by Suzanne E. Sky, MTOM, Life Resilience Coach
How Is Your Money Relationship?
While our relationship with money is reflective of the value we place on our well-being and self-care, our financial worth is not indicative of our personal worth. Our worth is intrinsic: we are worthy and we are value and we don't require external validation for these qualities inherent to our core being. As we fully own our intrinsic worth, we manage our wellness and our money to create our life from our heart's vision. Our money and other relationships align with our core being.
Creating a foundational positive relationship with ourselves, expressed in our own self-care, including our finances, sets us up to engage more fully with life, friends, family. Our finances, as a dimension of our wellness, require our ongoing attention and care.
Money is the currency of our life. Like water, money flows through all areas of our life, providing nourishment. Money gives us the ability to support ourselves and our loved ones, and to create the life we've envisioned. And, if we're lucky and so desire, money allows us to reach out and give – from our abundance – to support and enrich the lives of others and to affect positive change in the world.
Our Money Stories and Heart-Centered Awareness
In my decades of experience working with clients as a Chinese medicine practitioner; and now as a financial wellness coach, I've found that non-judgemental, gentle awareness along with loving kindness is the best approach. I call this heart-centered awareness. It's the key to everything.
When we can learn to offer this heart-centered awareness to ourselves, our heart and mind relax, and open up. This fosters an ongoing process of resilience and growth. The subject of money usually evokes a range of gut reactions (felt-sense) and thoughts. It can be a charged topic. Or you might even feel totally numb or disconnected from money. As you become curious about and aware of spending habits or personal issues holding you back, with non-judgemental awareness and kindness towards yourself, you open to new insights and possibilities.
Questions arise. How do we see money? How does it relate to our values and life vision? What feelings come up around money or the idea of taking care of ourselves and our family? Joy, fear, resentment, anger, excitement, engagement, disconnection? You may be aware of emotions, stress, anxiety, emotional spending, money fog, and other issues as part of your personal money story. And, we all have money stories because we grew up in a certain culture, country, neighborhood, and a family with generations of money stories.
When you can explore these issues with open curiosity and kindness your heart and mind open to new insights that foster long-term resilience and creativity.
Making meaningful and long-lasting changes in life depends on your ability to form and execute new goal achieving activities consistently enough that they become habitual. Commitment, consistency and patience." - Thomas Oppong
How Can Financial Wellness Coaching Help?
The main focus of our work together is that I mentor you in practical, heart-centered money management skills and a system that helps you create a financial wellness plan based on your vision, values, needs, and lifestyle. During this process, you'll notice habits, patterns of spending, and get more clarity about your overall money situation in the context of your goals. With commitment, consistency, and patience you'll develop new habits as you align your heart, your life vision, your daily life, and your money.
I've noticed that it takes several months of working together to really wrap your arms, heart, and mind around where you are at financially. Because of this, I like to work with someone initially for a series of 10 sessions over three to four months. This allows you to work through this process to establish sound financial wellness habits and a solid financial foundation to build on. From there, we determine how often you'd like to meet for ongoing support or check-ins. For some people, this is once a month; for others quarterly.
"A money coach can provide something these resources (books etc) can't: accountability." - Amy Livingston
Accountability: Secret to Success
One of the "secret ingredients" that coaches offer is accountability. Having someone we are accountable to raises our chances of success from the average of 8% to an amazing 65%. Additionally, for over half of us who resolve to make a positive change, our resolve doesn't last past six months. This is one, of several, reasons that I suggest people work with me consistently for at least six months to lay a good financial wellness foundation.
From my heart to yours, Suzanne Sky - Life Resilience Coach
As a Life Resilience Coach, I offer a heart-centered approach to support purpose-driven women in transition in creating the meaningful life they love. We work together in a collaborative coaching process to identify practical steps you can take in alignment with your abilities, core values, and life vision so you can live your heart and create the impact you want. My whole person coaching integrates compassionate awareness, collaborative dialogue, gentle inquiry, and an invitation to engage in journaling and embodied awareness practices.
I offer a free 30-minute Connection Session to discuss the possibility of us working together. I'd love to meet you!