at, uh, math itself to be able to do it. It's just basic kind of addition, subtraction, or at least just understanding where money is.
So say, for instance, you have a pie and it's, it's yay big. Um, again, if you can't see me, I've got my hands in the shape of a, of a circle. And if you carve it up into certain numbers, then you know, you can't go beyond that circle, that pie.
Um, and that's the concept of percentages as 100%, that that pie is considered 100% and whatever gets carved out of it has to add up to 100%. Now, that's not what I would say is super complicated in terms of math concepts. But if you have this belief that you're not good at math and you think that has something to do with math, and instantly that will feel harder rather than going, okay, well, if I physically put.
And even if you think of it like a pizza or a pie, whichever, if you're a sweet tooth or you like the savory food better, go with whichever one works for you. Um, I always had in my mind, like, you know, my, my grandfather. I'm just going to digress briefly.
Um, my grandfather used to make this delicious, it's called linsa torte, which is like this cherry raspberry kind of tort pie looking thing. And so in my mind when I was creating this, that's, that's the visual that I had. So for me, it's a pie. It could be a pizza as well.
And if you cut out a slice and go, okay, well, this slice is going to be four bills and debt paying off debt. This slice is going to be for fun and travel. And this slice is going to be paying school fees. And this slice is going to be for emergencies or a buffer.
This slice can be for saving for a new car, or this slice can be for renovations on the house, whatever you happen to have in your life. But ultimately you'll end up with no pie. And that's not to say it's zero. Everything has its purpose, Everything has its place.
It's kind of all, it's all there and accounted for. Provided that you're clear on what you want it to account for in totality. So that in itself you don't have to be great at maths. It's not about algebra or complex equations or complex fractions or anything like this or you know, what is it?
Something equals MC squared? I can't even think of it right now. But um, it's not about that. It's about then kind of going, okay, well I'm going to actually disconnect that belief from being good at maths with being good with money and go, okay, well maths, okay, we'll put that off to the side.
But money, do I really believe I'm not good with money. I really managed on a shoestring for a very long time and I could. So when you start to actually break it down, it really starts to bust things. So I find it's not as simple as going, I have a belief and there is a result and that's interconnected and that's it.
Quite often we haven't paid attention to how we've evolved and developed over time and our remarkable ability as human beings to survive in spite of things and to, to come up with a result. And then especially if we start to get clear and clear the older we get, I find slightly clearer we get on the sort of lifestyle we want because we've had enough experience to know what we don't want.
And we've got things in our lives like children who make it really clear what kind of life do I want for my kids? Because this is the other thing. As women we're more likely to be motivated by what is good for our children than what is good for ourselves.
So I don't think I've ever eaten as well as I have as when I was pregnant and breastfeeding. Now it's kind, yeah, I could slip away. It's just, oh, it's just a little, you know, it's a piece of chocolate. Well, it's anyway, but. And it all kind of compounds together.
But what I'm saying, we tend to be a lot more motivated when it's to do with someone other than ourselves. That's partly a self worth issue. Not going to go too much into that right now, although that is underlying some of this too. So we're going to look primarily at where do all your beliefs come from?
And this is where it's good to, to delve back into the past. Sometimes not always pleasant. Um, if you look at some of the stories, some of the, the repetitive like the, the things that repeated when you're a kid, the conversations that you overheard or that you think you overheard, because that's.
It doesn't matter if it's real or perceived. Perception is reality. So it really doesn't matter. Who has the right memory of history? My. My dad's constantly bickering with my mum, and they divorced many, many years ago about what happened. In certain situations, my mum will remember it a certain way, remember it a different way.
It honestly doesn't even matter which way is which. Which memory is the correct one, which one, because each of them have their own filters and, you know, perceptions and agendas that go with it that how they want to remember it to suit their own stories and narratives. So the perception of that is.
Is irrelevant. So look at what feels real to you. What do you perceive to be real? What do you believe to be true? And that is what you need to work with. So regardless of whether or not you get the facts right, let's just. We'll work on the beliefs.
So I'm going to bring up the visual and provide. I can get to it easily. Here we are. I'm going to try and make this as small as possible. M. Okay, I've done this in a slightly different way this time. Okay, I might just have to do that. Ah, there we go.
