724: Special Series -  Underearning Empaths

Empaths, I'm talking to you. This new special series is going to address some of the common things we encounter in our work and financial lives when we are empathic, or what is also known as a highly sensitive person. You see, we tend to undervalue and under earn across the board and I've worked with so many of us who have fallen into this pattern, not even realizing that it is a pattern, just knowing that no matter what we do, it's never enough. We don't ever have enough money. We never seem to be getting ahead. So I'm going to share some ideas around this and give you some directions that you can begin going toward so that when you leave today's episode, you're going to have a definite energy shift and start to feel confident in reaching your next income level. You guys ready? Let's jump in. Flow Dreaming still kinda Woo Woo is just what it sounds like. An escape into the world of woo. Also a ride into you and how to feel happier, wiser and more self aware in every way. It's your ultimate journey into personal growth and inner power. We'll explore ideas like how your energy self influences the kinds of opportunities you encounter, or how your personal growth can drive your business growth, or even how that feeling of being stuck is really always coming from something else. We just have to figure out what. That's right, we're a dash of woo woo. A sprinkle of self care, a heap of problem solving and pattern busting, and a giant cup of encouragement. We're going to relight so much passion, purpose, self love and confidence in you that you practically stagger. I'm Summer McStravik, your host and welcome to Flow Dreaming. Still kind of woo woo. All right my darlings, you guys ready to jump in? I love today's topic under earning empaths. And a shout out to the lovely Keela for giving me inspiration to record my perspective on this after she shared this topic with me in another context. So under earning empaths, raise your hand. Raise your hand right now if that is ringing a little bell inside you. First of all, you may know that you're empathic or you may not yet know. You may just think that you're always feeling other people's feelings. You always have these hunches and knowings, you're always prioritizing other people ahead of yourself, et cetera, et cetera. Oh my gosh. The list of red flag empath indicators is long indeed. But today I'm not going to be explaining to you what an empath is we're just going to pretend that we all already know. Instead, I want to share with you how this plays out in your earnings potential, not necessarily the workplace, but in what you ask for, what you expect, what you receive, how you value yourself. So over the years I've produced quite a few programs, courses and flow dreams around raising your income ceiling, raising the amount of money that you allow into your life, heightening and expanding your ability to receive. I mean literally. I have a program called Money Flow. I have the Prosperity Challenge, I have the rich secure and debt free playlist. Like you can just throw yourselves into this. And yes, they all work. They will remodel what you're able to receive. But I want to address a particular kind of person, maybe this is you. This particular kind of person tends to discover that they are never earning what they want to be earning. They do all the work, they go in and they do all the manifesting. And in fact opportunities do tend to slide in to increase what they receive, but never really sticks, never really stays around. We're going to dive into this and I'm going to ask you and challenge you to start asking for more. So here, here's how this looks. When I work with somebody who is what I would call an under earning empath, one of the first questions I'm asking is, well, what do you earn? Now this is not a question I typically ask in coaching. I'll just tell you that right out. It only becomes relevant when that is actually what we're working on. And then as we continue our discussion, we realize that what they're earning perhaps has in fact increased year by year. They're earning more now than they did five years ago or 10 years ago, but somehow it's still not enough. Somehow there's always a big bill that comes in and swoops out the little savings that they were able to achieve. There's always just making it, just getting by. And so we look into this and I say to them, what's your value? Is your value the same as what you're being paid? First question that we look at, and it can take a little while to unpack it because on the one hand you say, oh, I'm much more valuable than what I'm being paid. But if you really believe that, if you really exuded that, if your energy was straight up aligned with that, if that was what you were broadcasting to the world, then there would not be this mismatch going on. So in essence, one part of you is often saying one thing and the Other part of you is saying, another one part of you is saying, heck yeah, I'm worth more. Heck yeah, I love myself and I see my value. And the other part of you is saying, but the world doesn't see my value. But people outside of me don't appreciate my value. But what I