And so I had this identity around money and how much I really thought that it made me a better person. My entire money mindset was that making money is evil. Business is evil. Anybody that wants to make money is a bad person.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Lessons From A Quitter. I am so excited to have you here. I am so excited about this episode. I actually recorded it once and then I have so much more to say and I was like oh, I gotta rerecord it because there's so many things I didn't hit on. I might be all over the place with this but it's a topic that I have worked a lot on myself. And so I figured I could share my thoughts with you and you can see if it fits for you or not because I think we all should be making a lot of money. And I will talk more about that in this episode. And before I do, I want you to know that if, as you listen, things start shifting for you and you're like huh, maybe I do wanna make a lot more money than I'm making, I want you to join me in my six-month program, Pave Your Path. Because this is the work that we do. We start reframing things. We start getting really real with ourselves. Like what are the things I want that I don't even know that I'm not really admitting to myself because I feel bad about it. And we uncover, we start going after it, right? We stop playing small. We figure out what we want for our lives. So if after you listen to this, you're like yeah, this is me, which I suspect a lot of you will uh go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath. We're gonna open up doors in June and I want you in the next group so we can start doing this work together. Okay, let's talk about wanting to make lots of money. The reason I wanted to do this episode is because I get a lot of people in my groups, in my free coaching calls, that will say some version of, you know, what what it is they want. They'll talk about the things that they want like flexibility and, you know, work life balance and whatever, yada yada and then they'll say something like I don't actually even care about the money. It doesn't matter how much money I make. I don't really need to make a lot of money. These other things are what are important. And whenever someone says to me now like I don't care about money, my question to them and my reaction is always is like why? Why would you not care about it? It affects literally every single aspect of your life. It affects where you live uh where your kids go to school, the healthcare you can afford, how you're ever gonna be able to retire. If you are, the vacations you go on, the food you eat, you get it. Like every aspect of our life is somehow impacted by money. So why do we have this like arm’s length ugh I don't even wanna talk about it. It stresses me out. I mean, I already know why we have that but it's really fascinating to me. And I say this as a person who very much used to say and believed so deeply that I didn't care about the money, that I don't care about money. And I'll talk a little bit about like where I started but needless to say, I've done a lot of work by myself. And that's why I wanted to do this episode because I realized how one, wrong I was. What I was really denying within myself and how I was thinking about it kind of backwards. So the reason I think this is so important is not because I think you have to go out and make tons of money. You can do whatever you want. You don't need to make money. I don't care. But I think that it's a lie when people tell me they don't care about money. Because again, money is just a resource. It's a tool that lets you have all these things that you want in your life. And I think that a lot of times when we are lying to ourselves like this like part of the reason so many of us don't know what we want in our lives is because we won't allow ourselves to like really look at our desires because we feel ashamed or guilty about them. And so we constantly keep staying stuck in like what is it that I want? What is it that I need? And we never get to it because we're not willing to admit certain things. And it's only when you like kind of lift the rug and look under and you really start seeing like what is it that I really want for my life? And you have to admit some things that might make you think you're a bad person or whatever preconceived notions you have to really feel like oh okay, if this is what I want like how do I go after that? Recently, in a coaching call, I had somebody in my group thinking about like the vision that she wants for her life and she kept kind of going back and forth because she was thinking about do I really wanna be a part of the financial independence movement, which really advocates a lot of minimalism and saving and scrimping and doing all these things in order to be able to be financially free. And she was saying like I don't wanna live like that. And when we got down to and I was like okay, so what you're saying though is that you want money, right? One way of doing it is through financial independence but the reality is that you just you want money that you could do that in other ways too. You could just make more money. Right? You could go out and try to make money. And I could see that it was uncomfortable for her to like even accept that. But it was really interesting to see like we when we skirt around these issues, we come up with all these other goals that may not really be what we want because the end goal is like yeah, of course I want financial freedom. Of course, I don't wanna feel stressed about money. Of course, I wanna know that I'm taken care of. Why wouldn't everybody want that, right? But I don't wanna do it through this way of like I can never buy a latte again. Right. Or I have to never go on whatever it is. I don't know what financial, I know uh don't come after me people that are in FIRE, I get it. There's lots of things you can do. I'm just saying we get these preconceived notions like oh, I'm gonna have to give up a lot. And that's just not true. So that's really why I wanted to do this episode. And I'll talk more about like what other things I think having these thoughts, how it really hinders us. So it's not even about the fact that I think you have to go out and try to make all the money, that you have to go out and like money has to be your only goal, obviously not. But I want you to realize