Lesson 8 - What is holding you back from Financial Sobriety?

What is holding you back from Financial Sobriety?

We can often feel completely paralyzed when it comes to starting to work on our Financial Sobriety. 

I often hear people when they tell me that they are feeling “stuck” with their money. Something is holding them back from starting. 

Instead of thinking that you are stuck, or that something is holding you back I would love for you to ask yourself “ What am I afraid to look at?”. 

Fear is real when it comes to our money. 

When was the last time you heard a conversation when someone talked about how good they are feeling about their money? When was the last time you heard a conversation when someone complained or said negative things about their money? I’m pretty sure that it was more recent that you heard someone using negative language about their money. 

The society that we live in has an overall negative narrative about money, other than consumerism telling you what will save your life or make it better if you buy something. That’s a conversation for another day! 

How was money talked about when you were a child? What messages did you hear growing up? How did you feel like you fit in when you were in school with all the name brand clothes? Were your family trying to keep up with the Joneses and they were broke and caused tension in your household? Were you constantly told “We can’t afford that”?

No wonder we are scared and feel stuck when it comes to taking a step to work on our Financial Sobriety!? 

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s ok to talk about struggling with money because I think it is very important for us to remove the stigma about feeling shame around every decision we make with money. I want the conversations to happen where we can support each other through the hard stuff. What I don’t think is helpful is the constant complaining and negative language and energy about our money. 

The negative energy, language, narrative and stigma can really feel like it is holding us back. It is very normal that you might feel this way. This is the way we are conditioned to feel about money. 

Here are some questions I would love for you to think about: 

• How do I want to feel with my money?
• What am I doing good with my money?

For the first question I am sure a feeling you would like to have with your money might have been happy, confident, excited, empowered etc. My follow up question to this is what is one step you can take to bring that feeling into your life with money. 

An example of this might be that because you want to feel happy with your money you could write down every day one decision you felt happy about in your day with money. This can be done at the end of your day. Keep a little journal beside your bed, your Happy Money journal (and I know you have many journals there ready to be written in!) and just one thing every day. This can be one step you can take and it starts to build a habit. 

Sometimes when we think of working on our Financial Sobriety we look at a huge GIANT scary picture of what we need to accomplish. Working on our Financial Sobriety is best done when we are breaking it down into bite sized pieces. 

Building on habits to make changes with your money is such a great way to create change. Mel Robbins is someone I adore and she talks about habit stacking. Here is a great instagram post she did on it to explain it more: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYjJhkfs0Nu/. 

Taking the first step you take in your Financial Sobriety is the HARDEST.

Making that decision of wanting to change. Wanting to follow through. One thing that I am learning in life is that sometimes we also have to do it even if we have some fear. 

 When I started working on my Financial Sobriety I didn’t feel ready. I don’t think we ever feel completely ready to do it, especially when we are in a place of fear. 

 It’s ok to feel some fear, it’s ok to do it scared, just start. 

Let’s connect with our hearts and understand what we are scared to learn and then ask ourselves, what if we take one small step so it doesn’t feel as scary?

 I invite you to take that one small step.

 I am always here if you need support, 

Linda Parmar
Financial Sobriety Expert