You did everything right. You got the grades to get into the university. You earned the degree and got to work. Maybe you started your own business. You pinched your pennies when you had to and you invested wisely. You’ve got the mortgage covered, the car leases, one daughter’s tuition with two more coming down the pipeline. You’re able to take a nice vacation every year and you’ve put together a nest egg that’s growing nicely. You’ve done everything to create the security that you thought was going to make you feel, well…secure. So why is it you still lay awake at night with numbers whizzing through your head? Numbers attached to worries. What if there’s a medical emergency? What if the bottom drops out of the economy? What if a hailstorm turns the roof into swiss cheese? The truth is, none of these scenarios will send you to the soup kitchen, but you worry about them just the same. Those worries can fester and drive actions that might not align with whatever vision of life you have created. They might affect decisions you make around your business or in your job. They might lead you to shy away from certain opportunities or rush blindly into others. The good news is, you’re not alone. We all carry emotional patterns around money. Some of them drive us toward success, others leave us feeling like we’re drowning in anxiety. But once we can learn to recognize them and understand why they’re there in the first place, we can begin the practice of changing the patterns that don’t serve us well.
Relationships around money can get sticky. When I was in my late teens, early twenties, I remember scraping for any work I could get and it seemed like there was just never any money. I really love cars, and I would have given just about anything for a bitchin muscle car when I was nineteen years old, but of course I couldn’t afford one. I was able to buy old junkers and do my best to fix them up, but that didn’t always go so great either. It turned out the car parts I needed were really expensive. I remember looking through car parts magazines and thinking to myself, “How can anyone possibly afford to buy this stuff?” The amount of work I would have to do in order to scratch together enough cash for a carburetor seemed totally impossible. The message that implanted in my nervous system and the relationship I formed around finances was, “It’s really hard to make money.” This created a cycle, or a pattern, in which I constantly struggled to make money because I was operating from the mindset that making money was a struggle. Of course it was a struggle. It never crossed my mind that it would be anything other than a struggle because “It’s really hard to make money”. Duh. But when the state of pain and frustration I was living in became untenable (and not just around the issue of money) I decided there had to be another way. A better way. I spent years training with mentors that ranged from world class psychologists to martial arts masters to learn how to rewire my nervous system and break free from the patterns that were blocking me from creating the outcomes in life that I desired. As a result of my own personal journey, I created Inner Matrix Systems and our foundational curriculum, the Power Series—a curriculum of tools, techniques, and strategies for recognizing undesirable patterns and creating new ones that will get you where you want to be.
As human beings, we’re designed to recognize patterns. It’s an evolutionary tool that our brains and nervous systems have mastered. From noticing unusual movement in the tall grasses of the African savannah to navigating traffic on the freeway, the ability to recognize patterns and disruptions in patterns is crucial to our survival. And patterns are everywhere. Nature is full of them, from the changing of the seasons, to the movement of ocean tides, to sand dunes in the desert, and everything in between. We see patterns in the ways we design buildings and infrastructure, in the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, even the shows we binge on Netflix. The stories might be different, but they’re all told in the exact same way because the pattern of storytelling, beginning, middle and end, is what we are accustomed to. The entire business model of social media is to recognize user patterns and engineer those patterns into strategies for selling us stuff.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that our behaviors are also dictated by patterns. Some are patterns that were built in early childhood and others we pick up along the way. Once they’ve become established, they can be very challenging to disrupt. Because, as part of our survival instinct, the brain sees any change in pattern as a potential threat, even when the pattern itself is the threat. This is the dynamic at work when you snuggle in for the night and those worried thoughts start cycling through your brain. Even though you’re in a financially stable place, your brain wants you to worry that you’re not. It’s operating on a pattern of beliefs you have around money that were probably planted in childhood. Maybe you had parents or grandparents who lived through the Depression and you were fed a steady diet of doom and gloom about how you can be on top one day and at the bottom of the heap the next. Maybe you grew up in a household that always seemed to be just hanging on by the thinnest of threads and the idea of being financially secure was a pipe dream. Whatever the case may be, you’ve carried these belief patterns for so long that your brain has created normalcy around them. And normalcy = safety. If you even flirt with the idea of feeling secure, let alone actually allowing yourself to enjoy what you’ve created, the brain starts up with, “Not so fast, buddy. This could all be gone tomorrow. Take your foot off that gas for even a second, and this whole thing could go right off the road.” If you’re not aware that this process is occurring in the subconscious, and that you can learn to circumvent it, those thoughts are usually going to win the day and stop you in your tracks.
This is what we tackle in our Power Series curriculum. Each of us has a unique set of thoughts and emotional patterns that drive every choice, decision and action we take. I call it the Inner Matrix. If you’re carrying emotional patterns of fear, shame, or anxiety around issues of money, those are the emotions that will inform the actions you take (or don’t take) around issues of money. But you can learn to recognize when those emotions are present for you. You can learn to understand where those emotions are coming from, accept them for what they are, and ultimately replace them with new emotional patterns that will clear the way for taking new actions. We can actually hack the survival mechanism by reframing the threat and teaching the brain that the pattern itself is the threat. So that whenever fear or shame pops up we can identify it (out loud) as a threat and shift into the love-based state that will support us to create the vision to which we aspire. Over time, we can teach the mind, the unconscious self, that the threat to survival is your current reality, the current state of affairs, until perpetually making life better becomes the norm.
I could go on and on, but sometimes it’s best to just let the results speak for themselves. Two of our clients, Linda and Allan, were caught in patterns of anxiety around money. Here’s what Linda had to say after attending a Power Series weekend: “It took away the anxiety I had around finances. I was able to break things down in a practical manner where I can apply it to everyday life and say, ‘Hey, am I doing really well with my finances and I’m just feeling anxious about them?’ I was able to really focus on what I wanted to create rather than focus on the things that weren’t feeling so good.”
And Allan: “I was able to utilize the systems to really get inside of enjoying money…Now I actually look forward to looking for investments and seeing how we can grow a business that will increase our wealth…I was fearful of wealth and what I could actually achieve, now I’m not fearful of it anymore.”
You too can learn to break your current patterns around finances and create new ones that will create the outcomes you’re looking for. Right now you can take advantage of a limited time offer: First timers are invited to join us for a Power Series Weekend Intensive for just $200. That’s $499 OFF the regular price. These events sell out fast, so click HERE to learn more and sign up today!