How many times do you have to try to break your spending patterns before they are actually healed?
It’s different for every person but one thing is for sure:
The faster you begin healing your negative money patterns, the faster you will be able to enjoy your money.
In both my private coaching containers as well as my group coaching circle, we deal with both the mystical and logical aspects of money.
Mystical= the energy of money, emotions, healing, spirituality etc.
Logical= finances, spending plans, spending, saving, investing, net worth, etc.
One aspect in the logical realm that many clients feel unable to shift by themselves is their spending patterns.
Both overspending and underspending cause problems.
So I want to share how these patterns are created and things you can do to resolve them.
Overspending means you are spending more than you have allotted in your spending plan, in a particular category like restaurants or clothes (which are actually common categories for overspending).
First, a few of the sources of overspending…
Overspending can be created as a knee jerk reaction from living through scarcity.
If you’ve lived through an experience of feeling like there wasn’t enough money to buy the things you desired, you may have developed spending as a tool to buy the things that make you feel abundant.
These purchases are often luxury experiences or luxury items.
They can make you feel powerful and in control (and even rich), while in the meantime, too many of these purchases can drain your actual financial wealth.
The solution in the beginning phases of healing from your scarcity experience is to allot for high spending in this category to give yourself that pleasure willingly, to reassure yourself that there finally IS enough for you to have this experience or thing.
Except this time you are CONSCIOUSLY deciding to make it a priority. You are building it into your spending plan. Sometimes other categories may have to be lower to give you what you need to feel abundant.
Then, as your money healing grows stronger you will begin to see that other things like savings and investments are appealing. Now that you feel more secure that money takes care of your wants, you feel more willing to build a stronger foundation.
The last thing you should do in the beginning is to take the luxury items that make you feel delicious completely out of your spending plan.
As you heal, you may not need these purchases as much (or maybe not at all), but first we need to reassure your subconscious that money is there for you, and you get to choose the categories that mean the most to you.
Another source of overspending comes from avoiding finances and spending plans altogether, leading to SHOCK when you see how much you’ve spent. This avoidance usually comes from a money trauma you experienced growing up, like:
The list goes on and on, but you get the picture.
The solution here (as with the scarcity experience) also includes 1) healing the original wound and 2) becoming willing to look at your money and finances.
To summarize, you can heal overspending by:
Underspending means you are afraid to spend money, because having money sitting there all piled up makes you feel more secure, in the meantime you’re depriving yourself from abundance and living in scarcity in many areas of your life.
Yes, it's super important to save and invest, but not to the exclusion of using money for abundant purchases and experiences that make your quality of life better.
Underspending has many sources.
One source of underspending is using financial wealth for self esteem.
Our culture celebrates wealth as one of the greatest achievements ever.
Sometimes people learn, hey I may not feel good in these other areas of my life, but I can feel worthy and esteemed here. So they make their financial achievement muscle very strong.
The solution to shifting this for more happiness, is to build some other muscles to harvest your self esteem.
Start practicing affirmations.
Commit to speaking kindly of yourself in your own mind.
Begin practicing spending and noticing that it actually increases your quality of life.
You can’t take it with you, so it’s important to balance responsibility with enjoyment.
Ironically, another source of underspending is actually the same source as overspending: scarcity.
A great example of this is grandparents and great grandparents you’ve seen saving every penny, even though they may even be very wealthy.
The desire to survive is so strong, true money survivors are hard wired to save, save, save, and definitely invest.
And P.S… if you are experiencing underspending, yet did not personally live through war or a dramatic money survival, remember this: if your ancestors lived through this, the emotions have been passed on through generations.
Intergenerational trauma affects how GENES respond. (Google intergenerational trauma and epigenetics to learn more).
The solution has many parts, the first being to heal the intergenerational money trauma.
Next, begin with baby steps of discovering spending a little bit in categories that feel fun to spend in. Consciously celebrate that you took care of your life. Practice enjoying the new things and experiences that are flowing through your life. Notice how people are responding differently to your heart when you share your abundance.
There are many other ways people use underspending: to hurt themselves, to deprive others and thus feel in control, the list goes on and on.
To summarize, you can heal underspending by:
You can heal your relationship with money.
Use these suggestions as a starting point to create both inner and outer wealth.
February 3, 2022
Contact me if you’d like some tips on how you can improve your relationship with Money.
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