Transcript

Ani
Hi and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey, Ani. Well, hi, Brian.

Hello. How are you?

Brian
Well, how are you?

Ani
I’m good and I’ve been anxiously awaiting this episode, continuing on from last week’s conversation on abundance. You know, we have been getting notes on social media and emails. Clients are talking, students are talking, they loved last week.

So we’re so glad that you liked last week and got a lot out of it. People got a lot of actionable stuff out of it. If you haven’t listened to it yet, you know, you can go back and listen to it as well.

So it was really impactful to talk about abundance and money mindset.

Brian
Yeah. So this week’s episode isn’t like strictly a part two to last week, other than they’re both kind of about money mindset. So this week, we’re going to talk about how to expand your abundance mindset while still being responsible with money.

And so you came up with this idea based on a conversation you had with a client, right?

Ani
Yeah. Yeah. I had a client who actually has been listening to a lot of the podcasts and she’s like, I’m getting the abundance stuff and I’m taking notes from the podcast and I’m really thinking about it and trying in my life, but here’s the deal.

But let’s just get real. How can I be abundant and be responsible with money? How can I balance that?

That’s what she asked me. And I thought it was such a fantastic question. I thought we had to talk about it so everybody could hear.

Brian
So let’s talk about it. I think this is also a really great question. And it’s one that people can feel a little bound up around.

Ani
Well, I think too, a little like maybe vulnerable about asking. Like I really appreciated that this client asked because I’m sure it’s on the minds of other listeners, but maybe, you know, people would have been too embarrassed to ask or something. It’s like such a fantastic question.

Brian
Yeah. So, of course, when I heard about this question and started thinking about it, of course, I had to go to the dictionary because I was really curious. Like, what the heck do you mean by responsible?

Ani
That’s what I said to her. I was like, I took in her question. I was like, well, what do you mean by responsible?

Yeah. So you looked up the definition.

Brian
I had to look up the definition because I want to make sure, just the definition can tell us in some ways, like how are we even thinking about asking that question?

Ani
How is society programmed us?

Brian
Yeah. Because so often a question will reveal within it the limitation itself. Sure.

Right. And like an evolving understanding of the idea of abundance and how the laws, how the natural laws work. Right.

You can actually in a question, you can actually see where people are in that map of evolution and kind of understanding. So I just want to look up the definition of responsible. So just looked it up, Oxford Languages.

Here they go. You ready? I thought these were two very interesting kind of takes.

Okay. They’re two lines under the same definition. Sometimes the definition will have multiple kind of the ways they describe the definition.

So here’s the two. One is having an obligation to do something or having control over or care for someone as a part of one’s job or role.

Ani
There’s so many words in that. Yeah.

Brian
So let’s just break that down for a second.

Ani
So many.

Brian
So we have obligation in there.

Ani
Could, have to.

Brian
Right. I’ve got… So think about…

So just that word responsible. So if we’re injecting that word responsible into a question that has to do with abundance mindset and money, you can already see the idea. We’ve got, I’ve got obligations with money.

And then you have to ask yourself, what are those obligations? Who came up with those obligations?

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
And where did you learn those obligations? All those kinds of things.

Ani
Right.

Brian
And then we have having control over…

Ani
Which also…

Brian
Over… I have control over the bank account, the checking account or whatever it is. Or what?

Or I’m responsible for feeding my kids or responsible for paying my bills or responsible for… Because it’s like… Or care for someone.

I’ve got to care for my kids, my parents, my pets, my spouse, whatever it is. And there’s something around that with this idea of responsibility. Right.

And it’s a part of your job or role, which is really interesting because to me, that means identity. Like oftentimes people identify with their job or their role. Like I’m a mother.

And what does it mean to be a good mother? Or what makes you a bad mother around obligations for money? Can you see how like…

Ani
Yeah. I would say, yeah. Academically, that’s definitely like role identity.

It feels so constricting, which is the opposite of abundant.

Brian
Exactly. Exactly. So that was just the part one of the definition.

I thought part two is equally as revealing. So part two is… So what is the definition of responsible?

Being the primary cause of something.

Ani
Really?

Brian
Yep. And so able to be blamed or credited for it.

Ani
Right.

Brian
This is all faked in to our definition of responsible. So in other words, if I’m responsible, I am the primary cause of something.

Ani
And you can be blamed for it.

Brian
And I could be blamed or credited for it. There’s so much…

Ani
Listener, do you feel slimed like me right now?

Brian
In that definition, right? There’s so much of it. Because what it does, like the definition of being responsible here actually takes us out of a co-creative relationship with the universe, first of all.

Ani
Totally.

