Host Leslie talks about the psychology of money with expert Barbara Stanny Huson. They talk about how a person’s personal history impacts their relationship with money - about how to change it.
Host Leslie talks about the psychology of money with expert Barbara Stanny Huson. They talk about how a person’s personal history impacts their relationship with money - about how to change it.
Links mentioned in the episode:
You're listening to the third episode of The Third Season of The Nature of Nurture, a podcast for your mental health. I'm your host, Dr. Leslie Carr, and today's conversation is about the psychology of money. I'm chatting here today with Barbara Huson previously known as Barbara Stanny. She's a bestselling author, a financial therapist, teacher and wealth coach.
And while her work appeals to women and men alike, she's considered a leading authority on women wealth and power. Barbara has helped millions of people take charge of their finances and their lives, and I promise that her work applies to you whether money is something that you struggle with or. In fact, I'm thrilled to be releasing this episode in part because of how utterly universal this subject matter is.
I have quite a bit to say about this, so it's gonna be one of those longer intros in case you wanna make yourself a cup of tea or a stiff cocktail and get comfortable cuz I'm about to lean in.
I first came across Barbara's work back in 2011 when I was fresh outta grad school and in the beginning stages of starting the business, I'm still running today. And it set me on a journey that really changed my. Over the course of the past decade, I went on to read almost every book Barbara has ever written, five of her seven, as well as several other books about money and personal finance. I'll link to some of my favorites in the show notes. And, I'm here to tell you that I find the psychology of money to be endlessly fascinating.
If there's anything that I've learned in the past 12 years or so on this subject matter is that this issue applies to every single one of us, no matter our circumstances. And that's because we all have our relationship with money. It might be good. It might be not so good. Maybe it's an area of your life that needs your attention.
Regardless. The relationship we have with money is deeply connected to our families, our psyches, the messages we received about it growing up, and the values that we hold.
So I'm gonna share something with you so that you understand a little bit better where I'm coming from in this episode. And it has to do with what drew me to Barbara's work in the first.
For me personally, the history of my relationship with money is actually quite complicated. My parents separated when I was three, so I grew up in two separate households, and those two households had vastly different economic realities.
On my father's side, I experienced a lot of privilege to be quite frank. I was raised to say that we were comfortable, but if my father was comfortable, my mother was decidedly uncomfortable. Many of you know that she had several massive brain hemorrhages when I was about seven years old. What fewer of you know is that she never really recovered from those hemorrhages. They left her with invisible disabilities that drastically impacted her ability to work and to care for herself.
So my mother experienced a lot of economic insecurity when I was growing up, and I witnessed her challenges firsthand. I watched her navigate food stamps and payday loans. She struggled with homelessness. She never lived on the streets, but she did sometimes live in her car. And I want to be very clear about why I'm telling you this.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode. Some of it is concrete, and some of it gets into territory that's more spiritual. Talking about money as a form of energy and things like that. And I'm aware that in some places this conversation might sound like two privileged white women talking about money in a manner that's really disconnected from the reality that many people face.
And I want you to know that nothing could be further from the truth. If you ever really wanna hear me get on my soapbox, I could rail on all day about the delta between CEO and worker pay and how criminal it is that families like the Waltons, who own Walmart, are raking in billions while their workers make minimum wage and qualify for food stamps or have to work two jobs and still can't afford rent pretty much anywhere in this country because we've commodified the housing market.
There are macroeconomic forces in the US and around the world that are super problematic and I am not enured to that. I know the trauma of poverty firsthand.
Nonetheless, I believe that our relationship with money is always on some level, a reflection of something that's occurring in our psyche. I believe that was true of my mother.
I do. I believe that it's true of all of us. So I really hope that you'll listen to this episode today with both ears and think about what your relationship with money is like for you. What do you believe to be true about it? What would you like to be true? And here's Barbara talking about how the journey started for her.
Believe me, Leslie, I never thought that I would be considered an expert on finance. I grew up in a wealthy family. My father was the R of H and R Block, but the only advice he ever gave me was, don't worry, because under that was the unspoken assumption. There'll always be a man to take care of you.
