Business & Professional

s i o n a l f e s P r o & s s n e B u s i

How to Win the Money Game

It’ s the collective sigh heard around the world.

“If I only had more money… ” we secretly think to ourselves every time we want something we cannot seem to afford.

Iva Perez, Licensed RTTÒ Practitioner- Hypnotherapy

In our logical mind, more money equals more freedom.

But lottery winners are here to remind us that just throwing money at problems doesn’t resolve them. The National Endowment for Financial Education cites that over 70% of lottery winners ending up broke and/or declare bankruptcy not long after receiving a windfall. This is because our ‘ money problems are deeper than that.

You can decide to spend thousands more on business coaches, more sales funnels, or even the latest hacks, tricks, or quantum leap strategies that promise to take your business to the next level and still go nowhere because somewhere, there is an old program or outdated belief buried deep into the subconscious that will sabotage your ability to receive and make money.

Since money is energy, it will only amplify what is already there. And it will make lemonade out of the many false ‘ mindset lemons’ we might be carrying around which prevent us from winning at the money game.

Procrastination, anxiety, avoiding visibility, self-sabotage, and money blocks, just to name a few, all stem from deep-rooted lemons that run the show subconsciously.

Supercharging your mindset and bringing your subconscious on board with your money plans is key. It’s how you recession-proof your business and life.

This is not about ground-breaking business strategies or the next big money-making idea that you haven’t heard of before. This is about helping you build a strong foundation for your business journey.

By shifting your consciousness around money and leaving behind the false ‘ mindset lemons’ , money will respond and flow abundantly into your life. As Richard Bach wrote: “The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. ” We’ ve become so used to negative self-talk and toxic thought patterns that keep us stuck believing our own false stories, that we’re drinking the lemonade — probably every day. So are you making lemonade out of these lemons?

LEMON # 1- I’m not good enough

Perhaps you ’ ve spent most of your life thinking something’s wrong with you. When we feel that money is not being fair to us, that we need to work hard for it or be the good girl to earn it- we’re drinking a big glass of lemonade!

What’s even worse is the heaviness around how we perceive money is treating us.

There are so many stories behind that.

Most people constantly hide their different sides because they ’re afraid of being judged for who they really are. And when we’re out of alignment and not being authentic, it’s hard to operate with integrity with who we really are.

When we accept ourselves fully, flaws and all, our energy is more light-hearted. We show up with less resistance to having what we want.

Money then gets to be attracted to us. It gets to be the boy that calls us, picks us up for a date, takes us dancing, and drives us home with a good by kiss and the promise of “I see you tomorrow ” .

Swoon.

LEMON 2 - Money Won’t Solve Your Money Problems

One of the most common misconceptions is that having more money would magically solve financial problems. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Seventy percent of lottery winners who become millionaires overnight soon lost more than they won.

Money problems aren’t based on a lack of money. They ’re based on what you think of money.

Contrary to common belief, having more money won’t magically solve your problems. In the worst case, it’ll even amplify them.

If you don’t even know how to manage little money, you ’d struggle even more once you ’d need to manage a lot of money.

LEMON 3 - If I had more money, I’d finally be happy!

I’d be a lot happier/more relaxed/[insert desirable state

if I had more money! Or if I had more disposable income! Or if I won the lottery!

The truth is, you wouldn’t.

Even though external factors can shape our emotional well-being, they ’re mostly a reflection of what’s going on inside our heads and hearts.

More money wouldn’t make you any happier, just like a different job or a different partner wouldn’t magically change how you feel.

If you feel frustrated, angry, or even just a little stuck, you must first look inside before blaming anything on the outside.

Saying that having this or that would make us happier is easy because it helps us shuffle off responsibility: “I’d be happy if I had more money. I don’t have it right now, so I’m allowed to be unhappy. ”

If you want to feel differently, you mostly need to do things differently.

LEMON 4 - If Money Is Your Hope for Independence, You’ll Never Have It

Most people believe more money would make them free. As a result, they spend most of their life chasing money and hoping that an increase in their bank statement would also lead to an increase in freedom.

But the reality is different.

It’s true that money can lead to freedom if you use it wisely. The problem is that money alone won’t lead to satisfaction and contentment because you can always lose it. Freedom starts in your head.

Freedom starts in your head.

