Latest / Business for Humans / Fear, Money, and the Patterns We Don’t See

Transcript

Fear, Money, and the Patterns We Don’t See · Business for Humans

• 0:00
  I'm Jaime Gennaro, business coach, consultant, and founder of Practica Consulting.
• 0:05
  On today's episode, I talk about overwhelm, what it is, how to manage it,
• 0:11
  and why it's important to admit you're experiencing it.
• 0:14
  I offer practical insights on how to work through overwhelm so that you stop
• 0:18
  trying to prove yourself and instead have more calm and success in your business and life. Enjoy.
• 0:30
  Hello this one has been kicking around for a while,
• 0:34
  I went back recently and listened to an old coaching session,
• 0:38
  a recorded coaching session that I had done maybe even five years ago.
• 0:43
  And sometimes, especially with coaching, there are these little nuggets of wisdom
• 0:50
  that coaches will drop on you.
• 0:52
  And depending on where you're at at the moment, it may not land. You may not hear it.
• 0:59
  You'll hear different things that apply to you at the moment.
• 1:02
  But what I love about recording coaching sessions is that I feel like there's
• 1:07
  always this wisdom to be unearthed when you go back and you're just in a different
• 1:11
  place, in a different mindset, thinking about things differently.
• 1:15
  And then you hear things differently from that session.
• 1:18
  So I went back, I listened to the session. It was so wise.
• 1:23
  It was a 20 minute session. It was like a super fast, like espresso version of a coaching session.
• 1:29
  But it was about how I tie security to money.
• 1:35
  And your logical brain is like, yeah, duh, you feel more secure when you feel
• 1:42
  protected when you have enough money.
• 1:44
  But there is this thing about security and that you can find it in other places.
• 1:53
  So that was an interesting nugget that I had kind of been thinking about for
• 1:58
  a while, how do I, how do I disassociate the idea of security and money and
• 2:04
  try to foster a sense of security without tying it to money?
• 2:08
  So that was something I had been working on.
• 2:10
  And then there was this idea that every time you worry about money, it's an urge.
• 2:18
  And so another coach recently kind of phrased it as fear is an urge.
• 2:25
  So what is an urge? What does this mean? So if you apply it to something like
• 2:30
  dieting or trying to get off alcohol, you would think of an urge as something
• 2:36
  that it comes up in your body.
• 2:38
  It's a physical sensation. You're craving something.
• 2:42
  You're urging. You have an urge. You're urging. You have an urge for something.
• 2:47
  So maybe it's sugar or it's alcohol or it's watching TV, right?
• 2:52
  So you feel this sensation come up in your body.
• 2:55
  And then your brain decides, am I going to take it further?
• 3:00
  Am I going to execute on that urge? Am I going to go eat sugar?
• 3:04
  Am I gonna drink a glass of alcohol am I gonna.
• 3:09
  Am I going to watch TV? So we have the urge, it comes up, but we get to decide
• 3:15
  what we do with that urge.
• 3:17
  So we can see it, recognize it, know it's there, and then decide to follow it
• 3:23
  through or decide not to follow it through.
• 3:26
  And the thing about an urge is that it's physical, right? It's physical and emotional.
• 3:32
  And so when we feel that sensation, a lot of times our brain just wants us to feel good.
• 3:38
  So if we feel the urge and we feel like it's too hard to resist it,
• 3:43
  then we just do it, right?
• 3:45
  Then we go for it because we don't want to feel pain.
• 3:48
  That's the human body, right? We just don't want pain, so we avoid it. Emotional pain, too.
• 3:54
  We do all the things we can to avoid it, which means a lot of times when we
• 3:58
  feel an urge, we're like, well, screw it.
• 4:01
  I'm going to go eat a chocolate bar because I want it. I have an urge. I have a craving for it.
• 4:07
  You know, I deserve it. We reason with ourselves.
• 4:10
  So this is not about discipline.
• 4:13
  This is about the urge itself and recognizing the urge.
• 4:18
  So now if we connect fear to that, which is what was so fascinating to me in
• 4:23
  the coaching session, it just never landed.
• 4:25
  I never quite heard that when I listened back to the session.
• 4:29
  But this idea that when you feel fear, when you feel worry, when you feel stress,
• 4:35
  and for me, I'm going to just place, put the placeholder in there of money.
• 4:39
  When you have this fear about not having enough, it's an urge.
• 4:44
  Because there is a tendency for us to take it further.
• 4:48
  And taking it further can mean many things. It can mean just spinning on the worry.
• 4:54
  Letting it take us down, making us take actions around worry, right?
• 5:00
  So in a business context, that could mean, all right, like I'm feeling scarce.
