A conversation with Molly Brown, a Mindset Engineer Life Coach. Molly leads people in the process of radical transformation and self discovery in which they shift their experience of life to be how they most love to live it.
Molly Brown is a Mindset Engineer life coach. Molly started her career in the army as an intelligence analyst and moved on to the corporate world as an engineer at a large aerospace company. Fast forward to her work today as a life coach: Molly believes that making any change in one's life follows an engineering design process that starts on a blank sheet of paper. She leads people in this process of radical transformation and self-discovery, in which they shift their experience of life to be how they most love to live it.
Growing up in a religious household where money discussions were off-limits, Molly always felt a burning desire to break free and achieve financial independence. Her determination to earn what she calls "man money" led her to exceptional academic achievements and career milestones, despite the societal and familial limitations she faced.
She talks about the shortcomings of chasing metrics like money and KPIs. She opens up about the disillusionment with these conventional markers and the deeper, intrinsic needs that often go unaddressed, such as security, freedom, and a sense of belonging. Through her intellectual and emotional journey, Molly underscores the importance of understanding the motivations behind our pursuit of success and how these realizations guided her towards a more authentic and fulfilling life.
“It's not the money that's keeping you safe. The money is fantastic and when you feel safe, it's really easy to make money. When you feel safe, it's really easy to grow money. When you feel safe, it's really enjoyable to spend the money going out and doing things that you don't feel like you have to hold it in. Your experiences around everything: money, education, food, other people, travel, the world, it completely changes when you understand inherent safety, when you embody your own safety.” - Molly Brown
Key takeaways:
- Anything measurable, like money, is adjacent to and not actually what we want to have. Molly notes that we actually want security and safety and belonging and freedom, the ability to express ourselves fully. Yet we can't measure any of those things, so we use money, which we can measure, as the substitute metric.
- Be open to your curiosity transforming you. Molly felt drawn to explore consciousness, which, through her own transformational work with a coach, eventually led her to become a life coach. She’s an introvert, and would prefer to be behind a screen, but her passion and curiosity for the work she is doing has led her to be a teacher and speaker.
- When you’re called to make a change, take practical steps. Molly knew that she needed to leave the corporate world and eventually, transition from two incomes to one income. So she sold her house, and bought a multi-family house that generated rental income that covered her housing bills, so she no longer felt beholden to her job. She felt financially safe, because she had taken steps and done the work.
About the guest:
Hi, I’m Molly, the Mindset Engineer life coach. I started my career in the Army as an intelligence analyst and moved on to the corporate world as an engineer at a large aerospace company. I've always had a passion for patterns especially in music and movement, it's what attracted me to physics, chemistry and mechanical engineering in college. So in my career as an engineer I was drawn to data of all sorts, anything I could get my hands on. I was looking for patterns to understand what was going on that we couldn't see or measure directly. After years of working with data with all sorts of teams, technical and non technical, I finally saw that all we were doing with data is drawing the target around the arrow. You've probably heard of confirmation bias but that is just the tip of the iceberg. I dove into this with a fascinated curiosity.
As the company was pushing a data driven decision making initiative, I was coming to realize that data driven decision making is a total myth. We can only ever find in data what we are already looking for, whether we are conscious of what we are looking for or not. And this is not a problem at all! But it is important that we understand what is going on in our thinking as we interact with data (data meaning any and all information about yourself and the world). This became the foundation of my life coaching. The data is helpful, it is a reflection of what we are already believing. If we are looking for the data to give us something different to belief however, we'll never find the evidence we need to change. If however we use the data to inform us of what we are truly believing, that we weren't already aware of, then it is useful. From there, making any change in your life follows an engineering design process that starts on a blank sheet of paper. I lead people in this process of radical transformation and self discovery in which they shift their experience of life to be how they most love to live it.
