094 | The Value of Awareness

So many of us live our lives on autopilot, going through the motions and not questioning anything or really being intentional about what we’re doing.

Awareness is recognizing your thought and behavior patterns and really questioning them and deciding if you want to keep them.

When you bring awareness to the way you think about money and the way you spend your money, you will discover the most valuable data to help you achieve your financial goals.

In this episode, let’s talk about why awareness is so valuable and go through some exercises to bring awareness to the way you think about money and the way you spend your money.

Topics Discussed

• what awareness is
• why awareness is so valuable
• exercises to bring awareness to the way you think about and spend money

Listen to the Episode 

Resources mentioned

April Money Reset Facebook group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/aprilmoneyreset

Budget template: https://www.rhothomas.com/budget

Work with me

If you’re ready to learn the mindset and strategies to master your money, let’s schedule a call.

Connect with me

Social media: Instagram and LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

Recent Episodes 

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today we are talking about the value of awareness. So many of us are running our lives on autopilot and aren’t even aware that we’re doing it. We’re going through the motions and not questioning anything or really being intentional about what we’re doing and it shows up in everything we had in life. Awareness is recognizing our thought and behavior patterns and really questioning them. Of course, we are talking today about money, but I want you to really think about how awareness can improve other areas of your life as well. With respect to money, I want to talk about the way we think about money and the way we manage our money and more specifically the way we spend our money. Our brains are running so many thoughts in the background to influence the things we do and the way we manage our money. But most of us have never stopped to question those thoughts. We just accept them as true and operate accordingly. The same is true with the way we spend money we are spending and not really thinking about where we’re spending how much we’re spending or when we get either those turning first to awareness with our thoughts. We talked many times before about how our thoughts lead us to particular emotions and behaviors. There are concrete factual things of the world money, X amount of debt, y bank account balance, the cost of an item, and then we bring our thoughts and opinions to those things which creates our experience of them and ultimately the way to interact with them. And so looking at what you’re thinking, especially in the context of your finances is super helpful because you may not know some of the thoughts that you’re operating from if you don’t examine them, but those thoughts are impacting the way you’re managing your money. I’m doing a free pop up group for the month of April called April money reset if you’re listening to this in real time, April 2022, please come join us you can head to rho thomas.com/reset. Or you can search for April money reset on Facebook. But in the group this week talking about the impact of our mindset on the way we manage our money and how important it is to manage your thoughts about yourself and your money when you want to know your money better. If you believe you’re terrible with money, or you can’t do it or money is complicated, or whatever other similar beliefs you might have. You’re going to handle your money a lot differently than if you believe you know what to do with your money. Money is simple. Budgeting is easy etc. The way we think about ourselves and our money is critically important to achieving the goals you have. So I gave the group a couple exercises to help them explore the way they think about themselves and their money. And I’m gonna share them here with you. So even if you don’t join us in the group, you can still benefit. So the first exercise I gave them was to finish the following sentences about money. I’ve actually talked about these on podcast before but take a second and go through them again because you’re likely in a different place with your thinking and or your finances than you were when you first heard them so you’ll probably receive them differently. Anyway, I had them finish these sentences. Money is debt is having savings is people with money are. For my parents or caregivers money was and if I had more money I would. So each of those sentences will reveal to you what you think about money, about debt, about savings about having money, some of the unconscious conditioning that you receive from childhood about money and thoughts about yourself and how you handle money. The other exercise I gave them was to rate on a scale of one to 10 how much they believe the following statements for themselves where one means they don’t leave at all. And 10 means they absolutely believe it. For each one. I told them to list out the reason that they did it the number they did, and it’s not a 10 What do we take the megaton so those things are I know what I’m doing with my money. I’m good with money. I control my money. I can figure out money issues. It’s inevitable that I will pay off my debt. I can save money easily. And I know how to build wealth. So this exercise is gonna show you all the things you’re believing about yourself and your ability to manage money. The reason you reach that is the number that you do is gonna create so much awareness around your thoughts about the specific skills