how much having these thoughts is hindering you. And we're gonna talk about that more. Okay. So going back to my own story and I've talked about this if you're a long-time listener and if you're not, I'll give you a brief synopsis. My entire money mindset was that making money is evil. Business is evil. Anybody that wants to make money is a bad person. Rich people are terribly evil. Like I really had these thoughts very much ingrained from when I was a child. And I very much believed them. And I very much prided myself on not needing or wanting money. Now I I actually didn't think about money all that much, I will say I was privileged enough to grow up in a family where we weren't poor. I we didn't have a lot. We immigrated here from Iran. My parents really had to work for everything but we didn’t struggle in the sense that like there wasn't food on the table or I had that kind of financial insecurity. So clearly that privilege really plays into what I believed about money but I was always someone that like money really wasn't that important. And I say this like even when I worked at a big law firm and I was making $160,000 and I quit to go be a public defender and I made less than half than that, I made like $70,000. It just wasn't a big adjustment to me. I didn't care. I was like alright, now I'll live with this. Like I wasn't a big spender. I never have had to budget because I just never spend over what I make. I don't really want for a lot of things. So I really like had this vision of myself that like money is just not that important to me. I'll make due. I make a living. I'm happy with other things. And when I went to law school, I went with the idea that like I'm going to help people. I'm not going, I never picked law school because I thought I could make money. I just knew that wasn't gonna be for me. I knew I wasn't gonna stay in a big law firm like or go work to try to, you know, make a whole bunch of money. In fact, the only reason I went to a big law firm ever was with just a plan of making a lot of money to pay back my student loans so that I could spend the rest of my career,not having to worry about that as I worked in nonprofit and government work, which typically doesn't pay that well. And so I had this identity around money and how much I really thought that it made me a better person, right? Which spoiler alert, it definitely did not but like I very much identified with that. And I think a lot of people do too. And so I've shifted a lot and I'm very grateful to the mentors that I've had that started talking about money in a different way and started showing me that wanting to have money is not bad and wanting to have a lot of money is not bad. It's okay. And that, especially for women, the more women make money, the really better it is for all of us. And I started really realizing like oh, I I do wanna make a lot of money. And I think that where I wanna start is really going back to kind of like the messages that we get about money. I've done a podcast on money mindset but really about the messages we get about making money. Living in America is a real mind trip. For most of my audience, you're in America. Obviously, some of you are not but I think everybody kind of knows how America runs. And so I think growing up here, I've just been witnessing this really fascinating and very painful relationship that Americans have with money. So on the one hand, we have the American dream, right. Which we all know and it's like if you work hard enough, you can have anything.
And there's really this sense of excess and abundance and luxury and all these really like amazing things that are sold to us as like, you know, things that you may want. And a lot of us legitimately do. And we're indoctrinated with this idea of going after that. And obviously, like capitalism plays a lot into that. And even if you don't overtly or, you know, consciously buy into it maybe, it's so deeply ingrained like you've been fed this message so much that we all have these wants. We we've seen these things so much like we want to experience it too. It looks amazing. And now with like, you know, Instagram and stuff, you see all these people living these lavish lifestyles and it looks good. Part of it's like yeah, I would like to experience that. Right. And then on the flip side of that, it's like America was founded on Puritan religious beliefs, right? And that's still a very large undercurrent in the American psyche. And this is really true everywhere. It's like most countries, there's some basis of some religion and most religion has the same view towards money, right? It's money is the root of all evil. Our, you know, goals should be to reject wanting that. You're a better person if you're, you know, only looking to help people and you don't actually want money. And so there is this push and pull that we have where it's like we want to keep working really hard. We wanna make money. We wanna have these things. And then when we have ‘em, we feel a lot of shame and guilt and we feel like there's something wrong with me, right? I'm an evil person. I'm a greedy person. I'm a selfish person, whatever it is. And we may not have these thoughts, again consciously, but most of us feel that tension within ourselves. And I started noticing this, even before I started doing this work. I noticed this when I was in law school, when I came out of law school. It's like all these people, all of us who went towards these careers that had quote unquote stable salaries, a lot of us went because you make a good living, right? You go to law school, business school, medical school, whatever it is, cuz you're gonna come out and you're gonna have a stable, nice income. And what I started seeing once I came out of law school and I started working in the field and I started working, with like all my friends became lawyers or doctors or engineers, was all of these people had a need to almost hide how much they were making. You know, have you noticed it's like none of us, like you don't talk about how much you make. That's very gauche, it's very untoward. You don't ask people how much they make and you definitely don't quote unquote flaunt it, right, myself included by the way. I would watch people have these things, buy these things and then really wanna downplay it. They didn't want people to know how much their house