Clients often hire me when they're sick and tired of avoiding their money. Here are some of the ways that money avoidance often shows up:

• Not knowing where your money is

• Not wanting to discuss money

• Not opening bills

• Not depositing checks

• Relying on another person to “handle the money”

• Ignoring financial statements

• Difficulty sticking to a budget or not having a budget at all

I want you to know that money avoidance is NOT a character flaw.

Deficiency Culture teaches us that dealing with money is essentially a mental process - one that entails planning, organizing and "doing the math". But the thing is we aren't just a bunch of floating heads engaging in a purely rational and intellectual relationship with money.

Our relationship is physical, it's emotional, it's personal. That's why it's called personal finance for goodness sake!

The Deficiency Culture paradigm for engaging with money denies the fact that we have emotions and bodies.

And our emotions impact our bodies. How we feel can affect our breathing, digestion, heart rate, posture, sleep, etcetera, ad infinitum. This paradigm also ignores the fact that our brain - the brilliant organ responsible for all the thinking, organizing and number crunching - is actually a part of our body!

So instead of perpetuating this (left?)brain-only approach to money which doesn’t work well for many of us, I propose we adopt a new paradigm, one that focuses on the whole person.

How do we do that? We begin by Dropping In.

Dropping In primes the pump for us to engage with money from a resourced stance. It invites all the parts of us to feel safe, nourished, honored and supported so that we are able to move through resistance with greater ease when it’s time to focus on money tasks.

When we Drop In we become fully present to What Is.

We become present to sensation and our physical needs
Maybe the body needs a snack, a cup of tea, a run around the block, a bathroom break, a nap or a few stretches before we can be fully present with money. (h/t to Bari Tessler and her Body Check-In)

We become present to emotion
Maybe we need a few minutes of journaling or a phone call with a friend who can help us process some resistance, fear or anxiety before we sit down with money.

We become present to our Wholeness
Maybe we need to meditate, play some empowering music, place our bare feet on the earth or our hand on our heart to help us reconnect with the wisdom of our Essential Self before we sit down and engage with money.

Dropping In isn't complicated. It doesn't take a long time and it doesn't require any fancy tools or rituals. (Although you can absolutely make a fancy ritual out of it if that feels good and inviting!) All it requires is the willingness to press pause and come back home to ourselves.

When we Drop In and become fully present something magical happens. Resistance recedes - and then we can actually turn our attention to money instead of avoiding it.