in those questions. We become aware of your thoughts about yourself and your ability to manage money, you can question them. Are they actually true? There are two sides to every story. So what else could be true here? You can decide if you like the thoughts and if you want to keep them. You can look at all the things you’re doing when you’re believing those thoughts. Are they things that will move you forward toward your goals, or are they things that are sabotaging your goals or keeping you stagnant? And when you start to unwind the thoughts that are unhelpful and really limiting you, you will start to make progress. you automate your finances, the way you think about yourself and money is the most important factor in managing our money. All the strategies are out there. There are countless books and podcasts and blogs and websites and all that about managing money. The information is there, but the reason you haven’t taken action on it is because of the mindset, the things you think about yourself, the things you’re thinking about money, the things you’re thinking about your ability to manage your money. So changing that mindset, changing those beliefs that are holding you back is a wonderful first step in getting you where you want to go. And then coupling that with the awareness of where your money is actually going. Isn’t to completely turn things around. For you. So many of us spend money without planning ahead or even thinking about it. Many of us have no idea how much we’re spending what was going on. Any of that here we continue on we’re gonna be oblivious to. A lot of times people will tell me how much they think we’re spending on certain things. And when we actually look at it it’s almost always 2x what they think because we’re pretty bad at estimating what we’re spending. So be part of achieving your financial goals is being intentional with the way that you manage money. I’ve talked a few times about the simple process for managing money better, the first step in the process is to figure out where your money is going currently, knowing where money is going gives you some data to work with. So you can decide if you like where that money is going. You can decide if you’d like how much you’re spending and think about your yet where things are spending on. So in the April money reset Facebook group next week is all about budgeting. And the first thing I’m going to do is give them the exercise of going through their previous spending for the last one to three months and just categorize it. I’m gonna give them my budget, which I’ve shared many times on here, but you can find it at rho thomas.com/budget If you don’t have it, and the point of this exercise is for them to gain awareness about where their money is going. Now. Most people have no idea where the money is going, which is why that’s the first step to my process. So I invite you to do this exercise as well get the budget to look back at your beginning. I recommend the last three months because that’ll give you a really good average of what you’re typically going to use for categories. One with might be a really high or really low. So taking the average of the last few months will give you a good gauge. But if you don’t want to wait for three months, that’s fine. At least one month will give you at least some data to work with. So look back at previous spending for the last one to three months. Figure out where your money’s going. Then once you have that you can see how to actually set in different categories. Go through and see if any of those surprise you decide whether you like we’re spending on any amount that are spending. Notice if there’s anything that you say you care about, but you’re not getting money on. Notice if there are things that you don’t care about that are sending a lot of money on. One of my clients when we did this exercise, realizing he was getting a quarter of his take home pay and that appeared to help him to decide that he’s gonna cut back. He’s a foodie but he doesn’t like food enough to keep spending more of his take home pay on it. So he was able to reroute that money towards the goal he has that he hadn’t made any progress on before we start working together. Ultimately, the awareness of everything about yourself and money and the awareness of how you’re actually spending money is some of the most valuable data that you can have. It will help you completely turn your finances around if you want to do that. You’ll see where you’re making things that are not useful for you and you can question those thoughts and also see we’re spending money on things you care about and can we allocate that money to move forward toward goals. So hopefully I have sold you on the valuable rareness it has been so useful for me and my finances and in other areas of my life. And I know it’s been useful for my client as well. So if you want to gain awareness, every week thinking on how you’re spending money to manage it better, let’s absolutely work together, you can head to rho thomas.com/call. And let’s set up a time to talk about what that would look like. So that is it for this week’s episode. Connect with me over on social media rho Thomas on LinkedIn and I am rho Thomas on Instagram, subscribe to the show and leave a rating review. All of that helps more people to find the show. And please share this episode with a friend who find it useful. As we close friend I pray that you have the courage to explore and question your thoughts and the way you’re spending money. I pray that you will take actual steps to start creating the finances you want and not keep putting it off for later. 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.