Episode 2 – Your Relationship to Money

 Welcome to Loving Money, the podcast with Lisa Wilcox. This is the place to be if you share the belief that I do, that when you change your relationship to money, you change your relationship to life. And even if you don’t have that belief yet, stick around. I’m gonna show you just how true that is in our time together.

If you’re driving in your car, cleaning your house, and listening to this podcast, I am gonna show you very clearly that when you change your relationship to money, you change your relationship to life. And I am so happy and grateful that you are here joining me in this experience. You can follow along at Lee Wilcox, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Pinterest, and of course at my website, lease wilcox.com.

I hope you’ll join me and. I’m so excited for what’s about to happen for you in your life.

Hello and welcome back to Loving Money, the podcast with Elise Wilcox. This is the place to be if you wanna change your relationship to money. Change your life and finally feel like you can stop playing small. I’m a big believer that literally every relationship in our life is built on the foundation of the relationship that we have with ourselves, including the relationship we have with money.

And a lot of the time people that I talk to sound a little bit surprised when I frame it as a relationship that we have to money usually more often than not. We see money as this transactional tool. Often it’s something that feels quite taboo. It’s, you know, in the world that we live in that has very few boundaries or, um, filters attached to it.

Kind of the, the age of the overshare money is still one of those things that we don’t tend to feel really comfortable talking about. If you wanna change your relationship to money, First, you have to be able to identify that you do in fact have a relationship to money. And that’s what we’re gonna be talking about on this podcast today.

I don’t know if you are familiar with something called Attachment Theory. Um, it’s a, it’s a psychological concept that was used predominantly in the studying of infants and how they attach to their primary caregiver. And then a couple of very smart folks, a number of years ago thought, hang on a second.

Why have we only looked at how attachment style affects infants? Why don’t we start looking at how attachment style affects adults? And if you’re somebody who is in an intimate relationship or interested in being in an intimate relationship, attachment theory is an incredibly valuable tool for you to understand because it looks at how.

We first attached or related to our primary caregiver and what that initial attachment looked like or continues to look like in the ripple effects of how we relate to other people, especially in intimacy. So you can have, you can be an avoidant attacher, somebody who, you know, may say they want a relationship, but as soon as they get close to one, um, they run in the opposite direction.

I have dated most of the people who fall into that category, and I’m happy to give you further examples. If you wanna DM me here or on Instagram at Lees Wilcox, you can have an anxious attacher, somebody who is insecure in terms of their attachment, so they tend to obsess. About their partner or their prospective partner.

Somebody who feels like they’re never going to feel secure in that relationship. And so as a result, they tend to overdo it because they’re constantly afraid that person’s gonna leave them. Um, I have been that person in a number of relationships, so again, happy to provide personal insights. Send me a message at hello, at least wilcox.com.

And then finally you have this like really coveted attachment style called secure. Somebody who has a secure attachment to their primary caregiver tends to be pretty secure in their adult life, meaning they’re pretty good at relationships. They might seem so good at relationships. In fact, they’re a little bit boring because they’re actually just really stable.

They don’t fall within the, the parameters of the Hollywood like. Immediate infatuation, and I can’t live with you style co-dependency. They’re just actually pretty secure in who they are, and they’re quite lovely to be in a relationship because there isn’t a lot of drama that comes with a secure attacher.

Well, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and argue that those attachment styles also carry into our relationship, or overflow into our relationship with money. So as I said, the first thing we need to do is understand that. Money is a tool. Yes. We’re gonna talk more about that on a later episode. Money is also not real.

It’s something that we made up. And if you look at the banks that have fallen, all the Sam Bankman Freed Crypto stuff that has blown up in our recent times. You can see money’s not real. It’s totally a construct that we, uh, just adhere to. In our current society, we’re gonna talk about that on a later episode.

Money first and foremost is something that we have a relationship to. You know, we want to believe that it’s independent of us, or we wanna believe that we don’t have to really engage with it beyond using it to get what we need. But if every relationship we have in our life is built in the foundation of the relationship we have with ourself.