Right.
I loved that advice.
I didn't understand money. I just wanted to spend it, and I had my father and then my husband, who was a stock broker. But very early in our marriage, I found out that he was a compulsive gambler.
Yeah.
And the insane part. The insane part. For 15 years, I find out many times a year that he was gambling my money, my inheritance away.
Right.
And I continue to let him manage it because that's how terrified I was and intimidated by anything financial.
Yeah.
Finally, after 15 years, we got a divorce and I decided, money's not my thing. I do not wanna deal with money. Well, I have this theory that if you don't deal with money, your money will deal with you.
Right.
And in the next year I got tax bills for way over a million dollars. Almost 2 million. Oh my God. I did have anywhere close to that. Nowhere.
Yeah.
My ex had left the country and my father wouldn't lend me the money.
Oh my God.
When I knew I had to get smart, so I did what you're supposed to do. I read the books. I went to classes, but my eyes would glaze open, my brain would fog up.
Yeah.
I just felt, I felt hopeless. I felt absolutely hopeless, but I was committed, and this was the key. I was committed. I had three daughters, young daughters. One was just a baby. I was not gonna raise those girls in the street. And I swear, I absolutely believe that when you are committed like a no backdoor commitment?
Yeah.
The universe revolves to help you reach your goal. And I, I was a journalist with the San Francisco Business Times and I was hired for a freelance project to interview women who were smart with money.
What are the chances, right?
What are the chances? I mean, serious. I not only got smart about money from those interviews, but I wrote my first book Prince Charming Isn't Coming, How Women Get Smart About Money, and now seven books later here I am talking to you, Leslie.
Yeah.
As a financial expert.
It's really amazing and there's a piece of your story that gets us right into this, this sort of dead center of what about these issues can be extra challenging for women, which is just, I'm thinking about the way that you were raised and the messages that you got from your father and the faith that you had in your husband at the time, and I wonder if you can say a little bit about, there's sort of the piece of your career that just has focused so much on how these issues affect women specifically. I kind of wanna start there with you.
Okay. Well, let me just say men are affected too.
Mm-hmm.
I will never forget. I mean, I really thought, okay, the way I was raised, it was just, it's just not fair. It's just not fair. You know, I was raised not to take charge of money, but I remember one of my earliest book writing. When my book first came out, my first book, a man came up to me afterwards and he said, I am not gonna buy your book for my wife. And I thought, well, you, you chauvinist. And then he said something that was so revealing.
He said, I'm afraid she'll find out how bad I've been with money and she'll leave me.
Whoa.
And it gives me chills now because the problem. Men were groomed to be financially successful, to be the breadwinners.
Yeah.
We were groomed by and large to be financially dependent, but no one taught either one of us how to manage our money.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I see men at a great disadvantage too.
It's actually a really good point. I never thought about it quite that way. You know, I've, I've thought about how underearning, which we will get to in a little bit impacts men as well as women, but I never thought about that precisely because, yeah, my story is a little bit similar to yours where I just, I grew up with a father that never taught me anything about how to manage money, and he had no sons. And I've always wondered what he would have done had he had sons. And I guess I've always kind of assumed that if he had a son, he might have taught him something, but maybe not.
I don't know cuz I know my, my father had no sons taught. None of us. None. None of my sisters or I, or my mother. But my uncle had two sons. Didn't teach his daughters anything but taught.
Well, so that is true for me as well. And what a funny coincidence that my father only had one sibling, which was a brother. That brother had a daughter and two sons, and he did teach both of his sons about finance. And you know, one of them became an investment banker because it's, you know, there was that sort of on that side of the family.
But, um, and that was always what made me wonder if he just, if my own father would've raised a son differently. But I guess it's a bit hit or miss. Right.
And you don't know because it was kind of that time.
Mm-hmm.
And so I think today, hopefully, . Hopefully men are raising their daughters differently.
Right.
But even still, even Gen X, Gen Ys, the millennial, whatever those younger generations are called, they're still not protecting themselves financially with
mm-hmm.
still aren't. And the big reason studies have found over and over again, they know they need to do more, but they don't have the confidence.
Yeah.
And that's what's missing. And the part of the reason I think that's missing for so many women is the nature of financial education Today it is very male-oriented.
Yeah.
I will tell you, women and men view money differently, and for women, money is a very emotional topic and not address the emotional part because I don't think they feel, I think they don't understand, but that's a, that does a very big disservice for women.
Mm-hmm. Will you say a little bit more about the emotions that come up around it?
I will never forget, also, very soon after I wrote my first book. I was talking to, I, I was in conversation with Pollster, someone who worked for a big, I think, Harris Poll. And he was doing this big research project and survey for a financial brokerage firm, a mutual fund company on women and money.
And I remember one day he had just had a focus group of women talking about money. And he, and he called me afterwards and I said, well, how was it? And he said with this big surprise in his voice, oh my God, women are feel so emotional about money. Duh. Yes we are. What happens is we, we women over the centuries, over generations have been groomed to be financially dependent.
Yeah.
You know, and, and really we have been... when I first started interviewing women who were smart with money, I really got a clue. And this was 27 years ago. I started to see how money and power are inextricably linked.
Inextricably.
But not because money gives us power, right? It is by stepping into our power that we become a container that can attract, that can keep it, that can grow our wealth\.
But the trouble is powerful women have been burned at the stake.
Yeah.
Powerful women over centuries have been, have suffered dire punishment, horrible consequences for being powerful.
Oh yeah.
So there is something in our collective unconsciousness that has us retreat back into fear. And, all kinds of emotions come up when we think if we haven't been well trained, if we haven't been groomed, if we haven't been conditioned to be financially responsible. It's scary.
Absolutely, and I, I'm kind of thinking about some of the unique beliefs that come up around women with this stuff too, in terms of fearing that, you know, for women who are heterosexual, sort of fearing that it's gonna be unattractive to men if they are successful and master this stuff.
Oh, that was for me. It was absolutely for me.
I remember when I was trying to get smart, trying to read books, trying to figure this stuff out, and I couldn't, it's like I was reading Swahili and I, I went to a, I went to a therapist.
Mm-hmm.
And I said to him, I remember sitting down on him my first session and I said, Daniel, I really wanna get smart with money. I really do. And he looked me in the eye and he said, no, you don't. And it's like, I couldn't argue. It's like someone took the air outta my defenses. And that, that moment I realized that I was terrified that if I was trying to manage money, I would blow it all. And I was even more terrified that my father, that my mother, and any man would not love me if I became financially successful.
Wow.
I had no idea that was there
Mm-hmm.
But working through it, releasing those belief, that's what helped change everything.
To me, financial success is a combination of the outer work of wealth, which is the practical, understanding the difference between a stock and a bond, knowing how to negotiate raise.
Yeah.
But if you get stuck, With the practical, then it's really important that you do the inner work of wealth, which is the looking at the, the, the, the beliefs.
Yes.
The, the decisions you made about yourself and money.
Yes.
How you've been conditioned.
Yeah.
And even that doesn't motivate you. There's what I call the higher work of wealth, and this is particularly important for women and men too.
The higher work is, I believe we are all here for a purpose. We are put on this planet for a reason, but we can't possibly pursue our purpose and play full out if we're struggling to make ends meet.
Yeah, absolutely.
But I think understanding why you're here, the higher work, what is yours to do, is the best motivator for women.
Thank you so much for that. I, I wanna shift gears for a hot sec here and talk about Underearning because I think once we start to talk about that, we will be able to connect some puzzle pieces for people. The very first book of yours I ever read was Overcoming Underearning and it changed my life. So, can we begin with defining it?
Will you define Underearning for our listeners for me?
You know, an under earner is anyone who earns less that she needs or desires, despite her efforts to do othewise.
Right.
It has nothing to do with the amount you make.
Mm-hmm.
you can make six figures and be an under earner.
Mm-hmm.
and you can make a lot less and not be.
Mm-hmm.
