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You Have to Be Delusional to Live the Life You Want · Mom's Money

• 0:03
  Before I was born, before my mother was born, I already existed. Not as a person, not as me, not as a personality, but as an egg.
• 0:12
  When my grandmother was pregnant with my mother, the egg that eventually became me was already forming inside my mother's tiny developing body.
• 0:20
  So somewhere in the 1950s, my grandmother was walking around New York City as a single pregnant woman whose husband had left her, carrying my mother, who was carrying me.
• 0:29
  Three generations, one body, one nervous system, one story of survival moving forward. And I think about that all the time, because we inherit more than eye color. We inherit fear. We inherit money stories.
• 0:44
  We inherit survival. We inherit the belief that there's not enough, not enough money, not enough safety, not enough support, not enough time, not enough room for us, and this is not just poetic.
• 0:56
  Biologically, female babies develop their lifetime supply of egg cells while they're still in the womb.
• 1:02
  So when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother, the egg that eventually became you was already part of that environment.
• 1:08
  That does not mean every feeling or fear gets magically downloaded into you, but it does mean the image is real. Three generations were literally connected in one body.
• 1:18
  And researchers studying intergenerational trauma have found that trauma can leave biological marks. Dr.
• 1:25
  Rachel Yehuda's work with the Holocaust survivors and their children found changes connected to stress response genes in both generations. So when I say we inherit survival, I do not mean that as a metaphor only.
• 1:37
  I mean the body remembers. Families remember. Nervous systems remember. But here's the most important part. Inheritance is not destiny. Awareness gives us choice.
• 1:51
  And then one day, if we're lucky, we wake up and realize, "Wait, this might be the story I inherited, but it does not have to be the story I keep living." This is Mom's Money Talk.
• 2:03
  I'm Ellie Ezra, the mom talking money like no one ever did for you. This is for the woman who's done managing money and ready to run her life like a business.
• 2:13
  I'm not a financial advisor, but I've built companies, sat in rooms with investors, and learned how money actually works. And here's the truth. You don't have a money problem. You have a systems problem.
• 2:24
  This isn't about budgeting harder or cutting lattes. It's about spending with intention, building assets, and thinking like the CFO of your household.
• 2:35
  Because if you're a mom, you're already running a business, the business of the home. So I'm giving you the playbook, one that makes your life feel lighter, not heavier.
• 2:44
  Because moms have been taught to budget harder, save harder, sacrifice more, be realistic, stay safe, don't want too much, don't get ahead of yourself, don't be delusional.
• 2:56
  And today, I want to tell you something that may piss some people off. I think you need to be a little delusional, not irresponsible, not reckless, not pretending reality isn't real,
• 3:11
  but delusional enough to believe that your current circumstances are not your final identity. Delusional enough to say, "I know what I came from. I know what I inherited.
• 3:24
  I know what my nervous system learned, but I am still allowed to build something bigger." Because the people telling you to be realistic usually don't have what you want anyway.
• 3:36
  So why the hell are they the ones writing the rules? I come from a family with trauma. I come from a Jewish family, and honestly, just being Jewish carries trauma. There's historical trauma. There's survival trauma.
• 3:47
  There's scarcity. There's a feeling safety can disappear. Money can disappear. People can disappear. The world can turn on you. And then inside my own family, there was more.
• 4:00
  My grandmother was a single woman in New York, pregnant with my mom after her husband had left her. My mom grew up in that. She was the oldest of three girls, and she had to become a little adult.
• 4:10
  She had to be a mom to her mom in certain ways. She had to figure things out without having a father in the house. And I say this with so much compassion because I know she did the best she could.
• 4:22
  The nervous system she inherited became part of what she handed down.
• 4:27
  And my dad, he had his own lack mindset, not because he was bad, not because he was wrong, because he was responding to the world he knew, a world where things could disappear, a world where survival mattered, a world where security mattered, a world where you had to be careful.
• 4:43
  And I understand that. But here's the problem. Survival is not the same thing as expansion. Survival says, "Don't lose." Wealth says, "Build." Survival says, "Stay small." Wealth says, "Take the next step."
• 4:58
  Survival says, "What if it doesn't work?" Builders ask, "What if it does?" Same facts, different question. And I think so many of us are walking around with inherited survival scripts and calling them logic.
• 5:14
  We say, "I'm just being realistic." Really? But are you? Or are you being loyal to fear? Are you being loyal to the version of safety your parents had to create?
• 5:24
  Are you being loyal to a nervous system that was built in another era, under another pressure, inside another woman's body? That doesn't mean we blame them.
