A conversation with Barbara Huson, a leading authority on women, wealth, and power. In this podcast, Barbara shares her personal journey and valuable insights about financial empowerment for women.
Bestselling author and financial empowerment expert Barbara Huson shares her powerful journey—from growing up in wealth but financially uninformed, to surviving a devastating marriage with a compulsive gambler, and ultimately transforming into a leading voice in women’s wealth.
Barbara reveals why smart women struggle with financial stability—and why it has nothing to do with money itself. Instead, she believes it’s about power, confidence, and breaking free from limiting beliefs. She shares how rewiring your mindset, combining passion with financial savvy, and embracing community can unlock true wealth—both financially and personally.
✔ Rewire Your Money Mindset – Learn how to recognize and shift negative financial beliefs.
✔ Own Your Financial Power – Understand why fear of power keeps women from earning what they deserve.
✔ Passion + Financial Freedom = Unstoppable Women – Align purpose with smart money habits.
✔ The Wealth Connection – How building a support network helps women thrive financially.
Barbara Huson, author of Overcoming Underearning and Rewire for Wealth, has helped millions of women gain financial confidence. Her mission? To help women stop playing small and start building lasting wealth.
🎧 Listen Now and step into your financial power!
Disclaimer: The information shared on this podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice. Please seek professional guidance for your specific situation.
Barbara Huson
The reason so many smart women are not financially stable. Or under earning is because it has nothing to do with money per se. It is, I believe, our fear of or ambivalence around power. And my definition of a powerful woman is someone who knows who she is. Who knows what she wants and expresses that in the world.
Narrator
Welcome to making change with your money, a podcast that highlights the stories and strategies of women who experienced a big life transition and overcame challenges as they redefined financial success for themselves. Now, here's your host certified financial planner, Laura Rotter.
Laura Rotter
I am so excited to have as my guest today, Barbara Huson, formerly known as Barbara Stanny.
She's the leading authority on women, wealth, and power, a best selling author, financial therapist, wealth coach, and founder of the Wealth Connection. Barbara's mission is to help women build their wealth and assert their power as a woman. There's a diverse resume, businesswoman, journalist, teacher, financial therapist.
There's a master's degree in counseling psychology, a certificate in trauma treatment. She's the author of seven books, and of course, she has vast personal experience with money. Barbara has guided millions to live up to their financial and personal potential. So, Barbara, welcome to the Making Change With Your Money podcast.
Barbara Huson
Oh, thanks, Laura. Thanks for having me.
Laura Rotter
I'm going to start with the question I always start with, and then we'll see how our conversation goes. And that question is, what was money like in your family growing up?
Barbara Huson
Money to me growing up is like water to a fish. It was always there. I never even thought about it and even as I got older, I didn't understand money.
I just wanted to spend it. And the only advice my father ever gave me about money was don't worry. We was a, we were a wealthy family and he didn't think girls should make or manage money. So, under that was the unspoken assumption. They'll always be a man to take care of you, which I thought was great. I love that advice.
He didn't understand money and there was always a man. There was my father, and then I married a man who was a lawyer, but he beca went to work for my father's company, which was h and r Block. And so he became a financial advisor and then he became a stockbroker. So I thought it was perfect, but what I realized.
Very early in my marriage is that he was a compulsive gambler and over the course of our 15 year marriage. I find out every year that he was losing many times a year that he was losing my money, my inheritance. And here's the insane part, Laura, I continue to let him manage the money. I didn't understand it.
I, I found it very terrifying, very intimidating. I just signed whatever he told me to sign and it wasn't until. 1 day, we got a divorce and after 15 years, and I decided money's not my deal. I just thought I do not want to deal with money. Well, I had this theory if you don't deal with your money. Your money will deal with you.
And in the next year, I got tax bills for way over a million, almost 2 million for back taxes. He didn't pay for illegal deals. He got us in and my signature was on everything. I did not have anywhere close to a million dollars, not even anywhere close. My ex had left the country and my father wouldn't lend me the money.
