10 things I’ve learned about money that may surprise, disgust, & delight you
In 2019, I made a conscious decision to start working on the beliefs I held around money.
The first year of my business had been super inconsistent. I had $0 months and $6k months, and I never knew which one would happen.
I had money, but I was always stressed about it. I wouldn’t look at my credit card statement or my bank account balance unless I absolutely needed to, to make sure the payment would be able to go through.
I’d feel a pit in my stomach every time I opened up the app.
Talking about money used to make me want to hide and cringe. Buying things used to bring me a lot of sensation – it either felt exhilarating or like dread.
This is going to be a piece about money. And while I’m going to tell you some numbers, I want you to realize that the numbers don’t actually matter.
It was never about the amount of money I was making or the amount of money that I had.
It was all about my beliefs around money and the way I was relating to it.
That might sound annoying – I used to be really frustrated by statements like that – but it’s true.
The way I related to money shifted.
I currently feel incredibly relaxed around money.
This did not shift because I have more money. In some ways, I actually have less money now than I had before (what?! I’ll explain below).
I think that feeling relaxed about money – feeling fully content with what you have, fully comfortable around money, and trusting that you will always have enough – is way more significant than how much you make.
And yet, because the numbers are their own evidence, I’ll tell you: for the past 8 months, I have been making ~$10k/month in sales. Consistently.
February has been my highest month yet, with over $20k in sales – and it’s only half over.
The money came after my beliefs shifted.
I now have a sense of ease around money. I have a solid trust that it will be there for me when I need it, always.
And I did not have that before. At all.
I believe these lessons are deeply impactful no matter how much money you make or where you’re at.
I have developed a deep respect for money, and I still feel like I’m learning from her.
And I want to share with you what shifted for me.
All of us come from different backgrounds, from different ways of relating to money. And there are hundreds of coaches who have a “rags-to-riches” story. I could never relate to that – because it felt like my family had money, but I STILL was stressed about money and didn’t believe I could make it.
We all have a money story. And writing out my money story was huge for me – it eliminated a lot of shame and gave me a lot of compassion for myself.
So I want to begin by sharing my money story with you.
My Money Story
I grew up in an upper-middle-class family. My mom came from a family with money, and my dad made enough money for us to live in one of the nicest houses in our area.
I knew my family had more money than others, and I learned from society that that was better. I did not have to get a job when I was young unless I wanted to.
In high school I babysat to have some cash that was mine, and a bit out of high school I worked as a waitress for like 6 months. I taught yoga in my early twenties; my mom paid for my teacher training.
I had pretty much whatever I wanted. Not like, designer clothes and unlimited cash, like some families. But anything I wanted that was reasonable, I could typically have.
But my family didn’t talk about money. And they certainly didn’t talk to me about money.
I knew money was there, but I didn’t know how much. Sometimes I was shamed for things I wanted; other times my mom would take us on a shopping spree. Sometimes my dad would say no to a $5 toy, sometimes he would say yes to a $200 coat.
I was given a car when I turned 16. I would often go to the grocery store and spend hundreds of dollars on organic food with my dad’s credit card, and sometimes I would get yelled at for it and sometimes I wouldn’t.
When I went to college, I was told that I had money for college, that my grandfather had put in stocks. Any time I wanted to know exactly how much money was there, it was shushed. “The money is there,” my mom would say. “Choose the college you want.”
I vividly remember having a moment when looking at schools, where I realized that if the money was there, then if I didn’t spend the money on school, maybe that was a good thing and that money could be mine. I had scholarships to some schools.
Different schools cost wildly different prices. I felt like spending $15k/year on school might make a much bigger difference to my future life than spending $60k/year.
But I was not allowed to ask about this. I was told I was lucky I had the money there, and so I should not ask. My parents and grandparents wanted me to have the experience of being able to choose any school I wanted. So I decided worrying about it was dumb, and I chose one of the most expensive schools.
My brother’s accident happened in the end of my first semester of college. To go into all the details of that is another story, but for a while, it seemed like my brother could die at any moment. No one cared about money.
