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Hi, and welcome to day six and the final day of The EMBRACE Training Program.
If you haven’t read the first five pieces of content, make sure you go back and do that first before you read any further.
You can find:
If you’d like a downloadable PDF of this Lesson, go here.
I want to thank you all for all the emails you’ve shared with me. I get so excited when I think about the group of women we have that have come together to change their relationship with money.
Today I want to talk about the number one reason so many women fail when it comes to their money.
And, it has to do with perfection.
We are addicted to perfection.
Our desire for perfectionism often is the catalyst that ensures our failure when it comes to our money.
Now I have had A LOT of experience with this issue. I am a recovering perfectionist for sure, and I am assuming you are too.
This perfectionism is fueled not so much by the ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ as is it once was referred, but by it’s newer generational culprit – competitive consumption. Most of the women I’ve worked with over the years have fallen victim to competitive consumption. It bankrupts people and fuels our desire for new cars, closets full of “must have” gadgets, fashion, and technology.
Competitive consumption and perfectionism is a recipe for overspending because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that unless we can get what someone else has we are somehow less than the perfect and ideal people we want to be.
But here in the EMBRACE Community, we do things very differently. We don’t buy into the ideas of perfectionism and competitive consumption.
Nope – not one tiny bit.
Instead of wrapping yourself up in this notion of perfectionism and competitive consumption, I want you to instead focus on contentment.
HERE’S WHAT I MEAN:
We’re taking action and going through the steps I’ve outlined in Lesson 1 through Lesson 5, we are focusing on what we value, changing our mindset, crafting a new money story, and tending to our relationship with money things are running smoothly and we find ourselves doing pretty well.
Then, we have a bad day – we hit a bump in the road or maybe we completely veer off course– because nobody’s life is without issue.
What happens to a lot of us when we have a rough day is we resort to our old ways of thinking and behaving.
- We hit the web and start an onslaught of online shopping.
- We head to the mall and charge up a few items.
- We think fixing our money situation is never going to work.
And while we’re doing this we’re rationalizing our spending by saying things like:
- I’ve had a bad day, and I deserve these things.
- This is exactly what I need to feel better.
- I’m going to look great in those new shoes.
AND then – we NEVER come back to what really matters, we just pick up where we left off with our spending and never come back to working on our money transformation.
But the bad days are super important to have and here’s why~
Those days are the moments that we can really learn more about what we NEED.
Imagine for a moment that you are having one of those days – you have a bad day at work, your husband is not paying enough attention to you, the kids are acting up – imagine anything that can set you off. You start shopping without distraction; you’re really going gung-ho!
That’s a good time to stop and go inside and ask – why do I need to shop? What is missing in my life? What do I need to bring into my life to rebuild?
Does that make sense?
There is so much learning that happens when we’re confronted with that bad day. We learn from our mistakes and get back on that horse and continue working on contentment and the many other areas I teach in my EMBRACE Training Program.
When we do this and experience the ups and downs, we end up having a really beautiful relationship with our money.
I often tell people that your relationship with money is like peeling an onion. With each issue, another layer is exposed, and it provides the opportunity for more growth, more development, and bigger insights!
I want to make something super clear – in my EMBRACE Lifestyle Program we spend A LOT of time diving into these topics, and we go super deep.
In this training series, I just want to give you a bite so that you can start to make changes today. But if you want to go deeper and really dive into this work, I hope you’ll join us in my EMBRACE Program.
So let’s dive into today’s topic.
Most women join The EMBRACE Training Program thinking they have a problem with overspending and then they realize – ugh I have a career or work problem.
What happens is we spend the most substantial part of our day/week working 8-10 hours a day and if we hate it, well then, of course, it’s a catalyst for overspending.
Emotionally charged circumstances make us prone to overspending and so if you’re spending all this time in a job or career that you hate and it’s causing you to be confronted with ever-increasing emotionally charged events – you’re going to be more prone to overspending.
So I want you to take a moment and assess what’s happening in your career. Do you love it, hate it or is it just ok? Do you wish you had a different job? If you don’t have a job, do you wish you did? If you have one, do you wish you were retired or home with your kids? Take a moment and get real honest about how you feel about your career and work.
Now unless you’re going to retire or quit your current job, the first move you need to make to love your career is to figure out how to enjoy the job you have. We could discuss a million ways to do this, but honestly what usually works better is some simple shift in your current work environment. So tomorrow I want you to plan to do a few things that will create an impact on your work environment.
Some of the ways you could accomplish this are to:
- Bring fresh flowers to the office and put them on your desk.
- Hang a beautiful picture on the wall.
- Clean your desk and remove all clutter.
- Add some pretty work office supplies like a cute post-it holder.
- Open a window and let fresh air in!
- Clear the floor, bookshelves, anything visible of clutter too.
When you do these things to spruce up your work environment, it helps to make you feel more relaxed, more at ease and comfortable in your workspace.
Sometimes by doing these things you create the space to build up your confidence. This new found confidence can be used to do things like negotiating a better salary, design a better work schedule that meets your needs, or even establish work at home hours. It’s amazing how doing these small but not insignificant tasks can change the dynamics of your work environment for the better.
I’ve coached so many women who took the time to build up their confidence at work and have negotiated precisely what they needed to make a ho-hum career into a career they loved and met their needs and gave them back precious time to do the things that would spark joy in their lives.
As you make moves to love the job you have, you’ll be freed up to pursue and find the job you really love and speaks to your calling.
In The EMBRACE Training Program, we spend a good deal of time talking about our values and our purpose in life. What that means to me is finding what lights you up and gives your life meaning. That can be a hobby, a career, being at home with your kids or retiring early.
So if you’re sitting there wondering what lights you up and contemplating what your life purpose might be, I have another way of asking the question that might actually get you thinking.
INSTEAD ASK YOURSELF: “WHAT CAN I DO WITH MY TIME THAT’S IMPORTANT?”
This is an infinitely better question to ask. It’s far more manageable, and it doesn’t have all of the ridiculous baggage that the “life purpose” question does. And it spurs you to get off the couch and start discovering what feels important to you.
Often one of the ways in which someone discovers their life purpose is by recognizing a problem they want to solve and melding it with their specific skill set and talents.
For me, the problem I wanted to solve was to help women end emotional spending and start living instead. I have this unique ability to coach women and get to the core issues that are preventing them from living authentically and giving them concrete, actionable steps to move past what’s holding them back.
When I put those things together, it was clear I was meant to be a coach and to help women with these issues.
So I want you to think about what this means for you. What problem do you see in the world that you would like to solve and what are your unique talents and abilities?
I’m sure when you think about it you’ll come up with many different combinations of things you can do – and that’s great. Choice is a great thing. So sit with all your options and see what really floats your boat – what sparks that fire in you?
If you feel stuck at all, leave a comment below. I’ll respond with my insights, and I’m sure others can and will pass on their wisdom as well and help you get unstuck.
Thank you so much for taking the time to go through this series and joining us for The EMBRACE Training Program Series. I’m so glad you took the time, and I hope this information was really impactful for you.
I would love to hear the impact this series has had on you in the comments below. And, I would love for you to share this information with anyone else you know who is struggling with overspending and their money. I know it’s taboo to discuss money, but this is really important and hopefully, the content will help another woman end her struggle with overspending.
Thank again. Tomorrow you’ll be introduced to The EMBRACE Training Program and see how it’s impacted so many women.
