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Whose Money Story Are You Living? · Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: And this is Money Can Buy Happiness.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: Episode four is Whose Money Story Are You Living?
0:12
SPEAKER_01: So let's ask that question again.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Whose money story are you living?
0:17
SPEAKER_01: Our relationship with money begins long before we earn our first paycheck or open our first checking account.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Our unspoken beliefs about money were inherited and passed down through generations.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: They're a lot like family heirlooms.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a relationship we rarely consider, yet it affects us without our conscious awareness.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: To heal a relationship with money, we have to start with where it began in childhood and the stories your parents and grandparents lived and shared.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: It isn't just about the dollars themselves, it never is.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: It's about how money was spoken about, feared, shared, or hidden, and how those patterns shaped your sense of safety.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: When you see where the story began, you can release the anxiety because the anxiety is not yours.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: And you can choose a healthier way forward.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you a little bit about my own family.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: My father was born during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: So it was natural that this era profoundly influenced his attitude toward money.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Because scarcity wasn't just a condition in his home.
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SPEAKER_01: It was societal.
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SPEAKER_01: It was the norm at the time.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: Having been born into an era marked by economic turmoil, he learned early that money could disappear just as swiftly as it came.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: In his adult years, my father established a successful career and he secured a comfortable life.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: On the surface, he appeared financially stable and self-sufficient.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: However, underneath the stability resided a deep-rooted fear of financial insecurity.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Although he could afford certain luxuries or experiences, rarely did he indulge.
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SPEAKER_01: It was as if he was, or the act of spending, maybe, were too frivolous or dangerous.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't even about being frugal in the traditional sense.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: It was more about unconsciously safeguarding against a fear of losing everything.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: When this type of fear is ingrained in someone at such a young age, it can significantly shape them for the rest of their lives, I believe.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: And although it's unintentional, it affected me indirectly.
2:51
SPEAKER_01: In many ways, I began to feel a sense of scarcity, even in times of abundance.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: And as a child, and certainly into my teenage years, I absorbed this cautiousness.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: I feared running out of money or even wasting it.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, my mother's experience with money was shaped differently from my father's.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: However, her circumstances were just as impactful.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Against the backdrop of wartime scarcity, my grandfather, her father, died in 1943 at the height of Second World War.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: He succumbed to pneumonia, likely brought on by exhaustion.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: See, he was a steel mill foreman producing goods for the United States war effort.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: He worked nonstop, sometimes only coming home to have dinner and visit with my grandmother, my mother, and my uncle before returning to the steel mill.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: After my grandfather passed away, my mother had told me that her and her uncle were raised by my grandmother alone.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Being a single mother in any era is challenging enough.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: And during this time, women had limited opportunities and they had scarce resources available to them.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: This created a tremendous burden upon my grandmother.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: They lived every day with the awareness of their fragile financial situation.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Every decision and each dollar spent had to be calculated out of necessity to simply survive.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: My sister and I always got what we needed.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: My mother may do for herself, applying the principle of necessity only to her own life.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: She always overprovided for others, but more often than not, hesitated to invest in her own rest and joy.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: I was fortunate to grow up with wonderful parents who would have stopped at nothing to provide for my sister and me.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: Financially, I received mixed messages, though.