cost or whatnot. It was so fascinating for me to watch. And I felt it myself. I couldn't explain at the time, I didn't have the words or really understand my thoughts. It happened more with people who didn't have it growing up and grew into it. Right? So like if you came from families who were maybe lower middle class and then you were kind of going into the upper class, there was this real tension because now you're part of this group that you've been kind of fed lies about that are like evil and whatever. And it's really fascinating to me because it's like it's not like the obscene, you know, we're not talking about the Jeff Bezos here. We're not talking about the people that are making hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars. Like what is the root of a lot of the problem in our society? We're talking about someone that's making a couple hundred thousand dollars and I'm not trying to be flippant about that money as if that's not a lot of money. It is. What I'm saying is that like the reason we have problems in capitalism is not because people are making a couple hundred thousand dollars, right? Or even a million dollars, a couple million dollars. Like we're talking about the loopholes that allow people to become billionaires and allow corporations to get away with really never paying taxes. It reminds me of the campaigns that were started by like BP and the food and beverage like the big, huge producers of all the uh of like Coke, you know, Pepsi and stuff. They all went on a campaign in the seventies, eighties, nineties, where they started basically marketing to us that global warming is basically a personal problem. Like our recycling or we, you know, is the problem or we have to reduce our carbon footprint. Meanwhile, they're the ones that are like, you know, producing billions of barrels of oil a day or, you know, manufacturing millions of plastic bottles and not changing their behavior because like we're so busy in our own shame and guilt to actually see what's happening. And I feel like it's the same thing with money, right? It's like yes, there's income inequality and we should talk about it. And I will in a minute. And like the things that we have to do but the person making $300,000 is not the reason why we have the level of income equality or the fact that we don't have healthcare or, you know, access to education for people in this country. Like that's not the problem. And you buying some luxury purse for yourself or car or whatever is not the reason that there are these like huge inequities in our society. And yet, like we internalize this shame because we don’t question why we have these thoughts. We think anybody having money is evil or bad. And then we have the pull of wanting it still though. Like we still have the desire for it. We wanna go on nice vacations. We wanna have time to rest. We want to be able to, you know, I don’t know… buy nice things, whatever. And we don't know why we feel these things. And so part of the the first way I started tackling, where I started realizing really the faultiness of my thinking was I started really looking at money like it is. It's a neutral thing, right? It's not moral or immoral, it is a resource. It is a piece of paper, not really anymore. It's a digital number on a screen and that's it. And yes, can people use it for nefarious reasons or evil? Sure. People can also use it for really good things. Right. But one of the biggest shifts that happened for me is really understanding that it's not a zero-sum game. So what I mean by that is if you really zoom out way out back in history, when we started using money, where when money was like invented and societies began using it, the way that it was used was actual physical items. Right? And it was typically like gold or other metals but it was a zero-sum game which means that like if I take this gold, that means you have less, right. There is a pie and I take a certain amount which means there's less for other people. Okay. And that was the way money was for hundreds of years. And so that is I think the way that our idea of money, the way when religion began, the way we saw money, that's the basis of it. But when credit was invented, when our new way of using money in our society was invented, that was no longer true. It's not a zero-sum game. Okay. If I have more money, it doesn't necessarily mean I take it away from you. Right. They literally print it. That's why you see all the time like stats where they talk about how many new millionaires were created that year or how many new millionaires are in the world or whatnot. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were only created because they took it away from somebody else. And for me, not only was realizing like if I make a million dollars, it doesn't stop you from making money. It doesn't necessarily like take away from other people in order to give to me. But more than that, I think what made a really big shift for me was that I also realized how faulty my thinking was that like by me not wanting money, by me not taking money, it doesn't then automatically go to a person that needs it. Right? Like it's not if I'm like you know what I don't need anymore, I have my fair share, then the rest of that money goes to the homeless person or the single mom. Like that's just not how it works. And so when I started really thinking like okay, this money is gonna go somewhere. People are gonna spend money somewhere. Right? Like now when I think about my business, I think a lot about like people are gonna try to solve their problems. Like people are miserable in their careers and they're gonna try to solve that emotion. And they might do that by spending more money on alcohol and food or trying to go on some trip to make themselves feel better. And that's gonna feel better for a weekend and then it's gonna be over, shopping sprees whatever or they're gonna hire other coaches or they're gonna do whatever. Right. So do I think what I am selling is going to help them more, right? It's not like when I stopped looking at like I'm taking their money from them and it's more about like do I think I can provide more value than what that money is worth? And do I think that I'm gonna substantially change their life? Which I absolutely do. I started just looking at money different. And this is why I think this is