Brian
Right. It puts us on an island of being the sole… Responsible for the sole outcome of so many things.

Ani
Just that idea of responsible takes us out of co-creation with the universe.

Brian
Takes us out of co-creation. Puts us almost like a false god role, by the way, kind of thing. False universe role.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Out of the co-creative thing.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Right. So we’re setting ourselves up for problems there anyway.

Ani
We can’t be fully responsible. Like that’s ridiculous.

Brian
Right. It’s like we don’t live in a bubble. We don’t live in a vacuum sort of thing.

And then the other part of that is so to be blamed or credited for it. And, oh my God, there’s so much work to be done around letting go of both of those things.

Ani
A hundred percent.

Brian
Because so many of us love to be credited for things, right? Love to be acknowledged, love to be credited. And if we are attached, if we’re attached to the experience of being acknowledged or credited, believe it or not, we’re also attached to the experience of being blamed for it.

Ani
Yep. I learned about this years and years ago when I was reading Don Miguel Ruiz’s books, The Four Agreements, for example, because he talks about this. I remember not really understanding that at that point.

But yeah. Yeah. If you’re attached to the credit, you’re attached to the blame.

Brian
You’re going to get the blame. And so the only way to let go of fear of blame is to let go of the need for acknowledgement.

Ani
You know what it feels like to me, Brian, from listening to this definition of responsible, which now I want to wash my mouth out and never say that word again.

Brian
Wait to get to the next part.

Ani
Oh, there’s more. There’s more. There’s more pain.

There’s more pain. What was I going to say? Oh, it sounds to me like a very good definition of limitation.

Yeah. Right? Like either you’re being abundant or you’re not being abundant.

It sounds to me like a lot of limitation and shackles.

Brian
Yeah. There is a lot of tethers, I think, with that idea. So I looked up the definition of being responsible.

And so we just talked about that.

Ani
But I also thought— Did you look up the definition of irresponsible?

Brian
I did. I said, well, I wonder what irresponsible is then. I’ll bet it says you’re so naughty.

I had to look that one up. And so there was a bunch of good stuff that came up. But the one that really popped out at me was— No one wants to be irresponsible, Brian.

Yeah, no one wants to be irresponsible. That’s why I looked it up, right? Because how do I become abundant mindset?

You can also say this, like, because is that being irresponsible with money?

Ani
100%.

Brian
Like is an abundant mindset being irresponsible with money? And so irresponsible—irresponsible is the definition I got— describes someone or something that lacks a sense of responsibility. Okay, good for them.

Ani
I don’t know about anybody else. I’m ready to let that go.

Brian
Is unreliable or doesn’t consider the potential negative consequences of their actions.

Ani
Goodness, no one wants to be that.

Brian
No one wants to be that. But what I thought was the most interesting part of this definition was the last part. Was that if you’re irresponsible, it means that you could be accused of not considering the potential negative consequences of the situation.

Okay?

Ani
Right.

Brian
Now, let’s link this back to the idea of how can I expand my abundance mindset while still being responsible with money? So there’s a little bit of a wiggle out here. Oh, you found a loophole.

There’s a loophole. Thank goodness. The loophole is if you do consider all the potential consequences—consequences not necessarily being a negative thing.

So I’m going to take negative out of that because negative is a judgment. Who knows? Good, bad, we don’t know.

So let’s just say consequences are effects from some causes.

Ani
So you’re going to consider all the potential effects.

Brian
Right. So all the potential effects. What we’re saying here is if you do consider, not beholden to, you’re just considering them.

If you consider as many potential effects as possible for making the decision that you’re making, then that actually would get you to wiggle out of the idea of being irresponsible because you did actually consider them. It’s not like you’re willfully not looking at them kind of thing, which is some of those other definitions were about that. They’re about being willfully denying or being ignorant or those kinds of things.

I don’t think those are going to be necessarily helpful to our conversation. So I brought in one. I thought, hey, this one actually, you could use this.

You could use this in a more empowering way.

Ani
Well, thank goodness you found that loophole. I buy that.

Brian
Yeah. So I think it comes back to—we’ve been talking about this for 12, 13 minutes now, but I think it all comes back to exactly the question that you asked your client to begin with. We can ask the listeners, what does responsible mean to you?

What does it mean to you?

Ani
Exactly. Obviously, you were conditioned around what responsibility means specifically in relationship to money. Tell me more about what that looks like.

What is that?

Brian
Yeah. You really have to flush that stuff out to understand even why you might be asking a question like that or considering a question like that. Because ultimately, being, in quotes here, responsible is a value judgment that you’ve been programmed with.

Ani
Right. Just a quick sidebar. I was having a very similar same conversation with another client who looked me dead in the eyes as we were talking about this and said, I’m a trained accountant.