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SPEAKER_01: My father's unconscious message was about safeguarding and preventing the loss of financial security.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: My mother's message was about survival and ensuring there was always enough to withstand adversity while still giving selflessly.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Scarcity mindset shaped both of their outlooks in different ways.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: And it helps to see that even the most loving, caring, well-intentioned parrots can pass along the money anxieties they learned in their formative years.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: In my case, the process of healing my relationship with money began with a single straightforward step.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: I recognized the source of my attitude toward money.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: For a long time, I assumed my cautious approach was simply a part of who I was.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: But when I became a little older and spoke to my father about his childhood and to my mother about hers, I began to realize that perhaps I was carrying something that didn't belong to me.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: We all inherit deeply ingrained attitudes about money, yet we often mistake them for our own beliefs.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: We adopt the caution, recklessness, assumptions, and fears of our parents, grandparents, and ancestors without even understanding the roots.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: You see, we don't just inherit caution about money, we also inherit its wild twin, recklessness.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Families transmit patterns, not just principles.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: So if a parent pinched pennies out of fear, that urgency can be passed on.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: But so can the opposite, the we survived, so let's spend while we can impulse.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: Both of those are nervous system strategies shaped by experience.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: One clamps down to feel safe, the other reaches out to feel alive.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: I cannot stress this enough.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: We do not blame our families when identifying these inherited beliefs.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Please take that strongly.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we must recognize that our beliefs are shaped by their times and circumstances.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: Generally, we do not recognize that our parents are just as human as we are.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: And they have all faced all the same difficulties.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: But recognizing this allows us to choose how we approach money and to forgive the shortcomings that we may have carried.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, stay with me for a moment because this goes deeper than childhood.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: How can our ancestors, whom we may or may never have known and or long gone, affect our current financial situations?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: Sounds far-fetched, I know.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: Many of us carry beliefs about money, safety, and self-worth that didn't originate with us.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: If the talk of quantum threads or past lives doesn't resonate with you, don't worry.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: You're still in the right place.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: Family stories, daily living, and stress chemistry transmit money patterns even without metaphysics.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Children sense the stress and energy around bills and paychecks long before they can add or subtract.
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SPEAKER_01: Their nervous systems absorb the tension and silence, in tightness, or in the absence of a smile on payday.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: They see that.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: They don't just see it, but they feel it.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: And in this way, money becomes more than math.
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SPEAKER_01: It becomes memory and it gets lodged in our emotional memory track.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: And that truth alone is reason enough to heal.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Epigenetics, the study of how environment and experience influence gene expression, shows that stress, including chronic financial hardship, can leave long-lasting marks that may be passed down across generations.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Seeing this helps meet money with compassion and responsibility.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: Some patterns weren't created by us, but we can update them.
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SPEAKER_00: And here's what that looks like in real life.
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SPEAKER_00: Many years ago, I had a friend tell me their family rule was never to borrow.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: Now, it originated from a grandparent who lost the family farm after taking out a predatory loan.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Now, fast forward to 2021, this person had a chance to buy a modest home with, at that time, historically low fixed-rate mortgages.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: Yet the very thought of purchasing the home brought up a deep sense of shame.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: It felt as if buying a home meant betraying the family code.
10:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, I talked it through with him and I encouraged him to move forward.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: And I asked him where the sense of shame and fear was coming from.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: I didn't understand it at the time.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: I'm not even sure if he did, but it was the realization that the fear of property loans had been passed down through the family.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Six months after buying the home, he said to me, I know I didn't betray my grandfather.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: I actually honored him by moving forward.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Now that is ancestral healing in action.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Honoring the past while choosing a wiser present.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Healing our relationship with money always means retelling the story we inherited.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: We can always honor our ancestors and still choose a wider, kinder script than the one we had.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: We never heal in a hurry.
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SPEAKER_00: Please allow that.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: We heal in slow, measured steps.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Slow is nervous system friendly.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: So here's something I want you to work on this week.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Grab a blank page, sketch three circles for parents and grandparents, and include anyone who raised you.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Under each name, sketch out a money mood in one word, whether it's anxious, proud, private, or generous.
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SPEAKER_00: Then a money rule in one sentence.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: Use it only for emergencies.
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SPEAKER_00: Never owe anyone share when you have it.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Write those down too.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: But then a money behavior, whether it's couponing, cash envelopes, a secret stash, or spontaneous gifts.
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SPEAKER_00: Now circle the rules that you still practice without thinking.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Add a star next to the ones you want to keep by choice.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Think of this as an emotional family of ledger.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: This is not about who's right, but about who's rooted.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledge the influence of your ancestral lineage and your past, but don't let them dictate your own future.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Join me next time for episode five Why Does Your Neighbor's New Car Bother You?
12:52
SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm Swami Larry.