I refused to be broke in ALL realities...

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach, coming to you from Cape Cod again. I'm back with my family for Christmas, hence the funny background. And Luna is joining me. I wanna. So I had this drive today for those of you who are traveling back home to be with family. Yeah, it's exhausting. I got up super early this morning, got maybe four hours of sleep last night, and drove seven hours to Camp Cape Cod with Ms. Luna here. And while I was driving, I was listening to this really interesting book. I highly recommend it. It's called the Psychology of Money. Puts into question, like, a lot of the ways we've been taught to be with money. And while I was listening to it, I was reminded of a couple things that I did when I was broker than broke, when I had my own personal financial meltdown. Great moment in my life. Some things that I did to get myself out of that rut mentally. And something that I actually forgot that I did that I remembered today was that early on when I realized how bad my financial situation had gotten, I decided for myself that I was not going to be broke in all realities. And I know that sounds absolutely not so, but listen to me. Okay, so I. Have you guys ever played that video game Sims? I was absolutely addicted to it when I was like, in middle school or high school. Luna, leave me alone. Hi, I see you. But I was absolutely addicted to it. I stopped playing it when I was in high school because I started dreaming in, like, Sims world visuals. And I realized it had become a problem. Anyway, I had not played it since I was a teenager and I. Luna is just exploring this new place. She's, you know. Anyway, I had not played it since I was a teenager. But the one thing that I remembered about the game is that you could create all these different characters and you could have them go and work and earn money. And at the time, I was just starting out my business. I. I was working so hard, not necessarily smart, but so hard to make any money in my business. And it just wasn't working. I wasn't getting any reward for what I was putting out. And so I decided early on that I was going to give myself some time where I could be in another reality and earn money in that other reality, even if it wasn't real. And so I, in my downtime, you know, like when I was hanging out with friends and they were watching a movie, I'd be on Sims, not necessarily playing the game, but I'd be in there making my characters, like, work to the point of exhaustion. And I'd have them do overtime and I'd have them do all the different things because I needed to not be broken. All realities and foreign. It's crazy. It's crazy, but it worked, along with some other money mindset stuff that I did. But it actually did work, because once I finished that, it's funny, like, I'd be making my poor Sims characters, like, work in the cafe three shifts in a row, right? And then they'd be exhausted and they'd pass out on the floor, as Sims do, and they just sleep in the street and. But at the end of it, I was able to see the number, the amount of money, Sims money that I had earned at the end of that. And during that time, I would always come up with ideas for my business. I would always come up with new ways to get in front of clients. I'd always come up with, like, new selling points for my services because I was putting myself in, like, a positive mindset. I was putting myself in the mindset of something that, like, was already profitable, even though it wasn't real. It. So I'm just sharing this with you because there's no right or wrong way to do money work. If you have a bad relationship with money. If you find yourself in debt a lot, if you, you know, just can't seem to save for your. If your life depended on it, just know, like, money work comes in all shapes and sizes and in many different technologies. There are books out there. You could play video games, as long as you make it about your money consciousness. Okay, There are absolutely relationship books, you know, about attracting a romantic partner that you could just refocus to have it be about money. A great one for this is actually calling in the one, and I'm forgetting the author, but if you're looking for a relationship and not having any luck, that's a great book for you to read for that. But it's also amazing for money. Something that I found absolutely fascinating in this book that I was listening to today, the Psychology of Money, was this point. So the author, I guess, used to be a valet. You know, he used to valet cars in Los Angeles. And he's a huge car person, you know, absolutely loves fancy cars, expensive cars, all the things. And so it was super exciting for him to valet cars in Los Angeles because, you know, the. The kinds of cars that used to come into this fancy place that he worked at were Maseratis. They were. Oh, hi, Stefan. Nice to see you. They were Maseratis. They were Porsches they were just cars that he, at that point in his life would never in a million years be able to afford, right? And so he's like, oh my God, I wanna, I wanna drive them. And he got to, and he got to park them, whatever. And he realized at one point that the people who owned those cars, they probably. And we all do this, right? We buy something that like is status, right? Gives us status. And we think, oh well, people are going to admire me for this. They're gonna look at me getting out of this car and think, oh my God, they must be super, super important. They must be so impressive, like I should know them. And his, his observation was that that never happened for him. And it actually doesn't happen for most of us. When