Ch. 2, Ep. 1: Mind over money

You’re listening to ‘From Dollar One’ by Interac: an audio series for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and anyone with a business looking for quick tips and ideas aimed at helping you manage cashflow, avoid financial burnout, and hit your money milestones.   

This is chapter 2 – Mind over Money 

Where Chapter 1 was about managing the money side of your business, this chapter is about managing the emotional side of it.  

Finding the right balance between running a business and taking care of yourself is a constant balancing act.  

So, for this chapter we turned to expert Financial Therapist, Aseel El-Baba, to learn about techniques that can help you stay positive, empowered and balanced. 

Aseel is a former award-winning Financial Planner and spent the last 10 years working for 4 out of the big 5 Canadian banks. Today, she helps people explore their own relationship to money and develop personalized tools to achieve financial wellness. She does this through her own practice as well as her involvement with Conscious Economics, a national not-for-profit organization that collaborates with Interac to develop programs with a focus on economic education, financial literacy programs, research, events and experiential learning. 

We spoke with Aseel to get her take on: 

• Working through the emotional side of money  

• Feeling more confident and in charge of your money 

• And accessing free mindfulness learning courses for entrepreneurs  

Here we summarize her advice on how to tackle some of the emotions that come with talking about money. 

 Given that money can be one of the top sources of stress for people — even talking about money is a subject many would prefer to avoid.  

What we normally hear when people talk about money is stress, anxiety, depression, confusion and a lack of clarity about what the future holds. 

 The first step is to learn how to address the emotional impacts the subject of money can have on our body and then regulate our emotions better so we can make calm, rational decisions about finances 

That’s why Aseel recommends trying grounding techniques before making any choices concerning finances. 

Aseel uses the ‘5 senses’ grounding technique, often referred to as the ‘54321’ which is all about engaging all 5 senses to soothe your nervous system and experience the present moment.  

• Acknowledge FIVE things you see 

• FOUR things you can touch 

• THREE things you can hear 

• TWO things you can smell 

• ONE thing you can taste. 

Remain rooted in the present moment and focus on what you can control. 

If we learn to lift the emotional weight of money, largely by being mindful and aware of how emotions interact with our bodies, we can learn to see money less as a distant, scary thing and be able to face financial challenges head on. 

Another way to face the emotional side of money is to just talk about it! Reach out to a friend, family member or loved one. Have these conversations. When was the last time you got together with girlfriends and talked about your financials openly or your friends in university, or your workplace? These are things that can naturally make space for money to be normalized as a conversation that you talk about. 

[OUTRO] 

If you’d like to learn more about how your self-worth may be impacting your business, check out the Mindfulness & Money: For Entrepreneurs course by Conscious Economics and Interac. You can find a link and sign up for our newsletter at Interac.ca/dollarone.