I, I'll give you an example. My, I have two daughters. One's a, I, I have three, but one's a stay-at-home mom, but one daughter's an organic farmer and one daughter. It owns a small town movie theater. Neither one are high earners, but they're not under earners because they make enough to meet their needs and they're doing what they love.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
and it feeds their soul.
Mm-hmm.
Underearning never features soul. It is never a conscious choice. It is always a condition of deprivation, and not just of money, but of time, of choices, of joy, of freedom. And always self-esteem.
Mm-hmm. Well, it's really interesting because I feel like we are living in a really challenging time in the sense that even just statistically speaking, I would, I would sort of say that the majority of Americans qualify on some level as under earners, just because the statistics would bear that out.
You know, we hear these things all the time. One of the things that I was being reminded of as I was preparing for this is, I read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, which was published in 1996, so it's not a new book any longer. But at the time there was a statistic that I read that I never forgot, which is that 60% of US citizens at the time made less than $28,000 a year, which is remarkable. And I'm gonna go ahead and venture to guess that the majority of them are not doing soulful, fulfilling work. That's that is that they're being paid little for.
I tried to see if I could come up with some more modern uh, statistics and the only thing that I could really find is that in 2021, the median income was about $70,000 a year, which is, you know, depending on where you live could be fine. But if you live in a major US city, it's probably not going very far. And so one of the reasons why I wanna center this conversation, at least for a little bit on Underearning, is that I think that there is a high degree of statistical likelihood. That someone out there listening to this is struggling in some way, shape, or form with earning as much as they need or would like to survive.
Some of that has to do with macroeconomic trends, but a lot of it is just human psychology, right? It's how we are groomed. It's how we come to believe what we believe. So I wonder if you can say a little bit about sort of how our personal histories shape our brains or what we think is possible for ourselves. Will you talk a little bit about limiting beliefs and how that factors into this stuff?
It's everything.
Hmm.
It's absolutely everything. When a person is struggling financially, the, one of the first questions I always ask is, tell me what it was like for you growing up.
Yeah.
And most people don't make that connection surprisingly.
Right.
But you know, if they're saying there's never enough, they realize that's what they heard growing up.
Mm-hmm.
uh, if they're spending and squandering money, they realize that's what their, one of their parents or both of their parents did, if they're arguing about money. Because when we're young, our brain is so malleable.
Yeah.
Our brain always, we can always change our brain, but our brain is specifically grow, we're growing up. And what we see becomes embedded in our brain and it becomes a hardwired belief. And we will, our brain, our, our behavior will, our brain controls our behavior, and if our brain, if we will have certain beliefs, there's this thing called confirmation bias.
Yeah.
Where our, our brain will not see, our brain will not do, our brain will not decide anything.
Yeah.
That it conflicts with our beliefs.
Absolutely.
So it's really important to go back and look at what you learned growing up, because that's probably what's running the show for you today.
Absolutely. And I think one of the things that's so fascinating, just even given the conversation that we're having right now, is that it's not so clear cut as how much money did you have growing up? Because if we think about, just even your story, for example, the problem was not that you didn't have it. It was just that you were taught that it wasn't your role as a girl or a woman to know what to do with it.
So, you know, everybody's got their own personal story. But I think I just wanna point out that it's so interesting that it's not like, it's not a clear cut story of haves or have nots. People can grow up with money and grow up and not know what to do with it. They can grow up with no money and grow, you know, eventually become an adult and figure it out.
But.
It's, it's really about how we program our brain as adults.
Mm-hmm.
We know how they were wired and programmed and conditioned as children.
Mm-hmm.
But the beautiful thing is our brain are very plastic. They can change up until the day we die. So, and this was my latest book when I brought it, cuz I saw.
I, I, I was, I was absolutely fascinated when I started studying neuroscience and I started bringing principles of neuroscience into working with my clients, how profoundly it expedited the learning curve.
Mm-hmm.
How profoundly it changed their whole, uh, image of themselves and how quickly their behavior changed.
Will you please tell us a little bit about how you bring neuroscience into it? What does that actually look?
Okay. What does that look like? So our brain is what controls our behavior.
Mm-hmm.
