US Edition
According to a new survey by NerdWallet, one in four UK adults feel anxious about their finances at least once a day and 51 per cent say it’s affecting their mental health. Why?
“Our mental health is affected because money is so intrinsically linked to our survival,” said Denise Duffield-Thomas, the self-made multi-millionaire, best-selling author of Get Rich, Lucky Bitch! and a money mindset coach who has just launched her new book Chill And Prosper: The New Way To Grow Your Business.
“Not having money can also eat away at how we see ourselves. We make the mistake of attributing morals to money. If we’re not getting clients, if we’re not getting work, if we’re applying for lots of jobs and not getting call-backs, we start to internalise it – and asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’”
The good news, said Duffield-Thomas, is that you can change your relationship with money and reduce anxiety significantly.
“Constantly working on your mindset is honestly the most important – if not the only – thing you have to master,” she explained. “I have created a multi-million-dollar business without taking outside investment or working my guts out (while raising young kids) and I believe it’s all about my mindset.
“When I was a kid, I grew up on welfare and my family dreamed about winning the lottery, but I remember saying to myself, ‘I am my own lottery ticket’.”
The 43-year-old does not hail from a wealthy background, but is from Newcastle, “a working-class town in Australia” and was brought up by her mother Vicki, a single parent.
Duffield-Thomas came to London in her twenties and in 2010 left the corporate world in consultancy and event management to start her own life coaching business. Married and with three children, she also set the goal to make a million dollars in revenue by the time she was 35.
“I achieved it a few weeks before my 36th birthday and now make millions every year,” she said. “One of my proudest moments is meeting Oprah and telling her that I’ve broken the cycle of poverty and dysfunction in my family.
“When you change your money mindset, your thoughts of scarcity and lack are replaced with deep peace and trust. You feel safe and supported and abundant. You’ll feel a deep shift in your body: an expansive feeling of more ease and core stability in your nervous system.”
She shared seven things you can do to stop feeling anxious and start feeling good no matter how much you have in the bank.
Regulate your nervous system
When you feel broke, you can get into a negative spiral and it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby you start to see yourself as unlucky. You need to get yourself to a place where you feel calmer and more centred so you can take positive action rather than being paralysed by anxiety.
Start by focusing on the knowns in your life and create some certainty for yourself. No one knows if the interest rates are going to rise. Our governments and corporations are not giving us any reassurance and in the last few years with Covid, we’ve had no certainty.
You can’t control what’s going on externally, but you can control what you focus on – what decisions do you have control over that feel more certain? Where do you have the most agency about your money situation? Start there.
Identify your money blocks
Explore ways of starting a “side hustle” and then notice what money blocks pop up. Money blocks are our beliefs about money which stop us from earning what we want.
The most popular one is that you have to work hard to make money. We know this makes no sense because people who work very hard don’t necessarily make the most.
For those of us who grew up in a pre-internet world, we have a very particular view of what work can be. You go to a job, you put in your hours and you get paid for those hours.
However, post-internet, we have lots of different ways that people can earn money, but our minds still haven’t quite caught up with that. I see people who make money from being able to self-publish books or create their own courses and it breaks our brain a little bit to think that you can make money out of doing something that you love.
Start exploring enjoyable ways to earn money on the side and challenging the money “blocks” that might arise.
Cultivate an abundance mindset
Make a list of everything in your life that actually makes you feel rich already. It could be that you live in a great house, that you have a loving relationship, that you’ve got amazing health.
Write a list of all of those things where you actually have abundance and luck already in your life. Focus on what makes you feel “rich”. Then notice when a scarcity mindset has you in its grip.
If you have a scarcity mindset around money, you may find it difficult to make money or hold on to it once you’ve received it. You may find yourself feeling envious of others’ success or feeling as though there’s never enough to go around – this can be money, success or whatever. It can also manifest as anxiety. Perhaps you feel that you’re not good enough, that you don’t deserve success.
Practice noticing your thoughts and then choose to make the leap from scarcity to an abundance mindset. To help with this, each day make a list of five things you are grateful for related to money. It could be something as small as “I’m grateful for my coffee this morning” or “I had enough money to cover my rent this month”.
Instead of bemoaning your current situation, look for ways to improve it. It’s much easier to take positive action and make a plan when you are feeling positive. It’s an upward spiral.
Explore your origin story
Identify what you believe about money and the “origin story” of those beliefs. If your belief is “I’m no good with money” – examine childhood memories for where that belief came from. What did people say about you and money when you were a child? E.g. ‘Suzy spent all the money on sweets when she was six years old/Money burns a hole in Suzy’s pocket’.
Identifying and then challenging some of those outdated assumptions you have about yourself and money is the first step to creating a new, more empowering belief.
Create ‘positive money anchors’
What would feeling financially stable look like/smell like/sound like/feel like? Engage all the senses to create visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and olfactory triggers that are linked to feeling calm and happy about money.
You could try collecting pictures on your phone and computer screen that represent the lifestyle you want, or buying an Eiffel Tower keyring if your goal is to go to Paris, for example.
Now start plotting income-producing activities that you can implement today and create a step-by-step plan of how you can put them in place.
We are bombarded with negative messages about money, so crowd them out with your own daily positive money anchors instead.
Don’t hide away from debt
Face it head-on. People are often too scared to even find out how much debt they have. There is a lot of shame, and embarrassment. You might be using your debt as an excuse to not take action in your life.
But it’s such a great feeling when you don’t owe anything to anyone; you are under no obligation and you are not trapped to do things just because you have to pay off your debts.
Start by examining and unravelling the beliefs and stories you’ve inherited from your parents about money. Then create a new script for yourself. What would you have to believe to create a debt-free life?
You first have to change your beliefs in order to change your spending patterns and habits. Then make a plan to move from feeling powerless to taking control.
Watch what you’re saying out loud about money
There’s definitely a kind of “eat the rich” sentiment at the moment. But money isn’t good or bad. Money just is.
Notice your language about money – are you saying things like ‘money-grubbing’, or ‘filthy rich’ about other people? Instead of b------g about how much money other people make, start getting curious. See if there is any correlation between the way you talk about money and your ability to earn and look after it.
Denise Duffield-Thomas is appearing in Bristol City Hall on November 11 and 12 – click here for more information