As a creative entrepreneur, it can be extremely helpful to look at our money stories to better understand ourselves & our habits, especially in how our past experiences influence our engagement with the world now.
Do you know what a money story is?
As a creative entrepreneur, you will have a money story, everyone does. But you may not know what yours is, or you may not even be familiar with the term money stories.
In this post I will be sharing:
What money stories are
How to decipher yours
My personal experience and my money story
So first, let me tell you what a Money Story is…
A Money Story is a combination of your conscious and subconscious thoughts and feelings and experiences around money. You likely have a variety of influences in your life, as well as your own experiences around money, that have all impacted how you view and relate to and use money now; as well as your lens of how you view yourself, how you view the world, how you view doing business, and basically any way that money is used in your life.
It can be really helpful to start examining our Money Story, especially as creative or spiritual entrepreneurs, as we’re out here selling and promoting and marketing, so understanding our personal money story is key.
Your money story is influenced by your family, your upbringing, those involved in raising you,, relatives, friends, your neighbourhood. It can also be influenced by your education, your religion, or even the media. There's a whole bunch of different things that come into play and will help you understand where your relationship with money comes from and how it was formed.
It can be influenced by your family's lineage, your family's generational experiences, as well as and your own experiences with money such as receiving allowance or getting a job (or not receiving the birthday gifts that you asked for!). It is quite complex when you look at it, so many things could have influenced your money story.
When you look at your money story you can better understand yourself, which is the whole reason why we're here!
How to discover your money story
You can start to examine your money story by going back in time and looking at your first experiences with money.
A great question to ask yourself is, “What was my first money memory?”
Look at the good money experiences you have had, as well as the negative ones. Whether it was selling lemonade on the corner, or selling a painting, think about what those experiences were like for you. Not just the transaction, but what was going on internally for you and your thoughts and feelings about that money experience.
You may find it to be quite a triggering process. So I advise you to be careful, considerate and thoughtful with yourself as you go back and look at your money story.
Also, if you need some professional support as you do this, whether you want to talk about it with your therapist, or hire me to create some safe space to talk about your money experiences and your thoughts and beliefs, get the support you need.
As you examine your money story, you will see how it's probably changed and evolved over time. You may find you have a belief that's really stuck around and is not actually serving you, or a thought pattern that keeps coming up. This is where we get to evolve, change and choose what we want our money story to be like. We get to decide who we want to be and how we want to engage in the world.
It’s important to keep in mind that when it comes to mindset work, our thoughts are not facts, which means that they can be changed! When you start to realize the thoughts and feelings that you've had around money in the past don't have to stay the same or dictate your life now, it is eye opening. It's totally possible to change your money mindset & you're totally capable of it.
And just like any other habit, it may take some time to change. So it's really not enough to just simply become aware and want to have a different experience. You are going to have to build on it. You will probably need to make some changes and also figure out what is going to support you in changing your experience, as well as sustaining that new experience. (Mindset work, habits, education, mentorship, new tools, boundaries and hard conversations!)
My Money Story
I will tell you about one of my personal thoughts that had been part of my money story for a very long time.
My belief was “I’m not good at saving money.” Fact, end of story.
When looking deeper into my money story, I realized that I wanted to change that.
I started by setting a goal, I wanted to save $10,000. At the time, I actually didn't have any real accountability besides my husband and our goal of buying a house, but it was the catalyst for my savings goal, and really the first time I had even set a savings goal. It was huge!
Becoming aware of and working on my money mindset around saving really was a game changer for me. I set the goal, and was very clear about the motivation for that goal.
I went about working on my money mindset and starting to change my relationship with saving, and my relationship with myself. I looked at my thought process, such as why did I think I wasn't good at saving? Why did I think I was incapable of it? What would I be capable of if I could save?
I didn't have a rigid set of rules for how much I wanted to save each month, I just knew that I wanted to save that $10,000. I told myself I was great at saving, I loved saving, I loved seeing my account grow and grow!
Every time I got a paycheck I would allocate a percentage of my income to my savings account. I didn’t have a perfect system, but I knew there was something great on the other side, and it was thrilling to witness myself grow and become more capable and abundant in this area of money.
That was my first really big change in my own money story. Since then there's been lots of changes. But that one always stands out to me because it was such a deeply ingrained part of who I thought I was.
I encourage you to look at your areas of making, saving and spending money. You could also add debt or investing to those categories and start to examine, how are you currently thinking and feeling about those areas of money, and look at where you have some thoughts/beliefs that have really been with you for a long time?
It all starts with sitting down, acknowledging where you're at, and getting excited about where you want to go, who you want to be and the relationship that you want to have with money. Look at how money is contributing to your overall wealth, aka your well-being!
I would love to support you and allow you to have a healthier, happier relationship with your money and with yourself, so if you need some more support in learning about your money story, then book in your free wealth consultation to see how I can support you! Wealth Coaching for Creative Entrepreneurs — Real World Creative