But our brain is wired by our mind, by the thoughts we think and the feelings we have. So whatever we think or feel over and over again goes to a brain cell. And one brain cell talks to another brain cell and they create this little path between them called a neural pathway. And the more we think that, oh, there's never enough. There's never enough. Or, I'm not enough. I'm stupid. I don't know what I'm doing. The more we repeat that, that path, that neural pathway grows deeper and suddenly it becomes a habit and we habitually follow that belief. Habitually, unconsciously.
Mm-hmm.
So it's very important. It's critical, really, if you. Speed up the learning curve, if you wanna really change that you, you don't work, you don't focus first on changing your behavior. You work and focus on changing your thoughts, your feelings, and your beliefs.
Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's amazing how true that is. I mean, so one of the things that I'm thinking about with what you're saying in terms of confirmation bias and that kind of stuff, but it's amazing how people can have options and not even perceive their options, which I think is sort of central to. You know, the, the Underearning phenomenon, right?
And actually it came, that came about that we can't conceive of other options that we don't believe in or understand it. It's kind of an evolutionary, uh, thing. Because we learn to survive our pretty historic ancestors, learn from our families how to survive. And our brain has only one purpose. It is only one purpose. And that is our survival.
Absolutely.
To keep us safe.
Mm-hmm.
So, so we don't see options because we were, we grew up thinking, 'This is how we survive.' we survive by spending too much. We survive by complaining about it all the time. We survive by struggling and working so hard and, uh, exhausting ourselves. All those things we, our brain sees as survival.
Mm-hmm.
when it's actually the opposite. The irony of it. So it's, it's has an evolutionary role.
It absolutely does. And it's interesting how even part of that evolutionary role to keep us safe is to kind of, to just do what it is that we know. Even if what we know and what we're doing is dysfunctional. Right.
Exactly. I know.
Yeah. It's kind of wild.
Yeah. And when the pain gets bad enough, we wake up.
Mm-hmm.
And, and that's kind of ,one of my, one of my motivating forces is to really encourage people, don't wait for a crisis, cuz that's when most women get serious about managing money is when they lose a job, lose their spouse or the brink of retirement, which is the first time, don't wait.
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We only send newsletters out and we have something good to say. I. Thanks so much. And now let's dive back in.
I'm just gonna tell a little story. Okay?
Please.
So when I first, I sold my first book to, uh, to Penguin, my publisher. I went to New York and I had lunch with my editor and we were talking, and I said, do you, do you invest?
And she said, oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, I have no money. No, no, no. And I could tell she was embarrassed. So I dropped the subject. Well, she worked on my book.
My book came out, so it was a couple years since our lunch, and she called me and she said, remember that lunch we had? I said, yeah, and I told you I didn't invest. Well, she said I had a 401k, but it was all in cash. It wasn't until I read your book that I realized how ridiculous that was. So I started investing. And I started investing my, the 401k and I even started saving up my spare change. When I got enough, I started investing that outside my 401k. And I said, oh my God. I was so excited.
But then she said, the words I hear so often I hear all the time, she said, I have to tell you, Barbara, I feel so powerful and that is why we do this. It is not just about the money. It's about. Stepping into and owning and feeling how powerful, how powerful we are when you, when you take charge of your money, you really.
Yeah, it's really amazing. It kind of makes me think about, as I started following your work, it felt to me like I was kind of going on a trajectory in my own life that I started to notice coincidentally or whatever, just in the publishing of your books, you were going on an evolution that my life was sort of mirroring in a certain way.
So you know, it started with Underearning, but then you came out with sacred success and things were becoming increasingly spiritual.
And I wanna talk to you about that a little bit more because obviously you've been kind of hinting at it a little bit here, but can you say a little bit more about what that journey was like for you when it, when you started to kind of open up spiritually around this stuff?
So, interesting you said that because that was a big deal for me. That was a big deal. My journey of, of really taking charge of my money, of really growing into an adult with money was very, very spiritual. When I got that tax bill for over a million dollars and I didn't have anything, and I was terrified. I remember I was just terrified, and I was in despair.