Um, so I call it the formation cycle. And if you've seen any of my webinars that I've done, and I've also done some podcasts on this as well, this will look relatively familiar. So it starts, first and foremost with our sense of self, our identity, who, the type of person that we think we are.
And that can be like, I hear this term, so, oh, that's just the way I am, you know? Okay. Um, my dad says that a lot. And of course, you can imagine my response to that. I was like, well, that's what you. Who you choose to be. Sorry, I have to try not to be a bit too, you know, like, preachy in that.
But think about who you believe. Like, we often identify ourselves in certain ways. Like, I look at. When it comes to money, we. Are we a spender or are we a saver? Well, it really depends on the circumstance. I can tell you. If it comes to, you know, going into a shoe store, I am not a spender.
And as I absolutely loathe shopping for shoes because none of them fit me, I have these weird little narrow feet. Long but narrow. And it's just. It's a nightmare. So I don't really enjoy shopping for shoes. So you put me in a shoe store. I am not a spender at all.
Get me into a craft or an art stop. I'm probably going to be more of a spender. So it really depends on the situation. And get me into Hague's. Oh, my goodness. We were down in Sydney, uh, just before Christmas, and yes, I invested quite a lot in eggs chocolate.
But, you know, it's. It really. So it is contextual. So the identifying part that we. Or the way we identify as ourselves, are we shy? Even the things like, are we introvert or extrovert? I happen to be an ambivert, which is. I could be both. But I'm noticing as I get a little bit older, I'm probably edging more towards introvert because I need more time to myself to recharge.
And possibly that's because I don't get enough of it. So on the ambivert scale, I'm probably getting too much time, you know, around groups, um, or others. I don't get enough alone time to really recharge my batteries. And that's partly also because I hear the word mama spoken many, many times in a day, which I do love.
But at the same time, I then need to figure out how to, to do that. Recharge, energy, recharge. So even labels like that, and there's so many different personality tests out there. And I mean, I, I do the HBDI profiling. So you look at, you know, your various preferences, thinking and quadrants.
But then there's the Myers Briggs and the disc and the 16 personalities and oh my goodness, there's so many of them. So they're great for helping us understand ourselves. But we've also got to recognize that we still have agency over our own life. We still have the ability to choose how we want to be and who we want to be and what we.
We want and who we listen to, who we surround ourselves with. There's so many facts. What food we put into our bodies, what we, how much movement we do. There's so many things that we get to choose that, yes, it does seem a bit overwhelming. But if you just break it down into ultimately that sense of I'm choosing who I am and the person that I want to look at in the mirror every day, that's where I want you to start with.
Don't care about the labels. A lot of them are good information, but ultimately you are uniquely you. So that's the sense of self, the beliefs, they're often built from rocky foundations, I'd like to say sometimes. So if there's things that you get told when you're a child, like I got told constantly about, you know, I'm shy.
Um, I was. Because, uh, I was a very observant kid. Like, I would just sit and watch things and I would be off to the side. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't this kid who just like launched into things. But if I was in an environment where I was comfortable, oh my goodness, you couldn't shut me up.
And I was, you know, a little Miss Social but fly. But in an environment where there were lots of people, like, even at school, I was a lot quieter. So I had that belief for a very long time. And then there's the physical things that get, you know, I'm not even going to go into that.
But when, and then when it comes to money, it's not necessarily even what we're told, although it can be, oh, ah, we can't afford that. Or. And if you hear that too many times, all you'll think about is that you can't afford things. You'll hear that yourself then, that you can't afford things.
So, uh, even when you're old enough to make your own money and make your own financial choices and make your own decisions, all of that, you'll believe that you can't afford it, regardless of what it is. Rather than looking at it from the perspective of do I want to afford this?
It's a very interesting flip around. So I'm a big fan of Whenever you say something, let's flip it around. I do this with my daughter all the time when it comes to when she feels a little bit anxious about something and she's like, oh, what about this? And I was like, okay, well, that, that's a possible outcome and that's a possible scenario could happen.
Depending on the scenario. Some, some of Them are pretty out there. I was like, well, what about this? This could also happen. And she'd be like, ah, uh, yeah. I was like, which one makes you feel better in your body? What feels nicer? Oh, that second one. And I was like, okay, well, let's, let's, let's hold that feeling and then go conscious of that.