I took a semester off and lived at home, then transferred colleges, spending a semester at UVM. I lived in Burlington and only bought my food from the local co-op. I was super depressed at that time; one time I remember going to Urban Outfitters and deciding to buy everything I wanted.
I put $400 on my dad’s credit card, the most I ever had spent at one time (my family had money, but not like MONEY). I remember shaking at checkout and also feeling a lot of glee, wondering if he would even notice.
When I wanted to open a yoga studio a couple years later, the money came out of my college money for me to invest. My college money was there for everything – a two-week shamanic training, multiple yoga trainings, any type of workshops I wanted to do.
I still had to ask my grandfather for permission for all of this. And bless him, he did not write off any of it as “woo-woo.” He let me follow what I wanted to do.
And then my grandfather died, completely unexpectedly, in 2015.
It is difficult to overstate the amount of confusion I had around money. My parents divorced in 2014, and I fought with my dad a lot, throwing his credit card at him one day because I “didn’t want anything from him anymore.” Sometimes my mom was super stressed about money, and sometimes she was the opposite.
With my friends, I learned to be ashamed of the fact that my family had money, and I pretended it wasn’t there, adopting their terminology, complaining together around how expensive things were, bragging about cheap deals, and generally being afraid of spending any money I had.
When my grandfather died, I was handed a $20k life insurance account, which I hid because I was afraid of having that much money and didn’t know what to do with it. Soon after that, I was given the login details to my stock accounts.
I think at that time, before my grandmother’s death, I had around $60k in stocks.
So at 23 years old, I was handed $60k and I had absolutely no clue what to do with it. I didn’t really understand or trust the stock market.
So I spent it all.
Gradually. I spent some on school (I ended up going to 4 different universities, never graduating), living expenses, traveling the world, doing coaching trainings and whatever else I wanted to do. (It didn’t run out til 2019, so I think I did a pretty good job, lol).
I used to be really ashamed of this. I was given all that money and I spent it all! My other family members had saved it.
Throughout that entire time, I was extremely stressed about it. I had some ways I made money – I had made money from my yoga studio when teaching and then again when I sold it, I had a business teaching women how to lift weights online, I did some things – but mostly I was just watching the money in my account go down.
I also kept up with my sometimes-scarce and sometimes-splurging way of relating to it. When I traveled, I stayed in $3 hostels that crawled with cockroaches. Until I got sick of it and would spend $150 to have a night that felt “normal.”
Every time I made a purchase I felt guilty. I paid for my ex to travel with me and I felt irritated by it. I felt like I should give up the money I had because other people had less – I was a white girl with money, and the more I learned about that, the more terrible I learned to feel. (I cannot tell you how much money I donated, not from truth, but from guilt).
And at the same time I didn’t really believe I deserved to make money, because so many people had less than me.
I started this business in the end of 2018. I sold my first coaching package ever for $50/session, which is laughable now. But at the time I couldn’t believe that someone would even pay me that much.
I used to be SO. ASHAMED. of this story. I used to feel like I wasn’t allowed to be stressed about money because I had money, like I was the dumbest person in the world for spending all the money I had, like nobody wanted to hear anything that was “poor little rich girl.” I hated myself because of it. I judged myself for it.
Until I started really learning about money and realized that every single person has their own money shit (we’ll get to this below).
Today I feel a sense of ease around money. People think that since Jordan pays for most of our lives together that I don’t work. Nope, I have a partner who pays for things AND I make very good money on my own. Adapting to Jordan paying for things – and receiving instead of being the one paying for everything – was a huge adjustment for me and you can read more about it here.
Truly, maybe the biggest thing is that I no longer feel sensation when I spend money, which is super new for me – to spend on myself and not feel anything about it.
I have full confidence that if my business crashed tomorrow (which it kind of did in 2019 when my Instagram got banned!), I could just rebuild it.
And I actually feel so much compassion and love for my money story – because all the ways I spent that money gave me the skills I have today.
