Feel-Good Finances: 3 Steps to Building a Positive Relationship With Money

All too often, feelings of shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, and embarrassment accompany personal finance. These feelings can hold us back from reaching our goals, keeping us stuck in a cycle of negative emotions. Not anymore. We are taking back our power and finally creating a positive relationship with money so we can break the cycle, break away from being broke, and live the life we deserve.

Watch or listen to this episode about Feel-Good Finances on YouTube and Spotify, or follow along to the transcript below! Thanks for being here! :)

If you've been feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or embarrassed about your finances, then this episode is exactly what you've been looking for.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Happy, Healthy, and Wealthy. I'm Nicole, the host of this podcast and the founder of Mindful Money Media, a company dedicated to promoting financial literacy and wellness to everyone, but particularly women. As you can tell if you are watching this on YouTube, but not just listening, I'm back in my regular location. Last week I was somewhere else, was looking a little different, but we're back in my big, big comfy chair and I'm so excited for today's episode, which is all about feeling good about your finances.

And I know that this may seem like a tall order, especially given the economy and everything going on, but I just know that it is so easy to catastrophize and fear the worst and just start exuding doom and gloom and like any time that you even think about money, you know, you start to avoid opening your bank app or looking at your accounts.

And that is not a good place. We don't want to be in that place where we're just avoiding everything because we're afraid of seeing what's going. And these negative feelings that surround your money and your situation, whatever that may be. Maybe you have a lot of debt or you're struggling to pay your mortgage, or you're just living paycheck to paycheck, or you're struggling to just afford to live the life that you want to be living.

It can start to lead you to avoid the subject altogether. And that is hardly productive, especially if you're trying to make meaningful progress towards your goals. Instead, we're going to focus on cultivating a positive mindset and a positive attitude, because that's the number one thing. A positive mindset is going to be the number one determining factor in your success.

So we're going to cultivate that just around money in general. And then of course start implementing some healthy habits to support us along the way. So let's get into this. But actually before we do, if I sound stuffy, I'm so sorry. My allergies have been so bad lately. So I'm just going to apologize in advance if you have to listen to the next however long this episode is and I sound kind of nasally or congested.

Demystify Your Finances

The unknown will always be scary. That is why so many people are afraid of the deep depths of the ocean. Space, like space, terrifies me. Any time I watch like an alien movie, it's just like this vastness, this black vastness of space. It freaks me out because there's just so much unknown about it. It's unfamiliar. And this is especially true of your finances, when you don't know what the heck is going on.

Anything that's so simple from just logging into your bank account, is going to feel like you're walking into a dark room without a flashlight. You have no idea what you might encounter, whether that's rats or cockroaches, or in this case, maybe a negative sounds. But when your finances are no longer just lurking like a creep in the periphery of your life like a deranged stalker, they become less scary and more manageable.

And you achieve this by actually being involved in your finances. This means actually tracking your spending actually budgeting and not just saying that you will, and filling in all the gaps in your knowledge. In my opinion, the power of learning about personal finance is so underrated because understanding something really shrinks the fear and anxiety around it. And considering that personal finance is a topic that not many of us were educated about or informed about, it makes sense that a lot of us try to avoid it because we don't understand it, and we're not good at it.

And as humans, when we don't understand something or we know we're bad at it, we tend to push it off. It is detrimental to your wellbeing and your finances, to keep pushing it off and to keep ignoring it. So having number one that I want you to start implementing, kind of like homework is going to be learning more about personal finance.

Identify what areas your week and what do you not know about. What questions do you have that you need and want answered? So this could be anything as basic as how to build a budget that works for you, so you can stick with it to determining and investing strategy that fits your needs. You're going to do this by any means necessary.

So this could be reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, going attending workshops or meeting with an advisor or a planner or a coach or anyone that can provide knowledge or support, that can help you. The whole point of this is so you're able to get the information you need to make empowered, informed decisions. Like I said, this may look like talking to a financial planner or a coach, or starting a conversation with a friend or your spouse.

And it may look like, you know, putting on a financial podcast while you're at the gym. The more knowledgeable that you are, the more confident you will become. Which brings us to step two.

Building Your Confidence

With knowledge comes confidence. But that confidence comes at different levels and it's different for everyone. You may be confident in what you know, but you might not be so confident in actually applying it or believing that you deserve the changes that will come from applying. Do you believe that you are capable of putting it into action? Do you believe that you deserve to put it into action and if the answer is no, then these roadblocks can and will get in the way of your progress.

Because even with all the knowledge in the world, if you don't have the right mindset, it's going to be kind of useless. Kind of like a remote without batteries. If you don't believe in your own capability or worthiness, nothing is going to change. So if you're someone who struggles with your confidence, particularly around money, which I know a lot of people do, what can you do to fix this?