Website: www.mindset-engineering.com
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Molly Brown
It's not the money that's keeping you safe. The money is fantastic. And when you feel safe, it's really easy to make money. When you feel safe, it's really easy to grow money. When you feel safe, it's really enjoyable to spend the money going out and doing things that you don't feel like you have to Holds it in your experiences around everything, money, education, food, other people, travel the world. It completely changes when you understand inherent safety, when you embody your own safety…
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
So I am so excited to have as my guest today, Molly Brown. Molly is a Mindset Engineer Life Coach. Mollie started her career in the Army as an intelligence analyst and moved on to the corporate world as an engineer at a large aerospace company.
Fast forward to her work today as a life coach, since Molly believes that making any change in one's life follows an engineering design process that starts on a blank sheet of paper. She leads people in this process of radical transformation and self discovery in which they ship their experience of life to be how they most love to live it.
So welcome Molly to the making change with your money podcast.
Molly Brown
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk.
Laura Rotter
I'm going to learn a lot about you and your metamorphosis. I'm going to start with the same question I always start with, which is Molly, what was money like in your family growing up?
Molly Brown
Oh, taboo, right? We didn't talk about it, but even so, even with that, not talking about it, I didn't experience any struggles in my childhood as. An adult, I've had conversations with my mom about, you know, why couldn't I have done dance lessons? Why can't I have done these things? And she said, well, there wasn't money for that.
And I actually had no idea as a child that the things were made off of those decisions. I made it a belief system in my mind that said about, Oh, I wouldn't be good about that. I wouldn't fit in. So I, you know, adapted my own beliefs. Not knowing about money is a decision making. And yet when I was, you know, 17, 18, going to college and deciding what I wanted to do in college, I had a very specific term that I had made up in my mind that I would go to college and I would make man money.
I would earn my own man money. I had just observed that nobody gave, nobody told me these things that women can't be. Doctors or lawyers or astronauts, but I just observed that the women are moms and they either don't work their moms and of course, like the perspective of a child, I'm around moms all the time and then waitresses and teachers.
And that's kind of all I saw from, and I was in a very sheltered religious upbringing also. So I just didn't, I didn't see a lot of other opportunities. And I was like, well. I don't know. I may or may not want to be a mom when I grow up, but I don't want to be a teacher. And I don't want to be a waitress.
And I was painfully, painfully shy. So both of those are like speaking things that were terrifying to me. And I was like, well, I will, instead of trying to marry a man who makes good money, I'll make my own man money. So I went to school for engineering, which just kind of follows the, it just checked the boxes that I needed it to check.
And, and it worked well for my mind. I had a. Very smooth time in school for engineering. It was a good fit for me. And at the same time, another financial decision, I, I looked at college as being like the biggest opportunity cost of going to college is I'm not working during that four years and I'm paying, I was in Boston, so I'm paying to live in Boston.
So if I'm already doing, if I'm already not working and I'm already paying to live in Boston, I might as well get all the degrees at the same time. That I want, I want that this would just be the most efficient leverage of not working and already paying. So I got at the same time, a degree in physics and with an emphasis on minor in chemistry, which was my passion.
So I, I did get to do in college, the thing that I was very passionate about. Just in love with subject matter wise and passion through studying physics and then I got my engineering degree at the same time because it was very important to me to make my own man money.
Laura Rotter
So was that a master's degree you got at the same time or you got your BA in all these things?
Molly Brown
Yeah, they're both bachelor's degrees. And the way I did it, I ended up taking a lot of graduate courses for engineering because they were in the evening, but you can't actually have a master's degree in engineering if you don't have an undergraduate degree in engineering. So the degree that I get, it's a bachelor's degree in it.
But that's how I was able to kind of make the time work was just take the. The graduate level courses without having to get any kind of undergraduate prerequisite for it. And I think the university was like, I don't, if you fail it, you just have to pay for it again. I don't think they didn't have a problem with it.
Laura Rotter
So you started off saying, and it's not unique that you started that way, Molly, which is that you didn't really think about money growing up, but clearly in some way you did. I love the term man money. I have never heard it before. And I may repeat it in the future. It's a great term. And clearly even without perhaps being consciously aware of it, you were making decisions not to be a waitress.