I have complete control over my time and how I spend it, I can make money whenever I want – and I’m no longer attached to it.
My sales could go up or they could go down, and it would not shake my trust in money being there for me.
In the beginning of my business everything I did was money-oriented; now nothing I do is money-oriented.
So! Without further ado, let me tell you some things I’ve learned about money.
1. Being able to talk about money is hugely important.
Money is arguably the most taboo thing to talk about in all of society. It’s even worse than sex.
Have you ever asked someone how much money they make a year? Think about the feelings that brings up in your body.
It should be a neutral question. Because it is a neutral fact.
But if you’re like most people, how much you make a year is laced with meaning, telling you how valuable you are, how smart you are, how good you are.
Asking that question might make you seem like a nosy and rude person.
But whenever there are things we can’t talk about openly, those things have IMMENSE power over us.
Think about how much power you’d free up if you could neutrally discuss money with absolutely anyone, all while knowing it didn’t mean anything about you.
This truly only comes from talking to other people about money, opening the conversation, being completely willing to feel their (and your) discomfort.
I once took a course with Kasia Urbaniak where she had us have as many money conversations as possible. I talked to everybody – my parents, my cousins, my new friends, my old friends. Asking them things like, how do you relate to money? What do you think about it? How does it impact your relationships? How much do you make? What is that like for you?
I highly recommend this. Most of us never even question our beliefs about money, because we don’t discuss them with others.
2. Taking full responsibility for your life is the only thing that will change it.
People with less money often want to hate on people with more. And there is no faster way to ensure that you stay on the bottom of the pyramid by being resentful of the people on the top.
(ps – we often deeply desire what we hate. Hating Jeff Bezos really just tells me that you secretly desire to be like Jeff Bezos!)
Any time you’re putting yourself in the victim role – whether it’s to society or to others – you no longer get to be the creator of your life. It’s automatically disempowering.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true that society is set up against you – the moment you decide that you will live your life according to that belief, you help keep it that way.
For example, many people starting businesses like mine think that the market is “just so saturated” and “blogging is dead” and “it’s so hard to make money as a coach.” So they whine, while they make very little money and spend their energy thinking about how difficult it is, and then they quit.
I started this website in January of 2020 and it had over 100,000 views that year.
When I was making very little money, I knew it was because of me. When I had months with no clients, I knew that was because of me. When my site views went up and then down, I knew it was because of me. When I only made $20k my first year of business, I knew that was because of me. When my Instagram with 10k followers was deleted, and when I was banned from my Facebook a few months ago, I didn’t go into victim mode – I decided it was happening FOR me and I had created it, and I moved on.
Not because of society, or the world, or other people, or Instagram, or Google, or Facebook. Just me.
So, you can be a victim to the world if you want – and you will find endless, sometimes true evidence of reasons to be a victim.
But I personally think it’s more fun to take full, unabashed responsibility for what I see around me, so that I’m able to shift it.
3. Everyone has their own money shit.
EVERYONE. EVERYONE. EVERYONE.
The interesting thing about money is that often, the more you have, the more you know people who have even more.
So no matter how much you make, if you stay externally focused, comparing yourself to everybody else, you will always feel like you don’t have enough.
People who have a ton of family money often feel a low sense of self-worth, because everything has been given to them and they don’t know their own value. People who make millions of dollars are sometimes also millions of dollars in debt. People who have no money are stressed about eating and paying rent. People whose partners pay for every single thing often feel like they have to ask to spend money and they’re controlled by somebody else.
Likewise, you can be heavily in debt and feel like life is supporting you, or you can have millions of dollars and feel like life is supporting you.
If you still aren’t sure about this, check out Bling Empire – a highly entertaining Netflix show about billionaire Asians in LA. Watch that and tell me that most of those characters aren’t entirely insecure, mostly miserable, and always searching for something outside of themselves.
The amount of money doesn’t matter at all.
4. What is “expensive” is entirely relative.
I have really tried to remove this word from my vocabulary, because it doesn’t actually mean anything.
