054 | Money Emotions

We talk a lot about money mindset, but we don’t give as much attention to the role emotions play in managing our money.

How we feel has a lot to do with the results we have with our money.

In this episode, we explore how emotions affect our behavior, the importance of recognizing our emotions in relation to our money, and common emotions around money.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

 Topics Discussed

• how emotions affect our behavior
• the importance of recognizing our emotions in relation to our money
• common emotions around money

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

Work With Me

If you’re ready to go deeper with this work, click here and let’s set up a call to talk about how coaching can help.

Connect with me

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

Recent Episodes

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey, friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well. I am excited for our conversation today because we are going to talk about money emotions, basically the role emotions play in how we manage our money. So we’ve talked before about the relationship between our emotions and our actions. I have a life coaching certification in cognitive behavioral technique, which basically draws on concepts from cognitive behavioral therapy, but applies them in the coaching relationship rather than a therapeutic one. But the underlying theory for CBT is that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are all connected, which we’ve talked about many times before. So our emotions affect everything we do or don’t do. We take action or don’t take action based on how we feel. And one example that I think will resonate with you is the difference between a lawyer who feels confident, versus one who doesn’t. I’ve always been pretty confident in myself and my abilities at work even as a first year, right? Maybe I didn’t know everything about how to be a lawyer, or, you know, I didn’t have the same skills as someone who had been out for 5, 10, 15 years. But I knew how to read. I knew how to think critically, I knew how to synthesize information. So I had no problem letting partners and senior associates know when I thought we should handle something a different way from the way they’d instructed me. And I came with the reasons to back it up, right, sometimes they agreed with me, sometimes they were like, I hear you, but I want to do it this other way. And ultimately, I defer to what they want it to do. But I didn’t view myself as just carrying out whatever I was instructed. Right, I figured I was hired for my brain. And I know that I read XYZ, when reviewing these documents, even though you told me ABC. And so I’m not just going to assume that you know better and that I must be wrong. Just because you’re more senior, maybe you didn’t appreciate this thing that I’m seeing because I’m closer to the details. So I’m going to bring it to your attention. And honestly, I still do this, like just push back on something one of our partners wanted to recommend to a client and when it’s recommended to take action on this like a few weeks ago, but I disagreed. And I presented my reasons for my position. And she provided them with our own reasons. And I probably gave her more reasons why I didn’t think we should do it. But ultimately, she wanted to take action. And I defer to her as the partner responsible for the matter. I’m confident in my own skills, though. So I won’t just not speak up because someone more senior disagrees. And I told her that I reported to the client, but I was doing it under protest. And she was like, that’s great, as long as it gets reported. And you know that this is someone I’ve worked with for years, like since I was a senior. And this is someone I’ve worked with for years, like literally since I was a summer associate. So we have that kind of relationship, I probably wouldn’t have made the under protest comment, you know, seven years ago, but I probably would have been thinking. But the point in this whole story is a lawyer who doesn’t feel confident, may not push back in the same ways that I do. Or they might not present different ideas, because they feel unconfident. I don’t know if I’m confident is a word but they don’t feel confident. Right. So they’ll shrink back, or they will not speak up, even if the idea they have could be a better way of approaching the situation. Because we act based on how we feel, or sometimes how we want to avoid feeling, right like how we think we’re going to feel we don’t want to feel that way. And most of us don’t realize that that’s what we’re doing. Another one for a lot of people is snacking. So if you’re a snack or think about when you typically snack for some people, it’s you know, when you’re feeling bad, or maybe when you’re feeling bored or otherwise trying to avoid feeling an uncomfortable emotion. Rather than feeling that emotion. You go eat instead. And of course, spending money is another common thing people often do to feel better or avoid discomfort. So I’m feeling down let me go shopping. I’m feeling unworthy. So I’m going to go out every night. You don’t want to feel the negative emotions, so you spend money to avoid feeling them. But if you allow yourself to just feel the emotion than it would pass, resisting the emotion leads to feeling worse. And it leads us to do these things we don’t want to do like overspending or overeating, because we’re trying to avoid feeling the emotion. So I encourage you to pay attention to how you feel when you’re spending money, especially if you find that you often get to the end of the month and have no idea where your money went. Like are you spending because you’re trying to avoid feeling a particular emotion or are you trying to make yourself feel a particular way. So now that we’ve talked about the importance of emotions to the actions we take, I want to talk about some common emotions that come up for people around money. Money is such an emotionally charged subject for many people. And I want to start with the emotions that tend to lead to negative or undesired results with money. And this is by no means like a comprehensive list, but just a few that come to mind. So first up is shame. This comes up a lot for people, especially around debt, like when you’re ashamed of your financial situation, your debt, you’re less likely to want to look at your finances, and take steps to improve. This also comes up for some people with making too much money, right, it’ll stop you from making more money or from growing your wealth. The shame often comes from the negative thoughts that many people have about wealthy people. And so if I believe that wealthy people are bad, then I’m not going to be pressed about building wealth. Another one that comes up a lot is guilt. This one comes up, especially for lawyers who are the first in their family to become a lawyer, or to make the kind of money they make. So you may feel a sense of obligation to pay for things for your family, even when they haven’t asked, I spoke with a young lawyer who was telling me about how she helps to support her family. And she mentioned that her brother was celebrating his anniversary with his girlfriend. And the lawyer sent money for the anniversary, and didn’t really know why she did it, but just felt like she should write. And so the support for her family was a cultural thing. But the sending money for the anniversary kind of went beyond that. Part of that was she was the first person in her family to become a lawyer, she makes the most of everyone in her family, and probably feels guilty about that. Another one is scarcity. Thinking you don’t have enough, it could be money, it could be stuff. I’ve told you before about my client who only had $50,000 in savings, and thought that the balance needed to be higher. That feeling of scarcity, often leads to people buying more stuff and spending more money, often on things they don’t even really want. And when you’re spending your money on stuff you don’t want, you have less money to use toward your goals or other things that you do care about. And ultimately, you create the result of not having money. One that goes kind of hand in hand with scarcity is insecurity. This comes up comes up at all different levels. There are people who make five and six figures a month, and feel like they’re one step away from being on the street. And there are other people who make considerably less and feel completely secure. And scarcity and insecurity especially illustrate that our thoughts create our emotions to people could be presented with the same thing, right like the $50,000 savings, account balance, and have completely different thoughts about it, and therefore completely different feelings about it. So like a college student, for instance, who’s never made more than minimum wage, it’s going to look at a $50,000 savings account balance a lot differently than my client did, for example. In contrast, let’s look at some emotions that tend to lead to more positive or desired results. The first one is sufficiency. In American culture, we’re often looking at what we don’t have and maybe even feeling envious of what others have. But what if you felt sufficient? You have exactly what you need in this moment. How does that affect the way you view and manage your money? One thing that comes to mind is you’re probably going to spend less, right? Like if I already have everything I need, I don’t need to go buy more. How about this one? abundant. If you’re feeling abundant with your money, you may be more generous. Like with the feeling of sufficiency, you’re probably going to spend less, you’re going to be more intentional with the money you do spend, you may be more open to investing whether that’s investing your money in the stock market or some other investment, investing in yourself, investing in, you know higher quality things when you do buy. And finally, what about confident people who feel confident with their money are more likely to actually pay attention to their money and to know where it’s going. You’re probably more willing to educate yourself and ask questions when you don’t know something. You may set specific money goals and take action on those goals. Right. The main point is pay more attention to how you’re feeling when it comes to your money and look at how those feelings are showing up in your current results. If you’re not sure how to identify your feelings or otherwise need help with managing your money better or hitting your money goals, I can 100% help you. So let’s schedule a time to talk. You can head to rhothomas.com slash coaching to do that, ultimately the emotions you have around money, impact the results you have with your money. Learning about your emotions and how they affect your money is game changing, because you have so much control over your emotions. When you’re coming from the negative emotions, you can still make progress with your money. But it’s much harder to do than if you can cultivate more positive emotions. I’ve heard in the context of weight loss before that, you can’t shame yourself skinny. And I’d say you can’t shame yourself to wealth either. So that’s it for this episode. Come connect with me over on social media. Let me know your thoughts. You can find me on Instagram at I am Rho Thomas, or on LinkedIn. Please take a second to subscribe to the show and leave a review. Both of those things help the show tremendously. If there’s a friend or two that you think would benefit from this information, please share it with them. I want to get this information in the hands of as many people as possible. And as we close out friend, I pray that you take some time to get in touch with your emotions and recognize the effect they have on your money. I pray that you will do the work to generate more positive emotions for yourself around money which of course starts with your thoughts about money. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.