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Rollercoaster – A cautionary tale to becoming a millionaire

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Tell me, how do you ride a rollercoaster?

  • Do you close your eyes and wait for it to all be over?
  • Do you grip tightly and hold your breath?
  • Do you hide in the back trying to pretend it’s not happening?
  • Or are you the hands up, full out screaming type?

As a young girl, I loved riding roller coasters. Every time the roller coaster would get to the top of a big hill or turn I’d be scared, and while most of the time I’d be gripping on tightly to the safety bar holding me in place, there were many times I’d throw up my hands and scream, trusting the experience, and allowing myself to just – let – go.

As a counselor, I can tell you that this complex state of exhilaration is called stress euphoria, or ‘eustress’, and when that kicks in… whoa, I feel so alive, open, and free. The same is true on the road to creating, enjoying and respecting millions. This is what it feels like to get on the rollercoaster ride of True Wealth.

Let’s call it out shall we?
No one says to us, don’t be so emotional as we’re getting on a rollercoaster. Yet we say it in business all the time. As we climb in to the car, pull the safety bar down, and start the climb, we know exactly what we’ve signed up for: a big, slow ascent full of anticipation, the terror of the first peak followed by hair blowing back momentum down down down, on to heartstopping curves, more speed, more heights, and finally a full, sudden, often jarring stop. Yes, riding a rollercoaster is filled with emotions.

The unspoken rule of don’t be emotional in business is taught to us. We’re warned not to let our emotions get the better of us. It’s almost as though we believe our emotions are out to get us – as an antagonistic force. Then in contrast, we are also told things like, go with your gut and trust when you have a feeling about this, as though there are secrets only our emotions can know. What is true? And what does any of this have to do with making decisions about our wealth?

No one says to us, don’t be so emotional as we’re getting on a rollercoaster. Yet we say it in business all the time.

Within our navigation of emotional intelligence as business leaders, there is the inherent internal conflict we rarely discuss, much less explore. This contradictory messaging can be very confusing, leaving you wondering, how do I trust myself with all of this feeling going on?

When your belief is: I can’t let my emotions get involved, the ability to trust is severely hampered. For our purposes here, my premise is, in order to truly trust yourself and make sustainable financial decisions, you must allow all parts of yourself to be included – yup! Your emotional life too. If you are not asking yourself appropriate emotion-based questions and practicing self-inquiry, then self-doubt and poor choices will be your norm.

Wealth does not happen without self-trust.

What I’ve found through my therapeutic work, research, and personal entrepreneurial experience, is your business will profit for the short term without doing any significant emotional inquiry. However, it won’t be sustainable. In the long run, a business run without a healthy dose of emotion will eventually cost you: either in loss of money or becoming incredibly dissatisfied to the point of personal collapse. True Wealth can sustain itself and that’s what you want.

True Wealth:

is regenerative and limitless. It creates deep soulful satisfaction and sustained homeostasis within you and your business.
doesn’t cost you your health or joy or energy or focus. Rather, it enhances these states of being.

In my practice as a Money Therapist, I’ve seen clients struggle financially from all sides of the spectrum: one client made $10 million twice and then lost it because they were unable to see the deep-rooted emotional issues creating this cycle. Another client profitably grew her company to $573 million but constantly lived with the risk of self-sabotage as she struggled to believe she deserved it.

To make and keep millions must include working through the psycho-emotional obstacles as part of your strategy to living Truly Wealthy. Let’s dig into just one way we women ride the rollercoaster of true wealth.

The Avoider

Did you know that more than 50% of women are money avoiders? Listen, we all say we want to make more money, and yet from an emotional and psychological perspective, my research and work with hundreds of women entrepreneurs shows more than 50% of women are money avoiders. That’s one out of every two women! And if that isn’t enough more than 90% of the remaining money archetypes are emotionally avoiding to varying yet significant degrees. Being a money avoider doesn’t mean you don’t have money. On the contrary, you may have millions or billions, but you still avoid and it’s causing you emotional or psychological discomfort and even distress.

In a general sense, I describe a money avoider as one who consciously or unconsciously, experiences a great deal of anxiety, fear or disgust around money. Money avoidance might look something like this:

  • You have money but feel undeserving of it – you may run a profitable company but you’re not allowing yourself to benefit from the perks of your success.
  • You have such great fear of losing money you cling to it rather than grow it in sustainable and satisfying ways.
  • The cycle of debt or indebtedness haunts you.
  • You make a lot of money but it goes out the door as quickly as it comes in.
  • You experience guilt when working less hours than your team while making money.
  • You do not have financial clarity in your business. You do not have a practice of tracking, reviewing, and leveraging key metrics and important financial data. You are essentially driving your business with a blindfold on.
  • You sacrifice yourself and work really, really hard for your money.
  • You are not pricing your product or service appropriately.
  • In spite of your success you believe you are not good enough or not doing enough.