Of course, money significantly shapes our lives.

We all live in this physical world and life is certainly more fun if you don’t need to worry about whether you can afford your next meal or not.

In the end, money is nothing more than a form of energy and an enabler to live life on your own terms.

It’s true that you can’t buy happiness, health, or love. But you can indeed spend your money so that it makes you happier and healthier.

Final Thoughts

It’s probably not the first time you have heard people say, “Money is an energy” .

But what does that even mean?

Just like everything in the Universe, money is made up of energy, and it, therefore, responds to your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.

How thrilled would you be if I told you that the fastest way to make money was to massively increase the amount of joy, excitement, and adventure in your life?

Bet you would be looking for ways to feel more of those feelings as much as possible! Most people hate thinking about money and feel uncomfortable checking their bank accounts. If you want to do yourself a favor, do the contrary and start improving your relationship with money.

Talk about money. Speak your love language with money. Get comfortable playing with money instead of allowing it to control your life and choices.

What if money can be enjoyed without a hidden agenda attached to it _ i.e. solving your

perceived money problems?

By expanding your capacity to receive money, you will begin to unlink, cancel and delete these hidden programs that are blocking money from coming into your life. I help clients to remove the root cause of unwanted behavior and thought patterns that prevent them from achieving higher levels of success, money, and freedom. You CAN work Less, Earn More and RecessionProof your Business and Live a Good Life. I can help!

Iva Perez

www.themomergymovement.com @momergymovement

The Family ‘Systems’ You Need to Run a Successful Business from Home

Brianna Hosack Parenting, Productivity & Accountability Coach

“ ...You will run out of energy before you run out of work, so self-care comes first. Your children will grow and stop caring about connecting with you before you run out of work, so connecting with them comes next. Your relationship will fall apart from lack of attention before you run out of work, so connecting with your partner is a higher priority. You CAN finish cleaning your house, and you will never run out of work, so do some of that daily. Then, when you use the rest of your time to work, you can do so with a clear mind, guilt-free, and with more focus and intention.

If you want to run a hugely successful business out of your house, there are some foundational ‘ systems and structures that are needed at home (outside of your business) that will support your business (and you, in running it!).

Many moms start working from home on the assumption that life will be easier; the house will be easier to keep, connections with the kids easier to build, time saved without the commute… you name it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t just magically work for them. They haven’t suddenly improved their cleaning skills and habits, they haven’t built routines and habits for connecting with the kids, and the time saved in one area is drained away SO fast with the extra mess from being at home more hours of the day, etc.

And when suddenly, a few months in, they realize that they haven’t had a breath of fresh air or a day off for longer than they can remember, and yet the house is a disaster, and the kids are running wild… it can be so easy to fall into the mom guilt, shame and blame. ‘Why can’t I just keep up with it all?!’

The REAL issue, for most, is a lack of routines and schedules.

You may have had both before you started working from home, but you are in a whole new world now, and if you didn’t take the time to set yourself up in this area, you ’re not alone. We tend to assume that what used to work will keep working, or just not think of it at all, especially when the creative juices are flowing and we’re setting up a new business!

You also used to have things in separate ‘boxes’ in your head. Home, work, play. When you transition to working at home, especially if you ’re working for yourself, you suddenly find yourself having to create a single, giant, layered schedule for everything in your life, and that is a really different thing than you ’re used to!

Suddenly the ORDER of your day matters. You can have a structure that builds on itself and holds you up all day, or you can be putting out fires all day long. If you don’t plan ahead, and decide what things will look like, it is so easy to get sidetracked or forget important pieces of the puzzle of life. Those pieces you forget are EXACTLY what causes those ‘fires’ you’re putting out.

It can be difficult to piece together a giant, complicated, layered schedule while you evaluate out which things work for you and your family, and which ones don’t. So, I’ve created a detailed list of the foundational pieces for your schedule. Everyone needs these, but that doesn’t mean everyone KNOWS it, or puts them in order to support the specific situation of being a workfrom-home mom, so don’t skip any if you really want balance and calm in your life. Each layer has two PARTS, one for you, and one for your kids/family.

Layer one: Self Care

Before you roll your eyes and skip this section, deciding you don’t have the time for self-care, I need you to understand that without this layer, everything else falls apart eventually.

