The Art of Negotiating with Yourself with Brooke Tomasetti

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To learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Brooke, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

It is our pleasure, my friend. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Yes. I am a personal finance consultant and educator and my focus is on helping people use money as a tool to create their dream lives. And right now I'm doing that as owner and financial coach at Money Life Mentor and then I am also the Director of Financial Education and Community at Carbon Collective, a sustainable investing platform.

This is great. Well, we are excited to have you. This is a very important topic for us to cover and it's going to be cool to explore it from your perspective because you are approaching it from the financial literacy, financial well being approach. And then we have listeners all over the world who are approaching negotiations and difficult conversations from all different angles. So it's going to be fun to use your expertise as the vignette for this concept that's super important of negotiating with yourself. And so when you think about that concept, what does it mean to you to negotiate with yourself?

Yes. So for me, what I think about a lot, in my experience, negotiation is really all about understanding yourself first, because it's really hard to move forward with gaining an understanding of, let's say, what the other party wants or creating a path forward, whether it's for yourself, for your finances, or any other difficult conversation or situation in your life. So understanding your life vision and your guiding values is super key to both negotiating and designing a life you love. Because in order for us to properly negotiate with, whether it's ourselves or others, on what we desire, we have to know what that is first and where we want to go.

Absolutely. You're spot on. And it's so interesting because when you say it, it seems obvious. How can you have a difficult conversation with somebody else if you don't have a full understanding of who you are in this moment and what you want in this moment and for the long term? And then also, how can we expect them to negotiate effectively with us if we don't even know who we are and what we want? Right. So when you describe it Makes complete sense. But we do know that most people don't do this in a very intentional way. So let's talk about that reality. Why do you think that is?

I think because it's really difficult. It's so hard when you're going through the day to day motions of waking up, getting ready for work, making sure you're doing this. I can't even imagine if you have children running around trying to get everything situated, spending 40 plus hours a week at work and just building time in to relax. It's really hard for someone to say, you know what, this weekend I'm going to block out two hours to maybe, let's say, sit outside and just reflect on the past month or this year to date and ask myself those difficult questions of how is everything really going? How am I feeling? Am I happier? Could I be more fulfilled in my day to day or in my career? I think that's something that a lot of people don't do simply because it is so difficult.

I agree it is difficult. And as you started to go through what that could hypothetically look like, I said, ugh, I don't know if I want to do all that, Brooke, because that's going to be. First of all, like you said, it's hard. It's hard. And then the other side too. It's scary because when we ask those types of questions, we might be afraid of what we find.

Mm, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I usually like to use journal prompts as like a crutch here because it's really hard to approach these kinds of topics of self awareness and general life fulfillment. It almost gets into that, like, what is the meaning of my life and why am I here and what are my values and what is my purpose? Right. These are such difficult topics and they're really high level. But I have found that understanding those makes it a lot easier when we're interacting with others on a day to day basis. And then also what we were just talking about, negotiating with yourself. I love using prompts to dig really deep and it sounds funny because I'm a financial coach, but the first thing I have all of my clients do before our first session is self awareness journal prompts. So that's one technique I find helpful for at least starting the process.

This is great. So let's stay on that as a case study essentially. And so let's put together a nebulous conglomeration of multiple clients. Obviously for privacy purposes. When you have somebody do this exercise, what are some of the types of revelations you've Seen. Yeah.

So a lot of what comes out of this exercise is goals. So we do the high level journal prompt, digging deep on their own and then talking through it with myself almost just as like a mirror or a sounding board, just someone there to talk things through and see how they responded and maybe digging into the why behind that and then actually using their responses to generate goals. And of course, for me, it's typically on the financial side, but what I've discovered is that a lot of goals end up translating into personal finances as well. So that's typically what comes out of that. And one of the questions that I love to ask in this exercise is what is one experience that you've had in the last 12 to 24 months and how could you repeat that this year? So kind of digging deep on what their favorite memory is and how they could recreate it. Because sometimes I find they say, oh, going on that weekend trip to Chicago with my sister was such a formative memory. And it's something I think about a lot.

So.

So then we might take that and say, okay, let's see how we could potentially work this into your budget and into your financial goals.