And that's when I knew. I had to get smart. So I did what they tell you to do. You know, I, I read the books. I went to the classes. I couldn't understand a thing. My eyes would glaze over. My brain would fog up. I just felt terminally stupid, but I had three daughters. One was just a baby. They were young. I was not going to raise those girls on the street.
I knew I had to do something. I knew it. I really believed that when you have a commitment. Down to your toes commitment, the world will revolve to help you meet your goal and I was committed. I got hired. I was at the time I was writing or I was a journalist writing for the San Francisco Business Times and I got hired for a freelance project to interview women who were smart with money.
I mean, I could never have made that happen. Those interviews changed my life. I not only got smart about money, but I wrote my 1st book. Prince Charming isn't coming how women get smart about money. And suddenly I had this whole new career and I was traveling all over the country. Teaching women how to get smart about money and here we are 7 years with 7 books later.
And I'm talking to you as an expert, you know, it's like you never know where life's going to take you.
Laura Rotter
That is so true. And I have to say, Barbie, you just condensed. What most, what must have been the most trying, difficult years of your life into this quick, like, oh, and then I learned and then I can't even imagine, especially approaching your father and him telling you, you've got to figure this out on your own with three young daughters,
Barbara Huson
But, you know, I have, I have thanked him for that.
I have thanked him for not lending me the money. I have thanked my husband for. Being a gambler, because if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today. And I love what I do. I just feel like this was, it was all divinely planned.
Barbara Huson
I'm certainly a believer in that, and it's also lovely to look back in our lives and see the plan when we're going through it.
Barbara Huson
Not quite as lovely. I would never want to go through that again. Never.
And I can say. I'm glad it happened.
Laura Rotter
I'm glad you're able to say that. So I was never aware. I know that you ended up doing the journalistic work on high earning women. I wasn't aware that that was assigned to you and that you didn't choose to do that on your own.
That's correct.
Barbara Huson
It wasn't the high earning women that I did on my own. Oh, okay. It was my first book just to interview women who were smart with money. They weren't necessarily earners. They weren't necessarily working. Many of them were. But it was those who knew how to manage their money and then, because it was very interesting, I interviewed those women who were smart with money.
When I interviewed high earning women for my next book, which was Secrets of Six Figure Women because I wanted to, I was a chronic under earner, chronic under earner all my life. They weren't necessarily good with money. They were making a lot of money. But my biggest surprise was how few of them were wealthy, how few of them, because they were too busy making money that they had no interest or time or skills or knowledge to manage it.
So that's, that's one of the things that I really got from these interviews. You know, I only write books. About what I want to learn. I'm not an expert when I write them because I want to learn it. Yes, they always say, right. You have to teach when you want to learn something. That's right. And that's why I keep I will keep doing this.
I've been doing this for 42 years and I will keep doing it. Until I get it. So I haven't gotten it yet.
Laura Rotter
So Barbara, what did you learn? You just mentioned two separate sort of journalistic interviews that you did specifically with women around money. What have you learned that's unique to women when it comes to managing and understanding their financial resources relative to men?
Barbara Huson
So honestly, I don't know if what I found is unique to women because I don't work with men. I don't interview men. I just have married a man. That's not the gambler. I divorced him and I have another. I have a good husband. The thing I've learned that is okay, the thing that I've learned that is unique to women for a man, no matter how much money a man has, he could always have always have more and it's kind of like, but for women.
Once a woman is financially stable, in other words, she has enough to put food on the table, roof over their heads, she's no longer motivated by money. Study after study has shown this. What motivates women is not money. It's our desire to help others and so what happens is sometimes women get lost in their desire to help others that they forget about managing money.
But when you can put those 2 together, we are a force to be reckoned with.
Laura Rotter
I, I certainly as a woman resonate in. What you're saying, I look back at some of the choices I made in at a previous career working about 30 years as an institutional investor on Wall Street. And I specifically made choices away from money to be closer to my family to have less of a commute to have, you know, shorter work hours.