What if we started to look at our relationship to money as a reflection, as a relationship we have with ourself? Now, I don’t wanna make this too heady or too cerebral. I just think it’s really fascinating that we can have a relationship with something as inanimate as money, especially when it has these unconscious grips on our life.

Um, meaning it has these stories or programs that tend to guide our behavior from behind the scenes often that we don’t know are there. So if we just kind of briefly look at how attachment theory could apply to money, let’s look at you as a specific example. When you think about money and you think about your relationship to money, does it feel like you wanna just put your head in the sand?

Like you don’t wanna talk about it? Maybe you feel like you’ve never been good at math, or you’ve never been quote unquote good with money, and so as a result, you kind of shy away from it. Does it feel like anytime anything financially comes on the news or in your social media feeds or around the dinner table, what have you, that you’re just like, Ugh, I don’t even wanna go there.

Like I can’t even, I don’t think anybody says, I don’t wanna go there, but just, just join me in my nineties moment for a second. Does it feel like, I just don’t like, I just. I can’t, I can’t participate in this conversation. I feel like it’s not for me. I don’t want anything to do with it. Maybe you think money is the root of all evil and that rich people, just like Disney told us, are like always these like evil, bad guys that steal, if that sounds like you, that you just don’t wanna have anything to do with it.

And you certainly don’t wanna look at a bank account or you know, really dig into how much money you’re making or God forbid spending. It’s very likely that you have, you know, that kind of avoidant relationship to money. What if, on the other hand, maybe you’re somebody who is great at earning money, like really good at making it, but you’re also really good at spending it and it feels like there’s almost an obsession.

Like I can’t wait to get more just so I can basically get rid of it. Or how much more money can I get so that I can just spend more of it? Or you’re living paycheck to paycheck. Even if you’re making great money, you’re living paycheck to paycheck and you’re kind of using your bank account as your budgeting tool to be like, oh, thank God I just got that $5,000 payment.

Now I can pay off this thing that I already committed to, or I could now buy this thing that I’ve been been wanting. Maybe you’re somebody who’s like obsessed with money that you start to check your bank account every day and. Maybe overspending is not your thing. Maybe you can’t, it’s like overs saving is your thing.

Like there’s a fear of spending money because it feels like I’m never gonna be able to afford it. I’m never gonna be able to have enough. I have to constantly look at my bank account and go over my numbers to make sure there’s enough coming in and you just kind of can’t stop obsessing about it. If either of those scenarios sound like you, That’s coming from such a place of scarcity.

I would argue that’s an anxious attachment to money. I never feel satisfied. It feels like there’s never enough for me. I’m anxiously attached to it. Then maybe you’re one of the few people who, who somehow developed a beautiful financial education or an incredible sense of financial literacy through your parents.

This is, by the way, phenomenally rare. It is just so phenomenally rare to grow up. In a home that talks about money in a really healthy way. Um, I can tell you from my perspective as a strategic business coach, it’s just exceptionally rare that people have a naturally healthy relationship with money. We usually present, company included.

We usually come to the table with just all kinds of emotional wounding with respect to money, however, If you are one of those coveted few who has a secure relationship to money, you’re somebody who probably is comfortable with the notion that there will always be more. There is always enough. You’re able to make decisions from that really abundant mindset of, you know, money’s not real.

It’s a thing we made up. I trust in myself. I trust the universe always is protecting me, and there’s money coming in. I’m aware of where that money is coming in from, and I’m also consciously aware of how I’m saving it, how I’m spending it. In general. I feel good about the relationship with money. Well, congratulations to you because you have a secure relationship with money and that is ultimately the place we each wanna get to.

And that’s why this podcast came to be, you know, as I said, as a results focused strategic business coach. I help women make more money and empower women to be worthy and wealthy in everything that I offer from private coaching, group coaching into a very soon to be launched digital program. So let me ask you this.

When it comes to your relationship with money, even if this is a new concept or new language for you, or if you haven’t, just haven’t thought about this in a long time, or if you haven’t given yourself permission to sit down and look at this part of your self-education in a while. How do you feel about money?

When we start to have these conversations, what are the emotions that come up? Is there erasing in your chest? Do you feel that pit of your stomach kind of drop out? What’s the name of that emotion and where do you feel it in your body? What we wanna do is capitalize on and nurture the really good feelings we have with respect to our relationship with money.

