Your Money Memories Build Your Money Relationship

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Every day, you are forming new money memories. These memories come from siblings, parents, relatives, television, radio, etc. Everything is helping you form new memories, which in turn, helps you build your money story.

Most of the time, we bury the bad money memories in our subconscious and make them our automatic actions around money.

The good money memories we just forget because they don’t leave as much of a lasting imprint on us.

In every single interview, I ask each woman what her first money memory is. Why do I ask for the first one?

Because the first one has a lasting impact on you and your money story. It has really set the stage for how you look at and deal with money today.

Sit down and write out your first money memory in as much detail as you can think of. Then reflect on how this memory affects how you act with money today.

And once you finish your first money memory, write out your best and worst money memories too.

Just knowing these three memories will help you see where your money story started forming from.

Tune in to today’s episode and then leave a comment below with your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. 

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Transcript for Episode 7 – Your Money Memories Build Your Money Relationship

Clarissa: This is Episode 7 of the Prosper and Profit Podcast. This is the Prosper and Profit Podcast where women talk about money and transformations because being independent with money is sexy and profitable and money transformations are how you prosper with your money daily. Now for your host, Clarissa Wilson.
Your money memories really do affect your money relationship. Asking money memory questions is something that I ask in every single interview, so I want to talk a little bit more about your money memories and how they really affect you and your money relationship. Your money memories actually start in your childhood and they are good and bad memories. You tend to remember the bad memories more than you remember the good memories just simply because of what happened. For example, when we listen to my own episode with my interview for my money memories, the first memory that I remember is going shopping with my mom and hearing that we never had enough money, we can’t afford this, we can’t afford that. Those are more negative memories and they’re not something that you really want to carry forward, but the way that your subconscious works is that you do remember those negative memories more than you remember the positive memories.
What happens is these memories just get buried into your subconscious, and then they actually become automatic actions where you don’t even know why you’re really doing these actions until you take a minute, step back, and actually dig into your money story for why you’re doing things the way that you’re doing. I also mentioned in my own interview where once I moved out on my own I would go grocery shopping and I would end up spending all of my money on stuff that I didn’t even need and then I’d still end up throwing away half of that food that I bought. That’s just because part of the money memory that I had ingrained in my subconscious, which became an automatic action, was that we can’t afford this and you just have to spend all of your money on food because this is all the money that we have for the rest of the month kind of thing. I just spent all of my money on my food every time I went grocery shopping because that’s the automatic action that had formed itself in my subconscious.
You do remember the good money memories, but sometimes you have to dig for them a little bit more than what you think you have to. They’re not always right there on the surface for you to be able to remember these good money memories. Yes, there are some where you can remember the good money memories very easily, but others you can’t remember the good money memories very easily because we tend to forget them. They’re not so much buried in our subconscious like the bad memories are. When bad stuff happens, we bury it in our subconscious. When good stuff happens, we have no need to bury it. By burying it, you’re trying to forget about it, but it’s still in your subconscious mind because that’s the way that our mind works. We have the subconscious and the conscious mind.

The conscious mind is what you’re thinking about right now in your present time, and the subconscious is other stuff that you’re thinking about but you’re not consciously thinking about it. For example, how I mentioned that when we would go grocery shopping my mom would always say, “We can’t afford that right now. This is all the money that we have left for the month.” That was never something that I said, but it was there for me to act upon this memory because it had been buried in my subconscious. It was something that I thought about every time I went grocery shopping, but I never actually said it. It wasn’t in my conscious thinking, but it was in my subconscious thinking. If you have more questions about this, go to the show notes page, which is at propserprofitpodcast.com/episode7, and let’s talk about this a little bit more for your subconscious and your conscious mind and how that works.
If you notice, the very first money question that I ask all of the interviewees for every single interview is what is your first money memory. Why do I ask what the first money one is? I ask this because your first money memory is the memory that really sets the stage for how you are going to act with money for the rest of your life. Yes, you can change it. I have changed many of mine. Most of the people that I’m interviewing for this podcast have been able to change theirs. You tend to remember a negative money memory for that very first memory. I’ve already explained mine as going grocery shopping and my mom always said, “We don’t have enough money for that. We can’t afford that.” I brought that to my adult life and I really took those words, that I can’t afford this, I can’t have that, I don’t have enough money kind of stuff, whether I was saying it or not. It was always present in my subconscious and it was something that I was acting on until a couple of years ago when I started digging into my money story and rewriting it.
That’s one of the things that you can do is you can rewrite your money story so that you don’t have these automatic actions around these negative money memories. That first money memory, it really just sets that stage for how you act with money, the automatic actions that are set up. This memory usually happens sometime between the ages of five and nine. It’s usually not a good memory. I’m not saying always because there are people that do have a really positive first money memory. It’s just part of the process for how our minds work because we live in a world where we focus on the negative. A lot of people are switching to focus on the positive and that is helping more and more people today, but where we currently are, because of how we grew up and our childhood, we have those negative memories really coming forward. We need to take a step back and really notice how these memories have affected our money story.
The first thing I want you to do is take some time and write out what your first money memory is. Write out in as much detail everything that happened around that money memory and how you feel about that money memory today. Once you write that money memory out, take some time and reflect on how it affects you right now, what kind of actions are you taking right now that are really affecting your money story based on this money memory. We’ll go back to my example of my mom saying that we don’t have enough money, we can’t afford that, this is all the money that we have for the rest of the month. I took that as an automatic action to spend all of my money on food and other stuff that I really didn’t need when I became an adult and had my own money to spend.
When I took a step back and realized what I was doing because of that first money memory, I was able to change it. I now don’t buy food that I don’t need, I don’t spend my money on every little thing that I think that I need, and I don’t end up throwing as much food away. I still throw food away because I’m one person and some of the stuff that I buy I think that I want more than what I really need, but I don’t throw away half of the food that I was buying. I was always throwing away half the food that I was buying, I was spending all of my money. I actually have money in my savings accounts now. I save from every single paycheck that I receive. Saving was not something that I was taught, my parents never did savings. I taught myself how to do that by being able to rewrite my money story so that it’s one that I really want to carry with me and I want to be able to pass it on to my own children.
When you take the time to write out your first money memory and then reflect on how it affects your money story today, you will find stuff that is going to help you change your money story. It’s not an overnight process. It’s not something that you are going to be able to change just by figuring out what this money memory is and then focusing on what you’re doing right now to be able to change that. It’s going to take some time and it’s most likely going to take some discipline. I know from my own experience it takes discipline. I had to really discipline myself to not spend all of my money when I was out shopping. I was able to do that, so I know that you are going to be able to change your own money story as well because I only pass on stuff that I have learned that I know works for me.
You already know that every single money memory that you have affects your money story. These money memories come from siblings, they come from parents, they come from aunts, they come from uncles, they come from TV shows that you watch, they come movies that you watch. You pick up all of this stuff just by seeing other people in your life. You can change these money memories so that they don’t become automatic actions that you really don’t want to have every single day. After you write out your first money memory, go ahead and write out your best money memory and your worst money memory and see how they tie into your first money memory. We’ll dig some more into your money memories and money stories throughout this podcast. I hope this helped you and we’ll see you for the next episode.
The show notes for this episode and all other episodes can be found on propserprofitpodcast.com. I hope you would leave a comment on the show notes page for this episode and let us know what your biggest takeaway was for today. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never miss an episode.