And it's interesting when I look back on that and some of the. Crossroads where I may question the decisions I made, but I would agree with you that at least from my point of view, money was not my primary motivator, beyond a certain number, beyond a certain, I am curious, you've talked about women's discomfort with the concept of power and how that sometimes gets in the way of our earnings.
Barbara Huson
Sometimes I think the number one, the reason so many smart women are not financially stable or under earning is because it has nothing to do with money per se. It is, I believe, our fear of or ambivalence around power and my definition of a powerful woman is someone who knows who she is, who knows what she wants and expresses that in the world.
I'm apologetically. So, in other words, because take my situation in my 1st marriage, I had the money. I had the inheritance. My husband had the power because I gave it to him because I let him make all the decisions. I was too scared to rock the boat. I was too didn't feel confident enough. So, in other words, so power is speaking up asking for what we want instead of watering ourselves down.
So we don't make waves.
Laura Rotter
And so, Barbara, how do we start to change the stories in our head? The stories that say, I'm I'm a woman. And, and I don't even think it's that obvious to us, right? We grow up with our money stories. You grew up in a family where your father, you know, ran a successful business. I'm sure there were stories that you heard of the role you're supposed to play relative to the role your father played and your, and watching how your parents interacted.
And so you of course told us about a startling event that helped you change. But if, if. Women listening to this are not in such a life or death situation. How do we start to rewire and change those stories?
Barbara Huson
Even if you're in a life or death situation, even if nothing's happening, it doesn't matter. It's all the way we've been conditioned.
It's like, so often we have inherited our financial behavior from our parents from our parents, their own behavior, or the messages we got from them, or the message we got from society, or the church, or our teachers. It's changing and now that's I wrote my whole last book about that. My, my, my 7th book is called rewire for wealth and it's all about reprogramming your brain reprogramming the conditioning that's been embedded in you that you cannot help but engage in these behaviors that have been so, so conditioned.
So, the place, where, where should we start talking about that? Should I talk about how you rewire your brain?
Laura Rotter
Please, and I have a quick question because you did say that you write what you need to learn. So, what was coming up for you that had you write that seventh book?
Barbara Huson
So, what happened, coming up for me is when I was working with clients, I kept Noticing how they get stuck in resistance and they get stuck and so I have a therapy background and I knew someone how to get them past that, but there was certain women.
I couldn't get them past it. And I didn't know what to do, and I started getting frustrated and I started losing. This was around 2016. I guess this is almost 10 years ago. I started losing interest in my work. I started. It was just the most bizarre thing. I remember saying to my husband, I just dread going to work and it was bizarre because I love what I do.
And so I decided something's going on here. I felt like something is missing from my work. Maybe I'm not supposed to be working anymore. I'm not a spring chicken. Maybe I was not supposed to be doing this. So I decided to just surrender and I just kind of took a lot of things off my plate and I just. Set the spirit, show me where to go, show me what to do because something's not working.
And one day I was at my computer and I was just in my inbox looking at my email and there's this article on neuroscience and I don't know why I read it and I swear to God, I swear, I believe my brain was lit up like a Christmas tree saying, this is it. This is the missing piece. And I got all excited, and so I spent 5 years studying neuroscience, seeing how I could weave it into my work, and finally, after I think about 5 or 6 years, I came out, I wrote my book, Rewire for Wealth, I, I've been practicing, I saw how when you include neuroscience, when you include that training the mind to reshape the brain, because the brain is our organ in our head that controls all our behavior.
Like, inhaling, exhaling, spending, saving, it is all controlled by the neural pathways in our brain. But our mind, which is not a physical organ, it's a non physical entity, the source of our thoughts and feelings. Our brain is what sculpts, what shapes those neural pathways. So if, if you're working on changing the behavior, that's tough.
That is hard because your brain doesn't want to change. But if you work on changing your thoughts and feelings, that starts. Changing those neural pathways and then your behavior changes automatically change what you think you will change what you behave. So, I just saw that, and that got women through their, my clients through their resistance so much quicker.
It shortened the learning curve. It was just phenomenal. So that's how I got into it.
Laura Rotter
Thank you. So now, of course, I'm curious. Can you share some of the ways. That we can start to reach.
