Welcome back to the Money Mindset Shift podcast with Episode 50! In the last episode, I promised that we would get into mindset with purchases. And that is exactly the topic of this episode, Cultivating Spending Confidence!

Before we get into the episode though, I do want to celebrate that the Limitless Money Mindset Journal has officially turned 2 years old! Wooo! I’m so proud of this journal and so happy for everyone who has used it over the past two years!

While Amazon is the one in control of “sales” in terms of price reductions with the little slash through them, I have control over the actual price. So in celebration of the journal’s birthday, you can save $5 and get it on Amazon for $9.99. Usually, it’s $14.99. The link to go get it is …. https://a.co/d/fXTBESW . It is also in the episode description, so please feel free to go click it, tap it, go there. And with the little celebration out of the way, let’s get into today’s episode!

Over the last two episodes we’ve discussed two different ways that overspending and impulse purchases can show up in our lives. In episode 48, it was micro transactions in mobile games, and in Episode 49, we went shopping together and explored how this happens at a physical retail location.

And if you go back to Episode 8, we’ve touched on 3 reprograms for cultivating more comfortability with spending already – but I want to add an additional layer to this conversation. Because, Episode 8 focused more on the anxiety that occurs when making a purchase and different thoughts or beliefs that could support more comfortability specifically.

Now, confidence and comfort are sort of two different things, but there are two very important things at the core of both. And I wanna touch on that today.

However, I want to see if you can tell what they are.

So let’s apply the Evaluate, Shift, Heal framework and see if they come up for you.

So, in applying the Evaluate, Shift, Heal framework, firstly, you need to evaluate what spending confidence means to you. What does it look like to spend with confidence? What does it feel like? If you were to spend with confidence, how would you be spending your money?

So it’s really like, sitting down, closing your eyes, imagining that situation, noticing the bodily sensations, noticing the thoughts – what comes up?

And to contrast this, what is your relationship with spending like right now? If you were to get to the register and the total was more than you expected, how would you feel? Or if you were to read your credit card statement, and it was more than you expected – you accidentally spent more on a mobile game than you meant to – how would you feel? What sort of bodily sensations do these situations bring up? And what thoughts would you have?

Once you’ve done that, then you can identify the things that need to shift or be healed. We’ll use some from my own journey here as examples.

I am someone who tends to be hard on myself. So the thoughts that would come up for me would be along the lines of “Damnit. What the fuck was I thinking? Why can’t you just do better? I thought I calculated things out but here we are.” There would be a mix of pain, anger, shame, and guilt in my heart and my gut.

But also, because of those feelings, and this sense of individual responsibility, I would take this on as things I needed to do, and not ask for help (a little bit of pride getting in the way there). Unfortunately, this is all a tangled ball of beliefs and programs that we’ve all been given, so not asking for help pulls on strings of worthiness.

We are all worthy of support, compassion, and care. Not just from ourselves, but from others as well. And I knew that if I had a loved one who was having a hard time as well, that I would want to help them.

But that shame and guilt drive a wedge here. It fears judgment. And it fears being seen – being addressed. So it pressures – any of us who feel it really – but it would pressure myself to hold it all in. To try to do what I could. To not ask for help.

You might be thinking, “But Shelby, how does that tie into spending specifically?”

Well, brains like to alleviate feeling bad. They need the hits of happy brain chemicals (serotonin, dopamine, etc). And you know what does that? Impulse spending, one of the things we’ve been talking about over the last few episodes.

So, if the shame and guilt is not addressed, if healing does not begin to occur, then these feelings feed on the secrecy and isolation. This not only makes the brain more susceptible to advertising that X thing will make you feel better, and it’s what you need in order to be happy, but also, the brain is going to just want to feel better, even if for a moment, and sometimes it thinks the most accessible way to do so is to make an impulse purchase.

This perpetuates the cycle, because now there is more shame and guilt afterwards. And it isn’t really congruent with confident spending huh?

Thus, in order to disrupt the cycle, healing the guilt and shame needs to happen. Which does entail some amount of acceptance and reaching out to your support network.

THEN you can create new habits and beliefs that are more in alignment with how you want to feel when spending money.

Okay, maybe I miscalculated here, and there are actually 3 things and not just 2 – one of which being healing the guilt and shame.

But let’s get back to the little challenge I issued earlier and the other two important core pieces here. Have you figured them out? I haven’t said it directly, but as you’ve reflected on cultivating confidence with your own spending, maybe you’ve noticed them.

They are intimacy with your money and self trust. When you know your money situation, you are better equipped to make empowered decisions. If you think back to the episode regarding the mobile game and micro transactions – I was not being intimate with my money, and especially not with my spending. I thought I wasn’t spending that much, but it easily added up to an amount I wouldn’t’ve been comfortable with spending had I spent it all at once.

You also need to be able to trust yourself. You are human, and yes you will make mistakes. But, can you trust yourself to figure out the situation once it gets to that point? And can you trust yourself to ask for support should you need it?

Because, the fact of the matter is that you are going to desire things. You are going to want to make purchases. And again, you are human. You may miscalculate sometimes. You may take risks that don’t turn out as expected.

And also, yes you should be able to spend your money in ways that makes you feel secure, happy, and confident. I know the systems we live in don’t always allow for that, as highlighted in Episode 8, but what the Evaluate, Shift, Heal framework does is help you to create opportunities, given your financial reality, that support you feeling more empowered and confident regarding your money.

And it is a tool you can use over and over again to help yourself with that self-trust as well. Because once it’s more than just a ‘something you use sometimes’ sort of thing – once it’s more committed to your behavior, to your memory, to that sort of muscle memory reaction, you can trust yourself to evaluate, shift, and heal the situations so that you can cultivate spending confidence, for example.

You can address what happened when you went to the store. You can reflect on how you were feeling. You can reflect on what was going on in that situation. And you can create not just more aligned thoughts, but you can also shift your behaviors to support spending confidently or however else you want to feel about spending.

Now, specifically, the healing work does continue to get deeper, because it always does, and in the next episode, I interview Quinn Downie regarding her thoughts and experiences with money mindset and healing! Make sure you are subscribed to the podcast so you don’t miss it. It is a good one! Especially because healing is sometimes a bit more difficult than just shifting our beliefs. Sometimes those wounds go deeper. And sometimes they go waaay back to when we were little, and things that we maybe didn’t realize that these wounds came from.

So definitely make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast so you don’t miss this next episode with Quinn Downie and her Rose Method of healing.