Molly Brown
Yeah, it was definitely top of my mind, even though I couldn't have put my finger on it. Like it was how I was making decisions early on in life without even being aware that I was making decisions based off of lack and fear of. Being tied to somebody else's money. I think it wasn't at the time. It wasn't really not having money because I had only seen a world in which there was money, but I had seen that people are connected to other people's money and that is limiting for their choices in life.
And so I was like, well, if I'm connected directly to my own money, that will be more freedom for me. And that was definitely how I was making decisions really early.
Laura Rotter
I also like how you mentioned Stories and stories. We tell ourselves that did come up in your description of what it felt like to be in your family home and recognizing now that there was sort of a narrative that you were building about your life and their life and how that might have affected your decision making.
I would assume you were also skilled in math and logic, and that's why you were drawn to math. Becoming an engineer.
Molly Brown
Yeah, skilled and exposed to. My dad has a degree in physics. Both my grandparents are engineers. So I was, I was exposed to it. I think largely in people explaining things and trying to get my older brother involved in engineering and science and math, but I was like collaterally around it.
And it definitely resonated with me more than him.
Laura Rotter
So please take us on your journey. So you, you started your career in the army. I mean, that's an interesting place to start one's career.
Molly Brown
Yeah, so other things that, that man money concept, which really doesn't line up with the army, that is not the shortest track to making man money.
But another just really impactful thing of my youth was 9 11 and just like this giant swell of patriotism. And so I really just had it. It was so impactful in my youth that I really just wanted, I really wanted to serve. And I knew I, it was in my mind after high school and my parents were like, just go to college, like, just get to college and see how you feel later.
And so I did that. And it took me 5 years in college. I did a co op program. And so 5 years later, I still felt that way. And I, you know, other beliefs and observations that I had from the world around me is that, It's not good if you regret things. It's not, you know, happy adults don't regret things from their youth.
So if it really is still called in me to do, like, now's the time to do it. You don't go have a family of kids and then leave them and join the army in your fifties when you're like, I wish I had done that. Like, some things you should, they are easier to just do at different times in your life. So, I. I just kind of executed on that connection that was in me, that passion that was in me.
And it, it really opened my eyes to a world that was so much broader, you know, in my religious upbringing, like very conservative upbringing, and then being in a technical School environment where I didn't have really philosophical and, you know, I didn't talk politics with people. We were very heavily studying math and science and it kind of some people's college experiences are eye opening that way and my college experience was many things, but still very tunnel vision and technical so that the army was really my like first exposure to just like just a diversity on all sorts of levels.
And then it was just. Such a joy to be part of it. And I did four years, my body didn't hold up in body armor the way that I would hope that it would. I ended up not doing more than four years and I went on to a corporate job and just went right back to my pre army need to make man money and I went into corporate engineering and just a large aerospace and defense job.
Company and try to just tow the company line and be corporate and earn man money.
Laura Rotter
Yeah. And earn man money.
Molly Brown
And, and of course, like the assumption behind the man money is that this money would solve all of my problems or preclude any, you know, existence of problems. And when that wasn't happening, like, it's kind of like having the rug ripped out from under your feet.
It's like I had worked for a long time and I had this belief for a long time that this, this money would create. A certain safety, a certain kind of lifestyle, a certain personality in me, even, right? I was still just very shy, introverted, and money doesn't, money doesn't get you out there on the dance floor dancing at weddings.
You still sit back and are reserved. And so like the real things that I wanted, the real way that I wanted to experience life, still, I was, I was far from it. It wasn't happening at all. I was starting to create this tunneled, you know, sane kind of environment that I came from, even though I picked markers, like, you know, KPIs, like they do in business.
I picked markers in my life that I'm like, well, I won't be with someone Super religious. I'll be with somebody not religious and then I won't end up in this religious bubble. Well, one of my misunderstandings of like, I think all I think all metrics, anything measurable is adjacent to what we actually want to be having right money included, like we actually want security and safety and belonging and freedom, the ability to express ourselves fully and we can't measure any of those Things, but we're like, well, we can measure money.