• 5:35
  I don't believe in sitting around blaming our parents forever, but I do believe in telling the truth. Because if you don't know what you inherited, you'll think it's your personality. You'll think it's common sense.
• 5:45
  You'll think it's destiny. And it's not. It's a pattern, and patterns can be interrupted.
• 5:52
  In my house, there was a lot of negativity, volatility, uncertainty, and somewhere along the way, I think I took the opposite road. I became positive. Not because I had endless proof that everything would work out.
• 6:04
  I didn't. But I had this head- And this thing inside this head that said, "It's gonna work out. It's going to work out.
• 6:10
  It's going to work out," even when there was evidence to the contrary, even when things didn't work out, even when I lost, even when I got rejected, even when I was embarrassed,
• 6:21
  and I was embarrassed, even when I didn't know what I was doing, there was this voice that said, "It doesn't matter. Keep going." [laughs] And maybe that was epigenetic too. Maybe that was survival in a prettier outfit.
• 6:36
  Maybe it was my nervous system saying, "We're gonna make it. We're gonna figure this out. We are not going to disappear." And because I... Learning came easy for me, I overachieved. I was a straight A student.
• 6:49
  I got super involved in school. I found success there. I became a performer, surprise, surprise. I was a musician. I played the flute. I was first chair. I joined color guard. I became captain.
• 6:59
  I was the top of my graduating class, spoke on stages, ran for student government in high school and college, won some, lost some. I built resilience, and that matters.
• 7:11
  Because mindset is not just saying nice things in the mirror. Mindset is what you do after you lose. Mindset is what you do after someone says no. Mindset is what you do when the facts look bad.
• 7:23
  Mindset is not pretending it doesn't hurt. Mindset is saying, "Okay, that hurt. I'm still going." And that's the part people miss. They think positive thinking means you never feel pain.
• 7:35
  No, positive thinking means pain does not get to become the boss of your life. And positive emotion is not just fluff. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson developed something called the broaden-and-build theory.
• 7:49
  The idea is that positive emotions can broaden our thinking, help us see more options, and build long-term resources like resilience, creativity, and social support.
• 8:01
  So when I say I was positive, I'm not saying I was cute and sunny and pretending everything was fine. I'm saying positivity helped me stay open. Fear narrows. Survival narrows. Shame narrows.
• 8:15
  But hope can widen the lens, and sometimes that wider lens is the only reason you see the next step. When I first watched The Secret, it was around 2006. I was now living in New York City.
• 8:28
  And listen, I know people have feelings about The Secret. Some people love it. Some people think it's bullshit. Some people think manifestation is magic. Some people think it's neuroscience. Some people call it God.
• 8:39
  Some people think it's coincidence. I actually don't care what you call it because for me, the movie gave me language for something I already knew in my body.
• 8:49
  It showed people writing checks to themselves, putting visions on walls, looking at the thing they wanted every day, training their minds to believe it was possible.
• 8:57
  And I remember thinking, "Wait, if I knew I could have this, how long would I work toward it? When would I give it up? If I knew it might take 20 years, would I still go?" And the answer was yes.
• 9:10
  Because if you really believe the thing is yours, you don't just quit because it takes longer than you wanted. That's where people get this wrong. They think manifestation is, "I want it, so it should appear by Friday."
• 9:20
  No. The real question is, can you hold the vision long enough to become the person who can receive it? Can you hold the vision when it takes years? Can you hold the vision when nobody understands?
• 9:34
  Can you hold the vision when your bank account does not match it yet? Can you hold the vision when you feel stupid? [laughs] Can you hold the vision when your own brain says, "Who do you think you are?"
• 9:46
  Because that's the work. And back then, I wanted to test it. So I didn't start with a million dollars. It felt too far, too big, too loaded, too much for my nervous system. So I started with something that felt easy,
• 9:59
  lucky pennies. I thought, "Could I manifest finding lucky pennies?" It felt believable. It didn't require me to, like, fight my gut.
• 10:09
  It didn't require me to override my entire identity because finding a penny on the ground, it felt possible. And then I started seeing them in New York, on the street, on 86th and Park. And I would think, "Wait a minute.
• 10:23
  Who's dropping a penny here? [laughs] How did this penny end up right in front of me?" Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe people drop pennies all the time. Maybe I just trained my brain to see them.
• 10:34
  But to me, every penny felt like a breadcrumb, a little message. "You're on the right track. Keep going. You're not crazy. Keep believing. Keep building. Keep walking."
• 10:45
  And even recently in 2026, I was on a five-mile walk with one of my ultramarathon friends. We're talking about real estate investing.
• 10:53
  I look down, and there's a penny, and I laughed because now pennies are actually harder to find, right? They don't even make them anymore. We barely use cash anymore.
• 11:03
  People aren't walking around with coins falling out of their pockets the way I imagine they used to, and it's on a hiking trail.
• 11:09
  And yet there it was, a little copper wink from the universe or God or my brain or coincidence. Again, I don't really care because the meaning I gave it helped keep me going, and that's the point.
• 11:23
  Most people are not collecting evidence for their dreams. They're collecting evidence for their fears.
• 11:28
  They're scanning for proof it won't work, proof they're too late, proof they're not smart enough, proof they're not ready, proof they don't have enough money, proof, oh, the husband won't support it.
• 11:40
  The market's too saturated. The dream is unrealistic. They become private investigators for limitation. I became a private investigator for possibilities. That's what the pennies were.
• 11:55
  There's science underneath this too. Your brain is a filtering machine. It cannot process everything around you, so it decides what matters. That's why when you buy a certain car, suddenly you see the car everywhere.
• 12:07
  That's why when you're pregnant, suddenly pregnant women are everywhere. [laughs] That's why when you decide pennies are a sign- Pennies start appearing. Maybe the universe put them there. Maybe God put them there.
• 12:19
  Maybe your brain finally noticed what had been there all along. I honestly don't need to fight about which one it is because either way, the practice changed me.
• 12:32
  It trained me to look for evidence that life was working with me, not against me. And that matters because most people are doing the opposite. They're training their brain to scan for threat.
• 12:44
  And this is where I think affirmations get misunderstood. People think, "Oh, affirmations are cheesy," and some of them are. I get it.
• 12:52
  Standing in the mirror saying, "I'm a billionaire," while your checking account is overdrawn, it can feel ridiculous. But the point is not to lie to yourself. The point is to give your brain new instruction.
• 13:05
  The point is to stop rehearsing the same inherited limitation every day because some of you, you're already doing affirmations. You just call them facts. You say, "I'm bad with money. I always mess up.
• 13:18
  We can't afford that. I'll never get ahead. People like me don't build well. I'm not good with numbers. Too old. Started too late. I'm not that kind of person." Do you realize those are affirmations?
• 13:30
  They're just really shitty ones. And this is also where religion has been saying some version of this forever. Prayer, faith, ask and believe, speak life, set your intention, call it into being.
• 13:42
  Different traditions use different language, but the pattern is ancient. What you repeatedly focus on shapes how you move through the world. Science calls some of this neuroplasticity.
• 13:56
  Psychology calls some of this self-efficacy. Religion might call it faith. Spirituality might call it manifestation. I'm not here to make all of those things identical.
• 14:07
  I'm saying humans have always known that what we believe, repeat, pray, speak, and practice changes us. So yes, I believe in affirmations. I believe in positive thinking. I believe in visualization.
• 14:23
  I believe in writing the number down. I believe in putting the picture on the wall. I believe in training your brain.
• 14:32
  I believe in speaking to yourself like the woman you are becoming instead of the woman that fear wants you to stay because your brain is always rehearsing something.
• 14:43
  The question is, are you rehearsing survival or are you rehearsing expansion? Before I moved to New York, I had only visited once. It was April of 2001, before the Twin Towers fell. I was in high school.
• 14:59
  I paid my own way to go on a theater trip. I had worked since I was 13 years old, and at one point I worked at a movie theater. I saved my money. All the money I had went to that trip, and I fell in love.
• 15:12
  As I said, my mom was from New York. I'd heard about it. I had this mythology in mind, the buildings, energy, ambition, theater, possibility. It felt like a place where I could become someone.
• 15:24
  And when I came back from that trip, I put pictures of New York everywhere, all over my dorm room in college, postcards, photos, frames, images from that trip.
• 15:35
  I lived with the vision before I had any idea how it would happen. I didn't know the plan. I just knew the desire, and I think that's important. Most people wait for certainty, but certainty rarely comes first.
• 15:47
  Desire comes first. The pull comes first. The gut comes first. The knowing comes first. The plan comes later. So after college, I didn't go immediately. I didn't have a way.
• 16:00
  I got my first job in Las Vegas, my hometown, and after about nine months, I just knew this isn't it. This is not what I want. I'm home. I don't want to be home. I want New York. So I quit without a perfect plan.
• 16:12
  I started telling everyone. I humbled myself. I said, "I want to go. Do you know anyone? Can you introduce me? Can I talk to them? Can I learn from them?" Some people said yes. Some people said no.
• 16:20
  Some people introduced me. Some leads went nowhere. I mean, none of it magically was handed to me. Housing wasn't magically handed to me. I kept going, and I went with two suitcases. I stayed in a youth hostel.
• 16:33
  I only had about $1,500 to my name. That wasn't going to last long in New York, but I went anyway because I had decided I am going to make this work. I don't know how, but I'm going.
• 16:43
  And eventually, I wound up staying with family that I barely knew existed. My great aunt on Long Island was like, "You can stay here." Then her daughter, my second cousin, she let me stay. I couch surfed.
• 16:55
  I took the Long Island Railroad. I got up early. I went to the city. I looked for jobs, got rejected, kept going. And after about three months, I found a job, and it actually was no connection. I just got it,
• 17:09
  and I eventually moved into that city. I lived in a railroad apartment in Spanish Harlem 45 minutes away from the Manhattan Municipal Building where I worked.
• 17:18
  But the job, I could look out the window, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge. I was there. The pictures became real. The postcards became real. The thing I stared at became the thing I was living.
• 17:30
  And people might say, "That's not manifestation. That's work." Yes, exactly. That's the point. Manifestation without work is fantasy. Work without vision is exhaustion. But vision plus work, that's dangerous.
• 17:47
  Uh, that changes your life. And this is where I want to be really clear. The vision alone was not enough. There's research on goal achievement that basically says fantasizing is not the whole game.
• 17:58
  One powerful framework is mental contrasting with implementation intentions. That means you picture the desired future, but you also name the obstacles and create a plan. So it's not just, "I'm gonna live in New York."
• 18:10
  It's, "I'm gonna live in New York, and if I don't have housing, I'll stay in a hostel. If I don't have a job, I'll ask everyone I know for intros. If I get rejected, I'll keep applying."
• 18:18
  That's the difference between fantasy and power. The dream gives you direction. The plan gives you traction. I was not manifest- manifesting New York like a fairy tale.
• 18:28
  I was becoming the woman who could survive New York. That's the difference. So let's talk about the word delusional, because I wanna use it on purpose.
• 18:37
  I think successful people are often delusional before the world calls them visionary. A founder with no revenue and a pitch deck says, "This is going to be a billion-dollar company," and people call him ambitious.
• 18:50
  A mom with 20 years of experience, a career, kids, a household she runs, emotional labor she carries, a business idea, a book inside her, a podcast inside her, a calling inside her says, "Maybe I could do something bigger."
• 19:04
  And immediately she thinks, "Who am I to want that?" No. No more. I'm not interested in women being realistic in a world that has been unrealistic about what it expects from us, okay?
• 19:16
  Women have been expected to raise children, manage homes, work jobs, absorb everyone's emotions, track the groceries, remember the birthdays, build careers, look good, stay calm, be grateful, don't complain, and somehow don't want too much.
• 19:30
  That is fucking delusional. So if the world gets to be delusional about what it demands from mothers, then mothers get to be delusional about what we are capable of building. Let me be clear. Delusion is not denial.
• 19:45
  I am not saying ignore your bills. I'm not saying quit everything without thinking. I'm not saying risk your family stability for a fantasy. I'm not saying pretend math doesn't matter. This is a money show. Math matters.
• 19:57
  Cashflow matters. Debt matters. Assets matter. Emergency funds matter. Systems matter. But fear should not be the only adult in the room. Your vision gets a seat, too. Your gut gets a seat.
• 20:11
  Your calling, your future self, your desire gets a seat. Albert Bandura called this self-efficiency, the belief that you can take the actions required to create an outcome.
• 20:22
  Not just I'm amazing, not empty confidence, but I can learn, I can persist, I can figure this out.
• 20:28
  Research on self-efficacy has connected it to motivation, resilience, achievement, health, leadership, and the ability to bounce back from setbacks. So when I say be delusional, I do not mean be detached from reality.
• 20:46
  I mean build the belief that you can act inside reality, that you can take the next step, that you can learn the next skill, that you can survive the discomfort of becoming someone new.
• 20:55
  Because for too many women, being realistic has become a socially acceptable way to abandon ourselves. We call it responsibility, and sometimes it is.
• 21:06
  Sometimes responsibility is real, but sometimes I'm being responsible is just fear in a blazer. Sometimes it is your inherited lack of mindset trying to sound mature.
• 21:19
  Sometimes it's your nervous system saying, "Don't leave the cave. Don't risk rejection. Don't be seen. Do not want anything. Do not try." And that's where you have to tell the demons in your head to shut the fuck up.
