Interoception, Introspection and Money

What happens to us when we perceive we have no money??

Since I retrained as a Financial Adviser, followed my gut instinct to leave regulated advice and started out as an educator and coach, I have undertaken huge amounts of personal development work. It has included reading and listening hundreds of books and podcasts, journaling and quiet time trying to understand why I behave the way I do and how I can help my clients.

I have just completed a book “Breaking the habit of being yourself” By Dr Joe Dispenza which has made a few more things fall into place.

The main theme of the book is that to make changes to your life, you need to change. It starts with you. He also talks about why change is difficult to maintain. Now I quite like myself, I think I am quite good fun, am kind, on occasion ,and can be interesting if the wind is blowing in the right direction! but there are facets of my personality that are blocking my potential and the only person responsible for getting rid of these blocks is??????? Yes you guessed it ME.

For the past two years I have had miracle mornings, I have pushed myself to try new things, to be uncomfortable. Discomfort I can do, ?so I needed to get comfortable with comfort. I’ve had physical warning signs that all is not well; aches and pains, recently a lack of motivation and frustrated overwhelm with tech.

In listening to my body and reflecting has meant that I have had to slow down, rest and ask for help. This is discomfort. For me at least.

I have worked out, with the help of Dr Dispenza and his book, that I have been living in survival mode. Not just in starting a business or in finance but for most of my life. I am not alone. In fact, 72% of the population of the UK said to be living in financial survival mode.

How does this manifest itself and how do you find out if you too are living in survival mode rather than thriving in creativity?

You go inwards. You start monitoring your thoughts and feelings and naming your feelings. You recognise when you start off down the rabbit hole of catastrophe and find ways to pull yourself out of it.

For me, until recently; I used to wake up in a flat panic of overwhelm every single morning. So much to do and so little time. Heart racing, shallow breathing, hyper focusing on problems. I started off badly. Even while doing the 5am? starts and miracle morning, all the exercise, the reading, the meditation, ?added rather than subtracted from the overwhelm. The more I did, the more I thought I HAD to do. It wasn’t working. Burnout was on the horizon.

What might survival mode feel like for you?

When you think about your money situation do you recognise these?

Do you feel anxious? Is every financial decision super serious, do you become obsessed about never, ever having enough money? Do you stress about your future financial situation?

Do you panic make decisions that don’t align with what you want long term? Take a job that you beneath your skill set, stay in the job you hate?

Do you feel ashamed? Shame was a big one for me. Highly qualified and highly motivated, why was I so useless and bringing home the bacon? I felt guilty because I was unable to earn more and have an easier life, especially for when my children were so small, and I worked all the time. It was no fun for them.

Do you feel that you are the only one who is struggling so you withdraw from your friends, don’t go out, don’t talk about money!

These emotions are all signals that you are living in survival if you listen to them. The problem is, these emotions can shrink your options, limit your creativity, build the blocks that stop you getting any better off. It did for me at least.

Being in survival mode is not really about the numbers in your bank account. It is about your emotions such as shame, that surround that bank account. Its recognising the feelings you have when you get a council tax demand that is wrong, or if your car breaks down on the busy mini roundabout. ?You may start to recognise a pattern. I did!

Why you need to know about INTEROCEPTION!

Interoception is your body’s ability to sense what is going on within it. ??When you are stressed or in survival about your finances the body picks up on the shallow breathing, the rapid heartbeat, the tiredness from lack of sleep. The body is listening to you and wants to help you survive.

Your body will direct you to safety and it sometimes means giving you a quick fix by directing you to make an impulse buy, helping you avoid hard emotional overwhelm such as directing you away from looking at a statement or bill, ?or through making you hyper focus on the problem in hand to try to find a solution, thus reinforcing the immediate crisis rather than seeking long term solution. ?All of these ways will help you survive physically and mentally – for now! Long term though things need to be different, or you have a life less well lived, you may get ill.

So what to do?

To shift from financial survival and scarcity to thriving in abundance, it is necessary to be aware of your body (interoception) and undertake self-reflection (introspection).

By learning to listen to your body and name and understand your emotions tied to any financial stress with my help, you can move to a more grounded, creative, enjoyable future. I promise, ?it won’t just be your finances that benefit.

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I am a Financial Adviser Qualified Coach and Educator, available for Financial Wellbeing Corporate workshops and one to one or couples’ money coaching.

My why is to create personal financial wellbeing through education and awareness and, to plug the financial advice gap.

My expertise is personal finance, money mindset and wealth creation.

Contact me directly if you want help finding funds for your adventurous trips around the sun.