What is expensive to you only depends on A. how much you have paid for similar things in the past, and B. how much money you have.
So you might find a $500 coat extremely “expensive.” Someone who has only purchased $1500 coats their entire life would not. I used to think $400 was the biggest amount to splurge on clothes! Now $5k has been my biggest splurge on clothes.
I have heard people say that a $30 shirt is expensive. It will seem that way if you never spend more than $10 on a shirt, or if you only have $50 in your bank account.
What you’re really saying is “this is more than I am willing to pay.”
Which has a different energetic to it than “expensive.” Expensive is often victim-y and entitled, like you think it should cost less.
People have thought my coaching was expensive at every single price point it’s been at.
People have also paid for coaching without a blink of an eye at every single price point it’s been at.
The only thing that changed was how much I felt comfortable charging for it, and how much I could receive (we’ll get to that below).
5. What seems possible with money will depend on who you spend time with.
This relates to above, and people don’t like hearing it.
But if you only spend time with people who struggle to get by, who complain about life, and who are completely dependent on their bosses, you will relate to the world in a similar way.
If you’ve never known an entrepreneur, you would obviously have much less of a sense of how easy it can be to become an entrepreneur. My grandfather had his own company, my dad has his own company. While I created my business in a completely different way than they did (it being online), I always knew that I would only work for myself. Working for somebody else was literally never an option in my mind. I didn’t care how long it would take.
Back in 2017, I knew of two online coaches. Truly. I only knew two that existed, and so it was a lot scarier to imagine doing it myself.
Now I know thousands. I have met hundreds in person.
A lot more seems possible when you are surrounded by people who are doing it.
6. Money is directly related to how much you can receive (and how much you can hold).
This is a big one.
When I first started coaching I had a really hard time charging people. I could never have charged the amount I do now – simply because I was not capable of receiving it.
Carolyn Elliott refers to this as your “havingness level,” which I really love – quite literally, the amount you will allow yourself to have.
A similar concept in the self-growth world is “upper-limiting” – when you reach the limits of how much goodness can be in your life and then you want to contract.
People think that they’re afraid of not having money, not having true love, and not having success.
But can you imagine having millions of dollars, a partner who could see you deeply and completely, and all the fame and success you could imagine?
Chances are that brings up a bit (or a lot) of constriction and tension in your body.
Of course it does. Your system is not capable of receiving it. Which doesn’t mean anything terrible about you – it is just a neutral fact.
Receiving is different than holding. Receiving is how much you’ll let in, how much you’ll let yourself have – while holding is how much you’ll allow yourself to continue to have. Ever notice how you’ll make a bunch of money and then spend it all immediately? This is spilling – letting it dump all over the place so you don’t have to feel the sensation of having all that money just sitting in the bank. (We do this with sex and orgasm, too – orgasm too quickly to dump the sensation).
That’s why so many famous people get famous quickly and then crash – they couldn’t hold it.
Receiving and holding gets built up with practice. And practicing holding sensation in one area of your life will impact it in another. Which leads us to…
7. Money and sex are intimately intertwined.
I don’t actually know why this is true, I just know that it is. But I’d guess that it’s because they’re both taboo areas directly related to reception and holding.
Sexual energy is creative energy, life-force energy. So if you combine your orgasmic energy with your desire and openness to money, you can call money into your life.
Last July, I had what had previously been my best month in business ever. But I was exhausted – I had done it in a pretty masculine way, pumping my feminine, churning out posts and promoting my courses. After that, I decided I was done – I wasn’t going to do business in a masculine way. No matter what, it wasn’t worth it.
In the beginning of August, Jordan and I had sex (and many orgasms) on top of a pile of money. Mostly just for fun, because we hadn’t done it together before.
In the week after that, I brought in $9k. Completely effortlessly. By doing nothing other than relaxing and being myself.
This has happened multiple times, without fail, in my life.
And I have heard many times over that the more sex you’re having, the more money you’ll make.
