60-Day Financial Fitness Challenge: Day 14

Emily Reno

December 13, 2022

Today’s task:

Meet with a financial coach.

Not to be confused with ‘schedule a meeting with a financial coach’. 😀

I felt like 90 minutes of chatting and goal-setting was enough for one day. It didn’t help that I had spent the previous half hour letting tears run down my face.

The trigger was a comment from a colleague this morning about my calendar, and not having any suggestions for what to do to improve. “You’re doing pretty good, Emily. I think you just need to stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself.” I laughed and was reminded of how I always have such high expectations for myself, that things always take longer than I expect them to. It was a good moment to check myself and realize how far I’ve come since just four months ago.

And then this evening, as I took a nice long walk by the lake, I had myself a good cry. This should be a task in itself. Crying is such a healthy outlet for emotion, and it wasn’t something that was ever acceptable in my household growing up. “Suck it up” was always the phrase, and I did. For many, many years. Recently, though, as I’ve started to reprogram my internal wiring and develop healthier ways of coping with stress and processing my emotions, I’ve started to let myself cry. It’s quite liberating.

Today’s cry varied from one thing to another. Sometimes I get stuck on one topic and then just let it go for a couple of hours. Today I went from reflecting on my personal relationships to my financial status.

I couldn’t help but let the tears flow as I thought about how I wanted to respond to my colleague this morning, but didn’t have the courage to: “Really? Because I feel like every day I’m just barely holding myself together.” And it’s true. Even the people who seem so strong, confident, bubbly, and healthy have stuff going on that makes them want to fall apart at any moment. And if you just so happen to ask them on a day when they’re feeling fragile, you might just witness it.

I don’t think most people ask me how I am expecting me to respond in tears. For the most part, I don’t. I’ve always been conscious of who I dump my feelings onto, and as my social circle has shrunken, I’ve learned to find ways to process things on my own. Writing, meditation, walking, talking out loud to myself while I clean my apartment, swimming…they all give me time to reflect.

Which brings me to today’s task! 90 minutes of reflection.

At the time that I scheduled this meeting with my financial coach, I wasn’t in the best shape financially. But I knew that the information I would take away would be worth more than what I paid – it would get me back on track and result in greater clarity, bringing in even more abundance.

And boy was I right! We started with me just dumping a whole lot of information about what had happened since we last met. I held myself together pretty well. Then we outlined areas where I felt like I saw opportunity, areas where I was experiencing challenges, and divided these up into short- and long-term goals. I appreciated her ability to push back and ask me to get more specific about what I meant when I said ‘passive income’ and ‘abundance mindset’.

And I especially appreciated how she responded to my confusion about where I want to be geographically – “Maybe you’re only meant to be here for a season…and maybe you’re only meant to be there for a season.” Regardless of how long, or where you end up, it’s all part of your unique journey. I definitely held back the tears in that moment. And barely got out my response. “Indeed!”

I made it through. All in one piece. Like I always do.

I’ll end today’s post with some practical tips and journal prompts I’d like to share from my conversation that I hope will help you out, wherever you may find yourself financially:

If you’re unsure of where to start, start with the basics by looking at your budget. Ask yourself, how are you using it?
Identify what your goals are. List out all of your financial goals by free writing for 5-10 minutes. Now identify which of them are short- and long-term. Do any of the goals have sub-tasks? Write them down, too. Then put some dates by each goal.
List out what you think is keeping you from achieving your goals. What can you do to address or navigate those barriers as they come up? Is there anything related to your goals that you can schedule this week?
Start to recognize your patterns. When you were last in your most abundant mindset/lifestyle, and what did you do right before that thing came through? Can you do that again?
Connect with the feeling of what you want. This will help you get into your subconscious. Don’t worry so much about the how or the fine details. What will it feel like to be financially abundant? Wealthy? Financially secure or stable?

Here’s a snapshot of what I’m working towards: