5 Things I Did to 100% Stop Worrying About Money
No matter what is going on in my life, whether I was living in a 2.5 million dollar house or sleeping on the floor of my friend’s spare room, I worried about money. I worried about money when I was a little kid. The funny thing was, if I got money, instead of holding on to it so I wouldn’t have to worry, I would practically shove it down the drain. Having money was not the feeling my brain and body wanted. My body wanted STRESS and ANXIETY. Money in the bank was so GENTLE. So QUIET.
YUCK! What agitated brain wants peace and safety? Hell to the no! My brain wanted MAYHEM so my outer world could nicely mirror my inner world.
That, finally, finally, finally got old. I could feelI was wearing my body out with worry, and that either I was going to change or, probably, I would get some terrible disease and die. (Not to be dramatic, but come on, the adrenals can only take so much foot on the gas.)
So I changed.
I realized I was the one spending my money, and I started to ask myself when I reached for my wallet, if I had to carry everything I own on my back, would I want to carry this thing?
I also realized that I had the power to make money. So, now, when money worries hit, instead of letting myself go into freeze and panic and spending even more money as a reaction, I went into action and asked myself: What can I do right this minute to make money? I created work for myself. I got jobs. I made money.
I become aware of the habit I had to feel anxious. I paid attention to how I felt flat-lined and uneasy when I had money in the bank. I worked at understanding that safety did not equal death, that what my nervous system was reading as bad was actually good, healthy.
I examined my belief that I’d never have enough, and that there was no point to saving because my needs were so endless there was no point in even trying to fill them. I tried to make a list of the stuff that was in my storage unit, all that stuff I just had to have. I didn’t remember most of it. I thought about how spending money was a way for me to feel powerful, to get a surge of feeling that I existed, and how that had given me a pile of stuff I could not name. I started lying on the floor and doing breathing exercises instead, existing that way, in my body.
I decided I did not want to have stressful thoughts about money in my head. This was the biggest step of all. I just made a decision: I am not a person who worries about money, and I stuck to it. I changed. I just did. The funny thing is I had to give myself permission to not feel shitty most of the time. I had to tell myself it was okay for me to feel okay in my skin. It was okay for me to exist. It’s so weird: if I’m not someone who worries about money, then I am also not someone who spends her last ten dollars. If I’m not someone who worries about money, even if I don’t have any, I don’t worry about it.
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When you know that your parents paid for you, when there is a receipt for both the lawyer and the adoption agency in your family file, when you have seen your own price tag, it’s easy to end up with weird feelings about money.
Know what I mean?