And we wanna disrupt the negative thoughts or negative emotions we have about money so that we can improve our relationship to it. When we improve our relationship to money, we improve our relationship to life. When we’re able to dig into that and really look at how our relationship to money is affecting on the, on the inside is affecting our relationship to life on the outside.

That is when we’re able to start to close that gap between self-worth and net worth, which is why we’re here when we’re starting to look at how our relationship to money came to be. The question I loved to ask clients is threefold. What did you learn from your mom About money? Mm-hmm. On purpose or by accident?

For better or for worse. What did you learn from your dad about money on purpose, by accident? For better or for worse. And what did you learn from any other caregiver in your life? Sometimes it’s grandparents. Maybe it was a nanny. Um, an uncle who had an active role in your life or any other adult who stands out who has contributed to how you see the world, or how that lens that you look through has been informed or shaped.

What are those lessons that you learned, again, by accident or on purpose? And then look at each of those lessons that you learned from each of those significant people in your life. And yes, by the way, if you’re like literally nothing, I learned absolutely nothing. That is really powerful insight as to what your relationship to money could look like or how it’s been informed if there’s been no education.

You know, I often think if we don’t teach a kid to learn the alphabet, we can’t later expect that they’ll be able to read. Right. We have to learn the very basic foundational skills so that we can put them together and play with them and get creative with them and really make them impactful and meaningful.

Well, if you were someone who grew up in a household where there was no financial literacy or there was no financial education, we didn’t talk about it, we judged it, we shamed it, we hid it, whatever. You can’t be expected as an adult to magically create. The awareness to talk about money or to have like a really positive relationship with money if you’ve never been given the basic skills to, to start participating in the conversation.

So have a look at what those family stories are that have informed your current relationship to money, and then start to look at the patterns you have in your life that are dictated by that relationship to money. So, you know, maybe when you’re doing this self-reflection, you figure out that, wow, you know, for my mom, money was something we never had enough of.

She was always stressed about it. She needed to make sure that, um, we were always saving or getting things on sale. We never did anything or went anywhere. We got used clothing, whatever that is. And maybe the pattern in your life that you see is that you’re a reluctant spender. That it’s very difficult for you to trust yourself to make a decision that you know, you feel like dreaming about a vacation or a beautiful wardrobe or charging what you are worth is out of reach for you and you allow yourself to, to stay stuck in this pattern of feeling small.

You can start to see the direct correlation between those two things. All you’re doing is kind of fulfilling the story that you were taught. Maybe conversely, maybe your father taught you that you know, hard work is what it takes to get ahead and you watched him work hard and work harder and work harder still, and he never got ahead.

Maybe you start to have that avoidant relationship with money because you feel like it’s actually really evil, that your dad worked and worked himself to the bone and never got ahead and was constantly taken advantage of. And so what’s the point? Because anytime anybody has money, they’re going to yield it.

As they yield power over you, and they will always keep you down. Well, there goes your motivation to ever participate in the money conversation because your entire experience with money has been negative and frankly, heartbreaking. When you can start to look at the patterns in your life and think critically about where those patterns are coming from or what their own origin story would be.

You start to have agency over your own relationship to money, for example, what is the story you’re telling yourself and is that story true? How do we look for then examples around you in your, in your current life, your current reality that are the opposite of what you’ve learned? If you’re coming to the table as an adult with a really negative relationship to money, You can never love it until you decide you’re gonna change that storyline and therefore, change your relationship too.

Money. Start looking for examples in your life in which people are using money for great things. Start looking for examples of people who are wealthy and you respect. Start looking for examples of people who are living lives where it just feels like it’s enough. They’re not overdoing it. They’re not burnt out.

They’re actually living a pretty peaceful, contented, contented, I don’t know if that’s a word, a peaceful and content life where they feel fulfilled and they have money, and it feels like they have enough money. They’re not trying to overdo it. They’re not trying to prove it, and they’re also not going out of their way to scrimp and save.

