How do you feel about receiving money?

If someone asked me this question a few years ago, I would not understand:

a) What the hell does that even mean?

b) The quest this question would send me on for the next few years.

A quest about understanding myself. About understanding how I value myself and whether or not I find myself worthy. Worthy of receiving not only money but actually anything.

I never thought that I had a bad relationship with money. Well, actually, I never thought that there was something like a relationship with money in the first place. But once I did realize that, I realized how much the way I see money and receiving it is connected to all areas of my life.

Here are the areas of life that were influenced by that:

• I would not be able to accept a compliment.
• I would say no to opportunities or I would just make sure to miss out on anything that was handed to me.
• I would decline the options of healthy relationships (especially healthy work relationships)... and more.

All of the above, just from the question "How do I feel about receiving money?"

Yep.

Money by itself has no value. It's the energy we hold in regard to money and the stories we tell about money that give it its (negative or positive) power.

Stories such as:

• "It’s not safe to have money",
• "Rich people are nasty",
• "Desiring money is greedy",... etc., etc.

What I noticed is that the money stories often influenced people's lives when I conducted job interviews. I swear I'm not exaggerating when I say that probably only 5% of people I asked, back then as a recruiter, the typical salary question would just give me a number.

The rest, so 95% of people, would give me a story about the number they're asking.

Everyone had a little bit of a different story, but they were all kind of the same at the same time. It would be all about explaining to me what the industry offers—yes, often there would be the same explanation for completely different numbers.

Another common story would be about their life situation and therefore the salary that they need. Which if you think about it again, is irrelevant to the job that they are providing to an employer, right? Many, many different stories over the years of interviewing people.

And maybe this is the moment when you can even ask yourself, when you are in a job interview and you are asked the salary question, how do you answer that?

I cannot even tell you how many job interviews I have had with candidates that were incredible. The whole interview went so well, and the moment when the salary question came up, the atmosphere would rapidly change.

I was doing my best to make all of my candidates feel as comfortable as possible discussing this question (and please, if you are reading this and you are my past candidate, feel free to let me know in the comments how comfortable or not comfortable you felt discussing this question with me. I would be very, very curious to hear about that).

But something you realize being in a position like that, when the same topic you're discussing pretty often with people, is that you realize how much people react differently based on how they feel about themselves.

There were some absolute rockstars that I have interviewed who, at the moment when we started talking about the salary—and I'm sorry ladies to call you out, but it was mostly women—suddenly you could see how their self-confidence dropped down in the moment of discussing money, talking about how much they value their work, how much they value their time, etc.

This is one of those moments where I have to say how grateful I am for my time in recruitment. Witnessing other people having issues around the topic of self-worth has always been a huge mirror for me and made me realize how I see things so much faster. This job has given me such a sneak peek into people's heads it has literally shaped the way how I am operating in my career coaching business.

Apart from that experience, there's one specific person who has really helped me shape the way how I see money and how I see myself in relation to money.

Introducing Ruby Lee *insert applause*.

Ruby Lee is an entrepreneur and my beloved business coach, and mentor. Okay, this is the official description…

Now here's who she is to me and how I would describe her: Ruby is an embodiment of the perfect balance of an absolute badass confident business owner wrapped in a cute packaging of bestie/big sister energy with a cute little ribbon delivered directly to your door through the road of the internet.

Ruby Lee has an incredible mindset regarding money, wealth, and abundance. And although right now she is living an abundant life with her family on the Australian Gold Coast, it wasn't always the case. She has come a long way, overcoming her scarcity mindset caused by a lot of financial troubles she encountered growing up, to now arrive at the place where she is teaching wealth consciousness to thousands of women all around the globe.

I’m so excited to bring you this badass woman LIVE on my next LinkedIn Audio Event!

How to escape the scarcity mindset and MAKE MORE MONEY

Date: Thursday, July 20th, 2023

Time: 10 am GMT (London), 6 pm AEST (Queensland), 4 am CDT (sorry about that 🤷)

Register using this link.

And if you can’t make it live, register anyway, and I’ll personally send you the replay!