How I broke through my biggest money blocks

Money blocks are things that are holding you back or blocking you from making more money. In today’s episode, I’ll be sharing what some of my biggest money blocks have been over the years, and importantly, the biggest ways that I have been able to break through some of those blocks.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money so you can make more money with each week. I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you because you can and should be making more money.

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The 3 types of money blocks

So let’s start this episode by talking about what money blocks are.

As I said in the intro for the episode, a money block is something that is blocking you from making more money. There are three types of money blocks.

1. The first is a block in holding money, and this means that you have difficulty actually hanging on to money when it does come to you.
2. The second block is a block in receiving, and this means that you find it challenging to actually receive money, for you to allow money to flow to you.
3. And the third block is a block in investing. Now, this is when you struggle to actually spend money on yourself or on your business. You are so good at holding onto money that you almost hoard it and it can be at the detriment of your long term business growth.

Something important to consider when you are looking at your money blocks is that they’ve usually come from somewhere. So an example of this could be that you have a block in holding because you’d never had any money growing up, and so when you do get money now what you do is you instantly spend it because you feel so uncomfortable having money, because it’s unfamiliar to you.

When it comes to your money blocks, you don’t ever actually eliminate your money blocks from my experience. You’ll break through one of your blocks and then at your next level, you’ll have a new one. There’s a saying “New level, new devil.” Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I definitely still have money blocks, but the ones that I’m sharing with you today have been some of the biggest ones that I’ve overcome throughout the years and some of my big ah-has from that process.

How I overcame my block of investing

The first big money block that I used to have in my early days of business was a block in investing. I kept my costs in my business very lean as I shared before our blocks or our stories about money usually come from somewhere. And this particular story, I believe, came from my accounting days as a qualified accountant. As a trained accountant, I was taught profit at all costs, so I was very good at cutting costs and making sure that there was plenty of profit left over. This may have also come from my childhood years and growing up we didn’t have a lot of money, so I wasn’t used to spending money.

Those were the stories. How did I turn it around? The way that I started to work through this block in investing really kind of happened when I hit a bit of an income plateau and I was looking at my results and I wasn’t sure how to step into my next level. So what I did, I went out there into the marketplace and had a bit of a look at what my peers were doing, and what I noticed was that they were investing in their business. They were building beautiful websites with nice branding. They were joining masterminds. They were traveling overseas and going to amazing conferences and retreats, and I certainly was not doing any of these things. Like I said, I was keeping my costs lean. The first big investment I made in my business was a course, and I didn’t even have the cash to do the course at the time, but they did offer a payment plan. So I invested this course which was all about money mindset and put down the first payment, and throughout the time that the course progressed, I was doing the work. I started earning more money, and I remember by the end of the course, I was really easily making the repayments, whereas at the start, it had been a bit uncomfortable to be leaning into that investment.

The next big investment I made in my business was a retreat, and this was huge. It was a lot of money. It was about a five figure investment to go on this retreat, but I really wanted to be there with this coach. I knew there would be such amazing people in this retreat environment. That retreat was transformative for me. I experienced such a mindset shift because I was surrounding myself with people that were passionate and driven to be creating success in their business, and a lot of the women that I met at that retreat are still my friends, business friends to this day.

The third big investment that I made in my business that was transformational for my business outcomes was a mastermind. And this was such a challenge for me at the time because as I said earlier, I was used to not investing anything in my business and I was taught to keep my costs lean, but I felt so called to lean into this mastermind. So I took the leap and oh my gosh, am I glad that I did because this was my first big income breakthrough into achieving multi six figures in my business. Something that I found really helpful in terms of shifting this block around investing was a mantra that I now have, which is when money flows out, more money flows in.

How not holding onto money (spending it!) stopped me from growing my business

Another money block that I’ve experienced in my business was a block in holding. Now, this kind of block usually comes from being so used to having no money that when you do have money, you aren’t comfortable holding onto it. So what happened with me as my business was starting to grow and I was seeing the benefits of investing in my business, I was like, Wow, this is fantastic. I invest, I make more money. What happened? As more money was flowing in, I was getting so excited about investing that every time I got more money, I spent it almost as quickly as it came in. I was unable to hold onto the money, was unable to keep it sitting there. I didn’t have any savings. I was investing and going for gold.

As I was doing the money mindset work, I learned that this also is not helpful because sometimes we need savings for a rainy day. So the way that I broke through this was by starting small and basically what I started doing was putting a small amount into my savings account each week. Initially it was only $20 a week that I was putting aside, and then as time’s gone on, we’ve continued to increase it and increase it. So we’ve got a buffer of savings. When I was single, I’d always have $20,000 in an account, which was my buffer in case I lost my job or something. And then in our early days of business, my husband and I both started our businesses around the same time. I went through this period of time, we had this overdraft account, and I can’t remember exactly, but I think that it was for $15,000. And what would happen is we kept sort of borrowing this money and going into debt, like maxing out this overdraft, and that sort of felt like our comfortable position where the overdraft had to be maxed out, and we certainly weren’t borrowing any more money or anything. It just sort of seemed to be that number that we felt comfortable at was -$15,000. Often we don’t even realise that we are subconsciously reverting back to an amount that feels comfortable for us. If you are wanting to change your story around a money block, first of all, you need to recognise that you are actually doing it and then understand why you were doing it and then make a decision to change it. What happened with this $15,000 overdraft was that my husband and I made a decision one day and we just said, “We don’t wanna do this anymore.” It’s stressful having a loan that you need to pay back all the time. So we drew a line in the sand, we paid it off and we said, “Nope, we are not using the overdraft anymore.” We paid it off and we have never used it again since.

So maybe listening to this episode, you are starting to recognise some of your money blocks.

My 3-step action plan for breaking through money blocks

Here is a process I recommend for you to break through your money block or money blocks.

1. The first step, identify that you do have a money block. Work out and say, “Oh my gosh, this is a pattern that I keep repeating.” “I don’t invest in my business.” “I’m holding onto all of my money and I know this is sabotaging my long-term success.” Maybe you recognise that you are having a block in receiving. You don’t send out your invoices, or perhaps you feel guilty charging and you tend to do a tonne more work for your clients and not charge them for it. Or maybe like me, you have a block in holding. You’re such a big believer in investing in your business. You feel very comfortable receiving payment for your services, but when the money comes in, it seems to disappear out as fast as it comes in. So recognise what your money block is.
2. Step two is understanding why you do this. Where’s this come from? Is it a protective mechanism from something that happened to you in the past? Is it a story that your partner told you? Is it something that happened in your childhood? If you are wanting to significantly shift your story around something, first thing to do is understand why you’re doing it can really help you to reprogram it.
3. And then the last step in the process is to take action. You make a decision to change and then take a step. This might either be a small or a large action to start to change it.

Here’s some examples; when I jumped into my retreat or the mastermind, both of those were really big decisions when we draw a line in the sand and we said, we are not using the overdraft again, that was another big decision. When it came to starting the savings account, it wasn’t like we did something big and drastic to do that, we just started with one small step in the right direction, and then the momentum built from there.

So if you’ve recognised your money story and you’re understanding why are you doing it, why are you repeating this pattern? Then take action. Whether it’s big or small, start to move things in the right direction.

Our money stories are so powerful.

Our beliefs shape our actions and our actions create our outcomes.

If you want to change your life, the first step is to work on your mindset.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of the podcast and it’s inspired you to break through some of your money blogs. If we aren’t already connected, please come on over to Instagram and say Hi, drop me a dm, I would love to hear from you, my Instagram handle is @clare_wood_coach.

Have an amazing week and good luck breaking through those money blocks. I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money.

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