And I busted and got laughing. And I was like, talk about conditioning. Wow.

And we’re having this amazing relationship, helping her to widen her abundance and money mindset within the construct of not just the family that she grew up with, but her educational, professional background. I thought that was really funny.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
So what I am going to just kind of lay out there and ask you’re asking me a question around this is like, if you are struggling with this idea of being abundant with money, abundant mindset, and also being responsible with money, and we ask the question, well, what are, when you ask that question, you come at it that way, what are you actually being responsible to? And what I find is what people are actually being responsible to is their limiting beliefs.

Ani
When they’re needing to be quote, unquote, responsible with money. Yeah. Yeah.

Like a loyalty to your limiting beliefs.

Brian
Right. So if it’s having an obligation to something, we oftentimes feel like we have an obligation to our limiting beliefs.

Ani
Yeah. That’s, yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, as you were talking, one of the things I was thinking about was how obligation, but people want to, people care about other people in their lives.

And not only do they care, but they want other people to know they care. And so this idea of potentially being irresponsible and being able to be considerate, I think, Brian is so powerful because people really do care. And what you’re suggesting here as well about considering that what you’re really, did you say being responsible to is your limiting beliefs?

I think that’s a really, really important shift because it does help us to step into what we want, which is the abundance mindset and recognize that if I am having trouble doing that, it’s because I’m being responsible to my limiting beliefs. It’s not that it’s because I’m being responsible to my kid or my spouse or whatever.

Brian
Yes, exactly.

Ani
Right. So it takes that idea and puts it on its head. And when, especially when you know your core limiters and you can look at that, you’ll see like, wow.

And by the way, just from a somatic standpoint, one of the ways that you can know whether or not you’re being risk, quote unquote, responsible to your limiting beliefs or whatever, just check out what kind of charge you have when you’re doing this consideration. You know, check it out when you feel something about your abundance mindset. And if you’re not being responsible, what does that feel like?

And check in with your body, because if you’re getting a lot of somatic charge around that idea of being responsible, I know that’s come up for me quite a bit. There’s stuff in there, you know, there’s really, there’s really deconditioning that you get to be a part of if you do the work.

Brian
Yeah, I think a way as well, in building on what you’re saying, Ani, to become aware of when you’re being responsible to your limiting beliefs is we learn our limiting beliefs most often, not saying exclusively, but most often in our family of origin. And we may or may not carry those limiting beliefs into our adult relationships, like our partner relationships, our nuclear family relationships, those kinds of things. So I work with clients who, when it comes to this idea of abundance and money, is that, and these are, you know, pretty successful, like independent adults, you know, who own businesses and those kinds of things.

And they still struggle with displaying their financial success to their family of origin.

Ani
Oh, yeah, totally.

Brian
Right? Yeah. For them to drive up to a family holiday in a car that is far more expensive than any other car in the driveway creates distress for those folks.

You know, for them to, if their family of origin knew what they spent on their professional development and business investments, it would just create so much distress for the family of origin people. And so lots of times they don’t talk about that because it just, just just kind of keep it on the surface, those kinds of things because of those reasons. And so if you’re questioning, like, am I being responsive to my limiting beliefs?

Tell, I tell you this challenge, like go back to your family of origin and tell them what you’re doing with your, like stretching your money, you know, beliefs and trying things and kind of like making investments and those kinds of things and see what their reaction is. And if their reaction is like, what the heck are you doing? That is so, here it is, irresponsible.

Then you know that for you to actually make the same decisions they would make, what you’re being responsible to is not your family of origin. You’re being responsible to limiting beliefs that have bound your family together. Right.

And so, and again, it goes back to what we talked about last week with kind of the sense of belonging and being kicked out of the tribe. Like that’s a deep, that’s a deeply painful thing for people, for humans to experience. And this is why I get so kind of bound up in here.

But I really think this idea of responsibility, who would have thought we’d be having like a, you know, a long podcast on this word alone around money, but it’s, it’s so deep. It’s so important to start to kind of pull some of these tethers apart in terms of, well, what are you reflexively being responsible to? And the idea of being irresponsible, like what is that thing?

Is it actually your limiting beliefs?

Ani
Yeah. The idea of being bound relationally with your family, I think is so powerful. I’ve worked with a number of clients around this, where at first, when I brought it up as an idea, they were like, nope, that’s not happening.

Next topic. I mean, just totally unconscious to it. But as we do a little bit deeper work, the fear, so big that they did not want to have any awareness of it because it was like the monster under the bed kind of thing.

And, um, wow. Being able to confront that, especially in the, for the body, right. I don’t know how the hell to do that intellectually without being able to, um, regulate, regulate it.

