Five Journal Prompts to Dig Into Your Money Mindset in Your Business

So as of recording this episode I am working on bringing to life a new resource called The Money Mindset Toolkit.

This is going to include a guided journal, a workbook, and audio coaching to hold space for you to dig deeper into your money mindset in your business and explore how you can pursue your goals and work through your roadblocks in a way that feels aligned and supportive for you.

And the reason I’m creating this is because I know firsthand how tricky money mindset is to navigate as a business owner.

I have so many of my own roadblocks that I’ve worked through and continue to work through each day in my business and I’ve supported so many of my clients through theirs too so I know how important a topic this can be for us in our work.

And it doesn’t matter what stage of business you’re at, our money mindset is always something to be working on and supporting in our journey.

I used to think that one day after earning a certain amount of money and having a certain amount of savings in the bank all of my money fears and stories would magically go away, but that just isn’t how it works.

Yes I have more muscle memory now and deeper layers of trust in my business but those deep seated money stories still show up for me at times in this journey, especially when I’m stretching myself and embarking on a new chapter too.

The real work, I’ve found, is knowing how to support myself through these stories and fears so that they don’t derail me in my work and hold me back from the path I truly want to be walking.

For today’s episode I want to share with you five of the prompts from The Money Mindset Toolkit’s guided journal in the hopes they can hold a little space for you to dig deeper into your money mindset if that feels supportive for you right now.

1: What are your deepest fears around money in your business? And why?

Perhaps you’re afraid that your financial goals aren’t possible for you, or that you’ll have to sacrifice your wellbeing to make them possible. Or perhaps you’re afraid you’re not worthy of earning what you want to earn or that people will judge you for pursuing your money goals.

For me my deepest money fear, the one that I’m always doing the work of not allowing to sit in the drivers seat of my mindset in my business, is that one day my business will fall apart and I will no longer have the financial stability that I’ve built for myself.

I think for me this is very rooted in not having an external financial safety net - I am the breadwinner in my marriage and I grew up working class so I’ve never had family money to lean on so I know that the only person who is going to handle the financial costs of my life is me.

And listen, I’m proud of myself and the business I’ve built and the freedom it gives my husband and I to live on our own terms and be home together with our son and also it can feel like a lot to hold some days too. There’s such a deep story within me that it is inevitable that I will mess up at some point and this is the story I’m always working hard to remember isn’t actually rooted in any truth.

Because our money mindset can do that to us sometimes, it can so easily twist our perspective and leave us to believe something so deeply that isn’t actually rooted in any truth or facts. And that’s what helps me with this the most, when this money fear is triggered for me, I root back into all of the proof that my business is stable and strong and that I am wildly capable of navigating whatever may lay ahead too.

2: How do these fears affect how you show up for your business?

Do they stop you from raising your prices? Or pursuing your financial goals? Or do they leave you spiralling during a launch so you don’t follow through on your plan? Or do you find yourself always waiting for something to go wrong, or worrying about what may happen next?

The thing I’ve really worked on over the years is not allowing my fears and money mindset to be at the steering wheel of my business. Because what my money fears want most of all is for me to stay small, stay safe, and never rock the boat. But if I listened to those fears I’d never have built my business to what it is today - I’ve had to take intentional and brave steps forward to build the simplicity and spaciousness and stability I now have into my work. I wouldn’t have increased my prices, I wouldn’t have launched and sold new offers, I wouldn’t have invested in the things that have supported me to move my business forward, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to radically reshape my business to truly work best for me.

I see time and time again in my business journey and my clients too that meaningful growth and development in our business is almost always born from the courage to step in the unknown and pursue our desires without certainty of if and when they will be our reality.

3: What would it look like for you to show up in your business without these fears influencing the action you take and the decisions you make?

This is how we break the pattern of our fears shaping the action we take in our business. Because if they’re not at the steering wheel what can be is intention and optimism and focus and trust and they will serve us so much better than anxiety and self-doubt and fear ever could in our work.

For me it looks like letting my business vision guide me, it looks like trusting my instincts and my desires and showing up from a place of focus and intention every step of the way. It looks like not always looking for proof that my deepest fears are true and instead just seeing roadblocks and setbacks as part of the journey, and more than anything it looks like rooting for myself every step of the way in this journey.

And so often this is some of the most important work I do in my business - supporting myself to show up as the bravest, most intentional version of myself. But when I do that’s when I’ve found the magic really starts to happen.

4: Write a letter to your deepest money fears. Tell them what you want your relationship to be with them moving forward.

This is an opportunity to just sit with our fears and the stories we tell ourselves and reshape our relationship to them. It’s an invitation to explore what we want to be true moving forward instead and explore the ways we can shift these mindsets.

What I always need to tell my deepest money fears is that we’re safe. I think in many ways I see money as safety and therefore I can lose myself in the desire to control what is in many ways the uncontrollable and I’ve found instead a calm and a peace in trusting myself and my business and witnessing my fears as being along for the ride but not welcome to sit in the driver’s seat.

5: What are four reminders you want to come home to whenever your deepest money fears are triggered for you in your business?

You can put these on post-in notes above your desk or in a note on your phone to come back to when you need them.

Perhaps you want to remind yourself that your fears aren’t facts, or to root back into the proof of what’s already been possible for you, or to trust that the best is still yet to come, or to visualise your courage and focus at the driver’s seat instead of your fear.

For me in this season of my business these are the reminders I come back to:

First is to remember that I have strong and stable business foundations - past me has done the hard work of building and stabilising my business, now present me can focus on living in that business and scaling it gently to where I want it to be next too.

Second is that fears aren’t facts. My fears are rooted in nothing even to do with my business, it’s my inner child and her fears and anxieties and the part of me that doesn’t trust and believe that I’m capable and that good things are possible for me too. But present me knows different now and I can do the work to show my inner child that we’re safe and capable and stay open to all the possibilities ahead to come too.

Third is that what got me here isn’t enough to get me to where I’m going next. Because my money fears want me to stay safe and small and never rock the boat, but if I did that my business would lose all of its flow and energy and life force and so I need to stay open to experimentation and forward momentum even though it would feel safer to just stand still where I am.

And finally in this season I’m finding it so helpful to remind myself that I am wildly capable of making a beautiful living for myself and my family on my own terms, because that’s what I’ve done for 8 years now and I do have access to a deep trust within me that knows that it’s undeniable now that I am wildly capable of continuing to steer the ship that is my business with courage and focus and intention every step of the way.

Money can feel so emotional in business and if it does for you at times too I just hope you know that you’re not alone and you are capable of holding yourself through this and finding your way to trust and courage and optimism too.

And it’s not linear I’ve found - we have ups and downs along the way and it’s our job to keep doing the work to support ourselves to root into a money mindset that serves us and our work along the way.

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Jen Carrington11 May 2022