Helen

In 2014, I made $60,000 selling crochet clothing on Etsy.

I had spent years working as a psychotherapist earning between $16,000 and $20,000 a year — just above the poverty line. So $60,000 felt like a different life entirely.

And then something interesting happened.

In 2015 I made $30,000. In 2016, $25,000. From 2017 to 2020, no matter what I tried and no matter what I stopped trying, I consistently earned somewhere between $20,000 and $29,000. Every single year.

I wasn't doing less. Something invisible kept pulling me back to a number that felt, on some unconscious level, safe.

That invisible pull has a name. It is called a setpoint — and it is the thing I want to look at with you today.

Just a reminder — a few weeks ago I told you I was going to take you behind the scenes of how I actually work with women. That is what these Wednesday newsletters are — and last week we did the Money Map diagnostic together.

You mapped your five kinds of money — your savings, debt, income, income goal, and anything that felt entangled or stuck. You noticed the feelings attached to each one. Here is what I want you to understand about those feelings: they did not come from your current financial situation. Your current financial situation came from them.

And today we are exploring where all of that comes from.

Your feelings about money were wired into you first. Long before you opened your first bank account, long before you earned your first dollar, your nervous system was already learning what money meant, what it felt like, and how much of it was safe to have.

It learned all of this by watching.

Helen I want to invite you to do something right now. Close your eyes for a moment, take a breath, and picture yourself as a child — maybe five, six, or seven years old — standing in the home you grew up in. See yourself there as clearly as you can.

Now bring your parents or caregivers into that picture. They are there with you, dealing with money — the bills, the finances, whatever that looked like in your home. Just notice what is happening.

What is the dominant feeling in the room?

What are their faces doing?

What do you hear?

And what is that child — the younger version of you — absorbing from all of it?

You don't need to analyze it. Just notice.

Because here is what I see happen most often when women do this. When they go back and look at their Money Map, the dominant feeling in that childhood room is almost exactly the same feeling that showed up when they looked at their own Money Map from last week.

The feelings were programmed into you first. You have been living them out ever since.

This is what I call your inherited money paradigm — the template your nervous system downloaded in childhood about what money is, what it means, and how much of it someone like you gets to have- Your money scripts. It is your nervous system wiring around your money setpoint.

And beyond your earliest money paradigm, there is another layer that also influences your setpoint — what I call the Cultural Wealth Narratives. These are the broader cultural, historical, and societal stories about money that women absorb simply by virtue of the world they grew up in. They work alongside your family paradigm to shape your setpoint around what feels possible and safe for you to have.

A couple of weeks ago I shared a document with seven of the eleven Cultural Wealth Narratives. If you haven't downloaded it yet, here it is again — it is worth taking a few minutes to read through and see which one resonates most with where you are right now.

Download the 7 Cultural Wealth Narratives

It wasn't until I did this work on myself that I finally understood why my income kept finding its way back to the same number. Not through more strategy or through more effort. Through finally seeing the template that had been quietly running underneath everything.

When you make it conscious, you can shift it. I use EFT tapping to quickly discharge the old template and install new ones that are aligned with the wealth creating woman you want to become.

That is exactly what this work is designed to do for you.

Hit reply and tell me — what did you notice when you pictured yourself as a child in that home? Even one word, one feeling, one image is enough.

And tell me this too — have you been stuck at a particular income setpoint? No matter what you do, you just can't seem to go beyond it? Chances are what you downloaded in childhood and that setpoint are connected.

I read everything. I write back.

— Helen

P.S. If you want to explore your own earliest money paradigm in depth, that is exactly what a clarity session with me is for. We look at the template together — and we begin to change it.

Book your 60 minute no obligation complimentary session

 P.P.S Keep a look out for Friday Flash Sale day coming up!

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Take the money script quiz and find out your inherited money paradigm