• 5:05
  I'm feeling scared. I'm feeling worried about money. I'm just going to start spinning.
• 5:10
  And like, for me, it looks like I'm just going to create offer,
• 5:14
  offer, offer, offer, offer.
• 5:16
  And then people are like, wait, what do you do? Like, why are you sending us
• 5:21
  all these offers, these random offers, last minute, at the end of the year?
• 5:28
  You've seen them. But I get into this place where I'm like, well,
• 5:32
  let me just send out more, you know, more offers of what I can do.
• 5:37
  And here's a last minute thing. And you could, here's a cheap thing.
• 5:40
  And it's not really aligned to my business.
• 5:43
  It's not really related to what my business does.
• 5:46
  It's coming from scarcity. and then what happens is no one buys it of course
• 5:51
  they don't they're like what what are you doing,
• 5:53
  and and then I get even more worried and
• 5:57
  more scared and then I just keep the urge cycle going so if you think about
• 6:03
  alcohol and I like that using that example because I think there is this like
• 6:07
  strong urge and a lot of reasoning that we put into like oh I deserve this like
• 6:12
  I'm stressed out. I need a glass of wine.
• 6:14
  Here are all the reasons. It's actually not bad for me. We just go into this cycle.
• 6:19
  And during COVID, this is when I did the coaching session.
• 6:23
  I do not remember this at all. I mean, I do remember that I was drinking a lot
• 6:27
  during COVID, but I don't remember that I was doing like a little program,
• 6:33
  like a little coaching program about drinking because I wanted to have more
• 6:38
  control over my drinking because I felt like I was over drinking.
• 6:41
  I wasn't like getting drunk and getting wasted. I was just drinking more than I wanted to.
• 6:47
  And I felt like I was following the urge all the way through.
• 6:51
  So in 2020, I had these urges coming up and I was like investing a lot in alcohol,
• 7:00
  investing in the bar, investing in the wine club.
• 7:06
  And that's all fine and well. And, you know, I think it was appropriate for
• 7:11
  the time. But what's interesting is I haven't drank for about a year because
• 7:16
  of my health issues. I'm basically allergic to alcohol now.
• 7:20
  So that makes it easy, easy to give something up. But I don't have any urge. I have zero desire.
• 7:28
  And listening to myself in this session talk about how I wanted control over
• 7:33
  those urges, but I didn't feel like I had control over it.
• 7:36
  And now five years later, where I'm like, I don't even remember the feeling
• 7:41
  of having to take that urge forward.
• 7:45
  And I would like to have the same thing with fear of money or fear of not enough money.
• 7:51
  I'm not scared of money. I'm scared of not having enough.
• 7:54
  Because it's not doing anything for me.
• 7:59
  And we have this tendency to think that if we beat ourselves up,
• 8:02
  if we think the worst case scenario is going to happen, if we worry about stuff,
• 8:08
  somehow it makes us feel like we have control.
• 8:11
  And I'll use another example that sort of brought it home for me also.
• 8:16
  I am afraid of flying. And I get real wound up when I fly.
• 8:22
  And, you know, I live in Europe. My family lives in the U.S.
• 8:25
  So it is kind of a thing that I have to do and I have to face at least once or twice a year.
• 8:32
  And I get very anxious, very worried and very fearful.
• 8:38
  And there's this feeling that I have that somehow by worrying, I'm like in control.
• 8:48
  And I'm not. And I was thinking like, I would like to ask my doctor for maybe
• 8:53
  like an anti-anxiety pill when I fly.
• 8:56
  But then something in my brain was like, yeah, but then if I'm relaxed, what does that mean?
• 9:02
  Isn't it interesting? Like, I don't have any control in that scenario.
• 9:07
  And I would argue I don't have a lot of control in the fear of money scenario
• 9:13
  either. Now, I do and I don't. So I run my own business.
• 9:18
  So of course, I'm in control of how much work I do to create work and how I
• 9:26
  follow kind of my methods and frameworks for bringing in work and working with people.
• 9:33
  But that's different from scarcity
• 9:37
  and fear and worry and anxiety which
• 9:41
  is not going that's not controlling how I
• 9:44
  run my business it's actually taking my business in a direction that I don't
• 9:49
  want to take it in I don't want to be working with people out of desperation
• 9:54
  I want to be working with people because I see their potential and I want to
• 9:59
  foster their potential and I want to help them get to a place that they're, you know,
• 10:03
  wanting to get to in their business, I don't want to do that from a place of fear.
• 10:08
  And I also want to be able to lead them into a space where you don't have to
• 10:12
  worry about money to make money.
• 10:14
  That's not where making money comes from. It doesn't come from fear.
• 10:18
  It comes from momentum and motivation and inspiration and passion and talking to people.