You're confident that you will make the right choice and do the right things. If you do in fact encounter that negative scenario, um, you could run some scenarios about how you would deal with it, or you could just have a general overarching trust that whatever comes your way, you'll be able to handle.
And it's really interesting because I'm seeing a lot being loaded on people at the moment. I've got a few friends going through a lot of stuff. Um, I've got some stuff of my own going on that I. That is sort of lurking there. And I know I need to deal with.
Um, there's some health things, there's some family stuff, and, and it's one of those things where you, like, if I thought about all of it all at once, it's overwhelming. So I take a breath, I go, okay, I'm going to create some compartments. I'm going to tackle one thing at a time and do like, one thing to figure out what I would need to do in order to fix that or to do something about that and have that stepped process.
It's a little bit like goal setting in a way. You start with a bigger picture and you chunk it down. Your beliefs are very much the. When it comes to money, you look at the thing and you go, okay, well, there's all these bits and pieces. There's all these things I heard, there's things that I experienced, there's my own experiences.
So then there's. And then all of those beliefs have impacted your behaviors as well. So all of that kind of marries up in your mind and we compartmentalize it all over the place and then it will come out in how we behave. So when some. When a bill comes or when you get maybe like three bills, um, this month, a, ah, lot has come in.
I've made a couple of changes in my finances, which has meant that more bills have come in. But it's going to help me more in the. In the future. But right now it just feels like, oh, my goodness is. There's a lot happening here. Okay. Um, and because of the way I've set up my finances, it's manageable, but it's still a mental load that goes with it as well.
And there's a financial load, but like I said, temporarily. So there's the behavior that we have that has a result of those beliefs which is linked to who we see we are as a person. M. And then there's the habits. When we repeat those behaviors and those thoughts often enough, we have certain habits.
So I still remember as a kid watching the habit of my mum not paying off her credit card every month. So for me, as a. As a grown up, I was petrified of credit cards. I did not want to get one because I was like, these are the things that you can never pay off and you're in a constant cycle of debt.
And that. And I was. I understood enough to know that there was interest, it was high, and there was a lot to pay, and the longer you took, the more expensive it was. So it was these concepts that I still can remember thinking and knowing about. And this is like more than 20 years on.
So they. They stay with you and you start to feel them in your body, like they. They're stored somewhere in there. And so to try and breathe through those and go, okay, well, that was my mum's stuff. And at the time, I look back on it now, I didn't know what was happening then.
And the only. And I did end up getting a credit card because I was. When I was 20, um, because I was Travel overseas and I was like, okay, I really want to have something to. To kind of have as a backup in case I don't have enough cash with me or my travelers checks.
I can't change them because this was back in the day when you had travelers checks. Um, but I put money on it and you didn't have the credit debit cards back then. Um, but I unknowingly was already using my credit card like that. However, um, I then did get into genuine credit card debt in my.
In my probably mid-20s. And I remember thinking to myself, I can't believe I've turned into my mother. And it was just. And in relation to that, because in so many other ways, my mum and I are really close and I love her to bits, but when it came to her money journey, I was observing that and I'd started to take it on, but I'd already been doing some personal development work at that point and went, okay, this is a story that's not mine, so let it go.
Move forward. You've made the mistake. Let's just draw a line in the sand and keep going. So I'd recognized what was going on without being super duper conscious of it and having a visual for it, which I now do. And now I look at it, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can see these patterns.
Because what then happens is if we don't break this cycle somewhere, we will go back and go, okay, let's just reinforce my sense of self. That's just who I am. Um, I can't pay a credit card off every month. I'm not good at managing money. See that? I knew not being good at math would mean I'm not good at money.
Like, there's all these things that we do to reinforce the familiar because our brains function best with the familiar, because the familiar has kept us alive. And so we just stay with what, what we know, whether it's really helping us or not. So our brains don't really care about whether we're thriving.
They just want to be alive. So, uh, they just want to survive. That's it. Whether we're thriving is almost irrelevant because anything that challenges the survival is a threat to be, you know, squashed. Unless we do it incrementally, however, things will come and completely interrupt the process. Like, there could be, um, an illness, an accident, um, but even, like, more positive things, like having a child.
