061 | Self-Love and Financial Freedom

As a lawyer, you likely tend to strive for perfection in everything you do. This can often look like thinking that you’re not doing enough or that you should be reaching your goals faster.

But this line of thinking is really reflection of a lack of self-love and self-compassion and leads to negative results in your life.

In this episode, we explore an example of how this shows up in the context of your finances, some reasons why not practicing self-love is problematic for your money goals, and some tips to show yourself love more often.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• how lacking self-love shows up in your finances
• why not practicing self-love is problematic for your money goals
• tips to practice self-love

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

Episode 54: Money Emotions

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If you’re ready to go deeper with this work, click here and let’s set up a call to talk about how coaching can help.

Connect with me

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. How’s it going? I hope you are doing well. Welcome back to another episode of Wealthyesque. We are talking today about self-love and financial freedom. So I spoke recently with a lawyer who’s working on her finances, and she is every bit the typical type a lawyer right wherever the bar says she’s going above and beyond. And if she’s not doing that then she might as well be failing as as we were talking about her money. Some of the statements she made really caught my ear and I think they’re common to a lot of lawyers like a lot of lawyers have the same mindset that she has and so I want to talk about some of it today, to give some context, she saving to buy a house, she was talking about how she needs to do better with budgeting because she set savings goals each month, and sometimes she misses her goal by a couple $100 So, the example she gave was, if she wants to save $3,000 Sometimes she only saves 2800 And that’s a problem for her because she wants to hit her goal every time. She also mentioned that. She’s being very disciplined with her saving she doesn’t spend on things she wants to spend on, she’s only spending on essentials and she wishes she could be more frugal, but then she also made this comment about how she doesn’t get the chance to enjoy herself more. And finally she talked about how horrible her debt is, it was mostly if not entirely student loans, and some of our comments suggested that she feels regret and shame about her loan balance, and if that’s not the case for her. I know many of you do because you tell me. And so when I tell you that all of this was me a few years ago, like it wasn’t exactly the same situation. We weren’t saving for a house for example, and I definitely spend no more than the essentials like as you know, if you’ve been listening for a while. My husband and I set aside money for each of us to spend on whatever we want each month, no questions asked. And we’ve been doing that since the beginning of our marriage or at least not too long after we started managing our money because we actually combine our finances while we were engaged so we started that pretty early on in the process of managing our money together. But anyway, I’ve mentioned before that when we realized how much debt we had, and started working on our finances, I was always thinking that we weren’t doing enough, and we should be doing more, and I felt a lot of shame about how much debt we had, I didn’t think that we should be in the position we were in because we’re, you know so educated and we’ve been doing the things we were supposed to do with our money, but here we are, you know, or here we were at that point, With our negative net worth and hundreds of 1000s of dollars of debt, and it just all felt really heavy, and I was not enjoying it. The way this attorney was talking about her saving and spending habits suggested to me that she’s not enjoying it either, she’s beating herself up about missing her goal by small amounts, and not even every month right it’s some months. She’s only spending on essentials but think she should be more frugal and she wishes she could enjoy herself more and she’s ashamed of her debt, basically she’s telling herself, that everything she’s doing is not enough, these great results that she’s creating are not good enough, she should be doing more, she shouldn’t even be in this debt in the first place. And this is so common with lawyers, especially because of the way we tend to think, and it may be the reason why you haven’t started seriously looking at your finances and making progress toward the goals you have there, or you may be beating yourself up before we even get started, how am I in this much debt if I’m so smart, why don’t I already know how to do this, you may be thinking, if you’re not going to be able to do it perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all, or maybe you have a start stop relationship with your money goals where you start doing the work to reach them, but then you get off track and you give up all together, and then down the line you decide to pick it up again and you just stay in that cycle. With this lawyer I was talking to, she’s literally depriving herself of things she wants to the point that she only spends on essentials. She literally said she doesn’t spend on things she wants to spend on and wish she could enjoy herself more, and at the same time, she’s telling herself that she should be more frugal and she’s not doing enough. What if the point is not to optimize every single dollar you make. What if the point is to learn how to manage your money in your life in a way that you enjoy, while still reaching your goals. What