Keep in mind that you can also have sex in a way that’s extractive – trying to get your orgasm quickly, trying to force it to do something for you, having short orgasms that dump everything before you can experience the sensation of holding it, moving it through your body.
Your sex life will mirror the rest of your life, including your relationship with money.
I like to think of sex as a way for me to practice being open and receiving and holding sensation in my body. And sometimes, I will consciously and intentionally send the energy of my orgasm out to attract more money (though I will say I’ve done this less lately, as it’s just felt unnecessary!).
8. Working hard doesn’t equal more money.
This is a huge belief that so many of us have internalized.
I never feel like I’m “working hard.” (Though in the beginning of my business, I did – I continuously made myself sick by how hard I worked).
My days are purposefully filled with spaciousness, with time to take care of myself. I also spend a lot of time – probably more than I should – lounging in my bed.
Some of my best writing happens after I’ve had a day filled with space. After I’ve done a lot of “nothing.”
This belief is rampant in our culture, and it’s just not true. Plenty of people have tons of money – and make tons of money – who don’t work hard at all. And plenty of people work VERY hard, and make very little.
The two things do not equate. Unwinding and releasing the beliefs about money that don’t serve you is some of the most important work you can do.
They’ve been given to you, handed down without question, and they aren’t true.
9. I had to own my shadow pieces around money.
A huge block I used to have was feeling like I was a bad person because I already had so much privilege, had so much money, and didn’t need to make more in order to be safe – for example, I wasn’t going to starve if I ran out of money, I knew my family would help me out.
So I felt like it was wrong to ask anybody to pay me. Who did I think I was, to ask for money when I already had enough? Wasn’t it just so terrible to have a deep desire to make a lot of money?
Telling myself that I wasn’t a bad person didn’t do anything.
Instead, it took owning that I was a bad person to shift this for me. It took me saying, “Yep, I have a lot of privilege, my family has money, and I’m still going to have people pay me thousands of dollars for my work.”
You might have your own version of this in a number of ways – feeling like you’re not good enough, like nobody will want to pay you, like you don’t deserve to ask for more, or like making lots of money makes you an evil human being.
In that case, it’s better to just say “I’m not good enough and I’m evil and I’m going to have more anyway.”
This is true in all areas of life. For example, it’s way more effective to own and adore your grossness than to try to pretend you don’t find your body gross at all, like I wrote about in this piece.
10. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
You’ve probably heard this said many times in traditional ways – like investing – but something I’ve noticed for myself over the past few years is that I have to let money go out in order to let it flow back in. Whenever there’s something that I want that feels deeply true, I always get it, regardless of how much it costs.
If I ignore this and try to constrict my money because I’m worried there won’t be more, the money I have coming in stagnates. Every single time I’ve opened and “splurged,” I’ve made that money back almost immediately.
There is a level of trust that is necessary to open to more.
I’m not suggesting going into debt – but I’ll tell you I’ve even known people who have done that and then thrived.
For me, when it’s true, I follow it. And I trust that following the energy will result in me being deeply supported.
One final thing I want to note here is that it often takes time for beliefs to shift.
I’ve been working with some of these beliefs for many years. After I started really purposefully working with them in 2019, it still took almost a year for the results to tangibly show up in my life. And it was even more recently that I stopped feeling sensation when spending money.
This doesn’t mean that it can never happen quickly – I’m sure it can.
The most important piece of all of this is to develop the deep, unshakable knowing that you already have enough, no matter how much you currently have.
Things can only truly, deeply shift once we get into acceptance and approval of what already is.
I always felt like money was a thing I just could not “figure out.”
I was certain that if I could just figure it out, then money would start flowing to me.
And instead what I realized is that there was never anything to figure out.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– This piece Jordan wrote, which is an excellent masculine companion to this one, titled “9 things everyone should know about money”
– 5 surprising things that can hold you back from getting what you want
– Why having a funeral for yourself is the ritual you need in your life right now
– The way you have been taught to feel is wrong