so important, changing these thoughts, because when you have the belief of like oh, I don't really need anymore, I'm good, I'm totally okay, it impacts how you show up in your life in every aspect. And part of that is gonna be in your career. Now, whether you are a entrepreneur, you're gonna start a business, side hustle, whatever, or you even as an employee, right? Like as a somebody that's gonna sell something, as an entrepreneur, you have to deal with your money mindset quick because that is the first thing that's gonna come up because sales feels sleazy because of all of the thoughts that we have. And if you don't change those thoughts, you're not gonna stay in business very long because it feels terrible to ask people for money. If you think asking people for money makes you a greedy, sleazy a-hole, right. Like you nobody wants to be that. And so a lot of us don't impact the world. We don't sell the thing we want. We don't do the things we want because we're so terrified of asking for money. And when I started really thinking about like if I wanna truly impact people, how can I do that? Like one, if I don't make money, I'm not gonna be in business. So I'm gonna go back and get a job and I can't impact people. But two, honestly, I started realizing, as I started doing this, this didn't come about before I got into entrepreneurship, I really had to deal with my thoughts on sales when I did it. But I started noticing that like when I charge people more, they transformed more because they have more skin in the game. They show up more. I've mentioned this before, like I've done classes that are a hundred dollars and half the people don't ever even open up the email because losing a hundred dollars is not a big deal. So I started realizing like this is also a tool for me to get people to buy in. If I raise my prices and the people that have to figure out how to pay that or save the money or whatever, then they're showing up every week. But I can't get there if I constantly am thinking I'm a terrible person or I'm stealing money from them or I'm taking it or whatever. Right. And I started realizing like how am I showing up like what is my belief in my clients if I'm constantly thinking oh they don't have it or they're not resourceful enough to get it or they can't replace it or it's too much money. Like I am limiting what I believe is possible for them. I am limiting how I think they can show up. I'm limiting what I think they can create in this world. And so I had to clean up that money stuff very quickly in order to be like what is the impact I wanna have? How do I wanna help people suffer less? How do I wanna help people create the life that they want? If I wanna do all that, I have to clean up what I think about money. And I say that as an entrepreneur but it also impacts you so much as an employee. So many people are underearning, are afraid of asking for raises because you think that it somehow makes you evil in some way or bad or selfish or whatever. You're so scared. What's been really fascinating for me, my husband is an entrepreneur if you go back to, I don't even remember the number episode, he was on the podcast. We talked about his business but it's been really eye-opening for me to watch him grow that business. And he has now, I dunno, 40 employees. And it's been so fascinating because he does quarterly reviews and then yearly reviews and he does raises. What he started noticing is that the women never ask for a raise. It's infuriating. He would tell me, he is like I'm blown away. The men come in every time, doesn't matter what their performance is, it doesn't matter how well they think they did. Every review they ask for a raise and the women who are always outshining the men at his in his work. And he always tells me how like incredible they are never, not one of them asks for a raise and he always gives it to them. But like they're leaving money on the table cuz they're not negotiating. They're not pushing back. They're not standing up for what they deserve. And this is because of the thoughts that we have about money, right? Like think about what our society has put in. Like men are programmed and conditioned and groomed to grow up to be the breadwinner. Right? They see their responsibility as making money. And so they don't have shame around asking for money. That's what they're supposed to do. Right? They're supposed to bring home the bacon and for women now who are in the workforce, we've still been conditioned to believe the patriarchy of like just be grateful that you got a seat at the table. Just be grateful you're here. Don't make waves. Right? You don't want people to be mad at you. You don't want your boss to be upset. F*** that. And I see so many women do this where it's like you're gonna do the work anyways and you're consistently underearning because you have so much fear around looking at your thoughts about money and admitting like I want some money. Money would be nice. Instead of going in from an empowered place of like this is what I deserve, this is how much I'm working, this is the value I'm bringing. And again, like talking about like, you know, if that money is going somewhere, if your pile of money is with that CEO of that company and you're just leaving it on the table, it doesn't magically go to somebody in need, right? Like that's your pile of money, why are you not going out and getting it? And it comes from the beliefs that you have about it. It comes from the beliefs of what you think it makes you, what you think you'll then owe that person, how much more you'll have to perform. Whatever, whatever BS you have tied around it. And I know for me, when I started realizing that, when I started realizing that like this isn't a zero-sum game, if I don't make the money, it doesn't just go to the people that I want it to go to. I really started shifting my perspective and being like it is my duty to make as much money as I possibly can because I think I'm a good steward of money. Right. And I'm gonna talk about this in a minute. I think I can do much better things with that money. I can do things that I think are very important and I can enjoy the hell out of it. So that was like the first shift for me. But the second shift again, comes from on the back of that, when I talk about like what can I do with this money? So one of the things that I