Barbara Huson
Yes, the key is to be aware of the thoughts that are causing the maladaptive or unhealthy or unwanted behavior. And that's the thought you want to change.
So, there are, I narrowed it down to 3 steps. There are 3 steps to rewiring your brain and they are so easy. They are so simple, but in the beginning, like, the 1st, couple of weeks, It's really hard. It's like going against gravity. It really is. So you have to be very vigilant, but if you're willing to be vigilant, oh, my God, it's just a total game changers.
So, let me tell you the 3 steps and then I can walk you through them. If you want more. The 1st step is what the 3 steps are recognized. reframe and respond differently. So first recognize. So recognize a thought you're having that, and you, you can recognize the thought because when you have a thought that is causing this, the behavior you don't want, it doesn't feel good.
So when you're not feeling good, or when there's something you want, or you're feeling frustrated, notice what you're thinking. So you capture that thought. You recognize it. You don't criticize it. You don't judge it. You recognize it with curiosity. Isn't that interesting? I'm having a thought, there's never enough, or I'm having a thought that I'm not enough.
So you just recognize it. And the key here is when you say, recognize with curiosity, I'm having a thought about, it separates you from your thought. You are not your thought. Your thought is just words or conditioned beliefs that have been thoughts that have been conditioned in you. I'm not saying that very well, but that have been repeated over and over and over again.
And every time you repeat it, These little neurons talk to each other. Oh, she doesn't feel like enough. Oh, she doesn't have enough. And they create this neural pathway that then automatically controls your behavior to make sure you act in a way that there's never enough. So that's all. You just notice.
You just recognize. That that's a simple step. Second step is you reframe that thought you reframe it to what you'd rather think. And oh, but that's fake. Yeah, it's fake. Well, guess what? When you first heard there's never enough and your parents were always saying there's never enough. You didn't know if that was true or not.
It just. Registered and you just kept hearing it. So it kept digging. Every time you thought that thought, it kept digging deeper. So you reframe it. So instead of there's never enough to, oh, there's plenty or I'm not enough. Oh, I am more than enough. I'm more than capable. The point is, it's it's those words.
If you repeat them over and over the unhealthy thought. If you just don't pay attention to it, we'll start weakening those neural pathways and it will strengthen the part, the neural pathway that says more than enough. So, you 1st. Recognize the unhealthy thought, then you reframe it with a healthier thought and you reframe it like an affirmation.
My, my affirmation is because I always think that I don't have what it takes. That's my I don't have what it takes. I can't do this. So my affirmation, I keep it by my desk.
Laura Rotter
I love that. It's so important to write it out and to see it.
Barbara Huson
So I have this, I can handle this. So whenever I get scared, I can't handle I go can't handle this.
I can't handle this. So, when you recognize it, you reframe it. And then the 3rd, this is the key. You respond as if that reframe were true. You respond as if that reframe were true. Now, it won't feel comfortable because your brain only wants to do what it's used to doing. Doing something that you're scared to do is not going to feel comfortable.
So, you just keep saying, I just had to, I just have to keep saying, I can handle this. I can handle this. And then I do what doesn't feel comfortable. Then I do what feels scary. I just. Do it and get lots of support for it and everything.
Laura Rotter
What I'm hearing you talk about, Barbara, is a form of mindfulness work.
Barbara Huson
It is mind training. It's mind training. It is not just mindfulness, it is mind training work. I guess
Laura Rotter
I, I, I've been a meditator probably for the last, 20 years or so. And so I think the first step, especially of recognizing, because as you said, these are learned behaviors, perhaps from the time we're five.
And so to, by the time we're one, we pop out of the womb and we observe everything. And so to get that, that little gap between The thought and creating the distance. The witness to say, aha, there's that thought that takes place 100 times a day, if not more, because so many of our thoughts. I forgot what the statistic is, but so many of our thoughts are
Barbara Huson
70, 000 thoughts.
We think we think 97. we think 90, 000 thoughts. I think University of Pennsylvania, 90 thoughts a day, 90, 000 thoughts a day.