I find that affirmations and or introspective journaling can be really helpful. So you can pick one or do both, whatever you're more comfortable with. But I find that affirmations are really helpful for becoming your own hype woman or hype man, because they're kind of a little bit like, in my opinion, gaslighting yourself, which is kind of fun, where you just tell yourself something until you start to believe it.

So you make up your own. Or I'll give you a few to start with here. I am capable of changing my financial habits. I deserve to live a financially free life. My financial situation does not determine my worth. I control my money, not the other way around. And if you choose to journal, this is also a really good practice if you like to get your thoughts out on the page.

Maybe you're looking to get a little deeper into the why behind why you're struggling. You can use financial journal prompts. I'll give you some in a minute. Or you can just free right to kind of explore why or show so some prompts that you might want to use could be. When did I first start experiencing negative feelings about what relationship with money did I observe from?

How am I holding myself back financially now? Affirmations and journaling. They're really great, but they're not the be all, end all. You may need to talk to a therapist or someone else to get a little more insight, and maybe a little bit more professional insight into why you're struggling. If you really feel like the affirmations and the journaling are not going to be enough for you to get past whatever is holding you back.

And don't forget that this process takes time. So change comes with time and with persistence. So don't give up. Stay the course. It may feel a little daunting to not see any changes happening immediately, but that is okay. Just give yourself some grace.

Practice Makes Progress

Start doing the thing. Make a budget and actually use it. Set up automatic transfers to your savings for every payday and curb your impulsive spending habits. Whatever it is that you need to work on to improve your finances, just start doing it. Now is the time. You've got the knowledge. You've worked on your mindset and now it's time for action.

It is probably most likely not going to be perfect. You're going to mess up. You're going to make mistakes. You're gonna forget things and feel like the world is falling apart. But it's not. And that's not what matters. What matters is the action. Imperfect action is always going to be better than waiting and not acting, because you just are waiting for it to be perfect, because that's never going to happen.

It is so important to actually start because when we start doing it, we not only continue to learn and build confidence, but it also reinforces the habit. So it's really all connected. So whatever it is you're doing right, trying to budget, save money, pay off debt. We're going to call it practice, right. Because you're doing this thing, it's like, you know, building muscles.

You have to have that repetition in order for, you know, your muscles to grow big and strong. And it's the same with your finances. You have to have the repetition, the habit, the routine in order for you to actually feel confident in what you're doing and understand what you're doing and keep it up. Keep that movement going. So the more that you practice, the better that you're going to feel about your situation because you have more control.

And that's the thing is, when we are ignoring our problems, pushing them into the corner, they feel bigger and scarier than they actually are because we don't have control over them. We don't have a say over what's going on because we've chosen to ignore it. Stuff, a little closet stuff, stuffer, stuff it under the bed, whatever it is, it feels better to have a sense of control rather than just leaving it up to chance.

And it's really important that you stayed mindful throughout this whole process, because it's really going to help you be able to discern what is working for you and what is not. Don't fall into this trap of feeling like once you make a plan, you have to stick with it no matter what, because then you're just going to feel trapped.

There's always room to make adjustments and improvements and just keep flexibility front of mind for this whole process. So in order to really know how your progress is progressing, it could be helpful for you to use a habit tracker. So every time you put money into your savings account, let's say you could check it off. And any time you make an extra payment on your debt, you could check it off.

And this helps you stay accountable and make sure that you're actually doing what you set out to do. It can also be helpful to set up a little reward system. So maybe every time you reach an extra $500 paid on your debt, you can get yourself a pint of ice cream or something like that. I think it can be really helpful to bribe ourselves sometimes.

You can also check in with yourself using the following questions just as a guideline. What habits make me feel more confident or less confident with money? How could I make tracking my spending feel more possible? What are three ways I can continue to learn and build on my knowledge of personal? And to identify what might be causing these unhealthy financial habits.

Ask yourself, what can I do to reduce or remove these triggers? Remember that the point is not to be perfect, but to make progress. If you feel like you want or need any extra resources or support, you can check out the rest of my content. You can go back, watch my other podcast episodes and of course, please like and subscribe.

You can also check out my Instagram and my TikTok accounts. I post on there every day and it's just free knowledge, free information to help you on your financial freedom journey. And if you're feeling like you want more personalized support, I offer one on one coaching sessions mindful Money mentoring. It's judgment free, educational and empowering mentoring that is going to help you build confidence, build healthier habits, and of course, build that healthier positive mindset.

And that's going to help you become more mindful and more intentional with your finances. I don't offer financial advice, but I do offer a safe space for accountability, empowerment, and education. If you're interested in applying or just checking out my other socials, all those links will be in the description. So thank you all so much. Like I just have to say it every time because it's just so exciting to me that I have this podcast and I get to talk about something that means a lot to me and help other people and just do all these wonderful, amazing things.

So thank you for sticking around if you're watching this episode or listening to it, and I hope you have a wonderful week. I'll see you next time. Bye.