really struggled with was again, because I really I think for so many of us who are quote unquote good people, you know, we we have a lot of values that are very important to us. We see the inequality in the world. We see our own privilege. We know that other people don't have what we have. And when you come from a service-led heart and you want to help people, which I think the vast majority of people do, I know the world the news makes it seem like the world is a dumpster fire and everybody is evil. But I think we all know that like most people are good and and listen, we all have shadow parts, right? We all have greed. We all have selfishness like that doesn't make us bad people, that just makes us human. But I know that I really struggled because I felt like well, I don't wanna be apart of this capitalistic system. I don't wanna give into this. And I now realize how ridiculous of a thought it is for a couple of reasons. One, because I live in a capitalist system, right? Unless I'm planning on moving to another country or an island by myself, which sometimes sounds like a wonderful idea, this is the system I'm in. Right. And the resource of the system is money. So why am I living in this system and being like you know what, I don't actually need that resource. I'm good. I'll just take my little piece and then like struggle for the rest of it. And I think really taking a note, let's talk about capitalism for a second. Cuz I have changed a lot of my views on this. I know there's a lot of hate. Like we see the inequality that happens in in each of our countries but when you realize that capitalism is just a system, it's an economic and political system whereby the trade and industry, right? The means of production business in a country is controlled by private individuals instead of the state. Now in a vacuum, any system capitalism, communism, socialism can sound fabulous. It's wonderful. Right? But we don't live in a vacuum. The problem is that in practice things get ruined by people, right? So capitalism or any any system is gonna obviously need regulation. There's gonna need to be like checks and balances on it. The problem is is that the people that tend to be attracted to positions of power typically tend to be the people that shouldn't be in power. Right? The reason that people a lot of people want power are usually for not good reasons. And there's tons of psychological studies about what power does to us. And so we end up with systems where people, you know, have nefarious reasons for doing things, look out for their own best interests, cause corruption, whatever. It happens in every country. But when you start looking at it like that, right? Like it's not as though we're gonna create some system that's gonna be some perfect ideal. There's always gonna be good and bad because there's gonna be people involved. I know for me, I will always choose private citizens having the right to own their own means of making a living over giving it to the state. Because again, when you have it in countries where the state owns everything, the state is run by people. People that typically shouldn't be in power, right. That's why systems that maybe on paper like socialism, communism, whatever, seem fantastic don't actually work in practice because the people that tend to take those over can also be corrupt. And so, if you're gonna gimme those two options, I will go with capitalism all day long because I've seen, maybe it's from my background of being Iranian and seeing what has happened in Iran or just, you know, seeing what happens in other countries, I'll take my bets with capitalism. That doesn't mean that there doesn't need to be tons of regulation or that there aren't like things that kind of this hybrid mix like how we put in social safety nets and what needs to happen in order to make it work for everybody. But I think that when I realize like this is the system that I'm living in and I absolutely believe that there needs to be change and reform and these are just like my own political leanings. You don't have to have these same ideas to really like think about how you think about money differently but on a macro level, yes, I vote and spend my money in favor of reform, in favor of creating a system that works for more people, in creating regulation, in moving out of the oligarchy that we are in currently in America. But there's a huge difference between the macro and the micro. And I wasn't making this distinction before, when I was in my thing of like I wanted to reject all of like I don't wanna be a part of this. And so I used to think like anybody in business is evil. Anybody that does business is evil. And what I really started realizing was not only how faulty my thinking was but how dangerous it was. Because if you go by my logic where like good people don't go into business, good people that care about people don't care about money, think about what that leaves for people that wanna run businesses. Right? That means the only people that are going into business are people that only care about money that have basically just already agreed that they're greedy and selfish and they don't care that have like sold their souls at the devil or whatever you wanted to believe. Right. And so then that creates the corporate America or the, you know, corporate structures that we have where it is ruthless, where everything is only about the bottom line, where it's like squeezing out every single penny instead of figuring out other ways of doing business. And when I started really thinking about like if I want to change things like one is on a macro level, voting, donating, whatnot, and one is on a micro level, like how do we change this from the inside, each one of us. Right. And I realize for myself like I get to be an example of like you can have a business and make money and still value employees and still create a way where you are not only prioritizing money. Right. When I think about the business that I wanna create, I think about how do I wanna make it such an like amazing place for people to work? How do I wanna honor my employees? How do I wanna pay livable wages and give them time off and have good maternity leave and do all these other things that would make it a good place to live? But in that, I also have to make money, right? That's business 101, like if you're not making