• 21:32
  Not because they're evil, because they're outdated. They're trying to protect a version of you that no longer exists.
• 21:39
  [camera clicks] Here's where motherhood changes this conversation, because when you become a mother, something happens. Your body changes. Your brain changes. Your priorities change. Your intuition sharpens.
• 21:52
  You can feel things. You can walk into a room and know something's off with your kid. You can hear a different kind of cry. You can sense when something's wrong. You can feel it in your gut.
• 22:04
  And motherhood changes the brain. That is not just something moms say because we feel different.
• 22:09
  Research on the transition to motherhood shows that pregnancy and motherhood involve real neurobiological adaptations, hormones, brain plasticity, structural brain changes, and systems connected to maternal behavior.
• 22:25
  So yes, the mom gut is real. We become tuned differently. We become responsive differently. We become alert differently.
• 22:37
  And I think one of the tragedies is that women are praised for using that intuition for everyone else, but shamed when that same intuition says, "I need more. I wanna build. I'm called to something."
• 22:49
  We trust women's intuition when it is in service of everyone else. We praise the mom gut when it protects the kid. We praise her instinct when she knows the baby needs help.
• 22:59
  We praise her sensitivity when she can read everyone else's needs. But when that same gut says, "I need more. I wanna build, create, leave, start, earn, own.
• 23:10
  I wanna become someone bigger," suddenly everyone says, "Be careful. Be realistic. Don't be selfish. What about the kids?" No.
• 23:18
  What about the kids watching a woman ignore the voice inside her until she becomes resentful, sick, shut down, bitter, or numb? What about the kids watching their mother abandon herself in the name of being good? Ugh.
• 23:32
  What do they inherit? Because our children are not only inheriting our money habits, they're inheriting our relationship with possibility. They're watching what we do with desire.
• 23:43
  They're watching whether we trust ourselves. They're watching whether we build. They're watching whether we freeze, whether we say, "I can't," or, "I don't know how yet." And those are very different inheritances.
• 23:56
  [camera clicks] I believe the body keeps score. I believe when we stifle that voice long enough, it shows up somewhere.
• 24:03
  Resentment, exhaustion, anxiety, tension, numbness, overeating, overspending, scrolling, anger, sadness, in the feeling that you're living a life that technically works but does not feel like yours.
• 24:19
  I'm not saying every illness is caused by mindset. Absolutely not. That's not what this is. I'm saying the body and the mind are connected. The nervous system matters. Stress matters. Suppression matters.
• 24:31
  We suppress needs or rage, desire, ambition, or grief. We suppress the version of us that wants to scream, "I was meant for more than managing everyone's life."
• 24:40
  And that voice does not disappear just because you ignore it. It waits. It gets louder. It leaks out. It makes you restless. It makes you jealous of the women who are doing the thing you want to do.
• 24:51
  It makes you annoyed at your husband. It makes you angry at strangers on the internet. It makes you spend money trying to soothe a life that you've not given yourself permission to change.
• 25:02
  And that's why mindset is a money conversation. Because if you do not believe you're allowed to want more, you will sabotage the systems that could help you build more. You will undercharge.
• 25:14
  You will avoid the investment account. You will not ask for the raise. You will not start the business. You will not launch the podcast. You will not buy the asset. You will not make the call. You won't hire the help.
• 25:28
  You won't take the time. You'll say, "I can't afford it." I thought about this podcast for years, and you know why I didn't do it for years? I said, "It takes time and money to do it."
• 25:38
  And you know, when I said that to a really, really longtime friend of mine, you know what he said? "Well, you have time and money now." And why?
• 25:46
  Because the startup I was working with, it ended, and this is finally the time. Sometimes there's a deeper truth, right? Which is, I cannot yet imagine myself as the woman who does that. That's capacity.
• 26:00
  When Lisa Chastain came on my podcast, she talked about building capacity, and I love that. Because capacity is not just about money, it's about identity. It's about your nervous system.
• 26:11
  It's about what your brain can hold without panicking. If you say you want to make a million dollars a year, your brain has to know what to do with that. What does that actually look like?
• 26:21
  One, what actually comes in monthly? $87,500. What goes out monthly? What taxes do you pay? Who do you hire? What systems do you need? What decisions do you make? What support do you need, and what do you stop doing?
• 26:37
  What do you protect? What do you build? If your brain has only practiced survival, abundance will not feel peaceful at first. It may feel unsafe or irresponsible. It may feel like you're going to lose it.
