On shrinking and playing small around money

I grew up in a family where I saw my mom be told that she thought she was better than everyone for having money.

I saw my mom literally meltdown and sabotage and give all money to my uncle because she wanted him to like her and because she was tired of the family responsibilities that came with having more money.

I have tons of memories of my mom shouting and screaming at her family about how they were using her for money and can clearly remember how family members would respond with shouts about how all she cared about was money.

And sometimes things got out of hand and there was violence involved - physical violence or violence that involved the breaking of property.

Sometimes my mother would refuse to help people and would be given the silent treatment for months and we (the children) would be caught in the midst of this silent cold war.

And this happened often, so you can imagine how scared 8 years old or 14 years old I was.

And you can understand the fear I carry around financial expansion in my body. Having money was scary for me - I associated it with family fights.

I saw how when my uncle would expand and buy new furniture for his house, his younger brother would take all the furniture and go sell it.

And I saw how my grandmother would intervene and ask my older uncle to forgive my younger uncle every time this happened, which was a lot.

In short, I saw a lot of dysfunction around financial expansion and the conclusion I drew was: making more money upsets the people you love, people can't handle it and if I have more money than other people, there will be tension and arguments.

I LEARNED TO PROTECT MYSELF BY SHRINKING MYSELF & MAKING MYSELF SMALL

My natural instinct when it comes to money, especially making money or just having money in the bank, is to run as far and as fast as possible.

And I did run from money - for years.

I prayed that somehow if I worked hard enough and did enough affirmations, my money situation would change and my relationship with money would improve and I would miraculously feel happy about my relationship with money.

I didn't understand that trauma is not just mental but physical.

Trauma is an event or an experience that we were unable to process or integrate as it happened, so it gets stored in the body and keeps us in a loop, repeating the same behavioral patterns or going into a trauma response every time we're triggered.

As a kid I had no tools to integrate the physical, verbal or emotional violence around me that related to money, so I stored it in my body and learned a trauma response which was to avoid money.

I developed trauma-based responses that I believed kept me safe - I learned to protect myself by shrinking and playing small especially around money, which played out financially as:

?? Being unable to have more than a certain amount of money in my bank account

?? Getting rid of money as fast as I made it

?? Manifesting crazy money emergencies whenever I went beyond a certain income or savings level which made it hard to invest and create extra streams of income

?? Being unable to go beyond a certain income level in my business no matter how hard ii worked or how much education I got, which made it hard to invest and explore different business ventures

?? Having NO financial boundaries and not being able to set these boundaries because it was safe for people to see me as a giver and a nice person, because then they couldn't hurt me

?? A deep fear of sharing my financial victories because I was scared people would react violently

?? Only connecting to friends and family from a point of financial struggle and getting rid of money so I could connect with them from this point

?? Feeling like I can't expand beyond my family and friends or be different from them, instead of honoring what my soul wanted

Trauma doesn't have to be a huge huge event, it can be something as "small" as having siblings or friends that we're unable to celebrate our successes.

And because we didn't know how to process this so we learned to play small to get their love and are now scared to go beyond a certain income level because it may lead to us losing their love.

There's a part of me that still feels that money is synonymous with violence and represents danger.

I carry this trauma in my body and every time I expand financially or share my financial expansion, I can feel the uneasiness and how unsafe it feels to be in my body and I want to run and hide and stop showing and expanding.

The way I keep moving forward and growing my business is by doing the inner work in the #MoneyMagic course.

What some people saw on Monday was me sharing a newsletter about my finances, but what they didn't see was my meltdown and me using the tools (Lesson 1) in the #MoneyMagic course to work through that (see my wats app to Mizo, my co-host on the Property Magicians Podcast below).

MONEY TRAUMA IS LAYERED IT'S NOT A ONCE OFF HEALING EVENT; WE WORK THROUGH IT IN REAL TIME WITH OUR FINANCES WITH EVERY UPLEVEL

Some things that are simple for most people are actually not that simple for me and that I've had to develop a lot of tools to help me work through deep trauma so that I can do things that help my business grow (which is how the #MoneyMagic course came about).

One of the things that people see is me launch a podcast, sharing my stories and my work on videos, on social media and traditional media, but what people don't see (the #MoneyMagic students get to see this ??) is me being super scared to share the good things in my life and business because I'm scared of the backlash.

Most of us are under the impression that we need to wait to be perfect before we can change our finances and grow our businesses.

THE TRUTH IS THE HEALING AND THE GROWTH HAPPEN IN TANDEM, ESPECIALLY IF WE HAVE THE TOOLS TO DO SO

So, even though I was really scared to share my story about making R224,000 (US$12,000) from 15 hours of work so I can show how this work works, having the tools and the #MoneyMagic student group where I can through my fears and triggers helped me process the trauma, calm my nervous system, get unstuck and take action.

In the past, before I started focusing on the inner work, I would have stayed frozen, gotten writer's block, been unable to express myself, and then talked myself out of posting the post or sending the invoice or following up with a client on payment.

I know this because I did it all the time with everything in my business. I couldn't execute any idea related to money??

In the screenshot you see Mizo, tell me she got a new client for her coaching business, but what you don't see is the conversation we had the day before (2nd picture) where I tell her how to process her fears and trauma so she can fully show up and connect with clients.

In the screenshot, I refer her to lesson 7 of the Money Magic course (and yes, she allowed me to share this screenshot).

The shifts don't happen this fast for everyone and it is a process.

Of course Mizo has been a #MoneyMagic student for a long time, so the shifts will happen quicker for her because she has been on the journey????

EVEN SMALL THINGS THAT HAVE TO DO WITH EXPANSION CAN TRIP US UP BECAUSE OF UNRESOLVED TRAUMA

If posting a post about my income and sharing about it years later, freaked me out so much, can you imagine how scared I must have been to set that income goal and go after it?

And yet over the years I have managed to not just sent income goals but to start making enough money for my business to fully support me, even during Covid.

Every expansion and every up level brings up another layer of trauma and when we ignore it, the expansion can create drama and we find ourselves self-sabotaging, getting rid of money, ruining relationships etc.

And worse - for some of us, we have clear ideas and strategies on how to expand, but find it super hard to execute these ideas, not because we aren't smart, but because we're scared and we think we lack courage or money smarts, which isn't true at all.

IF YOU ARE DONE:

?? Being scared of what people will say and how they'll respond when they find out the truth about your finances

?? Playing small and shrinking yourself

?? Working hard but not seeing the financial results of your work

?? Always ending up at the same financial point no matter what you do

?? Not being able to set clear financial boundaries

?? Having brilliant money ideas you cannot execute

Then I invite you to check out and register for the Money Magic course.

You can register at : www.wealthy-money.com/moneymagic

The course CLOSES for registration on August 22nd, 2020.

But the BONUS (Access to the #BankAccountChallenge and a 30-minute session with me to guide you through the course) expires August 14th, 2020.