money, you're not gonna be in business for awhile. And I know for me, I had to realize like if I wanna have employees, that means I have to grow this business to a certain extent. I have to want to make money, lots of it, so that I can support paying other people's livable wages, so that I can be that example. I see this now with my husband, I love watching him build this business because he does things so ethically like he's so focused on making it a place where his employees are happy. And that's why he has very little like turnover, very little people quitting. And it's been so fascinating to watch. He also makes a lot of money. He runs a very successful business. And when I started seeing like oh, this is what we have to do. But in order to do that, you have to have that desire to want to grow the business. You have to drop the shame to be able to ask customers for money, to be able to charge the amount that you think it's worth charging, to be able to scale. That only comes, right, from wanting money, from wanting to be like yeah, okay, this is the marker of business. This is how I grow. This is how I pay people. Okay, let's do it. Right now I'm reading uh Trudi Lebron's new book. It's called The Anti-Racist Business Book. I highly recommend it to anybody that is running any business even if you are a side hustler and her book obviously focuses more on anti-racism and diversity inclusion equity in the workplace but it's the same idea. It's the same idea that like corporate America doesn't work for most people right now. It is, you know, filled with racist, misogynistic, sexist, ableist policies that really make it very difficult for people, for minorities, for everybody, just makes a horrible place to work. And like we should change those, yes. Right. We should hold companies accountable and we can also start building businesses to show what that looks like, what anti-racist businesses look like. We can start building businesses knowing like I'm gonna from the foundation, the framework is gonna be something where my values are equity, diversity and inclusion are a place where I create an environment that works for everybody. By being by building those businesses, by showing what is possible is the way that I can change bigger companies who want to say like oh no, if we do that, we'll be out of business. It's like no, you won't. And the only way we can do that is to show it. Right. And so I think about this. I also think about even on the macro level, right? Like when I look back now on my own beliefs, I think about when I had that belief of like I don't want any money or I don't need money or good people whatever don't make money. Who do you think then is only donating to the political parties? Right? Like if if only the people that are building businesses are the people that are in it just for the money and they wanna, you know, squeeze every penny out and they want to create tax structures that give them loopholes then those are only the people that are making the biggest contributions to politics which leads to the system that we have. Right. When I say now like I honestly feel like it's my duty to make as much money as possible because I want to donate to the people that are actually working for reform. I want to create a system that ends up working for most people. I know that I have a unique skillset that I can leverage that maybe not everybody can, maybe not everybody wants to. So if I wanna live in a country that is going to be ruled by people, you know, having money in order to have some kind of political power. Alright, then I guess that's the game I'm playing. Why would I ever feel guilty about that? Right. The second thing I started realizing was like this current system that we talk about that is so broken, right? Our capitalistic system. Why would I not want the resource that protects me and my family and my friends and people around me, right? It's so backwards when you think about it, right? In America, we we complain, as we should, about the fact that like there is a lack of healthcare, lack of education, all of these things. And it's like the thing that can guarantee you having that, if you can't change what the government's gonna do, I mean, you can, you can vote. We can all change. But I mean, you get what I'm saying? Like I can't single-handedly decide when everybody gets healthcare but I can decide that like I'm going to try to secure this resource that gives me the peace of mind to know that I'm gonna be okay, to know that I can retire. Right. I recently had my gallbladder out, as I've mentioned. And I've I ended up in the emergency room a couple weeks before I got it removed. And now with the surgery, I'm getting all the bills and it's just bringing this up again for me because this was not something I could ever have planned. I didn't, I'm a very healthy person. I've never had any other problems. This all just happened a couple months ago and it came outta nowhere. And I think about it and I'm like I so grateful that, I mean, I have health insurance but even the bills that are coming, it causes no stress in my life. I know I can handle them. And I think about how many people end up becoming bankrupt because of medical bills or whatever the case may be. And again, yeah, we need to reform the system but like why wouldn't I go after and feel entitled to secure the resource that's going to allow me to survive in the system that I'm in. And the third reason that I came to was like hey, money is fun. I don't know who I was lying to when I said I didn't want it. That was ridiculous. But it just provides options. It provides freedom. I actually just saw a TikTok, this is kind of an aside but um there was a TikTok where there was a it started with a woman, a stay-at-home mom saying like I'm a stay at home mom, does it seem insane that I wanna like hire someone to clean my house because I feel like it would make me a better mom but I feel guilty. And then somebody else had duet-ed it, which means like they just made a video back on the back of it. And the woman was saying that she doesn't have kids and she was like, you know, I'm a business owner and I hire employees to help me with my business and I've never felt guilty about hiring employees. And as a stay at home mom, that's your business except it's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So, and