That was probably what really honed it in for me. My daughter is going to be 10 this year, and I was like, goodness me. I think of the person that I was before she came m along and the person that I became and am still becoming an am m now at the moment.
And I such a different person. And so I bless her daily for that. Um, because I, I, ah, love who I've become and I love the. The relationship that I can have with her as a result of that, because of becoming more aware about facing what was going on and then recognizing.
So this formation loop, this can happen in so many different areas. It's not just in relation to money. So it can go to weight, food, um, exercise, health in general. It can, it can deal with so many different things and our level of satisfaction or ability to handle ambiguity, newness, challenge, all of it.
Uh, so the idea of, you know, speaking on a stage in front of a thousand people could be petrifying. And you wouldn't go from never having spoken on stage before to speaking to a thousand people. So that would just be, you know, mind blowing. So you do it incrementally.
Same with this, these. These changes here. You start to question your beliefs. You. Well, you can first of all become observant of your habits. Become aware. Awareness is really important first step. Then you can start to observe your behaviors and notice what's going on, question them. Then you can start to delve into, well, what are my beliefs that are driving this behavior?
So you actually kind of have to go backwards. It doesn't start with a, uh, who am I? That is too big a question for our brain to answer. That's where it should be. Like, well, what's this specific habit I'm looking at right now? Why do I keep hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock every day?
Because this is literally what happened to me. Um, and I'd be like, I would hit that button multiple times. It would take me like three alarms. I literally had three alarms to get me up in the morning. Until I realized that what was wrong was not just me. It was the job I was in and the career path I was in was not for me at all.
This was when I was still doing, being, um, I was still doing accounting. And I recognized it just wasn't, wasn't serving the person that I wanted to be. The identity. Um, and there was all these behaviors and beliefs that I had around that which were connected to that sense of identity.
And it challenged me, it challenged others. So whenever you start to make these changes, it will feel uncomfortable. But if you're doing it for the right reasons and you have a certain degree of clarity around your lifestyle vision, and I won't go into that today, but there's a process for figuring that out as well.
Um, it makes the whole thing a little more smooth, um, and you can deal with the bumps that come along. So I'll just go back to the beginning of the, of the loop. So it starts with your sense of identity and it connects to the beliefs that you have about who you are that impacts or influences the behaviors that you have in your life.
And then the repeated behaviors and the repeated thoughts that you have form your habits, which then get, reinforce your sense of identity. So if we keep going round and round in that, that loop, then things will stay the same. We have to be conscious about being aware that this loop exists and then interrupting it at some point.
Like I said, I find it a lot easier to interrupt it in the habit space and then start to, uh, work backwards. But you could really do it at any point in the cycle if you, if you wanted to. Depends how much you want it. So that's, that's a bit of a.
That's an overview. I'm just going to go back to the screen here. I Can. No. Oh, no. Okay, come back to here. There we go. Um, so that's a bit of an overview of the mindset side, and I hope that's. That's helped you kind of create some structure around it, because otherwise it's just like, oh, mindset.
I just have to think differently. Okay, what does that mean? And how do I do that? This is a way to put some boundaries and some structure around the concept of mindset and money blocks and to get to really know yourself better and to understand where you need to start to look.
And if it starts to be through habits, just. Just start to tune in, slow down, take some breaths. Look at your surroundings. What do you actually surrounded yourself with? Like, I have a vision board here. I've got, um, my year planner. I've got some artwork from my daughter. I've got a calendar, and mostly a clear desk at the moment.
There's a few things on it because I'm in the middle of a couple of different things, but mostly it's clear. So look at your surroundings. Is it too cluttered? What does it feel like? Because all of these things are going to influence how you think about money and then how you actually physically have money show up in your life.
So with that a bit of a deeper, philosophical, heavier, uh, episode today, but I hope you found that useful, and if so, please let me know because I am looking at doing a, um, formal masterclass in relation to money mindset. Um, if you would like to be part of that, please shoot me, um, an email, a message, like, you can go onto my website and go into the Contact Us page or find me on socials and send me a dm.
Um, and I'll put you on the list to find out when that is happening. Okay, well, enjoy the rest of your week and, yeah, I will catch you next week. Bye.