I didn't know what to do. And I, I was in, I was in the grocery store and the person behind, the person behind me was talking about a course in Miracles.
Mm-hmm.
I don't know why it caught my, it caught my attention and I leaned back and I said, what's a course in Miracle? And she said, well, it's a spiritual book. I don't really know much about it, but it's sold in this town where I had just moved to. And I went and I bought a course of miracles. And I don't know. Do, do you, do you know the Course of Miracles, leslie?
I'm actually only loosely familiar with it. I, I have only ever heard it. Uh, I've heard some people talk about it.
I've never read it myself. I, I'm not that familiar.
Well, don't even try to read it. Honestly, it has.
I've heard. Yeah, that's not the time anyone said that to me,
and I have no idea why I couldn't stop. This was in 1982. I have no idea why I couldn't stop with that. But I really believe that. Would you bring the divine into your relationship with the almighty dollar? It deepens your relationship with money. It changes it. It's not, it's no longer just a practical process. It's a spiritual practice. It's a healing journey. It is a right of passage into your power. And so for me, the practical was important, but the spiritual was huge. And I remember when, right at the beginning, one of the first lines, I'd read it, I couldn't understand it, and then a line would kind of stick out.
And the line was: your task is not to seek for love, but to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself you have built against it.
Wow.
And that was like God was telling me, stop trying to figure this money stuff out and look at what's inside and why you can't. You're a smart woman, why can't you?
Mm-hmm.
And that just started my journey. That just started, the veils just started to lift. The more I explored my fears and my beliefs and my early decisions I made.
Thank you so much for that. It's really interesting cuz I feel like we live in a world that gives us such messed up thoughts and beliefs about money. You know, the idea that this one feels important to me, but you know that money can't buy happiness, right? And it's like, of course there are lots of rich and miserable people on the face of the planet.
Poverty! Poverty doesn't buy happiness either.
Exactly. Mm-hmm.
Nothing out there buys happiness.
Mm-hmm.
It's, it's an inside job.
Absolutely. But I think it also is, it distorts a little bit the, the importance and the primacy that money has in our lives. It's like money buys the food we eat. It puts a, a roof over our heads. Like, it's very, our relationship with money is deeply. Psychological and deeply personal, but also very important. You know, like addressing this part of one's life is, it has a sort of a psychospiritual component to it, because that's such an important part of being alive I think.
It is. I mean, we don't say that about food. Money's still different than food, right? We eat it to stay alive. We need money to exist and to, uh, to give. I had a line in sacred Sacred Success that I kept putting in and taking out, putting in and taking out. Cuz I was embarrassed, I was scared. And so I kept it in.
And when my book came out, publishers Week Weekly gave me a really glowing review, but they started the review with that line. And the line was, "I believe that money is God made visible."
Because it's not the money, it's the power we have to claim, that we can become who we wanna be. It's the power that we have to take on and own to become who we were created to be.
Do you think, do you ever think about it through the lens of energy in terms of money being like sort of money, having an energy?
Everything has energy.
Mm-hmm.
We are energy.
Mm-hmm.
Nothing is solid. Everything's energy.
Mm-hmm.
Of course money is energy. And how, how do you vibrate energetically? It depends on whether you will attract that energy to you or you will repel that energy.
Mm-hmm. Do you happen to have any practical advice in your mind that comes to you when you think about how people can sort of step into more of an attracting space versus, you know, how do people start to play with this stuff for themselves?
It boils down to love.
Hmm.
It boils down to love. One is self-love.
Yeah.
Really, that's a whole nother subject, but it's loving money.
Mm-hmm.
It's really just, you know, there's so much, money's evil. Money is the root of all evil.
Mm-hmm.
People who have money are bad or greedy, whatever. We have these really contaminated beliefs around money.
Indeed.
But we can learn to love money. In my mind, money is like the ideal lover.
All money wants to do is serve you and support you for the rest of your life. But in return, money needs to be taken care of.
Yeah.
Like a loved one. It needs to be respected and appreciate it.
Mm-hmm.
And if it's not respected, appreciated, and feels understood, it's not gonna stick around.