• 26:49
  It may feel like too much, and that's why you have to rehearse the future. Athletes do this. Performers do this. Entrepreneurs do this. They rehearse the thing before it exists, and they make it familiar.
• 27:03
  They make it normal. They make it emotionally survivable. This is why capacity work actually matters, because your brain likes familiarity. If survival is familiar, abundance can feel threatening.
• 27:19
  If chaos is familiar, peace can feel boring. If lack is familiar, receiving more can feel unsafe. So when Lisa talks about building capacity, I think about it like reps.
• 27:30
  You're giving your brain reps with a bigger future. You're rehearsing the numbers. You're rehearsing decisions. You're rehearsing identity.
• 27:38
  You're making expansion feel less foreign, not because you're wishing money into existence, because you're becoming the kind of woman who will not sabotage it when it arrives. So yes, write the number down.
• 27:51
  Yes, put the picture up. Yes, make the vision board. Yes, say the affirmation. Look at the investment calculator. Open a spreadsheet. Imagine the million dollar year. Imagine the eight grand a month or 20 grand a month.
• 28:07
  Then the $87,500 a month, not because the number magically appears, because your brain needs to practice not rejecting it. Why do you think I know that number, $87,500? I keep saying it.
• 28:19
  We're gonna have 10,000 newsletter subscribers for Mom's Money. We're starting a movement. We're talking to each other. That's what this is. That's what I'm doing. Let's do it together.
• 28:29
  Your identity, it needs practice expanding. Your nervous system, it needs practice saying, "This belongs to me. I know what to do here. I can hold this. I can steward this. I can build with this."
• 28:41
  Because money without capacity can disappear. Opportunity without capacity can overwhelm you. Growth without capacity can make you sabotage. So this is not just wishful thinking. This is training. This is reps.
• 28:54
  I know a lot about reps this year. [laughs] This year I got a trainer, and for six months she has been working me harder than I have ever worked. I actually have biceps. [laughs] What? This is capacity.
• 29:07
  It's building muscle, mental muscle, to hold more. Here is the question I keep coming back to: If you knew you could have the thing you wanted, how long would you work toward it?
• 29:20
  If you knew you could build wealth in 10 years, would you stay the course? If you knew your podcast could become profitable in four years, would you keep publishing?
• 29:29
  If you knew your business could become a multi-million dollar company in 20 years, would you keep building?
• 29:35
  If you knew your kids would inherit a totally different model of womanhood from watching you try, would you be willing to be uncomfortable? When would you give up?
• 29:45
  That question matters because most people do not give up because the dream is impossible. They give up because the timeline bruises their ego. They thought it would happen faster. They thought it would be cleaner.
• 29:56
  They thought more people would clap. They thought the first version would work. They thought belief meant no resistance. Nope. Resistance is part of it. There's this Alex Hormozi idea of uninformed optimism.
• 30:08
  At first you're excited. You're like, "This is gonna be amazing." Then you get informed, and suddenly you see how hard it is. Informed pessimism. You see the details, the cost, the work, the competition.
• 30:19
  You see the holes. So then you're the informed pessimist, and that's where most people quit. They say, "Oh, this is harder than I thought." Maybe it's not for me. But the builders keep going.
• 30:29
  They move through that valley. They keep learning. They keep trying. They keep getting humbled, asking for help, but they keep adapting, and eventually, they become informed optimists.
• 30:43
  Not naive, not fluffy, not pretending, but grounded, tested, experienced, still optimistic. That's the goal. Not blind positivity, but battle-tested belief.
• 30:56
  I want to say something that gets left out of the manifestation conversations. Humility is part of it. When I moved to New York, I had to ask people for help. I had to say, "I don't know. Can you introduce me?
• 31:05
  Can I sleep here? Can you tell me how this works? Do you know anyone hiring? Can I meet them?" It's humbling, and I think a lot of people say they want the dream, but they're not willing to be humbled by the path.
• 31:15
  They want the vision. They don't want the couch surfing. They want the money. They don't want the spreadsheet. They want the business. They don't want the sales calls. They want the platform.
• 31:23
  They don't want to post the first awkward videos. They want the investment portfolio. They don't want to learn what an ETF is, or the house, but they don't want to run numbers.
• 31:31
  They want the body, but they won't do the reps. They want the identity. They don't want the initiation. But becoming requires humility. It requires being bad at something. It requires asking and learning.
• 31:46
  It requires letting people see you try.
• 31:49
  It requires letting people see you not know yet, and that's the hard part for high-achieving women because so many of us were rewarded for being good or smart, prepared, polished, impressive.