Laura Rotter
70 percent of those are negative and, and recurring and recurring the same thoughts over and over. And, and those thoughts, as you so distinctly said, are what create our reality, whether or not it's actually true, right?
You and I, I'm sure have worked with women who have more money than we can imagine in the bank and won't, won't spend money. Because their thought tells them there's never going to be enough as you're saying or the opposite people who spend money and you look and you say, are you expecting an inheritance?
Do you buy lottery tickets? Like, what are you doing? And so our thoughts really determine how we behave in the world. So, as a mindfulness practitioner again, I love that idea. Of being aware. I, I guess I wanna sh but this…
Barbara Huson
I think this takes it one step further. You, you're, I like the mindfulness, but it's retraining the mind, so there's different thoughts to observe.
Laura Rotter
Yes.
And I guess I, I do wanna share when you then say, reframe and respond differently. I was in a, a group meeting yesterday with a woman who runs a quantum manifesting group who said. Imagine yourself, like be an actor, imagine yourself, the person who feels I can do it and has tremendous confidence to speak to your particular affirmation and then be that person like, what are you wearing?
How do you walk? You know, like, really act it out.
Barbara Huson
Yeah, so good. But here's the thing. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Because the fascinating thing that neuroscience has found is the brain can't tell the difference between what's real and what's imagined. You imagine something often enough, the brain will think it's real.
So you picturing yourself as that person you want to be and then you responding as if you are will absolutely expedite that process. Of changing those neural pathways, so that that was brilliant. She was absolutely right. And not that easy to do. It's challenging. It's challenging. It takes commitment.
Like, if you are committed to something, you know, it's like that, that that story of the guy who went to Buddha and he said, oh. Teach me how to meditate. Teach me how to be a meditator. I think it was something like that. And so it takes him to the sea and pushes him under the water and won't let him up and, and, and the guy finally, finally let's him up.
He said, why did you do that? Why did you do that? And I guess the guy went to him and he was just having trouble meditating. He said, when you want to meditate, yeah. As much as you wanted that air, you will learn to meditate. So you have to be that committed to wanting change so bad that you are willing to do that.
Laura Rotter
Oh, so true, right? You have to be, you know, unfortunately, in enough pain from the, from the story of the life you've created for yourself that you're really ready to change. Barbara, you know that you say. Wealth doesn't come from what you earn. So how do you define wealth and what do you mean by that?
Barbara Huson
To me, and you mentioned this earlier, wealth is not an amount.
I know women who have, and you do too, who have millions and millions and millions of dollars and they feel financially insecure. You, you, you said it. I know women who have much less and they feel bountiful. The root word for wealth comes from the Latin word wheel, which means peace of mind. And that's the whole purpose to me in creating well, to have peace of mind.
So wealth is not an amount. My definition of wealth is when you have more than you need and you know it. When you have more than you need to get your needs met and you know it because all these people I've met who have more than they need but they don't know it or they're insecure about it. That's not wealth.
That's scarcity. Even if they have so much it's still a poverty mentality. So wealth is when you have more than enough and you know it and you can enjoy it.
Laura Rotter
I'm putting my hand in my heart. It's so aspirational, especially in our culture, which really gives us the message that, you know, if you're not driving the BMW, if you don't have the large home, you're not going to be happy.
And it's, it's really hard to take in emotionally that happiness is an inside job and changing your outside circumstances. Are not going to change how you feel inside that, as you said earlier, you have to recognize the voices and the messages that are inside that are contributing.
Barbara Huson
I think of wealth is not just a practical process to me. It's a healing practice to me. It's a, it's a right of passage into our power to me. It's a spiritual practice. It was for me, I had to find my center. I define my core. I define my values. I had to find my strength. I had to find my power. I had to find my relationship with the higher power. And that's what really freed me.
So, I see it. I see wealth building as a 4 pronged process. It is a combination of the outer work of wealth. Which is the practical, the inner work of wealth, which is the psychological, the deeper work of wealth, the higher work of wealth, which is the spiritual and what I call the deeper work of wealth, which is the mind brain connection and you work on all those fronts and you not only grow financially, but you grow personally.
