By: Murielle Marie
I’m in the process of increasing the prices of my coaching packages, so last week I was running a few numbers by my husband (hint: if you’ve been thinking about working with me, now might be the time to do so… prices go up at the end of the month!).
The conversation went great, until I started to explain why I was increasing my prices. He looked at me, sighed (as if we’d been there before), and said: “Babe, no need to explain your worth to me.”
If you’ve ever met my husband you’ll know he’s not the most talkative guy around, but when he does say something, it’s usually on point - except perhaps when he’s had a few too many Stellas. But since he hadn’t had a beer that day I knew right away he’d caught me in the middle of a nasty desire-guilt-excuse trip so many women go on when it comes to money.
This made me think about money, my relationship to it (yes, life’s a journey, and we’re all on it), and all the things I used to tell myself about money.
As women, we have a very strange relationship with money, don’t we? With statistics claiming that up to 85% of all consumer purchases in the US alone are done by women, you would think that we’re savvy, educated, well-informed, and powerful when it comes to money. But… not so much.
Contrary to most men, who seem to have a “natural” inclination towards money (read: get born into a society that teaches them money is something to love, desire, and work for), women - born in a different world altogether it seems, are told that temperance, including not desiring too much of anything really, are the cornerstones of civilisation - entertain a more “I love you, no I don’t” type of relationship with it.
I believe that this difference in the kind of world we’re born into, starts us off in life with a financial deficit that is unfair, and often difficult to fix. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. In fact, I think women are great with money.
We just lack the right education, and the empowering beliefs to go along with it.
So here are five cool ways that will help you to manifest more money in your life right now (and maybe even help you fix your relationship with it too):
Go on a scavenger hunt.
Whenever a woman tells me she can’t afford something, or has no money, my stomach twitches. Of course there are many people in the world that have to come by with way too little (and I believe it is our duty to help eradicate that inequality) but you reading these words right now indicates to me that you’re not one of them.
Often when we think we have no money, or that we can’t afford something I believe there’s a deeper issue at play. Most of us have homes full of stuff, don’t we? In fact, in the Western world specifically, most of us have too many things.
So where’s this lack of money idea coming from? It’s the result of a magic trick called consumerism. But the thing is, the money is not gone. It’s just transformed into something else, and it can go back to being money.
So my first tip is to go on a scavenger hunt around your house, your office, any other spaces you keep your stuff in. Look at your belongings (and I mean - really look at them, in a Marie Kondo kind of way if you need to), and pick all the things you can do without, don’t really like, don’t really need, or didn’t even know you had. Now turn them back into money: sell them, exchange them for labor of some sort, give them away...
Understand what money really is.
One of the turning points in my own money story was when I discovered what money really is: energy. This is HUGE. Because energy is everywhere, in everything, always. We are energy. The whole Universe is energy. And through what we call “work” we transfer that energy from one thing to another. Just like we transform that energy into stuff when we buy things, as I’ve explained above. What we call money then is the currency with which we give different types of energy (read: products or services) a specific value.
So my second tip is for you to start thinking of money in terms of energy - physical, emotional, mental. Your energy goes in, money comes out. When money goes in, something you wanted for a long time will come out. And so on… it’s one big exchange of energy. Remember this when you think about money, and your relationship to it will forever be transformed: you are money (wink wink).
Learn to love money.
As women, we grow up having all these mixed feelings about money: "it’s icky," "I shouldn’t like it," "it’s not for me, I don’t need it..." But worse than that, we grow up not fully trusting our own ability to make money. So we give our power away, and don’t control our finances. Perhaps we give away our power to our partner, or by getting in and out of debt, or by failing to put ourselves first… There are so many ways our twisted relationship with money shows up. But there’s only one way to fix it: learning to love it.
I’ve come to believe that learning to love money means learning to love yourself. You cannot fully separate your feelings of self-worth from what you believe about money (at least, that’s how I see it). Loving money is accepting that you have desires, and being ready to give them to yourself. In my book, there’s (almost) no greater act of self-love than learning to love money.
Become a finance expert.
It’s all good and well to learn to love money, to figure out what it really is, and to find you actually have more of it than you think. But how about making sure that what you have, and earn, is well taken care of? This is one area where a lot of women are lacking, and for a very good reason.
We’re simply not taught how to take care of our money - and that’s if we’re taught to be financially independent in the first place (uneasy cough).
We believe so many stories about money (see next point for more on that) but believing that we’re capable of managing it well, and prospering doesn’t seem to be one of them. That’s why we need to educate ourselves. Knowledge is power; in this case, with that power comes the ability not only to manifest more money for ourselves, but to make good decisions about it as well. Good decisions about money means more money, ladies!
Update your beliefs about money.
As we grow older, we hear so much crap about money that it’s hardly a surprise we don’t know how to deal with it. Of course money doesn’t grow on trees, and no you cannot eat money, and I’m pretty sure pennies, dollars, or euros on their own won’t make you happy. But that’s not the point now is it?
Almost all of those beliefs share a similar point: we live in a world of "lack." A world where you have to suffer to make money, where you’re supposed to be scared someone’s gonna come and take all of it away from you. One where it’s not OK to ask for money, or to receive it without a whole lot of effort associated to it.
But what’s the validity of any of these claims?
We live in a hyperconnected world with instant access to information. Not in a village outside of London in the 1600s. Life must have been much harder back then, access to knowledge, and an education probably almost inexistent, and money… well certainly not as available as it is today. Absolutely. But that was then, and this is now.
In a world where you have instant access to all the knowledge you need, and a direct connection to almost everyone you could ever cater for, where’s the lack? Pretty much gone. Replaced by a world of possibilities.
That’s why my final tip today is that it’s time for a major belief system upgrade. Give your money story the same care as you give your smartphone, laptop, or any other hardware you use for work, a.k.a. to make money. The same rule applies: the older the system you’re running, the worse it will perform. Exactly what an outdated belief system will do to your ability to make money.
This article previously appeared on MurielleMarie.com.
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Murielle Marie is a life and business coach, mentor, writer and women’s leadership expert. She's the Founder of Lumturio, providing advanced security monitoring for all CMS users worldwide.
Ellevate Network is a global women’s network: the essential resource for professional women who create, inspire and lead. Together, we #InvestInWomen.