• 32:02
  But wealth building requires being a beginner again. It requires saying, "I'm not where I want to be, but I'm moving and learning, and I'm willing to be uncomfortable, and I'm willing to look a little delulu.
• 32:15
  I'm willing to look like I'm doing too much. I'm willing to let people misunderstand because the vision matters more than the performance of being realistic."
• 32:23
  I also think it's fascinating that every tradition has some version of this. Religion has prayer, and spirituality has manifestation. Science has neuroplasticity. Psychology has cognitive reframing.
• 32:36
  Athletics has visualization. Businesses have goal setting. Therapy has parts work. Meditation has attention training. Different languages, similar idea. What you focus on changes what you notice.
• 32:49
  What you repeat changes what feels familiar. What you believe changes what you attempt. What you attempt changes what becomes possible. This is not about pretending thoughts magically replace action.
• 33:04
  This is about understanding that your thoughts influence your actions. Your actions influence your outcomes, and your outcomes reinforce your identity. Your identity determines what you reach for next.
• 33:18
  So when someone mocks mindset, I always wonder, "What do you think is making your decisions?" Because your mindset's not some cute little bonus feature. It's the operating system.
• 33:28
  It's the code underneath your money choices. It's the reason one woman sees a tax strategy and thinks, "Hmm, that's for people like me," and another woman thinks, "I could never."
• 33:38
  It's the reason one woman sees a business idea and thinks, "Let me test that," and another woman thinks, "Who am I to try?"
• 33:44
  It's the reason one woman sees Bitcoin and thinks, "Let me learn," and another woman thinks, "That's not for moms like me."
• 33:52
  It's the reason one woman hires a house cleaner and thinks, "I'm buying back my time," and another woman thinks, "I'm a bad mom if I don't do everything myself." That's mindset, and it's not soft. It's structural.
• 34:04
  So this is where money gets practical because if you say you want to build something bigger, your calendar has to reflect that. If your dream matters, it needs time. If your calling matters, it needs space.
• 34:15
  If your future matters, it needs protection.
• 34:18
  So maybe you pay someone else to clean your house, not because you're fancy or lazy, not because you're above it, but because those three hours may be the three hours you use to build the thing your gut has been begging you to build.
• 34:30
  Those three hours might be the podcast, the business plan, the real estate research, the sales page, the book proposal, the investment education, the offer, the asset.
• 34:41
  Moms have been taught to save money by spending their own bodies. Do it yourself, clean it yourself, figure it out yourself, absorb it yourself, stretch yourself.
• 34:50
  But sometimes the wealth-building move is not doing more yourself. Sometimes the wealth-building move is buying back your time so you can build the thing that changes your family's future.
• 35:01
  And yes, you have to run the numbers. Yes, it has to fit. This is not permission to overspend to avoid your life. But stop automatically assuming your labor is free. It is not free.
• 35:13
  It costs your energy, creativity, your nervous system. It's costing your future. And if you're a mom with a calling, an idea, a business, a career, a platform, even a wealth plan, then your time is not just time.
• 35:26
  It is seed capital. Spend it accordingly. Now let's talk about advice because once you start thinking bigger, people will have opinions. They'll tell you, "Slow down. Be careful. Be realistic. Don't give your hopes up.
• 35:38
  Don't risk it. Don't talk about money. Oh, they handle that. Bitcoin, what's that? Don't start a podcast. Aren't there a lot of those? Are you gonna quit your job for that? Oh, that's a lot to charge.
• 35:50
  Oh, you're gonna invest? Oh, I don't know about that. You shouldn't want so much stuff." Okay, some of that advice may be loving. Some of it may be protective.
• 36:00
  Some of it may come from people who genuinely care about you. But that does not mean it's directionally useful because most people give advice from the limits of their own imagination.
• 36:11
  They hand you a map based on where they've been. But if they have not gone where you're trying to go, why are they your GPS? This does not mean you ignore everyone.
• 36:19
  You need mentors, smart people, experts, accountants, lawyers, advisors, women who will tell you the truth. But be careful taking dream advice from people who have made peace with staying small.
• 36:30
  Be careful taking money advice from people who only know survival. Be careful taking business advice from people who've never built. Be careful taking courage advice from people who've never leapt.
• 36:40
  Not because they're bad, because they're not qualified to speak to the version of you that's trying to be born, and that's harsh, but it's true.
• 36:47
  At the end of the day, this comes back to motherhood, because I don't just want more money for the sake of money. I want freedom, options, legacy. I want my kids to see a mother who builds.
