Get Out of the Scarcity Mindset
When it comes to money, many people want to play it safe. They’re afraid to lose money, yet desperate to make it. What I recognized about myself was that I was controlled by scarcity.
Now, I am no financial expert. I can’t tell you a step by step formula to make loads of money. What I can tell you are things I had to heal with my relationship with money.
I usually have a great amount of anxiety and stress around money. I bounced back and forth between terrified to spend or running out of it to times of spending my money in unhealthy ways. Living in that fear didn’t allow me the space to approach money in a healthier and calmer way.
It did not take me making more money to adjust my mindset, I actually had to learn it in one of our most challenging times financially.
So here is my secret: I had to learn how to get comfortable with money, even when we didn’t have much. In addition, I had to get comfortable with talking about money. I used to have a lot of emotions around money which meant that anytime I had to face the reality of our financial status, or talk about it, my body instantly went into a fight or flight mode.
Here are some things I learned:
Learn where your money is going each month. I learned quickly that it wasn't necessarily that we didn’t have enough money, it was that we didn’t know how to spend it. When I would look back at the previous month and see where we spent our money, I had much more awareness of where we could make some small tweaks to rearrange where our money was going.
Start slowly chipping away at debt. Debt feels like a really dirty word and seems embarrassing at times. It made me not even want to face it. But on a day where my energy felt like I could handle it, I went into the belly of the beast. I started to lay out exactly where things needed to get caught up and where we could start our debt snowball. I set up reasonable monthly payments and little by little we were clearing off things that were weighing us down.
Plan out where your money is going each month. I do not live and breathe our budget. For me, if I tried to perfectly follow one, I would get anxious and overwhelmed easily. This led to me not even having a guide post. The result? Our money wasn’t being used wisely. Instead, I would lay out exactly where our money needed to go with bills, payments and expenses. Just simply knowing where our money needed to go, brought a lot of ease to our financial status. I could approach the month with more ease knowing our needs would be met. I had confidence in knowing that we were recovering financially. That monthly peace of mind alone eliminated what I found to be unneeded stress. Once I knew we had the safety of our needs being met, it became a fun game to see how much money we could have left over at the end of the month and where that would go. The mindless spending began to lessen.
Detaching from things. When you live in a scarcity mindset, your spending habits aren’t typically the best. Your purchases are chaotic and those things you feel like you “need” end up collecting dust and not having a use. This can be a long-winded explanation. For now, be more conscious of your spending habits. Do an audit of your previous month and see what you “had” to purchase. Now where is that purchase? Did you actually use it? Did you purchase it simply for the high of buying? I was guilty of that frequently but gently bringing awareness slowly allowed me to break the cycle of buying for the “high” of it.
Breathe. When the topic of money would come up, my chest would instantly tighten. I would start shutting down and not wanting to face it. Adjust your body language when you notice this. Before moving forward: take a deep belly breath. Roll your shoulders back. Unclench your jaw. Take another deep belly breath. As you exhale, make it a long sigh and tell yourself that you are safe. Release the tension around money, it is not serving you anymore. This habit alone will help you become more comfortable with the topic, face money with ease, and transform that ease into confidence. That confidence will allow your finances to flow in a much more positive direction.