• 10:26
  It doesn't come from sitting in a room spinning on the fear and concern about scarcity.
• 10:33
  So let's go back to this idea of it's an urge.
• 10:37
  So for me, as I've been kind of kind of walking through this process.
• 10:45
  I've been noticing when urges come up.
• 10:49
  And I think this is really the best way to work through any urges that you may be struggling with.
• 10:57
  If it's around something else,
• 10:59
  alcohol or any other kind of addictive tendencies that you might have,
• 11:04
  is not ignoring the urge, not trying to push it down, not trying to oppress
• 11:09
  it, but noticing when it comes up. Just being aware.
• 11:13
  Like, oh, there it is. Oh, look at that. Like, oh, it's this that triggers it
• 11:18
  or this situation that triggers it.
• 11:20
  But then deciding not to take it any further,
• 11:24
  realizing that if I take this any further and further meaning spinning on it,
• 11:30
  like really getting into it and believing everything that this urge is telling
• 11:35
  me, like you're screwed or whatever the message is.
• 11:41
  Taking it any further or believing it or taking it into any kind of action is
• 11:48
  not furthering my actual goals.
• 11:52
  It's not getting me where I want to be.
• 11:54
  And I would say like with my drinking urges, it definitely wasn't getting me where I wanted to be.
• 12:00
  I wanted to be the kind of person who like woke up in the morning and felt good
• 12:03
  and was not sabotaging myself with toxins.
• 12:07
  And not that I'm like some goody-two-shoes square now.
• 12:11
  I would love to be able to partake in alcohol here and there.
• 12:15
  But I can say like, I worked so hard to kind of optimize my health and to,
• 12:20
  you know, take the right supplements and do the right amount of exercise and
• 12:25
  meditate and do all the things to make myself feel good.
• 12:28
  That like binge drinking and then waking up in the morning hungover and then
• 12:33
  not feeling like I can do anything that day. That's not.
• 12:37
  A place where I want to be. Like, that's just, I feel like I'm just, I'm older now.
• 12:43
  Like, I did that a lot. I had plenty of fun. I did a lot of drinking.
• 12:49
  I mean, again, I think it would still be fun around the holidays to,
• 12:52
  like, have a glass or two of wine, have some champagne, some eggnog,
• 12:57
  but I don't miss it. Like, that urge is not there.
• 13:01
  It seems fun, but then I'm also like, but I'm
• 13:04
  gonna feel crappy it's kind of like when I watch people eat fast
• 13:07
  food I'm like I there was a time I really loved it
• 13:10
  but like now if I eat it I'm like it doesn't taste that good
• 13:13
  and it makes me feel crappy so like the urge is just gone I just don't have
• 13:18
  it and and it's not again like an ego thing I'm not like oh I'm so much better
• 13:23
  than people who have that it's just I think I've been aware of this urge and
• 13:28
  just not taking it further and I'm,
• 13:31
  I really do want to separate it from discipline because it's not this idea of
• 13:37
  using it as a weapon against yourself. Like, oh my God, look at me. I have this urge.
• 13:42
  I must be a piece of shit. I can't control myself.
• 13:46
  It's not about that. because I think if we put too many rules on ourselves of
• 13:50
  what we're allowed to do and what we're not allowed to do, we will fail.
• 13:54
  Just like parents who put too many rules on their kids, those kids end up being
• 13:59
  wild and crazy and not really, you know, balanced.
• 14:04
  So it's not about putting rules on yourself and then forcing yourself to commit to those rules.
• 14:10
  It's about noticing that you have a physical sensation in your body because you want something.
• 14:18
  And for me, I've just been conditioned in fear.
• 14:22
  It's been around me for so long, fear and money being tied together.
• 14:28
  And I'm not going to go into my history, but if you knew my history,
• 14:32
  you'd understand the light bulb moment.
• 14:36
  But those two things have been closely associated. So, of course,
• 14:41
  my brain is just mapped to connect fear and money, fear and money.
• 14:48
  So I don't want to do that anymore. Right. This is a little course correction
• 14:51
  I'd like to make is not connecting those two things, which is now showing up in the form of an urge.
• 14:58
  I have the urge to feel scared.
• 15:01
  It's interesting, right? I feel the urge. There's an urge to feel scared.
• 15:07
  It's a comfort feeling. It's a feeling. It's familiar.
• 15:10
  It's been there for a long time. It's been ingrained. It's been socialized.
• 15:15
  It's been sitting there and I haven't been aware of it. I didn't know it was an urge.
