Money Anxiety Before Having Kids?

Are you or your partner about to have a baby and are you freaking out? Freaking out, man. If so, that's, that's normal. And I got a question recently. This is from a member of my program, Confidence University, which you have, you haven't heard of. Go check it out. Theconfidenceuniversity.com and he is about to have, he's building confidence in a variety of ways. And his wife is pregnant and they're about to have their, I think it's their first or second kid. And he's like, I'm so anxious and my mind keeps being anxious about money and I'm so worried about money. What do you think? What confidence advice do you have for me? And so I want to answer that question specifically about the money, but then also confidence overall about having kids. So yeah, having a first child especially, but even that, a second or a third child is a huge shift to your life. And so that's going to create anxiety often for most people because uncertainty, change equals uncertainty, equals threat and danger. And so some part of us, the small self inside of us is like, ah. And that's something to work with. Now, it can fixate on money for a variety of reasons. One, you know, yes, bringing another human in the world to take care of does cost money. And so we can feel afraid. Now, if we feel really afraid there, that's because we probably have low financial confidence, low money confidence. Just like any other area of life. You can have confidence in yourself or you can feel low confidence. So you can feel socially confident. I can talk to anybody and people like me and I'm a good conversationalist. Or you can feel low social confidence, I can't talk to anybody, I'm awkward, I'm uncomfortable. You can feel romantic confidence, I'm attractive, people want to date me, or low confidence in that area. Same thing in money and high confidence in money is I bring value to the world. I can earn money, people pay me for things. I can get hired for jobs because I am a valuable contributing member to society. And so. Or we can have low confidence, which I did for many years. I had low financial confidence. I don't even know how I'd earn money in the world. Who would pay me for things. How does money even work? It's so mysterious. Freaked out. And that's actually where I was when I first had, when we had our first son and I was building a private practice in psychology just out of my internship and postdoc training where I got paid like a stipend of nothing. And never really had earned money in the world in a significant way and thought I couldn't. So I had low financial confidence at that time. So my question is, if you're anxious about the money part, what's your financial confidence on a scale of 1 to 10, not how much money you have right now, but. But like, yeah, I can earn money in the world. I'm creative and resourceful. And if some part of you is like, I don't know, maybe I don't have the education or maybe I'm not skilled enough, possibly that's part of it. But money and your ability to earn it is a reflection of how much value you add to the world, how creative you are in figuring out how to sell or contribute that value, and then also your focus. Because a lot of people can add value to the world and are creative, but they just don't follow through. They don't do the necessary work because it takes effort over time, building things, creating things, Whether it's getting education or, you know, once you have the education, contributing something of value, people want it quick and easy. They're like, I'm just going to create this thing and get money quick. It's like maybe creating that thing, whatever it is, that business or that contribution or working your way to that job takes you a year, two. But when you do, then you start to reap those rewards on an actual money level. So increase your financial confidence is the first thing I would say. And we're having a new live event around this in January 2020 called Maximize youe Money. Career Money, Business and career Confidence. Still got to work on letting that name roll off my tongue. It's brand new because I saw a need for this. There are so many people that came to my live events. We're working on conversation, confidence. We have one on that. We have one on dating and relationships. We have one on just mastering confidence. But I was like, man, so many people feel so disempowered in this area. So come to that, if you want to increase your money confidence. But the other thing I would say is sometimes especially both parents can freak out about money, but especially the man can do this in a couple that's having a child. If it is a man and a woman, it could be two women having a baby or two men, right? Whatever it is. But a common dynamic is a man and a woman. And the man is like, oh my God, I'm freaked out about the money. And part of that is it's a huge life change and there's so much that's unknown and kind of out of control. And look, the risk is very low in modern medicalized societies of death. But dude, birth is a big deal and it's a passageway. It's in the realm of life and death. And so some part of us knows something could happen to the mother or the baby and that's anxiety provoking, that we're very vulnerable. It's a very vulnerable time. Then you have this little vulnerable being that you can love and most likely everything's going to be fine. But what if something happens? What if something's wrong with their health? What do they get sick? What if they die? And we're so vulnerable, like our beating heart is now outside of ourselves in this little being. And that kind of vulnerability, especially for men, is like we're not even that aware of it and we don't want to go there. And so we're like, oh, so many things I can't control and I'm so vulnerable. I'm going to focus on money and earning more money. So if that's the case or contributing it, just be open to that and see if you can find your way to like, yeah, this is big. I'm opening to life. This is how I experience more of life. And I am a vulnerable being. And the way to get confidence in that area is yes to everything. Whatever life brings me, I'm going to open to it, I'm going to surrender to it and bring it on. Because I can't have the most beautiful, rewarding things in life if I'm not also willing to take risks and open my heart fully. So I hope that helps you with your confidence around having a new baby. And on the other side of it is something pretty, not pretty, extremely amazing and extraordinary. And I can't wait for you to experience that. Alright, until we speak again, may I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Talk to you soon.