no man would ever like if a man ever said like even a stay at home dad, if a stay at home dad said I'm gonna hire a um housekeeper, nobody would bat an eye. But of course, with women, we are like just given all of this shame and guilt. Obviously, it was really interesting reframe and she was saying like it's your business, you should never feel guilty about hiring an employee but even like not thinking about it as a business, like I was it was just so fascinating for me to think about why would you have to feel guilty about employing somebody, paying somebody money to do a task that you don't want to do? Right. We've tied in so much morality around things. Like if you have the money. Yeah, if you don't, if as a stay at home mom, if you you guys can't budget in for somebody to clean, fine. But what I started realizing with money was like it gives me the freedom to get help with the things that I need which makes me a better person. It makes me a better mom. It makes me a better wife. It makes me a better, you know, daughter, friend, whatever because I can show up at my life. I think back to the fact that like we used to live in villages and we used to have help with a lot of different things, child rearing and stuff, and we don't anymore. And so, especially as women, we are given these ideas that we have to take on everything and it somehow makes us morally better to do it. And if you can't do it yourself, there's some kind of failing. It's absurd. And so like even watching this, I was thinking about like it's a fascinating how much shame we put around things that are neutral. Like somebody has a cleaning business, you pay them to come clean your house cuz you don't want to do it. Money affords you that. It gives you that option so that you don't have to be exhausted at the end of them every day. And you get to show up for your kids the way that you want. And so when I started realizing that like money is very fun, right? It lets me not do the things I don't wanna do. It allows me to indulge in the things that I want to. It allows me to, you know, have whatever luxuries I want. I realize this too, like living in the and right. So many of us is like you're either, you know, a good person or you're not. You like you can either like, I don't know, give or you're gonna be like an indulgent, human being, whatever. And I just started like really embracing the fact that like all of humans, like we live in the and. We're all hypocrites. We all do things that don't actually kind of make sense when you look at both sides but it's because there's just different parts of us, right? Like it's okay to want to help people and give money for that reason. And also indulge in like a luxurious vacation. Both of those things are normal. It doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you human. And the more we learn to live in that and, and again, like going back when we were talking about like what the problem is with, you know, not someone making a couple hundred thousand or a couple million but somebody making obscene amounts of money like it's like even spending the money that you have like you spending the money that you're making is not what is causing the problems in our society. And so I will just tell you in in case it helps you what I've spent money on in the last year. And I don't say this in any way like I don't want a pat on the back for the stuff that I've given away and I don't actually care if you judge me for the things that I've bought because it's like I've just really clued in to what it is that makes me happy. What are the things I wanna experiment? What are things I want to try and experience in this one life? And I just give it to you as an example of not only what is possible but like an example of living in the and. Okay, so in the last year, just to show you this, like no right or wrong way to spend your money. What have I spent it on? I have donated $25,000 to different charities that mean a lot to me. I also bought my first Chanel purse which was a very fascinating experience. I feel like I do things just to see what my thoughts are gonna be and I had a lot of thoughts about that one. Um but I did it. I bought it. I still don't wear it that often but, you know, whatever, we're making some changes here. So I did that. That was two. Uh what else do I do? Oh, I I buy groceries for a single mom in Louisiana whom I've never met. I was randomly put in contact with and I have bought her groceries for the last year. She needed help with it and I decided that I was just gonna take that on. I also, I went business class for the first time, me and my whole family to New York last uh October which was fricking fantastic. And it makes it very difficult to go back into coach but alas, it was a fun experience. I'm also, I have a rental property and I have decided to rent it out for half of what I could make, especially in this insane market, because there's a family of four that wouldn't be able to afford that neighborhood or that type of a house and I want them to be able to have that. And I tell you all these again, if not for any other reason then to just show that like money allowed me to do all of these things. It allowed me to live in that and, it allows me to realize that the more I make, the more amazing ripple effects I can have in all aspects of my life. The more I get to experience really fun and amazing things and the more I get to help in the way that I want, right. I get to experience luxury. I get to give away more like those are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I found that the more that I do experience luxury, the more I also want to give back. And I was thinking about that because I was thinking like it's interesting because if I just gave away everything, if I was like you know what I wanna be a quote unquote good person and I wanna give away, I don't think I would keep doing this business cuz after awhile like the incentive, not that it doesn't feel good, it feels good obviously to make and to be able to give. But after a while I'd be like this might be a little too hard, right? Like I don't need to constantly keep growing and pushing myself and working and failing and embarrassing myself and showing up on in social media and doing all of these things. Like I could just go back and get a job and maybe I'll make less and then I'll