• 15:20
  I didn't see it that way. I just saw it
• 15:23
  as like a natural thing that I needed to try to like get
• 15:26
  over but it's not about that I
• 15:29
  need to notice when it's showing up in my body what is
• 15:32
  triggering it why am I getting it comes it's like
• 15:35
  always like this pit in the it's like a yeah like a feeling in the pit of my
• 15:40
  stomach like this dark hole and it's important for me to know what is making
• 15:47
  it come up when is it coming up not blame anyone it's no one's fault we get
• 15:51
  into this tendency sometimes too, where it's like,
• 15:54
  well, the trigger point was that person and they made me feel bad.
• 15:57
  And let me just get that person out of my life. No, it's not about that.
• 16:01
  It's just notice when it's coming up, why?
• 16:04
  What is the thing that's making this pit happen?
• 16:09
  It's not a pit. This thing happened in the pit of my stomach.
• 16:12
  It's something in the pit of my stomach.
• 16:14
  What is making that,
• 16:17
  happen. So we can kind of start to notice that like, oh, it tends to happen
• 16:22
  here. It tends to happen there.
• 16:25
  And then again, it's like, okay, well, that's just a thought.
• 16:29
  That's just a feeling in my body. That's just a sensation. Like,
• 16:32
  don't push it down. But like, oh, there it is. Okay, interesting.
• 16:36
  I see it. But I'm not going to believe it. I'm not going to take it down the
• 16:40
  road of like, what do I do? What do I do? How do I fix it?
• 16:43
  Well, I'm just going to be like, there it is. And then there it goes.
• 16:48
  Because it does dissipate. These feelings in our body, they come up and they
• 16:52
  feel strong, but then they also go away pretty quickly if we don't try to suppress
• 16:57
  them for just like, there it is. I see it. I recognize it. It's a feeling.
• 17:01
  Okay, cool. I allow it. And then it's gone. It's like a 90 second process, to be honest.
• 17:07
  Like if you feel a real, real strong sensation of a feeling,
• 17:11
  it usually passes pretty quickly.
• 17:13
  It's when you're trying to hold back that it sits there and then you can't really get a handle on it.
• 17:20
  But just notice and allow it. And you can do this with anything really.
• 17:25
  And the connection of an urge to a feeling has just been a little bit of a light bulb for me.
• 17:31
  And I really hope it's helpful for you too, because it's a different way to look at feelings.
• 17:37
  I think with my coaching methods, usually the feeling is connected to a thought
• 17:43
  this is similar where you can recognize that you have this thought that you've
• 17:48
  been perpetuating and that thought will create a feeling.
• 17:52
  But in this case it's more that you're noticing the feeling first and it's not
• 17:57
  that it's always connected to a story but it's like connected to some trigger
• 18:02
  point and then you just want it to to end there, right?
• 18:08
  I want to have an urge to drink and just go, oh, there's an urge to drink, huh?
• 18:12
  And then not take it forward, not reason with myself of all the reasons why it's good to feel,
• 18:20
  this urge and then take it forward. Like, oh, it's fine. It's fine.
• 18:23
  It's fine. Like I can just, just this once, just this once. I'll start on Monday.
• 18:27
  Again, not about discipline, just like, oh, there is an urge.
• 18:30
  I'm not going to take it forward.
• 18:32
  I don't think it's going to feel good if I take that forward.
• 18:36
  And what's been interesting is like, it's dissipating. It's only been like a
• 18:40
  couple weeks that I've been really marinating on this idea.
• 18:43
  And I would say like this fear that's been so conditioned in my body.
• 18:48
  Like probably every day there's some thought or sensation in my body that's related to this fear.
• 18:56
  And I'm just in two weeks already noticing like a little bit of freedom from it.
• 19:02
  A little bit of freedom from the heaviness of like, you should be scared.
• 19:06
  If you're not scared, you're not in control.
• 19:09
  And it's not true. It's not helping me get control of the things I want control of.
• 19:16
  I do like the idea of when you have an urge, it brings awareness, right?
• 19:21
  Like if I have an urge to drink, I'm like, okay, why am I, why do I need a drink?
• 19:26
  Like why, what's in there? What's making me feel that urge?
• 19:30
  I like that it's nice time to be curious and that can be motivating.
• 19:36
  The curiosity in itself can be motivating. Like, why am I so scared?
• 19:41
  Like, let me be less scared and more activated.
• 19:45
  Let me be more turned, like turned up.
• 19:50
  Let me take more action. Let me be more, let me get more momentum behind the
• 19:56
  work that I'm doing rather than like, I'm scared. I need to change something.
• 20:01
  It's just a different flow it's a different flow and it comes from a place that
• 20:07
  does feel like you have more control it's not like a subconscious place to be
• 20:13
  okay i hope that's helpful i'm gonna leave it at that talk to you next week.