Feelings and money, probably not two things you generally think of together. I don’t think most people understand just how much our feelings are influencing the actions we take in life and with our money. This is a huge topic! This plays heavily into the idea of our beliefs around money that I posted about recently. Our feelings about ourselves and the comparisons we make can really drive so much negative, ‘keep up with the joneses’ spending. It can also drive all kinds of spending on external things as a means to try and feel better (which never works long term by the way. I tried!) Today I want to talk specifically about forgiveness and acceptance and why those are so important to making positive decisions with our money.
So many of us are holding onto past hurts, past mistakes, past failures, etc. around money and it is seriously hindering our ability to make clear-minded choices about the future. Finding true acceptance for where you are and all the things that brought you there can radically change how you move forward. It’s important to do the work to find forgiveness for yourself for the mistakes you have made, the poor choices and habits you may have held and sometimes for just not knowing any better. There’s forgiveness for other people who may have caused you financial hardship. Holding onto that hurt only hurts you in the long run. There’s also a forgiveness and coming to terms with circumstances that are out of your control. Things like health issues, market changes, Covid and all the many heavy impacts that had. Holding onto the hurt and blame for those things can be incredibly disempowering when it comes to finding a new way forward.
Now, I am not at all in the mindset of glossing over those hard, and very valid feelings around all those things. That’s not real healing to me. Feel what you feel about it. Whether it’s hurt, frustration, guilt, anger, shame, helplessness, rage, or any other feeling. Don’t try to paint them into other than what they are. Contrary to popular belief, the fastest way to forgive and let go of those hard feelings is actually to lean completely into them. Give them space to exist. Sit and write all the nasty, awful things you think and feel. Burn it when you’re done if it feels good. Cry it out even. Do some rage walking or punch a pillow if it feels good. Let the feelings wash completely through your body. What happens when you make space for what you actually feel is that it just passes. It stops having such a hold over you and you get some healing.
Coming to terms with where you are and all the the things that brought you there and then accepting it fully gives you so much power to make positive change! You cannot make new experiences with your money when you are carrying around all the baggage of your past money issues. I can tell you with certainty that the decisions you make without all those feelings clouding your judgement will be infinitely more productive than anything you could force yourself to do while carrying them all. It then becomes only a matter of where I am now and where I want to go.
The feelings then become that of excitement and possibility and personal power to make what you want to happen a reality. That really is our natural setpoint when we aren’t lugging around all the wrongs of our past.
I was in a car accident in 2009 and it’s really only very recently that I have fully accepted that and let it go. Up until very recently I was very frustrated and angry about the physical limitations from that. For many, many years I kept on trying to work like it wasn’t an issue. I’d work my 40 hour weeks at my desk job, and deal with the terrible pain from that. I spent a fortune on massage therapy to try and alleviate the pain, I drank more than I care to admit, I popped tylenol like candy and spent lots of evenings laying down with my heating pad on. I’d spend my weekends trying to get my shoulders back to good again just to start all over again on Monday. Not exactly living my best life. I also believed strongly that I could never make a living for myself because of that. Talk about disempowering.
Now that I’ve started working for myself full time I realize just how much those old beliefs and feelings were holding me back and seriously affecting my money. I can now (mostly) appreciate my body despite it’s limitations and to listen closely to what it’s telling me. Now, on my own schedule, I can work a couple hours then go for a walk or do some yoga. I’m not tied to the desk for 8 hours and having to ignore what my body says. I make more per hour so I don’t need to work so many hours. I’ve embraced different ways of earning money like photography and writing. I’ve embraced the idea of passive income on a deeper level. Creating things that bring in money without me working on an hourly rate. Instead of just seeing the limitations, which is all I could see when I was holding onto all the anger and frustration and helplessness, now I can see greater possibilities. Dealing with the feelings matters. It matters for a general quality of life along with the dollars and cents.
I’ve seen this hundreds of times when couples separate. Each partner holds onto how the other hurt them financially or even are continuing to hurt them financially. When you’re stuck in the anger and blame and injustice, you can’t see the path to your own power. I wrote a whole post dedicated to child support a while back if this is your reality. It’s amazing the amount of destruction people will subconsciously cause to their own finances as a way to feel vindicated in their hurt. I’ve seen people who are a full decade out from their separation and are still blaming their ex for their financial troubles. It’s easy to see when someone else is doing these things, but noticing it in yourself takes a deep level of honesty and accountability.
Covid is another very common one now. So many people are stuck angry or heartbroken or feeling an injustice from the very abrupt change to so many industries. These are valid feelings. It’s also true that you aren’t nearly as capable of pivoting and moving forward in a positive way when you’re holding all those feelings.
Failed business ventures are yet another very common thing that people hold onto hard feelings about and often times don’t ever fully move past. They look at a failed business attempt and hold all the guilt and shame and devastation at a failed dream, and they let that hold them back from ever trying again. Failed businesses can offer all kinds of learning! Being able to feel and release all those heavy feelings gives space to see the lessons and a better way to move forward next time. It doesn’t have to mean the end of a dream.
This is not a real fun topic. It involves looking at some of the hardest, most painful experiences from your past and letting the feelings around those events have space to breathe. Let me tell you it sucks while you’re doing it. But on the other side there is such a glorious sense of power and clarity about how to move forward. You get to look at things through a new set of eyes.
I know I grew up in a time where feelings were not discussed and we definitely weren’t taught about how to process them in a healthy way to let them go. We have a culture that is based on numbing out and shifting blame to avoid the hard feelings. It is the root of so much disempowering behavior with our money. Facing the hard feelings head on is the real path to massive change though. If left unchecked our feelings wind up running the show and we make really lousy decisions when they are based on hidden hurt, anger and helplessness.
Give yourself the gift of healing, forgiveness and true acceptance for where you are. Accepting where you are is the jumping off point to all of your dreams becoming reality. The more baggage you can unpack and let go the faster the journey forward to where you’d like to be. Don’t shy away from seeking professional help with this either! There are some amazing counselors and coaches out there that can help teach you how to feel the feelings if it’s a new concept to you (it definitely was for me.) There’s no shame in not knowing what you were never taught. Tonya Whittle is running her medicine for the soul program again soon which was my first big crash course into how to feel feelings. I had a whole lot of them stuffed down deep and I am infinitely grateful for the support while sorting it out. Writing has become a regular practice for me to help move heavy feelings too along with meditation. It’s your one and only life. You don’t want to spend it carrying around old baggage and heavy old feelings when you have places to go and things to do. Make it your mission to learn to truly heal and forgive. It is the greatest gift you can possibly give yourself.
Lots of love
Dawn
Tax Wise 