God, that's so beautiful. Not only do I totally agree with you, but I actually think you were saying something really important when you were talking about self-love too.
Because if people are struggling with their sense of their own worthiness, that is not all of this stuff can fall apart there.
It, of course it does, because everything. Out there. Okay. You, you opened the door for me to enter spiritual conversations.
Yeah. Oh yeah. Let's go there. Mm-hmm.
I really appreciate that.
So we live in a reflective universe.
Mm-hmm.
Everything out there reflects what's in here.
Mm-hmm.
When we love ourselves and wanna give to ourselves, the universe matches that. When we don't feel worthy, when we don't feel beautiful, when we don't feel good about ourselves we push things away. Unconsciously.
Definitely unconsciously.
Yeah. Yeah.
But self love is the answer to everything.
And I can only imagine that this ties straight back into whether people feel like they deserve something or not. Right. Notions of deserving whether they deserve to make money.
Yeah, i, it's so interesting. I just, there was someone in my community. Just, I have an online community, uh, of women, safe place for women to talk about money as women.
Sure.
And she was just saying that she, she had so much success, so much success just recently, and she started getting scared because she had this superstition. She called her really a belief that she, that she does, that she's not worthy. And she said, she'll get what she deserves.
She started getting all this. And she got really sick. She got strep throat and was really sick. That's how powerful our belief system is.
Right.
If we don't feel worthy and we do happen to bring it in, we will implode somehow.
Mm-hmm.
unless we start feeling worthy, because that, that really, it mirrors how we feel about ourselves, our relationship with money.
Yeah. So interesting. I'm thinking. How we kind of help people move through that. Right. Like one of the things that I had wanted to talk to you about is sort of the resistance and the avoidance that comes up when people start talking about this stuff.
I love to talk about resistance.
Let's do that, shall we?
Let's do that. Yes. I believe resistance always happens. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. It is inevitable. It's normal. It is not bad. Resistance is a psychological term for an internal conflict. So whenever you move, whenever you do something you're not used to doing, that's out of you, out of your comfort zone, you will resist.
So it's a good sign when you go into resistance. When I go into a resistance and I do a lot, I always say, oh goodie, that means I'm going to the next level.
Ooh, good reframe.
Yeah, it is. But it's important to work with the. Because what it means is that part of you wants to grow and the other part is scared you.
So the way you work with resistance is to get to know the part that doesn't, and you get those parts to work together. So you ask yourself some questions, what am I really afraid of? What, what? What is the payoff for staying where I am? How would I feel in five years if nothing's changed, if I don't ever do that?
And to start really exploring what that resistance is telling you. It is. It is a beautiful opportunity to excavate, to bring to your awareness any unconscious beliefs that may be keeping you from getting to where you wanna go.
Yeah, I'm thinking about what you were saying before about how it's the brain's job to keep us safe, right?
And yet at the same time we have these, you know, neuroplastic brains. There's neuroplasticity that makes it so that our early life experiences shape the way we look at the world, but then we can work on ourselves and come to see it differently. Right?
And it feels like we're right in the tension point of those things, right? That part of us wants to grow. Part of us, the really unconscious part that kind of just wants to stay safe, wants to keep things the same, and this is how we work through those things. Right?
Right. And it happens. You know, when we're just living our normal lives, but when we decide to do something different, when we decide to deviate from the norm, when we decide to leave our comfort zone, resistance kicks in.
It just does.
And you're right, it's our brain keeping us safe.
But our soul is pushing us because our soul wants us to grow. Our soul knows we're safe.
Mm-hmm. I love that.
I, I will um, something I just wanna say for the sake of the listeners is that in the show notes and all of that stuff for this episode, I'll put links to your books and I, I wanna say for their benefit that in several of your books, if not all of them, there are really good journaling prompts. And I think particularly in Overcoming Underearning and Rewire, there are really good journaling prompts for working through these things.
But can you maybe say a little bit about, if somebody is listening to us right now and they're feeling really inspired and they have no idea where to begin, where would you maybe, uh, suggest that they start?
Well, it depends what the issue is.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true.
But basically the question to always ask first, it's what I call the power question.
And it's a question we rarely ask. And the question is, what do I want? What do I want?
Not what does my parents want, or what does my husband want? And what do my kids want? And what does society want?
What do I want?
And to really explore that. And then you take steps to get it. And if you can't take those steps or those steps aren't working, then to explore your resistance.
And to explore whatever beliefs or internal blocks may be getting in the way.
Yeah. What are the stories that you're telling yourself about why you
Exactly.
You can't have it.
Right. And the interesting thing to do now that you mentioned said that is just notice as you go through your day, the stories you tell yourself.
What is the conversation you're having about money? What is the conversation you're having about your ability to succeed? What is the conversation you're having with others and in your head about your worthiness? That's excellent.
How can people connect with you after this? You, I know you have your Facebook group, but that's a lady's only thing, right?
Yeah. I have a, I have a, it's not just a, yeah, it's a Facebook group, but it's a, uh, it. It's a community that we meet constantly. We have group coaching, we have experts come and talk about very financial things. We have a book club. We have just all kinds of wonderful resources. So, but you can go to my website, barbara-huson.com, and there's just all kinds of resources on there.
Fantastic. And a lot of that is, um, a lot of how you work with people is helping them to start investing and that kind of stuff. Right? That's something that we haven't really talked much about, but is there, you know, do you, is that part of the coaching, helping people to get comfortable with investing?
To help people because you, anything you don't understand is fearful?
Yeah.
So the way to get comfortable is to get out of ignorance and faintness. So yes, a big deal. You know, I'm all about creating wealth. I'm not just about paying your bills and getting out of debt. Michael Beckwith once said he's a, a, you know, the Reverend Michael Beckwith?
I'm, I'm familiar with his work. Yeah.
He once said, how can you be the light of the world if you can't pay your light bills? And I'm not just about paying your light bills. I'm really about really helping people become... Really shine their light at maximum wattage.
Absolutely.
And the way you do that is you follow four rules, what I call the four rules of wealth.
You spend less, you save more, you invest wisely. And you give generously, in that order. Cause most of us, especially women, have the giving generously are down pat. Giving generously what's out? Spending less, saving more and investing wisely is always an act of self sabotage. Cuz not only do you diminish, you know, do you jeopardize your financial future, but you diminish the impact that you can make with your money.
So investing is a big part of, of really creating wealth and all wealth. People say, oh, wealth. No. All wealth is, is, my definition is you have more than you need. You have more than enough.
Right.
And you know it.
Mm-hmm.
And that's an important part that you know it, cuz I know people who have $10 million and they feel financially insecure.
Yeah. That is an amazing piece of this, right? That it's not, it's not just about how much you have, it's about how you feel about what you have. Exactly.
You know, the word wealth comes from the. Root word weal
W e a l, which means wellbeing and the whole point of, wealth, the whole point in my book, is to create wellbeing.
That's excellent. Thank you so much for your time today, Barbara.
Honestly. You are. You are very cool.
You've been listening to the third episode of the third season of the Nature of. And I wanna thank you for joining us. If you would like to connect with Barbara, you can find her at barbara-huson.com, and she's @theBarbaraHuson on Instagram and Twitter. If you would like to connect with me, you can find me as always @DrLeslieCarr on Instagram and Twitter or@lesliecarr.com. If you found this conversation valuable, please let me know by leaving a review or a rating. It helps immensely to get the word out about the podcast and into the ears of those who may need it most. It'll also help me to understand what you're getting out of our conversations, and you can also subscribe if you haven't already in any podcast app that you can get your hands on.
Next up is an interview with author Tracey Higgins about her full recovery from schizophrenia. And what she wishes everyone knew about psychosis. You do not want to miss it. Many, many thanks to my producer and sound editor, Amanda Rasco Mayo, and to Barbara for having this conversation with me. Thank you as well to Donie Odulio for the artwork, and thank you to Steve Van Dyck, Lee and Tyler Sargent, and Joe Potts for the permission to use their music. The band was called Clown Down.