I mean, it’s just gotta be, um, kind of traumatic. Um, but, but when you work with somebody who can help you regulate your nervous system and, uh, and feel what’s going on under there, that’s really what it was. And the beauty of being able to break those ancestral ties and as well as have compassion for, and gratitude for the people who raised you.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
Because you don’t, well, but you don’t have to go that way. Cause you could be like, screw you people. I’m going to go over here and I’ll see you never.

I’ve read books that basically tell you to do that. If you want what you want, go do it. And, and to hell with everybody else to be able to do your own growth work and then also have compassion and gratitude for, um, other people, whether or not they will come on board with your thought processes.

It’s my experience that people are way more likely to come on board with the thought process, but even if they don’t, you still can maintain a relationship a lot of times.

Brian
And if the relationship is important to you, if it’s nourishing, if it’s, yeah, all those Exactly.

Ani
And all of that really, to me, it speaks to this idea of consideration, which is baked into that, you know, responsible, irresponsible kind of thing. And I, I think, um, that word around consideration is really what I’d like to, um, leave listeners with, but I think you have one more point to.

Brian
Yeah. Well, I think I have one more opportunity to shift this a little bit is if we shift our verbiage a little bit from the word responsible to being response able, right? It actually starts to change our relationship with abundance mindset around money.

Because if you go back to what we talked about last week, that money is everywhere. Money’s like air. And the trouble is that you know how to bring air in and let air go, but you probably have not learned how to take money in and let money go.

That money is always available to you. Actually, you don’t even have to hoard it because it’s always there. Just like you don’t need to hoard your breath.

Like then your next breath will be there. There’s money always there. So when we are response able, we move into a position where we realize, listen, I can always respond to whatever decision I make.

Like, so whatever decision I make around money, if I decide to invest more money than I’ve invested before in a program, if I decide to take a vacation that is more expensive than any vacation I’ve taken before, if I decide to just kind of like take a leap of faith and just have faith and trust that the universe is going to support what I’m doing and moving towards after I make the decision to do it, then whatever comes up, I can respond to it.

Like when it comes up, I can respond to it. You can’t always plan that stuff in advance because if you’re trying to get to some place you’ve never been before, you don’t know the way. But a lot of people want to know the way to a place they’ve never been before.

But the fact is I could give you the map, but if you’ve never been to Bali, you’re not going to know really what it’s like to go to Bali until you actually go to Bali. I could give you the map to Bali and give you all the directions, give you all the descriptions and all those kinds of things, but you’re not going to know what it’s like until you’re actually, actually there. And that’s the same way this works.

So when we make those commitments and we step out there, we have to be able to step in with faith and trust and work with the natural laws. Like that’s really understand how manifestation works, understand how those processes work and being response able to whatever comes up.

Ani
Well, really understanding the new science of emotion too and understanding that we create emotions based on context and emotions are created within us and that real creator kind of idea around the new science of emotion and being able to modify our sensory experiences through sensation based work helps us to become a person who can be responsible because if you don’t consider that, it can really be challenging to step into the idea of being a response able person because you’re always to some degree feeling like you’re at the effect of what’s outside of you.

Brian
So really, I think what you’re mentioning is we’re talking about things like doing our regular somatic practices, doing our regular nervous system regulation, emotional regulation practices so that we always know how to come back into our window of tolerance no matter what’s going on outside of us. We always come back in, which then allows us to be able to see opportunities, make decisions, to keep moving forward so we can keep growing, which is really what the whole idea of abundance mindset is really about. Being able to keep moving forward, keep growing, keep creating the life that we want to create and being response able rather than response ible.

Ani
Able instead of ible. The word I really want people to take away from this conversation is consider because if you want to live an abundant mindset, you certainly can and the way to do that and balance this idea of responsibility is to rather than trying to be responsible, be considerate. Be considerate of yourself and your nervous system.

Consider where you came from and what you learned about money. Consider your patterns. Consider what you want and how those desires and your growth will impact positively the people around you.

Those are all ways to infuse consideration into the conversation and in that way, I think you’re going to get met what you want to get met with that idea about abundance and responsibility. Let us know what you discover because we know that one of the things that we like to collect around here are light bulb aha moments. If you have one from this episode that you’d like to share with us, we would love to hear it always.

You can email us at info@somaticcoachingacademy.com. That’s a fantastic way to do it. Of course, always post your comments on social media and stuff like that so we can see your light bulbs.

We would love to hear what you come up with when you consider this topic. Cool.

Brian
Thanks so much for joining us again this week and we’ll see you next week for another episode of the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast.

Ani
Bye, everybody. Bye.