Laura Rotter
I love that. Like, I melt when you say that and, and. As you know, as a woman, I work with people around their money. I, when I started my practice, I really imagined it as if you will, being a yoga teacher for people's money, because I saw what a difference the mindfulness work did in my life and how it helped me make.
Decisions that I really helped affirm the life force within me as opposed to contract the life force within me and as someone who works with people I find it, I find it difficult to get beyond the outer work of wealth because people are so consumed with am I invested correctly and am I saving enough and, and so I'd, I'd love your some of your insight.
Um, I know you did. Just walk through some of the steps, but how you help transition people who are just so rigid and tight around the outer work to do the, frankly, from my point of view, and clearly from yours, the more important work once the basics are in place,
or you do the deeper spiritual work.
Barbara Huson
To get the basics in place to, to, to counteract the conditioning and the habitual behaviors that you're so used to, that are so familiar, that are so predictable.
Laura Rotter
I would you say when people come to you, they're ready to do that work.
Barbara Huson
Guess that's not going to pay me unless they're ready. They're always in resistance. They're always in resistance. It just it comes with the territory. Resistance is normal. I say, if someone isn't feeling resistance, and then there's there's something they're not really going for it.
But resistance to me is simply means there's an internal conflict, a part of you wants to and a part of you doesn't. It's like, it's like, there's 2 butterflies. I have this in 1 of my books. There's a story about 2 butterflies and they're walking along 2 caterpillars. Sorry. There's 2 caterpillars and they're walking along and they see a butterfly flying overhead.
And 1 caterpillar says the other, you're never going to get me up in 1 of those things. You know, it's like, he's meant to fly, but he's scared to fly. And that's how we are. We're meant to fly, but we're scared to fly. And so. It's just by addressing those fears, getting to those fears, getting to that early conditioning, having that part of the conversation.
Laura Rotter
You talk about that there are three levels of financial development, and what are those?
Barbara Huson
Three levels of financial development are survival, stability, and affluence. Survival is not enough. Stability is just enough and affluence is more than enough. And I, I learned this through my own experience because I had always been an under earner.
Always for 50 some years. I went from being an under earner from survival after my divorce when I had no money and I was really floundering. I went survival to stability. And then I wanted to go to fluids to make more money, and I couldn't get there, but I got from survival to stability. Why couldn't and I realize it's a whole different process.
And I realized this when I wrote my book. I was going to write a book on women who make millions. And I was all excited because that's what I wanted to do. I was making six figures after interviewing women who made six figures. I started making six figures, but I couldn't get past six figures. I wanted seven.
So I thought, Oh, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to interview women who make millions. Well, I did. And that was going to be my next book. So I interviewed women, no trouble finding them. I worked and I worked and I worked. And 3 years later, I was probably had the worst year 2009. Probably the worst year I ever had was not was totally kind of flip back to under earning.
I had no book. I was, I was, I was burnt out. I didn't know what was going on. Coach that said to me, Barbara, you're too into doing you need more time for just being I thought, oh, she's right. And so I went. I decided to go on a retreat before day retreat, and I took all my notes. The transcripts for my interviews of these women, because I felt there was something there in those interviews with these women that I missed.
I just felt very strongly, but. I didn't know what it was. So I went on this 4 day retreat, silent retreat. I just calmed myself. I looked at those notes again, those, those transcripts, and I saw what I had missed. It wasn't so much what these women were earning. I would just dazzle by that because that's what I wanted.
It was how they were doing it. They were playing a very different game than men, than the world, than the world teaches you. And that's when I saw when I wrote my book sacred to success, it was all about going from stability to affluence. And what I learned to go from survival to stability, you have to have a profit motive.
You have to love money. You have to want money. Money is a good thing. It's great. Once you get a profit motive and you can't have a profit, a profit motive and a comfort motive. They just can't coexist. So you have to do what you fear. So once you have a profit motive to get to the affluence, as I learned from the women I interviewed, you still want to make money.