  • You are able to celebrate your team, but you are certainly not taking time to reward and celebrate yourself.
  • You procrastinate for days, weeks, or months to send out the invoices.
  • You are not allocating appropriate time or resources on revenue generating activities for fear of putting yourself out there and being visible.
  • You are playing much smaller than you were born to so that others don’t feel less than you.
  • There are three more, but that’s a whole other article.

WINDOWS INTO YOURSELF

My work continues to identify that shutting down or ignoring important aspects of our feelings, ultimately create havoc throughout our entire financial life.

Emotions are our friends. They are our north star; and reflect the truth of what is happening within us. An important distinction is to remember our emotions are not right or true, but rather truth tellers of our internal experience. They tell us about the meanings we are making about what happens to us.

Believe it or not, fear, judgment, shame, blame, and guilt are our friends. They are the road maps and street signs cautioning you of upcoming falling rocks, slippery roads, and deer crossings. Emotions have a clear and often very loud message they are trying to communicate to us if only we are willing to inquire and listen in. The more we suppress them, the louder they become. They go from being a yellow cautionary sign, to an urgent cliff warning because we took our hands off the wheel, or we were avoiding the road entirely.

Suppressing emotions inherently impacts our body (self) and our wealth as self-inflicted aggression. When we acknowledge and respect our emotions as friendlies, not only can we avoid the pitfalls of reactionary decision making, but we can build a very vibrant, sustainable and ultimately satisfying strategy to help us live a beautiful and profitable life. A life of more ease, enjoyment, gratitude, and pleasure.

This is True Wealth.

The financial implications of ignoring our emotional life affects the money we have in our bank. It also affects our sex life, health, and relationships. There is a connection to our power-center and our wealth. The repression of emotions is destructive in many ways like:

  • a life of fear
  • a lack of intimacy and pleasure
  • physical symptoms like: constipation, headaches, joint pain, digestive issues, immunity problems, and eating disorders and more
  • constant exhaustion
  • a lack of purpose
  • less joy

These issues likely stem from repressed emotions, and while they are showing up in your personal experience, they are also manifesting in the sustainability of your revenue. You know how to make money, and lots of it, but what are you sacrificing? If you are too wound up, unwell and miserable…what’s the point?

You may have an internal money command like:

  • get it together
  • toughen up
  • power through
  • get moving and get it done
  • What are those commands costing you emotionally? How about the wealth in both your bank account and your body?

FOUR QUESTIONS FOR AN AVOIDANCE ‘RIDER’:

What am I avoiding because I’m afraid to look?

Identifying the things you are avoiding to gain clarity, confidence, options, and choice. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is listening to what your fear is telling you. When you listen, you create more room and space for possibility to enter. You can begin to see and explore options rather than be paralyzed.

Consider saying to yourself, “I will look until looking brings me no fear”. This is facing it head on to develop emotional intelligence and enables your capacity to transform fear to faith.

What do you see in me that I don’t?

You can’t see what you can’t see in yourself.

Ask your support network whom you trust, to identify and share with you what they believe hinders your growth and success.

Often, we are blind to the effect we have on ourselves and others. Having an ‘in’ on yourself makes it much easier to course correct, creating a lot more ease as well as allowing your support system to show up and help in ways you didn’t know were possible.

What do I not want others to know about me and why?

What feels heavy on you? Like a ball and chain you feel strapped to? It can feel embarrassing to be seen as not having it all together, but what is the emotional and even financial cost of staying hiding?

The Showtime series Billions speaks into the hardened world of lies, secrets, and the high costs of being Bobby Axelrod, the billionaire hedge fund manager of Axe Capital. As viewers watch the emotional rollercoaster ride, we see how hiding in the shadows of oneself can rob you of your own morality, dignity, and self-respect. While fictional, it is a well-demonstrated example of the cost of hiding.

What is possible when I operate from a place of love and abundance?

Are you coming down the hill with your hands up in the air? Are you trusting the safety bar will keep you secure? Are you letting go with faith that your life will bring you great joy?

When crisis occurs, we’re often freaked out yet the funny thing is, we are so much closer to crisis on a regular basis when we avoid our emotional life than when we don’t. If we can start by having a little bit of a laugh at the Boogieman we’ve made our emotions out to be, we just may be able to lighten up, throw our hands up, and enjoy the ride.

IN SUMMARY

The simple questions I previously outlined, can help us access the complexity of what makes us who we are and how we may be avoiding, gripping, and hiding from our own success.

Millionaire riders aren’t born, they are practiced. They get up and they get on the ride. Some sit at the front, some at the back, but wherever they are you can count on their eyes being open, their hands are free, and the wind of true wealth blows over them as they come up on every hill, dip, and turn promising a most exhilarating ride.

Most people reach out to me through a referral because the nature of my work is personal and requires sensitivity and confidentiality, but if something has spoken to you in this article, you can connect with me here for personal support.

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