Welcome back to Mindful Moolah, the podcast dedicated to holistic financial wellness! In this episode, hosts Luke Erickson and Lance Hansen dive deep into the impact of emotional health on financial decision-making. If you’ve ever wondered why money and emotions are so tightly intertwined, this episode is for you.

Luke and Lance keep it real as they explore how our emotions—both positive and negative—shape our choices about spending, saving, and financial planning. They unpack personal stories, like Lance’s childhood “charge account” bike upgrades, and discuss why emotional awareness is a critical tool for financial wellness. The conversation touches on emotional spending, coping mechanisms, self-talk, money stories, and how chronic stress can affect every dimension of our lives, including our wallets.

Key topics discussed include:

1. The definition and role of emotional wellness in holistic financial health
2. The connection between emotional coping mechanisms and spending habits (“pre-dinner Whopper,” anyone?)
3. Naming and understanding emotions using tools like the Emotion Wheel
4. The power of self-awareness and positive self-talk for better financial choices
5. How money stories from childhood shape our adult financial behaviors (and how to rewrite them)
6. The impact of chronic stress, social support, and mindfulness practices like meditation and journaling
7. The dangers of comparison (“Keeping up with the Joneses”) and how it steals financial joy

Key Takeaways

1. Emotions Drive Money Decisions – Many purchases (big and small) are fueled by emotional needs rather than logical analysis. Recognizing this can help break unhelpful patterns.
2. Emotional Wellness is Foundational – Understanding your feelings—and naming them—can prevent impulsive or emotionally-driven spending, improving financial outcomes.
3. Self-Awareness is a Financial Superpower – Taking time alone with your thoughts via mindfulness or journaling helps you control stories in your head and avoid unproductive stress.
4. Rewrite Your Money Story – Early life experiences shape our “money stories.” With intention, self-reflection, and positive self-talk, these narratives can be rewritten for healthier financial habits.
5. Mindfulness Tools Matter – Simple routines (like 15 minutes of meditation, mindful lawn mowing, or journaling) build resilience and foster wise money decisions.
6. Comparison Hurts Financial Wellbeing – Focusing on your own goals, not others’ successes, builds emotional and financial satisfaction.

Ready to level up your emotional financial wellness? Subscribe to Mindful Moolah wherever you get your podcasts and come back next time for a conversation around environmental wellness.

Learn more about emotional wellbeing in this article from the University of Idaho Extension: https://www.uidaho.edu/extension/publications/bul-1105

Plus, watch Luke and Lance make Emotional Wellness fun and simple in episode 2 of the Moolahed digital series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwXMrNA9iiY

Welcome to Mindful Moolah, the podcast about holistic financial wellness. This is Luke right here, and I'm.

With my co host, Lance. How y' all doing? I don't know if that. That was a weird transition, but we're. We're just going with it. Everybody loves this. Hey, it's good.

Yeah. You know, that's the thing about this podcast. We're real dudes, all right? We're just talking what's on our mind. So that's going to be great. Today we're going to focus on emotional financial wellness. It might sound a little bit funny, but we'll get into it and what that means. Last week, we talked about just the overview of holistic financial wellness. So now we're going to dive into one of the eight dimensions of wellness, and that's emotion, mostly.

We want to talk about how our emotions, our emotional wellness can have. Can. Can have pretty significant impact on our financial wellness, our financial wellbeing. If this doesn't make sense right away, you'll start to get a feel for it as we continue on with the podcast. Like, what is. What do emotions have to do with money? I mean, in some ways you can kind of see it, but some ways it might take some explaining. So that's what we're going to spend some time on today. We do want to start off with this idea, this question.

We'll ask this to you, the audience. You can think it through, and if Lance and I have anything to offer here, we'll do that. But the question is, have you ever made a money decision that didn't make sense on paper, but you, You. It just kind of felt right or, or maybe it felt entirely wrong, which did it anyway? Is that a dumb question? Lance, what do you think?

No, I. I think we run into this quite a bit, and I. And you know, this goes from. I sympathize for those that might have purchased a home or a vehicle without their partner's consent or knowledge that thinking they're being like, hey, I'm making a good decision here. How did that work out for you? I'm just saying, I mean, you know, and it can be as. As. As something large like that or as small as a $50 purchase when you didn't have the 50 bucks, but you're thinking, hey, I'm doing this nice thing. Well, is it really nice when there's charged emotions and things like that and that emotional stress from not having enough money, which I think that's the main kind of emotional wellness.

