What's Your Relationship With Money?
I’ve had a very long relationship with money.
And when I say long, I mean it goes all the way back to when I was a kid.
I remember being asked at school what I wanted to do when I grew up.
My answer?
“I want to work in a bank.”
At the time, I couldn't have told you why.
Looking back now, I can see how much of my relationship with money was being shaped before I even realised I had one.
My dad had a business.
There were conversations about money, banks and interest rates.
There was also a lot of secrecy around money in our household.
We didn't talk about it.
I didn't know how much money we had.
And I started working for money from a very young age.
Then I went on to spend around 20 years working in banking, followed by accounting, finance and money coaching.
So I’ve spent a huge part of my life around money.
And I’ve seen just about every relationship with it you can imagine.
People who had plenty and were still stressed about it.
People who wanted more but felt uncomfortable admitting it.
People who believed money wasn't important.
People who wanted to create enormous wealth.
And people who seemed to keep recreating the same financial reality year after year.
That's when I started to understand something.
We all have a relationship with money.
Whether you've ever consciously thought about it or not, you have beliefs about money.
What it means.
What it says about you.
How much is enough.
What you're allowed to have.
And those beliefs influence what you're willing to create, receive, keep and spend.
This becomes even more interesting when you're running a business.
Because money is tied to almost everything.
Your pricing, sales, decisions, risks… your freedom.
One of the concepts I explore in this week's episode is your financial thermostat.
It's the range of money that feels familiar to you.
You reach a certain level and you feel safe.
Your bank account drops below another level and suddenly you take action.
You make the sale.
You find the client.
You work harder.
You do whatever you need to do to get yourself back into that familiar range.
Then you settle again.
And you can keep repeating that cycle without ever questioning what's creating it.
So I want you to think about this:
What is your financial thermostat?
What is the level where you start feeling safe?
And what happens when you go beyond it?
Because moving beyond what feels familiar means doing something different.
And that's where your relationship with money becomes really interesting.
There’s another part of this that I see all the time.
Money can become a boundary.
"I can't afford that."
"I can't take that risk."
"I can't leave yet. I need the money."
Money gives you a very easy reason to stay where you are.
And when you have more money, you have more options.
More flexibility and choice.
That can bring up an entirely different set of beliefs.
What will people think?
Will they think I'm greedy?
Will they think I'm selfish?
What will they expect from me?
So you can consciously want more money while another part of you is working hard to keep you within the range that feels safe.
And this is where the conversation goes much deeper than simply asking:
“How do I make more money?”
The better question is:
“What is my relationship with money?”
Because I've had to do this work myself.
I had to look at what I believed I was allowed to have and what I believed I was allowed to make.
And when that changed, my business changed.
I went from charging hundreds of dollars to charging thousands.
It changed what I believed was possible for me and the way I showed up in my business.
That’s the conversation I wanted to have in this week's episode of The Coaching Circle.
🎧 Episode 158 – What’s Your Relationship With Money?
I go much deeper into the financial thermostat, the boundaries we create around money, and an exercise you can use to look at your relationship with money from a completely different perspective.
Because your financial reality isn't just about the amount sitting in your bank account.
There is a relationship underneath it.
And once you start seeing that relationship differently, you can start making different choices.