THIS is the layer that holds everything else up. Without this layer, you are more likely to reach burnout from your business, faster. Without this layer, your burnout may be so extreme that your business fails entirely, your family/marriage falls apart, you lose friends and more. This isn’t an exaggeration: it matters THAT MUCH.

On the other side of this is that your kids will learn one of two things from you. To prioritize themselves, or not. You need to set the example that you matter so that they can understand that they matter …and deserve to love themselves, take time for themselves, and have other people respect this need as well. That’s right, you need to teach them to respect YOUR need for this time so that they learn that other people should respect THEIR need for this time. This means that your kids not ‘letting you’ have time for yourself is no longer acceptable. You make, take, and expect this time. This can be done by a partner taking their turn parenting, hiring a sitter, calling a friend or a relative, exchanging help, or simply by teaching your kids boundaries (I say simply - not easily. But it is necessary!)

So, part one is building out your self-care schedule. And I call it a SCHEDULE, because you need to do exactly that: put it on your calendar/in your scheduler! It is just as essential as meeting with your biggest client. More essential, actually. You take care of everyone else all day every day. You need to be taken care OF, to be the best that as you can be. It should be just as set in ‘stone, ’ and just as equally respected and prioritized, as those other important meetings.

I won’t go into what self-care is, or when you should do it - this differs too much between individuals, and there are all sorts of resources, including some of my own, to help you with this part. In relation to how it supports you in your business though, enough sleep and quality sleep are top of the list! You want to be firing on all cylinders!

Part two is helping your kids create their self-care schedules. Children of any age can start to learn this, simply by watching and becoming aware of yours first. As they are old enough to understand more, you can start involving them in copying yours and then personalizing theirs.

You must designate time for planning. Yes, planning to plan. If you are your own boss, or even just your own manager working for someone else from home, you MUST have a plan. Without it, everything leaks into everything else, making YOU much less productive with your time. Productivity isn’t the be-all and end-all for us in life, but if you want your business to be more successful and sustainable, it’s definitely important!

Plus, knowing what to expect in advance helps prepare our minds and bodies for upcoming transitions, which is especially important if you have ADHD or other neurodivergent tendencies (I mention this because a REMARKABLY high rate of entrepreneurs does, myself included!).

It’s well known that children struggle with transitions, some more than others, but knowing the plan ahead of time can be hugely helpful for kids in this area as well, and prevent all sorts of meltdowns and resistance to changes in activities, requirements for focus time, etc.

Again, every individual is different, so what you need to plan, how far ahead you need to plan it, and how often you need to review the plan are not something I’ll dive into in this article - my assistance with this is highly individualized for my clients. The very baseline though is having designated windows of time for various aspects of your life. When will you work? When is it time to be connecting with the kids? When will you clean your house? When will you fit in that self-care?

Some examples of plans to have children involved in creating, however:

Meal plans (creates less resistance to what’s on their plate at meals), chore schedules (of course they should be helping… and they are more likely to do just that if they have a say in what they are doing and when. Not final say, necessarily, but their opinion is important.), what activity to do at playtime with Mama, what craft to create, etc.

The more plans you have in place ahead of time, the fewer decisions you must make as you go, which vastly reduces decision fatigue - a very real concern when you are running a business, a household, and a family every day!

And lastly, it is just as important to remember (and teach your kids) that plans change, and learn how to roll with it. But having a plan is a much better bet for sticking to one than not having one at all, so it is still incredibly important. It also makes it easier to get back on track when life throws you curveballs!

Layer three: Family Connection Time

Yes, this layer also comes before work. If you decided to work at home so you could be more present with your kids and partner, but then you prioritize work over them, even if you are confused about what the purpose of the added stress of working from home is! Your family will notice, be confused by it, and rebel against it.

This might look like your husband getting less and less supportive of your business over time or getting more easily frustrated with you if you don’t keep up with the house. It may look like your kids lashing out at each other, or at you. More dumping toy bins, less calm play. More ‘Mama, look at this, look at me!’ and less sharing with siblings. More hiding out in rooms and staring at screens and being miserable the rest of the time, and less understanding with each instance that a meeting goes overtime. More neediness, less patience.