I mean, being able to pay your Bills is a huge relief off of us. Right. Because we've taken care of budgets because.

We'Re.

Managing our money. We're just being responsible. But when you don't have funds, man, being emotionally, well, it's hard.

Right? Right. And it can go both ways. Right. So you don't. If you don't have enough money, you're kind of down to the dungs about not having money. Right. And so that, that can affect your wellness, like your emotional wellness, you know, just not having your finances in order. And then of course, it goes the other way.

Like, you're talking about, like, you just whatever purchase it is. Like sometimes I think in the example you were talking about, about is making a purchase because you kind of feel like you deserve it. You don't want to have to check in with your partner or anybody else. You're like, I deserve this. I'm going to make this purchase because, you know, like, I'm, I'm. I'm a good guy. I work hard. I deserve this.

You know, and it's kind of an emotional decision and you just want to bypass any other, like, checks and balances you might have around that, right? Yeah.

I mean, and whatever your situation is, you're. You can probably recover for from some of these, but some are going to just put you behind the eight ball. And that's not a place you want to be all the time. When I'm talking to people or educating youth about debt and making decisions, I mean, there's that needs versus wants, and that's something that I've always had. I learned really young after. After I got educated. Sorry, that's just funny thing. I say educated.

I got educated by my dad about charge accounts. I'd go down the store and I was charging stuff to my dad's account to put new stuff on my bike. And my bike was pretty cool after I had all that stuff on there.

But it was.

And it wasn't that cool after I kind of got educated, as I would say, about what I was doing, because I was just siding these slips and I had all these cool pads on my bike. You know, on the handlebars you had that pad you could put on there because it had that bar going across. I had all sorts of cool gear. Bells whistles but yeah, I was charging this stuff to my dad's account and I was like, oh, free money, whatever. No, it wasn't free. And I got in trouble. But I learned really quick at that. And I think it was like nine.

I'm like, why are these People letting me charge this at age 9.

Right.

So I have this whole experience and bought a lot of candy and stuff. I got. I got in trouble.

So that was it. That was a quick early lesson in life about how emotions are tied to finances. Because I'm sure your dad was not very happy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Needless to say, I. I washed a lot of cars. And that was back in the day when white walls were cool. And if you've ever, you know, on the tires, the white wa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you've ever had to do a little white wall on. Strip on. Yeah. To get it white. Oh, man. Dude, I scrubbed. Yeah. So that's that.

I learned really hard that money was tied to that and making that decision because I wanted my bike to look cool. Wasn't that cool of an idea? So, I mean, I learned really young, but not everyone does.

Good for you. Yeah. You know, I didn't really have an experience quite like that, so. But I. But I will tell you, it's pretty common for me to use, like, relatively small spending as, you know, emotional coping. Right. So it's like I was having a bad day. It's like, I deserve a milkshake.

You know, I'm gonna go spend some money. And not only that, but, like, it's. It's not good for you either. Right? Yeah, so.

And I don't necessarily think that one, you know, that pre dinner Whopper is that big of a deal. But I mean, I think you mentioned.

The pre dinner Whopper last episode too. I think this is.

I'm sorry, the pre dinner Whopper. I mean, Burger King, you got to start sponsoring us. Throw some money or that per week, give me free Whopper, man. I mean, I take care of my emotional wellness problem. But yeah, the pre dinner Whopper is not gonna. Not gonna make or break the bank, but. Five bucks. Five bucks, man.

Five bucks for Whopper, five bucks for Milkshake.

I was gonna say, dude, you're talking like 20, $15. Like, now milkshakes, like at least eight.

Eight. Okay, eight, $8. I mean, if it's a Wednesday, you get that whopper for 3.99.

Yeah, there you go.

However, it's. It's these. Having the emotional fortitude to know that you can resist that and still be okay having those coping skills. I think that's. That's a huge thing.

And.

And we all need more of that.