give less and I'll do all these things. And so I realize like yeah, part of the incentive for me to make money is because I get to enjoy really cool things. I get to like try really fancy stuff and I get to go on vacations that I really like. And if I don't have that, then I don't also build the business where I give really good employee perks or I don't give money the way it that I want. Right. Like when I realize I can become a steward of money in lots of different ways and the more money I have, again, I think the more money women have, the more money minorities have, the better off we all are. I'm a great steward of money. And that's like a belief I have now. And I will say this, when I was taking that first class flight, I had a lot of guilt when I going on the flight. And I was really like trying to just observe my thoughts of like why do I have I feel so much guilt about this? And I had a lot of thoughts that were stuff like why do I get to enjoy this? Why do I get to experience this? Right. So I don't think my parents have actually ever gone first class now that I think about it. I felt a deep sense of shame maybe guilt I don't know. And I and really the thought that came up was I don't deserve this anymore than anybody else. So why do I get this, right? And the truth is that I don't deserve it anymore than anybody else but I remember looking around that first class flight and I can, I'm sure you can imagine that the clientele there looked a certain way. And I remember thinking like it's funny cuz I don't think a lot of these people have guilt for sitting up here. And I remember thinking the thought yeah, I don't deserve it anymore but I also don't deserve it any less. Why am I making it that because I've I get the privilege and I have just whatever my life circumstance is, whatever my path has afforded me has allowed me this experience. Can I sit in the understanding that I don't deserve this any less than anybody else? And I get to enjoy it and me not enjoying it doesn't again, magically give the seat to somebody that I think would deserve it. I think like we all deserve all of it and life is not gonna be fair. Not everybody get is gonna have the same experiences. But what I also realized was as I was doing those things as I, not the Chanel person, but with the first class flight, there's other things that I've spent money on, investments in myself, coaching programs, luxury hotel rooms, whatever. And I realized that it started changing my self-concept of myself. It started changing the way that I looked at myself. It started changing the way of like how serious I take myself. It started changing the way I I have looked at myself as a business owner and I realized the ripple effect of that of how I show up, how I sell, how I uh give value, how I try to teach the bigger and bolder dreams that I have., the fact that I wanna scale in different ways. Like I realized even spending the money on the quote unquote like luxury or things that might seem like frivolous was changing how I related to myself, what I thought I deserved, what I realized how I was gonna show up in my life, what I was gonna ask for, what I was gonna demand. And so this isn't like, you know, some kind of push that like you should go out and get luxury things but it is like how I started thinking about myself is very much tied in the way that I spend money and the way I carry myself, in the things that I do for myself. Right? The things that I'll delegate, the things that I'll decide like you know what it's okay for me not to do this anymore because it doesn't make me happy. The more I started getting in tune with what is it that I really want? What are the things that I really enjoy? The more I start getting clear on my north star, the more I serve. It's all related. And that's why I want you to start thinking also about your thoughts about money and how that might be limiting you. How that might be putting you in a position where you are not advocating for yourself or you're not or you're underearning or you're not asking for the raise that you deserve or the bonus or you're not looking for a job that's gonna honor you and give you what you deserve and you're just taking kind of the bare minimum. When you clean up the shame and guilt, when you realize that it is a resource and you live in this society and you have every right to want to secure that resource for yourself and that money is just an amplifier of what's already there, there's nothing to fear. It doesn't it's not gonna automatically make you into a terrible human being. When you start really like cleaning that up then you get clear on like what is it that I want? Yeah, what are the things I wanna experience in my life? What are the things that would be nice for me to take care of and not have to have stress about? Why do I think that's not available to me? And so I want you to know like maybe take me as an example that you're allowed to want and make as much money as you want. And that it's possible to change your thoughts about it. I mean, my husband always has like a especially about money stuff, he's like I just cannot believe that you're the same person. Because when I tell you, I used to rail against this stuff and it's fascinating to to see how much my my thoughts have shifted. But I think that it can be an example that this work works and that it helps you come from a place that will maybe serve you more. I feel like I was a lot more angry and a lot more stressed cause I didn't have money. And how it's allowed me to change my thoughts about money has allowed me to show up in so many ways and actually help a lot more. So if you want help with your own thoughts about money, if you know deep down like yeah, I do want nice things. I do wanna make a lot of money. I do wanna help a lot of people. I do wanna have a big impact. I do wanna ask for what I'm worth. I do wanna be able to ask for that raise. I want you to join me. I want you to do this work deeper. I want you to get to the bottom of what this shame and guilt and all this bullsh*t that's keeping you stuck. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath and sign up for the wait list and join me for six months and let's do this work together. I hope that this episode was helpful and I will see you next week on another one.

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