You pick the time of day, and what goes on during that time, but you should have connection time with your family members every day. So, this layer comes before work in a prioritization sense, but not necessarily in a sequence of events (although if you take time to connect with the kids first, they ARE more likely to let you alone to work later!).

Again, including your family members in planning this time and in the awareness that you are choosing this time as family time, is extremely important. You need to stick to your word on family time, so if you show up for it but everyone else has another idea of what they wanted to do during that time, it will be frustrating all around. And if you decide on the activities each time, they may or may not be as interesting as you’d like them to be.

It helps kids know that if you are working first, there WILL be an end to it, so that they learn to leave you alone to focus during work hours (especially once you’ve stuck to your word on it a few times in a row). The common habit of saying ‘in a minute’ or ‘hold on a sec’ when we have no actual intention of finishing our task in that literal time frame, is the death of our children’s trust in us and in their ability to not interrupt.

Layer four: Cleaning, Organizing, Decluttering, and Tidying

Not everyone thinks of decluttering as a necessary/foundational thing for succeeding in business, for sure. But I include it because the less clutter you have in your physical environment, the less clutter there will be in your mind when it comes time to focus.

However, everyone at some point needs to clean, tidy, and organize their home. You may not think it should come before work but here’s why I say it does:

The mess you see in your space really does affect your clarity, patience, and focus. Having it done and out of sight clears your mind to focus on the more important, detailed tasks.

Of course, you don’t have to have clean toilets before you are ‘allowed’ to have a call with a client, but if you do have clean toilets before, then that is one less thought that will pop into your head to take you off the task at hand. This applies across the board. Walking on crumbs on your way to grab your tea before a virtual meeting doesn’t put your mind into the best headspace to focus and inspire or resolve things.

Less mess= fewer accidents. Your kids are much less likely to be injured during that meeting if there is less to trip over or hurt themselves on!

This is very much NOT an all-or-nothing rule - do SOME cleaning and tidying, especially in the vicinity of your work area, BEFORE you sit down to work, and you will already feel more accomplished (and much less guilty over what is left undone)!

If you are doing virtual video calls, having a messy space behind you just looks unprofessional! A few toys or an area that needs tidying is ok, but if the house is a pigsty and there are almost no corners that look clean to hide in for calls, it is going to add stress to your work times - a LOT of stress.

And as mentioned in planning, the kids should be helping with this as well. Making the time now to teach them how to clean up after themselves and do chores to contribute to the overall wellbeing of the family is something that every parent should do, not just the ones who work at home. If you do work from home though, this has the added benefit of lessening YOUR load so that you can ‘get it all done’ in a day, in general, AND for your business.

I won’t tell you, at all, how to run your business or work hours. You do you. But this is the actual LAST layer of your rock-solid foundation if you want to grow your business sustainably, working from home.

Again, you may work in the morning before the kids get up before you’ve done any cleaning, maybe even before self-care (I do NOT recommend), but that is a time of day and practicality concern, not a prioritization concern.

Work will fill the time you give it, whether that is one hour, ten, or twenty a day.

But you will run out of energy before you run out of work, so self-care comes first. Your children will grow and stop caring about connecting with you before you run out of work, so connecting with them comes next. Your relationship will fall apart from lack of attention before you run out of work, so connecting with your partner is a higher priority. You CAN finish cleaning your house, and you will never run out of work, so do some of that daily. Then, when you use the rest of your time to work, you can do so with a clear mind, guilt-free, and with more focus and intention. And THAT is how you become ready to scale, ready to rely on yourself to grow your business, ready to hold more clients or tasks…

Being your own boss, or even just in charge of your own time management when working for someone else, you MUST learn to LEAD YOURSELF. This means actual planning, actual reviews, and actually sticking to what you decide, or actively reasoning and choosing to ‘change the plan based on real data, not gut instinct (and I love me some gut instinct, but in business, you need to be able to tell yourself no, not get distracted from the priority tasks, and learn to let go of what doesn’t serve you, your family, your business).

You need to be dependable. And that starts in your personal life, with yourself and your family, before you can become truly dependable in the business. Otherwise, you’ll be putting out fires forever behind, and your clients and/or co-workers will learn NOT to count on you, which will be the death of your successful business dreams.

Brianna Hosack

www.thecalminspiredmama.com @TheCalm-InspiredMama

"I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be" . —Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, writer