give the value of it that I see is not what other people see. You see, there's a conflict that starts to arise. It's like a tornado starting to dip down from the clouds and eventually, yes, it will land and sort of tear through. Empaths by nature tend to always be forecasting. We are forecasting and we are reading the room, we are reading other people, we are reading situations, we are casting out that we know in advance of what other people will say or do or react to us. Let me give you an example. I talk to a lot of people who are coaches and healers, just a lot of you guys, because by and large, you guys tend to be also heavily invested in your own personal growth. So of course you come to flow dreaming because that's what we do, right? We do healing and we do manifesting. Boom, boom, boom, right? This is like a two pronged attack on growing. I shouldn't say attack. A two pronged approach, two pronged fun. I don't know. But you as a healer or as a coach, you're thinking to yourself, well, I'm good at this. I know people have had results. My friends told me, my family told me, the four clients I've had told me. But honestly, I mean, I really can't charge more than $75 a session. $50. 75. I mean, that seems to be about, you know, people would pay me that. Yeah, they'd pay me that. And what you're thinking right then is you're kind of sending your energy outward, right? When you're making a calculation in your head, when you're attaching a fiscal value to your worth, you are sending broadcasting, reaching outward with a calculation. You are in effect empathically reaching out and feeling, quote quote the world, quote quote the lineup of potential clients who will come knocking at your door and pinging you on your phone. You are reading what you think they will be feeling and thinking in advance of them ever actually stepping in the door. Now who do you really think you're reading? That's the real question. Because if your inner value is truly $75, you're going to be reading a whole group of people who align to that $75 and make it true. They will make it true. They will absolutely match you. And you'll say, I'm right. Everybody I met said 75. Boy, that's about all I can do. That's a stretch for me. And you will be right, because that was what your inner knowing was telling you. Broadcasting and finding the people who matched, thereby reinforcing. Consider it a self fulfilling prophecy. This means that what's happening is there is a deep part of you that says $75. Now, how do I find how far you can stretch in your value? Again? This is something that I do often with clients when we do private sessions together. I say, look, I want to find that barrier. You'll feel it. It's like crossing an invisible line in yourself where you go, huh? Comfort. Comfort. Comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. Stretchy. Stretchy. Oh, my God. Could never charge that. It's like an arc of energy. And I put your little pool floaties on and swim next to you and we go find that line. And I say, well, how about a hundred? I could probably do 100, but you'll start bargaining with yourself and you'll say, I'll do 100, but I'll have fewer clients. You see what you're doing right now, you're saying, I can work with more people at 75 or fewer at 100. But what's really happening here, you're actually not increasing. You're just staying the same. Fewer at 100, more at 75. But your actual income has not inched up. You're just shifting around the amount of people. You've made a concession, a bargain in your heart. What if I say 150? Then you start to say, well, that's, that's starting to feel like a lot. You know, I mean, I don't actually, I'm not a therapist. I don't have a degree. And, and I don't know, I don't think there's many people who could, who could or would want to pay me that. Okay, what about 250? Well, no, only the biggest coaches, the best healers, the most well known ones that people I admire like that, I think are at the top of their game, that that's what they charge. I'm not there yet. I don't deserve that. Okay. And we've reached a point now where you feel out of depth and what you're seeing is your own internally assigned value. What you've done is you are saying, I am only this good. And so I need to have people who only match the good quality, the professionalism or the ability or the length of time doing it, or the skill set, whatever it is that you feel about yourself, you're saying, these are the people who match where I'm at now. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to be somebody who is just entering a profession and charging the moon and then having slews of clients walking away saying that was the worst experience I've ever had. This person doesn't know anything. And you know what? I actually have known some people like that. And to them I have a very different message. I say you need to grow into this. You're not there and you're getting blowback because you're not there. But they are the exception to the rule. The 90% are the under earning empath. So we have to go in and we have to nudge up our inner value. Nudge, nudge, nudge. So you guys, I'm pretty pricey to work with. I know it. I didn't start charging this much, much, you know, 20 years ago, but today I do. And I do for a number of reasons. One, because I teach constantly for free. I give and give and give to all those people who really just can't afford to invest in their growth right at the moment. But on the other hand, the people who walk in, I expect them to have vetted me to know that they want what I'm offering. I know that they're coming in because they have assigned a value to me as well. And their expectations are I will get changed, I will have breakthroughs. I am committed to this. This isn't something that Summer is going to do to me. It's something that I'm going to do with her. So I know that they have committed inside themselves to taking what I've given them because it's of great value and they won't just drop it on the floor afterwards and walk away and saying, well, I didn't pay much for that so I don't have to do anything with it. They'll say, I paid a lot for this, I'm invested in it and I will do it. And this is how and why I get big results with people. Maybe you want big results too. Maybe you're not a coach or a healer or self employed at all. Maybe you're working for a company. And I'm thinking actually right now of a client I had recently who's been at a job for six years and not received a raise in all of that time. They've received a cost of living raise like 2%, 3% even during inflation. So we went into it. Why aren't you getting a raise? Well, I'm not positioned well enough yet. I haven't done the things that I need to do to deserve a raise. Other people are ahead of me in the workplace and they're supposed to get raises before me. And the company doesn't have enough to give us all raises. And my boss doesn't really care for me. And the list was long. And I said, you're empathic, you're sensitive, you are feeling all of this data rolling into you from other people and places. But you know what this data is doing. It's like a bad science experiment. When a scientist has an objective, their hypotheses, and then they look for data to support that hypothesis, they can find just about anything. It's kind of like how people joke when you read the Bible. You can pretty much support any belief because you'll find something that you can make work for it. We do this as empaths. We say, I'm not. I can't. I'm not ready. And then we find data. It's out there. It actually is there. It does exist. You are not wrong when you're feeling it, when you are anticipating or forecasting what other people feel. But the question comes down to do you want to keep aligning to that data? Do you want to keep aligning to those people? Do you want to keep forecasting into their negative feelings about your value? Because if so, you're going to be locked in that until you change it. Otherwise, you're waiting for those other people to. To change their opinions of you before you are allowed to grow in your own value. You see what I'm saying? They're the ones who are now holding the power around this. They change their opinions. Now you are more valuable. I want you to just be more valuable. I want you to grow your sense inside. I am good. I do whatever it takes to get more practice, to become, you know, better at my. My skill set, to grow to the top of my ability. I do whatever it takes. I'm committed. I'm all in. I'm here for it. I want to be of great value in this world, and I want to receive great value back. Now what we're doing is we've pulled back the energy. We pulled it back inside you. We're not relying so much on what other people are thinking and feeling, because remember, they're in essence oftentimes just mirroring what we're sending out. They're just reflecting it back, agreeing with us. But we're changing that and we're saying, I'm good at this and I'm getting better. I want to know what it feels like to earn more. I want to know what it feels like to have the world tell me, you're worth more and here's how much more. And I want something in my heart to go, what? And my jaw to drop open and I want to challenge my inner self to say, you're right, and I'm going to let myself feel that way. You guys, I'm trying to like, draw you into an energetic feeling state right now. And that energetic feeling state is a light bulb going on in you saying, yeah, world, pay me more, give me more, show me that I am worth a higher value and challenge me to step into that and rise to it. I'm going to give you an example of my own. When I first encountered this, I think one of the very first times, gosh, it must have been, I don't know, many, many decades ago, before I even started doing this work. I was still doing graphic design work back in my 20s and I was a freelancer and I had contracted with this lovely man who worked with corporations and presented them or he made some sort of presentations for them, like their end of year fiscal presentations. This was back before everybody could do it on their own on, you know, their computers. You had to like get someone to do this for you and print it and, you know, give you the binders to share around the boardroom. And he came to me and he said, I've got all this data, I need it made into these wonderful little