we see something that we really want or something that is impressive, we actually kind of bypass the person who has it. We don't even consider them. It's like they, they just kind of fall into the background because what we're doing is we're imagining if that thing were mine, I'd be so impressive. People would respect me. They, they would want to be me. They would assume that I am like this, this high and mighty human. And I just found that fascinating because it is so true. It is so true. And when we realize that doesn't, that doesn't all this stuff like the, the expensive cars and the handbags, small stuff, doesn't that just kind of lose its luster? Sure. He also. I've never heard this distinction made before and I loved this is there's a difference between being rich and there and being wealthy. So being rich means that you made the money and you probably like spent it. So you have all the trimmings of someone who is rich, right? So you could have a hundred thousand dollar car and have it on lease. That means you're making enough money month to month that you can pay for the lease, but it doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Wealthy is different. Wealthy is how much money you have in your accounts and your investments, all that stuff. It's not visual. You can't tell a wealthy person from looking at them. You can tell a rich person, but rich, rich does not mean that you're going to keep the money over, over your life cycle. And yeah, so I mean, I don't know, it was just, it was a super interesting. And I'm super tired right now. I'm working on four hours of sleep and I woke up every hour because I was stressed about getting up early. So I'm probably not Making a whole lot of sense in the, in the greater arc of this live. But I really just wanted to share this with you. I'm going to be putting a lot of this together. I'm. I'm doing a lot of reading on, you know, different thought patterns around money and different philosophies around it because I am putting together a money course for later this year and I want to just pull all the resources I possibly can for this thing because I want it to be so transformational for everyone who signs up. So if you know a money book, if you know a money practice, I would love to hear about it. No commitment that will be in the program, but I'm going to be vetting everything and anything to put in there anyway. I'm super tired. And Stefan, thank you so much for joining and everyone who's joining, thank you. I'm super tired. If, if you're having money issues this, this holiday season, towards the end of this year, know that you're not alone. Know that you're not alone. There are people. And know that the compare game, you can't compare to other people because we never know what their actual money story is. Okay? If you ran into me when I was having my financial personal meltdown, you never would have guessed unless I told you. And even if I told you, you probably wouldn't have believed me. You never would have guessed that I was going through that. Okay? You know, I'm. We all generally assume that people have their shit together, that they're, you know, doing well, and none of us really like to admit when things aren't going well. So if you're playing the compare game against other people and you're feeling behind. Stop it. Just cut it out. It's not helpful. Set yourself up for success, even if it's playing stupid video games to make yourself feel like you're rich in a different reality, that's fine, too. And I had another point. And what was it? What was it? Oh, and here have, have some curiosity and compassion for the people around you, okay? Just, just have some extra understanding that maybe things aren't going as well as everyone's saying, because you really, you really never know. And I can say, as someone who, who went through it, my friends who held me up on a pedestal, I had a really hard time telling them that I was having financial difficulty. The ones who, like, I felt comfortable telling the whole truth to. Throughout the whole process, so much easier, you know, the ones who really asked me how I was doing, it was so much easier to talk to them. Let me tell you, talking about it was so helpful. It took a lot of the shame out of it, honestly. So if you're in it, you know, give yourself some grace and also, you know, have some spare grace to go around. We can all use it, especially this year. Anyway, if you haven't seen yet, I am repurposing my Being Brave call this Friday at 11am Eastern to be a Christmas holiday party. I hope you could make it. It's at 11am Eastern standard. The link is in one of my previous posts on LinkedIn. You can also go to my website and just go to the Being Brave registration at the bottom of the front page and just book for this week. I didn't do. I was kind of lazy. I didn't repurpose any of the things with new branding for the holiday party. But I hope to see you there and feel free to just show up and just be around people. That's, you know, we're in this weird holiday season where we have to stay away from people again and we're not designed for that. And we're not designed for that at all. So I wanted to offer my community up as a place for everyone to arrive and just be around people virtually. Anyway, I am going to sleep, as sad as that sounds. Not even 7 o' clock here but I'm so tired. I hope you're having an amazing lead up week to Christmas if you celebrate and even if you don't, I hope you're having a nice mellow week. Anyway, I will be going live every day for the rest of this year. This year. Yeah. And I hope to see you there. Anyway, love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye.