60-Day Financial Fitness Challenge: Day 53

Today’s task:

Audit your most financially challenging experiences. 

I had the privilege of getting to take a few breathwork classes while I was in Santa Teresa. I even interviewed the teacher for The Transcendent Farmer podcast (coming soon, I promise!), which was an awesome way to dive deep into his journey into breathwork and the transformation that it brought about in his life.

I love taking ideas from one field and applying them to another. So today, we’re going to focus on this analogy between breathwork and financial flow within your life. 

One of the things that we may not be aware of is how shallow our breaths are on a regular basis. I’m so grateful for the days I get to go lap swimming because it helps me concentrate on taking very long inhales and exhales, and it’s often a mindful moment to check in and see how easy/hard it is to go for 5, 6, 7 strokes without needing to come up for air. Most times I don’t try to push myself to the max until the end, and instead focus on releasing the tension in my neck, my jaw, and anywhere else that I might be holding tightness.

When we start to do breathing exercises, it similarly forces us to pay attention to how and where the energy is flowing. Sometimes I’ll notice that as I’m taking a deep breath, it gets caught in a certain part of my chest, or underneath a specific shoulder blade. I always try to pay attention to which side of my body it’s on (masculine or feminine), and start to reflect on what’s going on in my life in general (through work or personal matters) that may be causing the friction. 

In an earlier post, I shared an exercise from Taylor Eaton’s course that I’m taking, which links human design to financial abundance. And in that exercise, she talks about breathing through the different centers and noticing where the breath gets stuck.

Today we’re going to take a look at the flow of money within our lives, through a series of journal prompts. I went ahead and answered them myself and am putting the answers here to give you an idea of how this exercise can be helpful in reflecting on your own experiences with money, the times when you’ve been most abundant, what led to that, or alternatively, what actions allowed you to get out of a hard place financially. 

A big part of this exercise is pattern recognition, a concept I’ve picked up from To Be Magnetic and the manifestation courses they offer. What’s cool is that once you have a general idea of what they’re teaching, you can start to apply it to other areas of your life. 

Prompts:

1. Describe one of the worst financial situation you’ve ever been in
2. Was it actually bad or was it just your perception?
   1. Were you still able to pay your bills (including paying off your credit card)?
   2. Did you ask for help or money from others?
3. When did it happen?
4. What are the behaviors/feelings that indicated you weren’t doing well financially?
5. What led to it?
6. What action did I take for it to end? When did it end?

Once you’ve gone through this exercise, repeat for as many different situations as possible. You might start to see some patterns in what you write!

My responses:

1. Describe one of the worst financial situation you’ve ever been in

Grad school. Didn’t have much in savings, and what I did I set aside to pay for university fees not covered by my tuition, books, etc. 

2. Was it actually bad or was it just your perception?

I felt like it was bad of course, because I was out of whack emotionally. So stressed, all the time. 

1. Were you still able to pay your bills (including paying off your credit card)? Yes
2. Did you ask for help or money from others? Yes, when I got in a bike accident and didn’t want to dip into my savings for tuition to pay for it. My mom bought my bike for me as a birthday/Christmas gift and it has served me well.
3. When did it happen?

2018-2020

4. What are the behaviors/feelings that indicated you weren’t doing well financially?
   1. Shopping at 3 different grocery stores to get the best prices; asked to get a ‘low income’ discount at the co-op because I couldn’t afford to do all my shopping there
   2. Constantly sleep deprived
   3. Working late nights, catering and studying
   4. 3 part-time jobs + full class load 
   5. Didn’t go out to eat more than a couple of times per month
   6. I would turn down offers to go out because I didn’t have any spare money to spend
   7. Constantly stressed – didn’t do a lot spontaneously- left little to no flexibility in my schedule for fun
5. What led to it?
   1. No savings to pull from to cover fixed expenses
   2. High level of fixed expenses – Rent was 65% of my income
   3. Unwillingness to take out a loan or ask family/friends for help
   4. Desire to graduate debt-free and have financial freedom
6. When did it end? What action did I take for it to end?
   1. When I moved out to the farm and starting collecting unemployment payments from the government during the pandemic. Started putting money into savings again.
   2. Took responsibility for my mental health by deciding to move out of the Twin Cities in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the war zone I felt l was living in. 
   3. I became connected to nature
   4. I also traveled to Costa Rica for the first time that spring even though I didn’t have a huge budget – $1K. I leveraged relationships to find creative solutions to my problems

Here’s a few things that I took away from this exercise:

1. I tend to have a lot more success when I take risks and trust that it’s going to work out for me. 
2. Taking responsibility for my situation is key – I didn’t mention this earlier, but I did move to another apartment for almost a year, where my rent went from $700 to $475/mo. That was a game changer for me, and it was a pretty rocky transition, but I was in a much better position after that emotionally. 
3. I shouldn’t wait so long to ask for help. And I shouldn’t be ashamed to admit that I need help. Indeed, the people who I believe are most successful are those who possess a strong sense of humility and are willing to accept that they don’t know everything. 

Today’s resources to keep you inspired:

• Anxiety Free Content Q&A – Counter Cultural Podcast
• It Will Give You Goosebumps – Alan Watts on What Do You Desire?
• How to Make Opportunities Show Up at Your Door  – Matt Paulson