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I love that. And this is really interesting too, because I like the way that you asked the question and it really speaks to how as negotiators, we understand that the quality of the response is going to be contingent upon the quality of the question. We get that, but we don't often take that same time to wordsmith our questions when we're negotiating internally. And I think the question that you asked was brilliantly articulated because you didn't say what was your favorite part of last year? Okay, I don't think we really. Our minds don't seem to communicate in that type of way. But when we think of ourselves, we can think of ourselves in the past. Present and future. Right. And it's our remembering self that really evaluates the quality of our. Of our life in retrospect. And so thinking about it in terms of experiences, what's the memory that you want to recreate? I think that's a brilliant way to get to that answer because if you would have phrased it differently, it probably wouldn't have gotten that much clarity.

Yeah, absolutely. And I like to mix those kinds of questions with also just perspective changing questions. So kind of stepping outside of the box and asking things like, what would you do for work if you didn't actually need the money? That's one that I find can be really helpful because my clients have found things from doing that exercise where they could maybe make a couple of tweaks in their current career or their current role and negotiate that with their manager, with their company to show, hey, this is something that not only is it something that I really want to do and transition into, but it could be profitable for the company. I've had things like that come out of these prompts, which has been really, really interesting to see.

I love this. And Brooke, you tell me what you think about this. It sounds like with your prompts, essentially what you're helping them to do is you're essentially serving as their internal voice in a way. So you're helping to walk them through that internal negotiation that they probably should do on their own. But since they're not aware of how to do it and most of us aren't, we didn't go to internal negotiation class in high school.

Right.

So there's no reason for us to know you're essentially serving as that internal voice and helping them through that internal negotiation.

Yeah, absolutely. Simply listening and asking questions is so important, and it can have a fundamental shift in somebody's understanding and then behavior.

Yeah. And what I found sometimes too, again, recognizing that the majority of people don't go through this internal type of negotiation, part of, especially the early stages of some of my difficult conversations, it's not only about empathizing and understanding them. It's also helping them to understand themselves by asking some of the questions that they haven't asked themselves, and they're thinking through it in front of me in real time. And I think it's speaks to the value of creating a relationship that has a lot of trust where people feel comfortable being vulnerable. Because if you don't have that and you're asking these deep questions that cause them to stop and think and dig deeply within themselves, they might not feel safe enough. To share?

Yes, absolutely. And we hear this a lot, but it's sort of that saying, like your most important relationship is with yourself. And, and I love how that ties back to the negotiation piece of needing to have that understanding in order to make the right plan and have the right conversations.

Definitely. And one of the concepts that I know you talk about a lot, especially from the perspective of personal finance, which I think is fascinating, is fostering empathy for yourself. So what does that mean and what does it look like?

Yeah, absolutely. So similar to. In any kind of negotiation or difficult conversation, it can be tempting to rush through the emotional piece of, for example in finances, of like, here's where I am and a lot of times when my clients come to me, they're unhappy with where they are. So one of the most common things I hear when my clients come to me is that I feel behind where I should be on my finances or on the amount of wealth that I've accumulated compared to my peers, or I feel like I should be further along than I am. That's something I hear all of the time. And then another common one is I feel overwhelmed by my debt and my financial situation. And they have a lot of guilt and shame around their finances. And this is particularly where empathy comes in because it's gaining that perspective and understanding of, here's where I am and here's how I got here and now it's time to move forward and kind of accept the path I took and these emotions that are coming up and really work through them. I find that writing or just speaking to someone about, hey, here's what I learned from my parents or guardians or other people when I was growing up about money. And this is how it influenced my decisions that I made in my life. Sometimes people follow the same path as their parents, or sometimes they go the opposite direction. So digging into that can be not only really illuminating, but it can help them kind of understand why they have these emotions. And then they can use empathy to almost forgive themselves for, hey, here's the decisions I made and here's how I'm feeling. And that's very valid. And now I'm ready to form a path forward.