if having compassion for yourself, loving yourself, rather than beating yourself up for every imperfection or every misstep. What if that led to faster progress. I heard a great analogy from a coach named Catherine Morrison, she’s a business coach and she was talking about this concept of your internal manager, and basically considering what would happen if you had a manager who treated you the way you treat you. So in the legal profession if you think about the partners or counsel or more senior associates that you work with, or your supervisor if you’re in house, if they talk to you the way you talk to yourself, would you enjoy working with them. Would you feel motivated to accomplish the goals they said, if everything you did was not good enough. If you were killing it most of the time right doing a great job, but every now and then you missed the mark and they focus only on the mistakes, no celebration or appreciation for the amazing things you do every other time, just criticism for those mistakes. It wouldn’t be a very effective management style and you probably leave right. Like, I know people who’ve left out for exactly this reason. The problem is you can’t leave yourself right you’re stuck with you. And when you’re already in this pattern of thinking like a particular way of seeing yourself. You don’t even recognize it, your brain just gets more and more efficient at executing that pattern, and you start to believe these thoughts are just the truth that you have to be perfect or you’re a failure, or that you’re not enough or that you’re unworthy or that you’re stupid for not having your money together yet, or whatever your flavor of not loving yourself or not having compassion for yourself is, when you’re berating yourself for all your shortcomings, you’re likely feeling ashamed or sad, or hopeless incompetent, any number of feelings that will not lead to the results you want, and head back to Episode 54 Money emotions, where we talked about the importance of your emotions and managing your money. You may see some of the results you want in the short term, but it’s not sustainable, like you cannot hate your way to financial freedom. And I won’t sit here and act like I have it all together and I always have self compassion and self love. I’m a work in progress for sure, still beat myself up about things, but I’m aware of when I’m doing it. And when you’re aware you can course correct. So, I want you to notice when you’re doing this, when are you downplaying your achievements or telling yourself that what you’re doing is not enough, or otherwise not being loving to yourself on this journey that awareness is a huge step. I also have a few tips for things I do to combat or counteract my negative self talk that you may want to try as well. First, ask yourself whether you would talk to your friend this way. For me it’s almost always a no right and that helps you get to a kinder place because we tend to be harshest with ourselves, so getting outside of yourself, will help you to reframe the way you talk to yourself when you’re thinking about how you would address your friend and the same situation. It’ll help you to be nicer, and addressing yourself. Number two, acknowledge the things that you’re doing well. Even if you’re not where you want to be yet, there are things you’re doing well already. So in the context of money did you pay your bills. Congratulations, right did you start to buy something that you didn’t really need or want and stop yourself. That’s great. Right intentionally look for the things that you’re doing well. Even if you think they’re small and acknowledge them because our brains want to automatically go to the things that aren’t working, but there’s almost always something, at least one thing that is working. And then the last one is to celebrate along the way. You don’t have to wait until you reach the ultimate goal to celebrate yourself as you’re making progress you can celebrate that progress so celebrate once you pay off X amount of debt or once you save Y amount, instead of beating yourself up for not being at the goal, celebrate all the progress you’re making along the way that’s getting you closer to the goal. And now, if what we talked about in this episode resonates with you and you’re beating yourself up and thinking you should be further along because you’re a lawyer and your money shouldn’t be such a mess. I really want you to reach out to me. I can help you be more compassionate with yourself and make faster sustainable progress on your money goals so you can head to rho Thomas comm slash coaching, schedule a call and we can talk about your situation. And one final reminder about managing your money in general, your quality of life does not have to suffer until you reach your ultimate goal, you can manage your money better and still live your life. It’s all about balance. So just remember that your budget is about being intentional, not about depriving yourself. Alright so that’s it for this week’s episode, come connect with me on social media and let’s talk more. At I am rho Thomas on Instagram and rho Thomas on LinkedIn. If you haven’t already please subscribe to the show and leave a review, both of which help in reaching more people with this message. And of course, Another way to help reach more people is to share the show with a friend or two, I greatly appreciate your support. Alright friend as we close out, I pray that you will become more aware of when you’re being hard on yourself and talking down to yourself. I pray that you will take steps to be more compassionate and loving with yourself and acknowledge and celebrate the good things you’re already doing. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice, you deserve. Talk to you later.