Hello Reader,

Someone else can do the hard work of solving a puzzle, and then you can swoop in and snatch up all the rewards. That’s 100% fair and I 100% believe that.

In fact, I’ve built an entire business solving puzzles for other people’s reward. Here’s what I mean.

June showed up to my recent tax event with a question:

“How do I find an accountant I can actually trust?”

It’s a totally valid concern—especially when you’re self-employed and your finances feel personal, vulnerable, even sacred.

But after a few questions, I realized her concern wasn’t really about trust at all.

It was about identity.

Before June started her business she used to work as an underpaid advocate, pouring her heart into a mission-driven career that barely paid the bills.

She told me, “I’ve always believed my work is my worth. If I’m not doing the hard work myself, it doesn’t count.”

So when I explained that she could outsource her tax strategy to someone like me—and still walk away with thousands in savings and a long-term wealth-building plan—she froze.

Not because it wasn’t smart.

But because it didn’t feel earned.

The real problem was she believed her work was her worth.

She said, “If I’m not the one making the plan... if I’m not the one figuring it all out... do I even deserve to benefit from it?”

💥 Boom.

June was trapped in a common Money Story. In order to discover this, we had to dig to the actual core first money story - that she had to be the one figuring it all out.

With this Money Story in place, June was leaving thousands of dollars on the table every year and sacrificing her financial future.

This doesn't make sense unless you understand that we all have Money Stories - deep subconscious beliefs about what it takes to be successful, deserving, or wealthy.

Here are three of the most common psychological road blocks that cause us to default to old money stories and limit our success.

Threat Rigidity

This phenomenon was first described by organizational psychologist Barry Staw.

It describes how, when we perceive a threat, we revert to an old, familiar solution even if we know that solution is outdated or not the most effective.

There are two key ideas here.

👉 First, the threat just has to be perceived, not necessarily real. Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a client request a meeting and you’ve assumed the worst, only to have a perfectly lovely conversation. Just me? 😀

👉 The other key idea is “revert to the familiar.” When stressed, we will default to the first way we learned to handle something, even if that way was maladaptive. “Fixing it” by pulling an all-nighter, giving a discount, saying yes to outrageous requests just to keep someone happy, is not good for your mental health or your bottom line.

Business is tricky precisely because you must continuously learn and implement new things, but under pressure threat rigidity might set in and leave you stuck on old solutions.

Threat rigidity can be avoided - you can catch yourself defaulting to an old pattern - but it requires cultivating a high degree of mindfulness to catch yourself and space to process your energy and emotions so you can take aligned action instead.

So is the way you think about clients and money stressing you out, and thereby triggering an unconscious threat response?

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Or have you reworked your money story to avoid threat rigidity all together?
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Success Contract

Dr Robert Holden describes a success contract in his enlightening book, Authentic Success.

You success contract might include beliefs like:

👉 You must always go the extra mile,

👉 That “no pain, no gain” is a mantra to live by

👉 That new levels of wealth and success always come with hidden costs and that “sacrifices must be made”

While your success contract may not keep you from accomplishing big things, it will keep you from enjoying them.

You will never feel successful until you are “worthy” according to the terms of your success contract.

With most people, but especially with business owners, success and money are intertwined, and so our money stories are often riddled with beliefs about who is worthy and deserving of more money.

Like June, this can actively prevent us from taking the next, right step until we feel ready, when we really are waiting to feel deserving.
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Reactance

In social psychology, reactance is a reflexive response when we feel our freedom or choices are being limited. Reactance leads to angry, self-sabotaging behaviors that might even bring about the opposite of what we truly want.

For example, if you believe strongly that hiring a coach would help you out of the financial turmoil you’re in, but you don’t have thousands of dollars for their fee, then, in an angry pique, you might spend hundreds of dollars wining and dining your friends.

You're trying to “prove” you have enough great people in your life and can get plenty of free advice. This gives you the feeling that you're actually doing fine financially because you can treat all these people.

And, you tell yourself that you don’t want someone else telling you how to run your business anyway.

Using credit cards for personal expenses whenever your business income drops or trying to deduct questionable expenses on your taxes because you “need this” are other examples of mistreating your money because of reactance.

None of these three psychological terms are about money specifically, yet all our decisions in business affect how we earn or spend money.

So we can make running a business much easier if, like June, we identify and rewrite our Money Stories.

This lowers our stress response so we can better manage threat rigidity. We won’t feel compelled to “do more” by our Success Contract and instead see and enjoy opportunities right now.

And if we can learn to view Money as a Teammate, as in my Money Storyteller Method, then lack of money won’t trigger reactance. Instead, any amount of money can be assigned jobs and put to work achieving goals on your behalf.

I'd love to hear your take on this!

👆Reply to this email with your biggest a-ha moment. Which one of these Money Story principles applies to you the most?

To your success,