• 36:58
  I want them to see a woman who follows that voice inside. I want them to see you can come from survival and still choose expansion. I want them to understand assets and ownership, work ethic, resilience, humility.
• 37:12
  I want them to know fear can ride in the car, but it doesn't get to drive. And I want them to inherit a different nervous system than the one I inherited. Not perfect, not trauma-free, not fake,
• 37:22
  but different, more spacious, more powerful, more honest, more abundant. Because the greatest inheritance you can give to your children might not be the house.
• 37:33
  It may not be the investment account or the Bitcoin or the college fund or any of that. It may be the operating system they watch you live from.
• 37:42
  Do they watch a mother who constantly says, "We can't, it's too much, that's not for us. People like us don't do that"? Or do they watch a mother who says, "Let's learn. Let's build. Let's run the numbers.
• 37:53
  Let's think long term. Let's acquire assets. Let's ask better questions. Let's not budget the crumbs. Let's own the bakery." That's the shift. That is the inheritance. So here's what I want you to do.
• 38:06
  I want you to choose your penny. Not literally, unless that works for you, but choose something your brain can believe, something small, something that teaches your nervous system, I can look for evidence of possibility.
• 38:17
  Maybe your penny is finding a dollar, or maybe it's seeing a certain number, that four four four or eleven eleven. Maybe it's getting excited about an opportunity.
• 38:31
  Maybe it's having one money conversation without spiraling. Or maybe it's saving a hundred bucks and opening an investment account, typing in the website of an exchange or of Schwab or Fidelity and looking around.
• 38:47
  Maybe it's downloading an app like Robinhood or Fold or Gemini or any of those. Maybe it's asking one person for an introduction. Maybe it's posting the first video or just writing down the number.
• 39:00
  Something believable, something small enough your gut doesn't reject it, but big enough that you believe it. Then collect evidence, not fear evidence, possibility evidence. Train your brain to notice.
• 39:16
  Do you ever say to your kids, "Did you notice the socks are right there on the floor?" Train your brain to notice. Then I want you to write down the bigger thing, the thing you actually want.
• 39:27
  The number, the business, the house, the portfolio, the book, the platform, the freedom. The version of motherhood where you are not drowning. The version of money where you're not constantly reacting.
• 39:41
  The version of your life where you're not just surviving the household economy, but leading it. Write it down. Look at it. Ask, if I knew this was possible, how long would I work toward it? Would I give it four years?
• 39:53
  Would I give it 10? Would I give it 20? Would I keep going if the first version failed? Would I keep going if people laughed? Would I keep going if I had to be humbled? Would I keep going if I had to learn?
• 40:07
  Would I keep going if I had to become someone new? Because that is the question. Not do you want it. Lots of people want things. The question is, are you willing to become the woman who can hold it?
• 40:20
  So no, this is not fluffy talk. This is biology, psychology, religion, neuroscience. This is lived experience.
• 40:29
  It's prayer and pattern recognition, faith and self-efficacy, manifestation and implementation, vision and work. The point is not that thoughts magically replace action.
• 40:40
  The point is that your thoughts decide which actions you're even willing to take, and that changes everything. Like me, you may have inherited survival or lack or fear or trauma.
• 40:53
  You may have inherited a nervous system that scans for danger before possibility. But you are not only an inheritance. You are also a decision. You're a builder. You're a mother.
• 41:06
  You're a woman with a gut instinct, and maybe that instinct has been trying to speak to you for years. Maybe it has been whispering, there is more.
• 41:16
  Maybe it's been saying, start, move, build, ask, invest, create, try. And maybe you've been calling that voice unrealistic because everyone around you taught you fear was wisdom.
• 41:30
  But what if that voice is the most honest thing in you? What if the delusion is not believing you can build more? What if the real delusion is believing you're supposed to stay small forever? That's freaking delusional.
• 41:43
  So here's my challenge. Stop collecting evidence for your fears. Start collecting evidence for your future. Be humble enough to learn. It will humble you.
• 41:53
  Be disciplined enough to work and grounded enough to run the numbers. Be spiritual enough to trust the breadcrumbs, the pennies, the signals,
• 42:04
  and be delusional enough to believe that the life you see in your mind might actually be trying to become real through you. This is Mom's Money Talk. Spend smart, acquire assets.
• 42:15
  Run your household like a wealth-building machine. And please remember, I'm not a financial advisor. This isn't financial advice. It's education, perspective, and a loving kick in the butt from one mom to another.
• 42:27
  If this episode hits something in you, send it to another woman who's been taught to be realistic for way too long, and then go find your penny. [upbeat music]