So we haven't really defined emotional wellness yet. So let's spend just a minute on that. Basically, it's the ability to understand, like, what emotions you are feeling and like, how to properly, you know, in healthy ways, deal with them without turning to coping mechanisms. On the flip side of that too is if you are Lance's dad, for example, and you find out your kid has spent a whole bunch of money, charge a bunch of money on to soup up his bicycle, like how to regulate your emotions around that. Right. So, so emotions, like, what are they? They actually are evolutionary survival, survival tools. I, I've heard the story about caveman days, you know, and it makes a lot of sense to me. It's like back in the olden days, sometimes you, you just didn't have, you know, as a survival mechanism, you didn't have the opportunity to actually think through all the pros and cons of your actions.

And they just had to be like knee jerk responses. So that idea that like you come out of your cave and they're. They're standing like a saber tooth tiger, but your emotions in that case are going to be very heightened because they're, they're there to protect you. Like that fear or maybe even just like anger or just whatever it is that, that can come to your aid in a split second. Right. So emotions are valid. Like they're part of our overall just kind of like intuition, I guess, the way that our minds and our bodies work together. Designed to be a survival mechanism.

Right. Okay, so what happens then? You Fast forward to 20, 25 and then no saber tooth tigers. And you know, our worst, you know, like real survival threats is, I don't know, just like hopping in your car, you know, which is pretty, pretty simple. But so that's what emotions are for. And so sometimes we have a lot of emotions, like spinning around our body, our minds and our bodies and stuff, and we don't quite know what they're there for and what they're doing. And sometimes because of that, we don't really handle them that well. So it's, that's the first step is to understand what emotions are there for and then how to regulate them. What do you have to say about that, Lance?

Yeah, I agree. Having those survival tools super important and making sure that they fit the. I mean, Covid times took us for a loop. And it's changed some of the. I've had to adapt a lot of my emotional tools to help regulate some of the new things that we're dealing with. Right. Things are kind of slowly getting back to where they were, but they're never going to get back. I mean, how many zoom meetings that are online meetings? We're dealing with, I mean, things have changed.

Having those survival tools in the toolbox there and being able to pull them out helps me also when it comes to making financial decisions.

I like how you talked about them as tools because that's exactly what they are. I like to think about emotions as like kind of a toolbox, right? And so, you know, you reach, let's say you blindly reach into the toolbox and just grab a tool and you grab a saw when you really needed a hammer, right? And so like each emotion has a time and place. Like it can be very, very useful so long as you know exactly what it is and exactly what it's useful for. But if you've got that saw when you need a hammer, it's not really going to be helpful. In fact, it could do a lot of harm. Right. And so it's really important to understand this is where we get into like naming emotions like, like self awareness of emotions, like the emotions you're experiencing and then naming exactly what the emotion is. Because again, you know, if, if you're just like never had any experience with a toolbox and the tools in them and you didn't even know what they're called and you're working with someone, there's like, well, hand me the, the hammer and you're, you're giving them a socket wrench, you know, and so that's why it's important to be able to like sit with emotions like, like be able to like name them specifically.

You, you've heard of, have you heard of the emotion wheel, Lance? Yeah, the emotion, right. Yeah, it's pretty common thing. I don't know if everybody's heard of it, but basically you have a big wheel and in the very center of the wheel you've got the, the predominant emotions. It's just like sadness, anger, happiness, few others. Right? But then you can take like for example, we'll just take the anger, right? And then you can break it down. Well, it's anger. Yeah, it's a very general way to call it. But then you break it down, you say, well it's irritation, you know, irritation.

Like what is that irritation all about? Well, it's irritation that I haven't had my pre dinner whopper, you know, like, like get down and like name it and get specific about exactly what that emotion is there for and why it's, you know, telling you these things, right.

Knowing how it's affecting you. And one of the biggest things, and it's not necessarily, it's more, it's something I learned along the way, just self awareness. And along the way when things happen, sometimes we build this story in our head that's positive, negative or whatever. And being self aware to know, like hand building the story in my head about making this purchase or doing this and how this is going to be the greatest thing ever. And then not being self aware of the situation, you fall into that trap of falling along with that fictional narrative in your brain when you would have been better off being self aware and pulling back from making a decision that isn't the best, right? But emotions, man, emotions can just drive you to do crazy things. And some are good and some are bad. But having self awareness and being able to see the long term effect is in a logical reality or real sense of if I go out and buy this car, what's going to happen to me when I go home, even though it's a really nice car and I did the math and we're going to drive it for this long, but I have an 8% interest rate, not such a good idea. But being able to pull back and be self aware of situations and not being impulsive, I guess would be the, the emotion being impulsive or again, the.

Impulsive emotions often have to do with exactly what you said, just like not really understanding what the emotion's there for, what it's trying to tell you. Okay, so have you ever seen the show Young Sheldon? Yes. It's so funny. Like it cracks me up. I was watching the show last night, right? And there's this episode and the dad, George, right? And he, he was talking to somebody else, is like, well, why don't you have problems in, in your marriage or whatever? He's like, well, we just, we just don't talk about it. We just kind of stuff it down, don't talk about it. That's how we deal with it. And they're like, does that work? He's like, well, look at me now, I'm happy right now.

But the problem though is when you don't deal with things directly, they can build up, right? And everybody knows this, but this is one area that I've actually found really fascinating. I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy Lance, name is Gabor Mate. But like he talks a lot about the psychosomatic symptoms of holding in emotions or basically just not dealing in a healthy way with your emotions. So you just kind of like stuff them down or just you resist them or that sort of thing and then they end up kind of like building up in your body. Is like chronic illness is, is what he's finding with his research. And so just another way to illustrate why it's important to be able to identify exactly what it is, the emotions that you're experiencing. Because. So for example, your example, buying a car, Right? Well, what's that all about? Why does, why does this person want to buy the car in the first place? And a bigger question is why does this person want to do it without going through the, you know, the regular channels, checking in with, with the partner, checking in with a budget, seeing exactly how it's going to fit, seeing what else is going to be sacrificed in order to make that purchase happen.

All that kind of stuff. It's, it's the same concept like if you, if you ignore it, stuff it down, like, pretend like it's not a problem, like, well, eventually it's going to be an even, even bigger problem.

So that's that whole kick the can down the road and eventually you can't kick the can anymore because you're at the end of the road and then you're dealing with a lot bigger problem. Exactly. I mean it's one of those things where you gotta sit back, take a really good look at what's going on, making sure that you're making a good decision. And it's. But you know, it's hard, it's hard for, for people to, and even me to take 15 minutes just to think about things or just be alone with my own thoughts. Yeah, we are a social. Well, most of us are social, some of us aren't, I guess. But we're so driven to want to have something, a tablet, a phone, whatever it is to help distract us, to keep us away from our thoughts.

And that alone time, that self reflection meditation, just to be alone for 15 minutes with your own thoughts to help you think things through, plan things out, create a list or whatever. Those are all important tools to help you be emotionally well. But it's hard.

It is very hard. So yeah, there's actually this re. I'm glad you brought this up because there's this research study out there or series of them that shows that people prefer an electric shock, a painful electric shock rather than, if given the option, rather than sitting alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes for longer. Good.

Also with my thoughts, I don't need to get shocked.

Yeah, and, but see the point of that though is a lot of people are afraid of their emotions. Like basically when you're sitting alone in your, in your own thoughts and your own emotions, like you're. We all have this, this inner critic, right? And usually the predominant message is you're not enough kind of thing. You're not measuring up, you're not keeping up. You're not good enough to, you know, be with, with cool kids or, you know, this thing or that thing. And so our own thoughts are actually pretty harsh to ourselves, right? So again, why is that happening? It's because you're just not aware of what these emotions are actually all about. And so what you. And you nailed it, Lance.

Because what happens is you end up trying to distract or avoid or numb these, you know, emotional messages rather than actually sitting with them and like, dealing with them constructively, right? So instead of learning how to use your tools, how to name them from your toolbox, you. You just kind of pretend like everything's going to be okay and just pretend like the toolbox isn't even there by just distracting yourself, right?

And then like I said, man, we doom scrolling social media, numbness, overspending and then do a lot with mental health, with, with work too, related to finances and substance abuse is a big one. You got to numb that feeling somehow. And that's not what you want to do. You don't want, you want to deal with the emotions in a healthy, positive way. And positive self talk. I mean, it was a joke back when we were growing up with Saturday Live. Stuart Smalley. I'm smart enough, I'm good enough, and doggone it, people like me.

But like, but that is such a good message, man. Maybe because I watch that so much that awesome Saturday Lives, those good old skits back in the day. I am smart enough and I am good enough. And doggone if people do like me.

So anyway, learn a lot inside of the night Live.

Yeah, I mean, laugh thought it was funny. And I'm like, I repeated that line how many times in junior high, in high school, just being funny. But I was listening to myself, right? Yeah.

No, just got yourself a little mantra you didn't even know.

Yeah, yeah, that little self talk. And that's a big tool, learning to turn the negative into a positive self talk. And man, we're going to say this a whole lot other than the Wednesday Whopper or no, the pre dinner Whopper. Keeping up with the Joneses. You don't have to do that. You don't have to compare yourself to what anyone else is doing. And I might have said it before, but I'm going to say it again. The statistics with people prepared for retirement in the United states, it's like 52% of them are, I mean, 52% of the population have issues with this.

So that's over half the people you see. So don't compare yourself to anybody but yourself and what you want and what your goals are long term for your emotional wellness, your financial wellness, all these dimensions. I mean, don't compare yourself to anyone else.

You heard the saying, comparison is the thief of joy. So yeah, like, it's very simple saying, but like it makes a lot of sense and especially when it comes to finances. Right. Because just. You nailed it, Lance. Like with. Keeping up with the Jones is a very, very common thing that we do because we're comparing ourselves to others. But oftentimes what you find and whether we're talking about finances or otherwise, we often, like on social media, we often compare, you know, people's best because they're willing to post it with our own worst, which is the stuff that we're not going to post, not going to share, not going to talk about.

Right. And it's just, it's, it's an unfair comparison from the very beginning, but it also leads to very dark emotional places. Right. Because you always, again, just feeling like you're just not measuring up, like you're just not as good as other people, not, not living life as well, just all that sort of. So there's a symbiotic nature between emotional wellness and other areas of wellness. And we won't spend a lot of time on this, but physical wellness can be affected by emotional wellness. Right. So if you're really struggling emotionally, you're gonna end up having trouble sleeping.

Right. Or it could actually, I talked a little bit earlier about the psychosomatic symptoms of chronic emotional unwellness or stress. And so that can result in, in illnesses that, you know, even autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, lupus, things like that. There's environmental wellness. If your area, your living area, your work area is cluttered, disorganized, it can actually make you feel unsettled and anxious. Right. Your social wellness. Without clear boundaries around people, your boundaries will be violated and you might end up experiencing a lot of resentment.

Okay, so why is all this important to our finances? We've alluded to it already a little bit and I liked how you're talking about money stories a little bit earlier, Lance, but maybe you can share a little bit more about that. Just like money story, the stories that we get in our heads about, you know, ourselves, our worth and also our.

Our finances when it comes to that. You know, you mentioned the stress that chronic stress because we're comparing ourselves to someone else. I mean, that's, I mean, chronic stress. I, I can, I'm just. Okay, everyone, let's just visualize this. The cleanest bathroom ever, right? You got this bidet in there. You're going in and you're coming out cleaner than when you went in. I'm.

It's that, it's that nice of a bathroom. That might be some like good stress, right? There's a good outcome after you've gone through the process. Now, chronic stress, it's long term. And let's think about this. Think about like a, a porta Potty or like a bathroom at a campground after 60 kids that were destructive went through there. There's crap on the walls, the toilet's not flushing, it's backed up. That's the only bathroom you have to use. That's chronic stress right there.

You're living in that filth in that cluttered environment and it's all in your head because you can't get out of it. It's just day after day after day. And that's chronic stress. And what that does to you, I mean it makes, it changes the chemistry of your brain and it makes it so hard to be productive or healthy. And I mean it has huge effects on your finances because you have illnesses that come from that and depression. Dark place to be in. So emotional wellness is so important so you're not in that dark place. And when it comes to that, the social wellness, having a team, a tribe, a group, some, some type of support group and having them identified so they know who they are so you can go to them and work through some of this.

On top of all your other tools said keep adding a tool. Having a social group, I mean, me and Luke, we go to conferences together, we talk quite a bit. Even though he's four hours away, he's part of my social group and he knows that because we talked about that as, okay, you know, you got my back, you're going to give me good advice and you're not going to let me eat too many pre dinner Whoppers because then might have a different problem on my hand here. I'm gonna be like, what happened here? I don't know. I feel like, oh, Chris Farley from Tommy Boy. And these Whoppers gotten lodged right in here, you know, causing me some health.

