Can I take good care of myself financially?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

How are you this morning?

I’m trying so many new things, and I’m making a lot of mistakes. I’m also proud of how I’m showing up despite the messiness and awkwardness.

How are you showing up? Where are you showing up? What does it feel like for you?

I recently got to present a training on the Wellness Wheel. We offer an inventory for teachers to use as a practical tool to get concrete about their wellness. Teachers often get preached at about “self-care” but that’s pretty vague, and I think trite considering how much teachers carry for their communities. Instead, we offer this inventory as a way for teachers to check in with themselves. Stop the machine for a bit and make sure they’re okay and that they’re not neglecting themselves as they pour out for others. The inventory contains five areas of wellness:

Occupational

Physical

Spiritual

Emotional

Financial

One of the cool things about getting to work with an Emotional Intelligence company that focuses on wellness is I get to keep coming back to this content year after year and seeing how I’ve changed.

I have changed! I’m very slowly getting better and better at taking care of myself. At noticing what’s going on for me and tending to it.

But it’s slow. And it’s not a straight line.

Three years ago when I took this inventory for the first time, I was doing really well occupationally, pretty well physically, and not well at all in the last 3 areas.

I had especially neglected my financial wellness. While I’ve come a long way, this is still a really unnatural area for me to step up in. I avoid it like the plague. I even put a weekly calendar reminder for myself called “tending to financial wellness” to try to help support and nudge myself to carve out time. But checking in with my finances for me is like grading papers, I dread it. And I can find 20 other tasks I can do instead to avoid tending to my finances.

The story I used to tell myself about this was “I don’t care about money.” But what I realize now was what I was really saying with my behavior is “I don’t care about myself. I don’t care about what I need or want.” There are a lot of things I can’t control, but taking responsibility for my finances so I can take good care of myself is something I have agency over. I have been asleep at the wheel for so long.

And waking up has been hard. I feel a literal brain fog when I start trying to focus on finances. I know I’m smart and competent, so I’m trying to just get curious about what’s happening for me. Where did this fog come from? When did it show up? How can I gently wake up this part of my mind and heart?

This past week, I noticed for the first time how many small businesses around my town have their first dollar bill framed: the hair salon that gave my son his “big boy” haircut before school started, the Italian restaurant where my husband and I celebrated our anniversary, everywhere I go, I’m noticing these framed dollar bills. I’m sure they’ve been there all along, but they’ve only entered my awareness recently. Something about these businesses marking their first dollar earned, sparked something in me. There’s something sweet about framing it. About honoring the first time you put yourself out in the world and accepted value for what you do.

I’ve spent so much time pretending money doesn’t matter. Like my needs and wants don’t matter. Like what I contribute to the world doesn’t matter. I would like to change that. I would like to move forward differently.