graphs. Make it interesting, but not too cute. This is corporate after all. He said, can you do it? And I'm like, ah, sure. I'm thinking it's pretty darn boring stuff. Of course, I could do this in my sleep. And he says, how much do you charge? And I said, well, maybe, I don't know, like a couple hundred bucks. And he was quiet. He's like, really? And I had a moment because I'm an empath where I thought, oh my God, he thinks I'm inexperienced. He is doubting whether he should have reached out. He thinks I may not be up to the job. I under quoted by a lot. What a weird feeling to recognize that I actually took his esteem of me down. Fortunately, he liked me and he was gentle. And he said, you know, normally I'd be paying at least 1500 for this, so I'll pay you 1,500. Can you do this? And that was the moment when I said to myself, oh my God, he sees value in me and what I do five times greater than what I was self assigning. And I challenged myself, do the same job you always do. Don't do any better, don't do any worse, because this is actually worth fifteen hundred dollars changed everything. And what I started to recognize is that the $300 clients I was continuously working with were people who were also in a state of, I don't have enough money. That's a lot for me. Gosh, it's a stretch. And we were all just swirling around in the same teacup together. So after that I said, I need $1,500 clients and I need as many of them as are out there. Flow life, my greater self, challenge me. How many clients like this can I handle? I wanted to grow and stretch, and that became my personal development for a while. I know it sounds kind of weird and unspiritual, but it's not. Getting materially secure is all about finding your inner value challenged me on a lot of levels. It made me think, but what about all the poor people who can't afford 1500? And I reminded myself, summer, there are plenty of other graphic designers just like you used to be out there, and they will go to one of them and they will get their $300 job. Thing is, you've done that and you don't want to do that anymore. Didn't you say that you're all about growth and being challenged and being able to hold more? Eventually, of course, my life path was, well, how much can you hold? Because eventually you're going to be coaching people. You're going to be helping other coaches grow their companies and other people change and make big shifts in their lives. And you're going to hold not just your life, but you're going to start holding some of theirs too. A lot of them. You need to start this work now, inside you. So you ready? And I said, yeah, by golly, I am. So that was the catalyst that started me on that road. Every time I raise my prices, I recognize I'm ready to grow some more. And if I raise my prices and no one's around, crickets. Well, to be honest, that's never actually happened. But if it did, then I would say to myself, I need to start showing up differently. I need to embody this more. I need to stretch and grow into this more, because I'm not staying in that alignment quite yet. Now, mind you, I know that what I offer and what I give is definitely Equal to my value. In fact, in many cases it's greater than what I charge. And I know that. Empaths. Are you willing to grow? Is this part of your path of development? Are you willing to stop protecting the people around you, whether they're your boss or your clients? Are you willing to stop protecting them by saying, I don't need that raise, go ahead, pick somebody else. Sure, I'll wait in line. Or are you ready to say something different? Show up like I'm worth a million bucks. I know I'm worth a million bucks. Because you will continuously read what they think about you. You will. That's one of your superpowers. You can do that. But when you're continuously reading what the people around you think of you know this. What they think about you is directly reflecting you where you currently are. So yeah, you're just going to go in circles if you keep reading what they think about you and then reflecting that back. Taking it in, owning it, staying at the under earning level you're at. Some of the ways that I have worked my own way through this, I've actually recorded in two flow dreams because it's so valuable and it's such a good strong learning path. Sometimes these material based learning paths are some of the most change making and they lead you to other things. So I recorded a set called the Entrepreneur's Flow book. Thriving wealthy entrepreneur. If you have your own business, if you have a side hustle, if you are ascribing value and you're not making enough, I want you to really think about getting that set. One of the things it does, it says, what are you worth? What do you want to be worth? Are you showing up in that worth or are you waiting for other people to tell you that you're worth that? Where are we at here? Do you want to come stretch with me? I have other flow dreams like clients and customers coming out the door. It's not what it's called, but you can look it up on my website. And one of the things I particularly do with clients in private sessions is I help them see all the people who literally are