You still want to make money, but you have to give up profit as your primary goal. Your primary goal is greatness. And I define greatness Paraphrasing, paraphrasing a quote by Buechner, Fred Buechner, greatness is that place where your deep gladness, doing what you love doing, meets the world's deep hunger.
And that is how you go to, how women, especially, go to being affluent.
Laura Rotter
I love that and, and you're, you've certainly been modeling that, I believe, in your life. And I, again, speaking for myself as someone who's, you know, older, that when I started this financial planning business, I do think I was very motivated by ego.
You know, I wanted to prove to myself after a previous career that I could build a profitable, high earning business and. It has shifted over the last decade or so to, I can't be motivated by that anymore. It doesn't do it for me. It really is mission. It's mission that gets me up. It's mission that gets me through my to do lists.
Barbara Huson
It's purpose driven, not profit driven. You want to make a profit. It's an intended goal, but it's really purpose driven and value driven. And that's what I see. It motivates me and motivates most women.
Laura Rotter
So true. Why would you say most women are under earners?
Barbara Huson
Uh, I think there's probably a lot of reasons, but I've narrowed it down.
I think they all can be in three categories. I think we women under value ourselves. Terribly, we give away our skills, our knowledge, our experience for free or bargain prices because we don't believe we're worth more. It's just a little voice in our head says, who do you think you are? No, one's going to pay you that.
And it's from this place of devaluing ourselves that the 2nd reason. Is we tend to be notoriously codependent. We put everybody else's needs before our own and not just our friends and family, but our coworkers perfect strangers, but ask us to put ourselves 1st, which is really critical in the high earning game, ask us to put ourselves 1st and we feel.
Guilty. We don't feel good, which brings me to the third reason. And this is really the main reason. This is the number one reason so many women or anybody who is under earners. We don't want to be uncomfortable. We don't want to anytime you deviate from the norm. Anytime you do what you're not used to doing, your brain's going to shot.
Don't do that. Don't do that. It's dangerous. And so we will stop ourselves. So the number one requirement for going to the next level in anything, whether it's making more money or losing more weight is the willingness to be uncomfortable because success in anything always lies just outside our comfort zone.
That's so true. I mean, change is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable. So if you're not making the money you want, if you're not reaching the level of success you want, this is what I had. I have a, I have a sign. That says , do what? Do what you're, do what you fear. That's it's right here. Do what you fear.
That's how you succeed. So I started every time I got scared and I get, I scare myself a lot. I get scared. I kind of old panic and then I go, wait a minute, this means I'm going to the next level. So it's like you don't just do what you fear, you look for things that you're scared of. 'cause that's the signpost to your success.
Laura Rotter
It's great. And as a corollary to that, I've shared this a number of times, there was a period of time where I taught yoga in when I was in between careers, I did a yoga teacher training, and I was asked to teach yoga at a silent meditation retreat. And, you know, so I had a captive audience of like, you know, 50 plus, you People and had my little Madonna Mike and so I'm, I'm sitting during the meditation retreat anticipating that I'm going to be getting up and teaching in front of this large group and my heart is.
beating and my hands, you know, my palms are getting a little sweaty and I'm feeling like, Oh, I don't want to do this. And then I reframed and I said, you're excited. The adrenaline is going, you're going to get up in front of a group of people and teach and share your wisdom. And it is the same physical response.
But I reframed it from anxiety, anxious, I don't want to do this, to excitement and anticipation. And so I try to remind myself of that. You know, frankly, I said, interviewing Barbara. I've been reading her for years. And, you know, I'm a little nervous and I'm like, you're going to be speaking to Barbara.
You're excited. So, you know, we hold both sides of us.
Barbara Huson
That's beautiful. That is beautiful. That is an example of rewiring your brain. That is this example of how to change. That is so good. Thank you. It's reframing.
Laura Rotter
That is really good. Thank you so much. I do also know as a woman, it's hard for us. If you're going to go out there and build a business and network, we need to, how do you say it?
I always get the metaphors wrong, like toot your own horn. And I think that's also something that's difficult for women to do where you don't want to call attention to ourselves. We don't want to be come across as full of ourselves. And it certainly can can get in our way. As we move forward.