Just don't throw them down two at a time, man. That's the problem.

Double fisted these suckers, they're going down. Yeah, but yeah, that's having all of These things, it's part of those tools and it's helps us get through the. The hard times. Because we're going to have them, right, man, we're going to have hard times. It just happens. Having people to talk to, having tools to help deal with the chronic stress to get us out of that. Super important.

Yeah. And we can even go deeper on this, right? Because if you're talking about emotions in general, this is a huge topic. But like, you know, therapy, especially since COVID like, like therapy is. It's been hard to actually like, get into a therapist because there's such long waiting lists, things, things like that, you know, but like, because it's a very important tool in order to help you understand your own tools, your own emotional tools. Right? And so that's, that's the important part of it. It's not that you have to spend, you know, your whole day analyzing your emotions, but at least be emotionally intelligent enough to understand when you do feel something like pretty heavy, pretty hard, whatever, that you can understand what it's. What it's there for, what it's doing. And this comes back into, just like you were talking about, like, the stories around money that we have, which are oftentimes ide, which are not always based in reality.

So a lot of times our, you know, our suffering or the, you know, the limitations we feel are just the ideas that are in our head. And so it's like, where do these ideas come from? A lot of times they come from our experiences, a lot of times from youth. And so, so here's an example. You know, I've come across people that are workaholics. And they, they will even know it though. They say, I'm workaholic. I can't. I just, I love to work.

Like, that's just what I do. And you start digging into that, like, what's really going on. And there are a lot of reasons that that could happen. But sometimes it has to do with this, this money story of money worship, like this idea that, like, I'm only worthy if I'm constantly bringing in money, you know, and so that's, that's one way, you know, that that could, that, that can manifest like this, these ideas, these emotionally based ideas that can actually kind of build a prison around a person. So, like, in that particular instance that I just shared, it's this idea that's not based in reality necessarily, but an idea that somehow got put in that person's head, whether it's from an experience from childhood or whatnot, that, that where if you are not constantly earning money, constantly working, then you are don't. That you're, you don't have very much worth to this world or to the people around you or something like that. And as funny as it may sound, that's actually a real money story that some people live their lives by. And, and they, and they don't even, A lot of times they don't even have the self awareness to understand that that's actually what's happening.

I mean then that's a big one. One of the things, talking to some of my buddies from high school, when we introduce ourselves, I mean when we introduce ourselves for the show, Luke's not up here saying, I'm gonna toot your horn for you Luke, because you're awesome. Dr. Erickson, I mean he's got a PhD. I mean he's worked hard for that. But he doesn't ever go out and say, hey, I'm Dr. Erickson. Not the kind of doctor that's going to fix your leg.

But you know, only when I go.

Rapping, that's my rap name. Yeah, yo, is Dr. Erickson.

Dr. Erickson, Dr. De Niro, yo. But that's not who Luke is. He doesn't identify, you know. And I don't go around saying, hey, I'm gonna. I'm an associate professor with the University of. I'm Lance Hansen.

And people like you're saying that money worship, they taught their value is tied to their profession or who they are or a status. And man, life gets pretty hard when you're trying to live up to a standard of success and all of that and feeling wealthy all the time. You just need what you need to survive, to get by to retire. And if you have extra, that's you put it in retirement, right? You make those decisions and you live your life in accordance to how much you are making and planning, you know, for retirement because that's the ultimate goal. We want to retire, but man, those who are money worshipers, they never retire. And it's like, golly what I mean, I could work another 40 years.

That's where they get their worth from, right? Like their self worth. It's not about the money, it's about their emotional well being, right?

And I'm just like, man, you can work another 30 years, then you can die. And I don't want to be working and you know, until I die, I don't want that. You know, I want to have time for the important things and defining what those are is important. Family, friends, yeah, but family Friends important. There's what else is important?

Right. And so one of the concepts that you're talking about right there is this idea that we, we kind of inherit money stories as we go through life. But like we can actually, as we become self aware, aware of them, we can actually change those money stories. So we can do it intentionally. Right. And so if your money story is, I have to constantly work to be worthy then to have some self worth, then once you become aware of that, you're like, oh, okay, like I know that that's something that I operate on as a default, but I can change that. I, I can come in with a new idea and I can say, no, I'm still, I still do have worth even if I'm not working. And here's how I have it.