Yeah, I really like that. And I want to focus on two words that you said in that last pass there. You said, accepting how you feel and then forgiving yourself. And I really want to pay close attention to this, especially when we think about the introspective process, because we need to treat ourself with compassion and respect during this process. Self directed compassion is something that is in short supply, I think. And so when you think about accepting how you're feeling and where you currently are, I think a lot of people hear the word acceptance and they think about passivity, they think about giving up, they think about apathy. And so I know that is not what you're talking about. So can you go a bit deeper on what you mean when you say accepting?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's not so much like a switch that we pull where we go from being deep in these emotions and then they're gone. Right. It's something that can linger for a while. Right. That's completely normal. And these emotions probably will come up again one year, five years, maybe even ten years from now. So something that I think is important, it's kind of the opposite of passivity, as you mentioned, which kind of implies doing nothing. Right. And kind of sitting with these things. What I like to do is go the opposite direction and start formulating a plan. Right. So for example, taking somebody's life vision that came out of these journal prompts or whatever self reflection that you like to do, taking that and developing some goals, even if you start small with one small short term goal that you want to accomplish in the next couple of years or one year and setting a plan in place, because I do find that my clients, once they have a path forward, it's a lot easier to move through those emotions and get to that level of acceptance.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I like that you are funneling that emotion into action. That's really, really smart. And especially writing it down too, because numerous psychological studies demonstrate that just simply writing down your emotional state, journaling those type of things, it helps you move beyond those emotions and process them in a really healthy way. Helps to get rid of rumination as well. It's just more efficient organizationally when it comes to your thoughts. So I love this process. And then when you talked about forgiveness and I think we touched on this, but I want to give you an opportunity to highlight that. When we talk about self compassion and then self forgiveness, what does that really look like?

Yeah, absolutely. We all have mistakes that we've made. Whether it's on the finance side, I'm sure all of us can point to a financial mistake that we've made, whether it was an investment or maybe not investing. For example, at my first job, I worked there for two, maybe three years before I started investing in the 401 plan. Right. So that was, that was one smaller, smaller scale example of a mistake that I had. But we all have these things where it's like, we need to understand here's a mistake I made, and then learn from it. But you can't learn from it until you've identified it.

Right.

So having that sort of, hey, here's, here's what I did, here's a mistake I made. And then moving forward, I think can be just really key when it comes to just putting a plan together and making sure that those kinds of things don't happen again.

Exactly. And again, now we extrapolate from the internal negotiation to the external negotiation. I know that when I've taken the time to process things and go through some introspection and think through things so I can become more okay with the situation and put myself in a better emotional state, I know that makes me less vulnerable to emotional mistakes that I could make in the upcoming conversation, because now I'm not processing these emotions for the first time in a high stakes conversation in front of somebody else. I've actually taken the time to think through it myself, and it actually makes me stronger. And it hurts in the moment sometimes going through that introspective process. But at the end, if you do it the right way, you should end up stronger.

Yeah, absolutely. Something too, that I like to point out as well is that a lot of times my job and the processes that I help people with involve helping people sort of limit the amount of negotiating that they have to do with themselves on a daily, weekly basis simply by following some basic financial wellness practices. And when we're able to implement some solid habits and fall into a system, it can get rid of a lot of those emotions that are a little less productive, that can be kind of negative when it comes to building discipline, which is really key to understanding yourself and getting better at having those conversations, but most importantly, building the habits. So a great comparison to getting organized with your finances that we use a lot is getting in shape. And those who end up having great physical fitness tend to make working out and eating healthy part of their routine. And the more they enmesh health into their day to day, the more effective it is. And the same goes for your personal finances. So with my clients and myself, I usually have them block out even just 20 minutes on their calendar, recurring once a week and then using that time to work on their action items or go through a flow of reviewing their budget. Depending on what you're working on, you can set that up to cover the things that you need to cover to improve your financial health. So that's kind of a method for I guess you could say eliminating part of the negotiation that you have to do with yourself. That's a little bit less on the productive side.

Yeah, I love that, too, because essentially, that comes down to habits and efficiency. Because we turn this into a habit so it becomes stronger. We're actually making sure that we're doing this consistently. And then the more you do it and if you follow a process, then you can do it more efficiently. You're not reinventing the wheel every time. You don't have to sit down and find yourself in a deep meditation for a long period of time in order to get to where you want to go. I think this is really, really great. And I know a lot of listeners are listening to this, and they're saying, okay, I like this Brooke lady. I like what she has to say, and I need to get my finances in order. So what would you say to those people as we wrap up here? What is the best way for them to get in touch with you and get started?

Yes, absolutely. They can go to my website, moneylifementor.com or feel free to hit me up on Instagram. I amoney life mentor.

Awesome, Brooke. Thank you so much for joining us, my friend. Really appreciate it.

Thanks very much for having me.

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