That’s. Action item number one, look for examples of how you can change your relationship to money simply by looking for those expanders in your life that they exist. Action item number two is to stop saying things like, I can’t afford that, or I could never afford it, or, oh my God, that is way too expensive for me.

When we’re looking at our relationship to money, it’s never about the cost of something. It’s about the value. I’m a bit of a brain nerd and I am really obsessed with how the language we use confirms old patterns of thinking to be true over and over again. So if you come from that background that tells you you can’t have anything, that you can’t have nice things or you can’t afford things, or you’ll never be able to live that rich life you, you’ve desired because it would feel good for you.

You have to get out as the pattern of telling yourself that you can’t afford it, because then you’re just confirming that to be true over and over again. And the way our unconscious mind works, it’s like a viewfinder. It’s like we take in millions of pieces of information and any given second. So if our brain were to process all that information, It would probably explode.

So our unconscious is designed to work as a filter, like a viewfinder. That what you put in the lens into the machine and you look through at a certain picture and just keep clicking through. My favorite was the Muppet, so I always use the Muppet example. You’re just clicking through your viewfinder lens, looking at different pictures of the Muppets.

It feels like that’s the only thing that exists cuz it’s the only thing you can see. We know from growing up with viewfinders as kids, all you have to do is reach into the machine, remove the lens, and put a new lens in through which you can look at, and now all of a sudden you can see pictures of France or of race cards depending on the lens that you put in.

Well, when we’re changing our relationship to money, we have to choose the lens we want to look through and we want to look through a lens that teaches us. You are allowed to have the things you want. You’re allowed to have dreams that are bigger than yourself and you’re allowed to take action to pursue them.

And when every one of those dreams or opportunities or even daydreams is, is met with, no, I could never do that. I could never afford that. That’s way too expensive for me. You’re immediately going back to look through that old lens. So I’d really encourage you to use this exercise on your own. What are the relationships you’ve learned from other people in your life, especially in early childhood, and how do those stories or their most narratives, those old programs, how do they impact and influence the relationship you have with money today?

You’ll be able to see that by looking at your own patterns, your own actions, and what that tells you about the relationship you have with money, in addition to the feelings that you have. And where you have them in your body. You know, if you, if you’re thinking about money and you get that awful like stomach dropping out feeling, you’re not gonna wanna pursue a relationship with money cuz that is a turn off, you’re gonna run in the opposite direction.

We wanna cultivate a loving, healthy, generous, trusting relationship with money. And we first have to identify what these stories are and kind of where they’re hiding out in our, in our physical body. Then you’re going to. Look for healthy examples or examples of healthy relationships with money. All you have to do is start looking for them and they will start to appear again.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message. Hello, at least wilcox.com or find me on Instagram or LinkedIn, both, at least Wilcox, and we can chat about that. But look for those expanders of people who are living in a healthy relationship to money that you really desire to have, and start teaching your brain that it’s safe for you too, to have that kind of lifestyle or for you to have that relationship with money.

And the last thing is to remove that part of your language that tells you the past is true. That part that like, oh, all I have to do is hustle, grind, work hard, get ahead. Or I could never afford that, or I, that would never be for me. You wanna really be conscious of the language that you’re using so that you’re not confirming old patterns.

And again, you can imagine that you’re just basically switching out one of those lenses in your viewfinder brain for a new one, a new one that you actually want to see pictures of. Not the pictures you’ve just looked at cuz they were the only ones you knew existed. How does this land for you? I’d love to know your thoughts on what comes up with those old stories that you learned in childhood and how you’re acting on them now, how you’re changing them now.

Cuz again, when we change our relationship to money, that’s when we’re able to change our relationship to life. And finally, stop playing small. So I’d love to hear from you. You know, hop over to my website. Lease wil cox.com. On Instagram or LinkedIn, at least Wilcox, and send me a message. I’d love to connect.

I’m pretty obsessed with this conversation and the relationship that we have to money, and I’d love to dig into it with you further, one-on-one or even in a group setting like my Mastermind, the Sunshine Club, the place where we heal your relationship to money, double your income and give you the opportunity to finally stop playing small.

Thank you so much for joining me here today, and I hope that you have a beautiful day going forward.