lined up and waiting for them. The people right now in your future waiting for you, waiting for you to catch up to them. This might be a future boss, this might be a future new company or workplace. This might be clients, customers in your future. Literally around the corner of days or months or years, they are there, they're already existing, they're already alive, busy right now in whatever corner of the earth they're in but they will be in your life when you catch up to them. And they will be paying you more if that is the direction you want to go in. So here's how I'm going to sum this up under earning empaths. You will not just snap your fingers and have this change. It's actually a path of learning that you need to commit to and embark on. And in my world, in flow dreaming, we pick certain paths of learning and we go into them joyfully. We embrace them. I call it getting stretchy. And we see how it feels, and we see how the world starts changing in response to us and how what we're manifesting changes. And we realize, I can hold this, I deserve this, and I've earned this. And if you want to pick that path, if this has been a struggle for you for years or your whole life, do you know how many other things are probably backed up behind this lesson? Like, literally a backup, like a backup on the highway of cars. Like, we need to clear this little fender bender here because there's a lot of stuff that's just waiting, waiting to pour in once we get past this. The opportunities that will come to you, the new friendships, the new peer groups, the new access and reach, the new notoriety. If it's something where you're impacting the world, it's all there. But this is the next piece. And you know it's the next piece. If it's been stuck and swirling around you for a while, if it's been here for a while, it's your next piece. And other things aren't moving and changing till this one gets taken care of. And I'm here to tell you today, you can take care of it. You're supposed to take care of it. It's perfect and purposeful that it's here for you. And being an empath just means that you have a little secret sauce, a little special ability to tap in and feel and know. And it can be your Achilles heel. It can be what prevents you from really embodying more value. Or you can use it as a way through. So I encourage you, flow, dream on your own around this. Pick this path, take it on, do it. If you want. Of course, I'm always here to reach out. I do introductory sessions now. By the way, if you've never worked with me before and you're curious, I'd love to talk with you and start you on this path. Just reach out. Go to my website, flowdreaming.com there's so many resources for you guys. There and of course there is my Flow dreaming mastermind which I'm just falling more in love with every day because, well, we do a lot of really interesting in class techniques. It's very hands on. We do workshops and I follow the full moon, I follow the seasons. We ride different waves of energy. It's, it's kind of fun, it's kind of exotic. You can also join that if you want or like I said, just pick up a flow dream or two. It's all here for you. Whatever ability to invest you are at. And of course it is an investment. It should be an investment because that's what we're talking about here. Worth value and exchange. What you give is what you get. Give it energetically, give it from your pocketbook. But invest however it means to you. Wherever you're at. You're not going to go wrong with this and you will earn more. So with that little bit of inspiration, I bid you all a beautiful day, afternoon, evening, wherever you're at and stay tuned because we're going to talk next time about empaths and work. Workety work work. All the people that you see around you, bosses, employees, co workers. Ooh, delightful series. I sure hope you guys are enjoying it. Drop me a note, let me know summerlowdreaming.com my love to you. Take care. I love to work with you. One on one. I get to see the most exponential growth in those of you who work with me privately every month. I'm part coach, part mentor, part energy worker and intuitive. What I do is beyond traditional coaching in many ways since I add in all kinds of information you wouldn't normally have access to and the results speak for themselves. I have hundreds of glowing testimonials you can read for yourself at my website or just reach out and ask me. We begin working together with an assessment of your life, what you want and where you've been, where you're going. We focus deeply on patterns, blocks and what you plan to achieve or become next within yourself and within your life. Last, we're going to carry your desires right into the heart of the universe by flow dreaming together as I lead you in every session with a personalized customized Flow Dream. You're going to end up with dozens of these plus a plan. Now you've got two options. You can either take me from for a test run with an introductory private session or we can just jump in and explore what a longer relationship working together would do for your Life. Just visit FlowDreaming.com, search for private sessions and I really look forward to meeting you.