And just like start listing the different ways. And even though you do that, it does take a while. You have to make it a habit to remind yourself of those types of things. Just see again, the Stuart Smalley thing where you're constantly reminding yourself, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough. But like, just remind yourself like, I am bigger than this one paradigm. I'm bigger than this money story. I'm bigger and better than these ideas that have been given to me. I can, I, I can recreate my own reality in my head to what I want it to be.

Something more healthy. Right. I think it's time to wrap up a little bit. We can do some practical tips and reflections on what we've been talking about today. Do you want to start hitting some of those?

Yeah, the mindfulness.

Right.

Take some time, some time to yourself where you can just sit and work on controlling the narratives from the day. Whether you're building off of a conversation in your head, trying to play it out, learn to control those narratives and recognize that this is a made up story in my head. It's not real. I don't need to go down that path anymore. And your emotional health will be so much better because you're not going to stress about it because it's over, it's done. Let it go. Just let it go, man.

Right.

Just doing that is a super important one that I do regularly. I, I take 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes. Or when you're mowing the lawn, don't put on the earbuds, just mow the lawn, enjoy the smell of the cut grass. Or if that's not your thing, I don't know, go sit in a hot tub, go to the gym, do something. Or right. Where you can work through your thoughts in a, in a, in an environment that's safe and, and good.

So journaling can be effective at this, like just writing down your day, but also just naming emotions in your journal entry. You, you mentioned at last, like practicing mindfulness, like just meditation sessions. I actually do 15 minutes a day. I started doing it about a year ago and it's been really a really powerful tool for me. And a lot of it has to do with, um, just, you know, understanding what the emotions are that I'm experiencing. Like aligning my thoughts with, with not the stories that I've inherited, but all the ones that I choose, like the ones that I want as I go throughout my day, different things like that. And also just like understanding what types of money behaviors and stories that are rooted in emotions that are not fundamentally based in, in reality, not fundamentally true. Like they're just based off of a story that is just loosely related to reality, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And so once you can identify some of those pre dinner whoppers or emotional spending purchases and you realize that, man, this is, this is a problem, you can start to make changes. And you know, I mean, I'm not saying abandon all of these things all at once, but start to step back, you know, cut back, realize other options, or better yet, just save that $8 or $4 and put it into an account to save up for a rainy day. And one of the biggest things is those money stories that we have, the positive ones, the good ones that help us either save money or just be better prepared financially. Those ones that we carry with us, make sure that they're good ones. You don't want to be out there making emotional purchases all the time because you're like always going to be wondering, why don't I have any money? Well, track your spending a little bit and become, start fully. You're going to transition from a spender to a saver and then at some point can reach that goal, which is part of that emotion. And that's one of the things about emotional stuff.

You set those small goals because that's an emotional booster for you. I reached this goal by saving this much. Then I reach this one. You got to break it up into pieces because just saying, hey, I want $6 million by the time I retire, that's a big goal. But you got to break them down so you can have that emotional success and that lift saying, hey, I reached this one. Now I, I'm working on this next stage. By doing all that, you're changing those stories or making them benefit you where you're a saver, not a spender. Just it just you're gonna have a healthier lifestyle.

All right, well, with that, we'll wrap up our episode next week. We're gonna be talking about environmental wellness and how that interrelates with finances. So that'll be fun. And I'm pretty sure that we've made it a a requirement to work in the pre dinner whopper to all of our conversations. So you can look forward to hearing more about that.

About the pre dinner Whopper.

That's right. My.

I might have a pre dinner whopper during the show. I'm just saying, Luke, you might be talking most of the time.

I, I imagine, like with environmental wellness, we'll talk about clutter a little bit and we'll talk about all the pre dinner Whopper wrappers that are just like collecting around here.

You can't see my floor, right? You can't see my garbage can. We're good.

There we go. All right, well, thanks for joining us for today's episode of Mindful Moolah. We really want to have you join us. Next time, make sure you subscribe and share about our episode and our podcast with friends.

Thanks, everyone.

Take care.