Barbara Huson
It definitely gets in our way.
We got to, we got to cut that out. We really got to cut that out. We have to I mean, I, I really love women who model self assurance. It's so different than arrogance. Arrogance is not self assurance. Arrogant is insecurity with a mask. But, yes, I, I agree with everything you just said, Laura.
Laura Rotter
So I'd like to end my conversations with asking how is your definition of success shifted?
And yet I know that the first book I read of yours was the Sacred Success, A Course in Financial Miracles. So I'm going to shift it slightly to ask what's your definition of sacred success?
My definition of sacred success. Is pursuing your soul's purpose. For your own bliss and the benefit of others will be being richly rewarded.
So, my definition of success has not changed once I kind of. Found my center once I kind of work through my money stuff. I, it's always about doing what I believe
Barbara Huson
What I believe. Oh, my phone's just ringing. Sorry what I believe. I meant to do. Doing that, but also making a difference in the lives of others.
I think my definition has always been impact. What is my impact? It has never been about how much money I can make. I like making money. I really do, but that's not, that's not why I do it. It's all about impact.
Laura Rotter
Thank you. And I, and, and I'm, I'm curious, Barbara, what role, and I'm going to use it as a may an amorphous term means different things to different people, but what role does spirit or faith play both in your life and in how you define success for yourself?
Barbara Huson
It's the heart of my life. It is, it is the centerpiece, it is everything I was flailing financially until I discovered, I discovered a course in miracles. That was what is a book. It's a spiritual text. It's just, it's just a lot of the stuff. The same spiritual text says a lot of the stuff that Buddhism and quantum mechanics and quantum physics says, but yeah, it's to me and people aren't attracted to me unless they're spiritual.
So it's like people don't come to me. I mean, I'm very practical, but I'm also very spiritual. I think the two make a beautiful couple.
Laura Rotter
Thank you for sharing that. So as we come to the end of our conversation, is there anything else you want to make sure you're saying to the women that are listening?
Barbara Huson
Yeah.
So I think, I think the most important thing, I think women who are having trouble with money often tend to feel isolated and they have a. We women in general have a hard time talking about money about 6 years, maybe 7 years ago. I don't know. I, I wanted to create a safe place that women could talk openly, honestly.
Authentically as women about money, because women, we talk about money very differently than men do. And so I created an online community called the wealth connection. And it's been a beautiful, beautiful community of women coming together and we meet every other week for, we meet, we have, I call it the office hour, but we have group coaching where we talk about money where I coach people where everybody supports everybody.
We don't just talk about, we talk about, yeah, the difference between a stock and a bond. We talk about how to. Overcome under earning, but we also talk about the fear and the emotions and power and all those things that are often not mentioned. So, and then we have experts come in and Laura, I would love for you.
I would love for you to be an expert guest and talk about money and talk about. Financial planning. I would love to have you on my, in my group.
Laura Rotter
I would love to be a guest and I will of course include a link to the wealth connection community in the show notes. And I'll share, I've been running a group for an organization called invest for better, where we educate women about money and talk about how we can use our money to align with our values.
make a difference in the world. And I, I, this is the second time I'm leading it. And the first time I had one of the participants said, I have never been in a room with women and talked about money. Like it was such a unique and what a privilege to do it.
Barbara Huson
I know, I know. So that's why I would love for you to come to talk about investing.
I would love to do that. This has been a pleasure as a, as I guess, a woman, Myself, who really attempts to merge spirituality with, with money. I use the word attempts because it's not always easy. So thank you so much for being my guest, Barbara.
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Making Change With Your Money.
Certified Financial Planner, Laura Rotter, specializes in helping people just like you. Organized. Clarify. And invest their money in order to support a life of purpose and meaning go to www. trueabundanceadvisors. com forward slash workbook for a free resource to help you on your journey. Disclaimer, please remember that the information shared by this podcast does not constitute accounting, legal, tax, investment, or financial advice.
It's for information purposes only. You should seek appropriate professional advice for your specific information.