We can measure your heart rate. We can measure all these things. And then we can, we can tell you by your health maybe, but it's really just adjacent to what we really want. So I was kind of, I was definitely doing that in my life of saying, like, I want this expensive thing I want to outside of religion while I ended up with somebody that through his, his own beliefs and, and in addiction and alcoholism and things that ended up in a very tiny imploded.
World again, it looked exactly the same, but I was like, but all of my metrics say it should be different. And it was my experience of it was that it was exactly the same. And as I'm having that awareness in my, in my personal life and at work and in this corporate world with all these KPIs against, you know, manufacturing and aerospace manufacturing, and realizing that like some of these KPIs.
There's actual math errors in them that we're not even computing what we're saying we're computing, and that's aside the fact that what we're wanting to compute is actually adjacent to what we actually want to be knowing and understanding anyways, but we can't know and understand that. We can't measure that directly, and so we're Latching on to the thing that we can measure directly and optimizing that even though we've reached a plateau, we're optimizing that variable is actually creating a huge gap between what we actually want.
And so I was watching this happen in corporate and and around technical people. Educated individuals who are incentivized financially incentivized to be able to make these changes to be able to push the envelope to create the new technologies and watching that not happen because of this emotional connection to the measurement and and this like inability to assess inside yourself, like to just keep pushing out of your mind.
We're not actually measuring what we really want. And to that, that there's this mass delusion to talk about the measurement and to pretend that the measurement is what's keeping us safe. And so I was watching that happen in corporate with suits and professional people, and then I'm watching the same thing happen in my personal life, where it's not at all shiny and it's ugly and falling apart, but I'm realizing it's the same thing to latch onto this group delusion of we can measure it instead of just.
Being willing to like jump into the ambiguous thing that we can't. Measure and actually start working in the place where we have leverage to work simply because it's the place we have leverage to work, even though we can't measure it. And that it's this misunderstanding and need to measure the addiction to measure that is keeping us from doing the work and getting the changes and creating the life.
Or technology that we want, depending on, you know, the container that it's in. So my little pattern brain, which is what got me into and through engineering so easily in the first place. And I got to explore and play with this and analysts and then the military with intelligence and watching these. Kind of patterns go along.
And I, you know, since in my personal life, I knew the person and the things involved in like this isn't an ego thing. Nobody's hurting somebody because they're it's an ego. And in the business, I was like, there's enough money in play for these people in terms of bonuses and growth and promotion opportunities to incentivize them to actually do it.
Change and do things differently and let go of these metrics and actually do the thing that I'm like, this isn't an ego thing. This is an emotional. This is a safety. This is terrifying. The reason people aren't doing this is it's terrifying. And as I started doing it simply, you know, kind of from a place of rock bottom starting making these changes because my life just wasn't livable for me anymore.
I started making these changes. And luckily I found my, like, luckily, or from the love of the universe, like whatever it was, I found myself in partnership with a coach, well first a therapist, and eventually a coach, um, who helped me make these changes because my experience of it, of letting go of the measurement, even intellectually knowing the measurement isn't serving me at all, the measurement is a misunderstanding, standing, I'm doubling down on a Lego tower.
I don't even want to be building when I'm using this, this measurement instead of being over like building with my Legos, what I actually do want to be building, but my, my experience of that, even intellectually knowing it was very, it was hard. And it was so. And so to have a person next to me to do that was like, I'm like, that's, that's what other people on earth are here for us to do with each other is to be with each other and these really scary things.
And then I recognized, like, this is what work needs. Work doesn't need me as an engineer and I'm not doing any, I'm not doing them any good as an engineer, maximizing their variables, their, you know, their metrics that aren't even related to what it is that they want to do. So. I'm not even serving. They can, they can pay me, you know, all the salary they want.
I'm not doing them any good. So to like remove myself from there and then come back as a coach for individual people and do, you know, that support and that work with them is like, that's where once I saw that, the pattern that way, that was what was clear to me is where I wanted to be putting my work.
Laura Rotter
Thank you for explaining that. I love the pattern that you recognize. And it's so resonates with me, Molly, as someone who works with people around money, because one of the first questions I ask people is why is money important to you to exactly get to the non measurable metrics, if you will, purity or freedom or independence, there's always a feeling that people want from money, which is just a thing. And then they imagine that more money they have will give them that underlying feeling. And, and the work is to recognize As you said, that achieving that feeling can be helped. It's certainly better to have more financial security than less.
If security is something you want and. It doesn't matter how much zeros you have in the bank. If there's something keeping you in turn, if there's some story that you were raised with, you're just never going to feel financially secure and recognize that and not beating yourself up about it. So I'm curious, you met this coach that put you on your path.
I also have curiosity about the business, and did you ever say we're measuring the wrong thing? Just quickly, did you?
Molly Brown
Oh, absolutely. I was, and I was told, interestingly enough, I was told that's just the way it's always been done, and that's the way we do it here. Which, like, in a technology company, like, it was, it's labeled as a technology company.
Laura Rotter
Innovating, yes.
Molly Brown
Right? I'm like, I, are we not supposed to, or isn't that what we do here is new ways? Like, I was just like, I was almost just too, like, dumbfounded to respond the first couple of times I heard it because it was so, nonsensical. It's like going to a restaurant and being like, I'm hungry. And then being like, we don't serve hungry people here. Come back when you're full. And I was like, this doesn't even make sense.
Laura Rotter
And so personally, more importantly, how did you start to shift yourself?
Molly Brown
I started very intellectual of getting the ideas of like, all right, the metric isn't working and you do have to be in this space where and there is substance in this space where there aren't metrics.
There is a real experience that you're having there, even though it's not measurable and to think through that. And then I, I built, you know, then I was kind of hanging out in like, Okay. Space and I wanted a tower to connect me to that. You know, I wanted a foundation to that and I went back to science physics, which is my my passion and my safety.
I feel safe in physics and math and it's an infrastructure for the world. It's a it's a language. It's universal. It's there's so many reasons I feel safe in physics and math. And so I I went to build up like foundations for me hanging out in this like new space up there and it came through quantum physics as yourself the consciousness in charge of the information that your body is expressing that we just build these entire concepts Megastructures of metrics that are just off, off the real mark enough that we, that we now have this some of under misunderstanding, a tremendous misunderstanding of who and what we actually are as people.
It turns into coaching, life coaching, because I want to go directly to the person. The company is false. The money is false. It's not real. The person is real. And then the, the people. Agree on these things together of money and companies and then we prioritize the money and prioritize the company at the sacrifice of the person.
It's a it's a backwards. It's a misunderstanding of it. So I, you know, the life coaching is going directly to the person because that's the What I understand to be real in the universe. And because my experience going through it, it was terrifying. And I was so happy. I continue to be so happy that I have somebody guiding me through it.
And so that's what I want to provide to people. If I thought I could write a book or a pamphlet or write a program. To do it, I would definitely be behind a screen just typing away on my computer instead of learning to get out there and speak with people and be seen, you know, all of learning to do that was, has been driven by desire to do this work and it, my desire to do this work has transformed who I am.
As a person in a way that would not have been measurable or predictable or outlinable or burn downable like any of those kind of business ways that we would have wanted to achieve it, it wouldn't have been done at all. It simply got done by my being so passionate about something and then wanting to explore it with curiosity more.
And that open mindedness, that childlike curiosity. Transformed me.
Laura Rotter
Thank you for sharing that, Molly. I'd like to break that down for our listeners to just a sense of there. You were perhaps still in the corporate job. I don't know exactly what the catalyst was for leaving, but, you know, experientially, I understand the intellectual backing, but we started with the head, but experience what were some of the steps that you took that started to get you passionate about this next stage of work.
Life and make the change.
Molly Brown
So I had this, this growing frustration that I wasn't being heard. And I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't being heard, but I also just wasn't fitting in, like my belief system didn't match my company's belief system. And I was like, this is going to be a problem for me and who I am. It's not going to work for me.
So I prepared myself and I, I didn't know that I would go off and start my own business and be a coach and be a totally different person. But I was like, maybe corporate just isn't for me. And my mind literally went back to waitress. Great teacher, waitress, these are the jobs, like my mind kind of made this mean something to me, bigger than what it was, which was, I don't fit in man world, I don't deserve, I don't, I can't make man money, because I can't have man beliefs, right, if man beliefs are, you do it the way everything has always been done, I can't have that belief, so now I'm not worthy of man money, and my mind started reverting back to like, I'm Maybe I'll be a waitress, maybe I'll be a barista.
So anything that my mind was offering me inside that whole paradigm was significantly less money. Then, and at the same time, knowing what I'm going to be on my own, that wasn't just another thing. I was like, so I want to go from two incomes to one income, and I want that income not to be corporate anymore.
So I sold the house. I was like, I'm not going to have to work. In some way, in order to pay for the house, I sold the house. I bought a rental house with my VA bill. I bought a multifamily house. I had learned about, I had, as the resources, right, as, and it's so incredible to look back on it as my desires are changing, resources are showing up to me in my life in ways that I had no idea at the time.
I was just, it just made sense. And I was following one after the other. Somebody came into my life and explained to me multifamily homes. That's not something we have in Southern California. I had never seen this or understood the financial model. And he explained to me house hacking. So I ran the numbers.
I went out with a realtor and I went and looked at bunches of homes. And I was just looking at the numbers, like, which ones can I live in? For free that meet, you know, a quality of life in a neighborhood in which I'll, I'll feel safe. But other than that, I don't care about the state of the property. I don't care about anything.
It's just just the numbers. So I had my spreadsheet laid out. I found a house that met all of the things. I bought the house…
Laura Rotter
on the West Coast or where did you grow up?
Molly Brown
I grew up on the West Coast, but I was in Connecticut at this time for my corporate life was in Connecticut where that's just a normal multifamily houses.
I did all of that before I left my job and I was just kind of preparing financially for.
Molly Brown
Yeah. Change in your life, right? When your life changes, money changes.
Laura Rotter
And then, you know, my perspective at work when I'm sitting there listening to just nonsense come out of these people's mouths and, and just being told to like, just get in line, just get in line.
And I'm a soldier. I have a soldier background and it's still, I was just like, no, this is, This is baloney. Like I won't go into the baloney of it, but it was just baloney and like sitting there from a place where I'm no longer paying rent on my housing is now self sustaining in, you know, the way that it being, I don't know.
You're talking about how's that for your property with people, but I'm living in a multifamily home where my tenants, I have two, two different apartments, tenants, their, their rent is covering the mortgage. So I'm living in my apartment at that home. For free. I'm just banking all of my income for when I go out on my own and to sit in meetings now with with people and I was sitting in some cool meetings up with like presidents of the company that normally my level engineer would not be talking to but because I was saying such very different things and my level of performance at the company I was in some really cool meetings where I was I was out of my league or I was it was a privilege and an honor to be in some of these meetings and The stuff that I was hearing was so unacceptable and their inability to shift or change or see things differently.
Like when you're, when you're sitting there having no need for the money that they're paying you, that your emotional experience of that is just very different. And it was very comical of me. And I lost respect for the leaders that I was, you know, just for so many reasons, I lost respect for the leaders.
And I was like, well, I don't, I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this anymore. So I didn't have a fully planned, I did not have a fully planned understanding of the business, how I was going to coach or I had a loose, loose idea of it, but I felt safe. I felt financially safe because I had taken steps and done work.
I had made decisions to keep myself financially safe and I was living within the container that I had set up for myself and had momentum, like eventually you just get a business. You just you move on to doing another thing and it just it happens in this amazing way that metrics couldn't have like if I was if I had a schedule for myself I wouldn't have I'm up with this.
This was so far off my radar of what I was, what I was capable of, what was available to me, how money can be made sales to take. I stuttered at the point I left corporate, I stuttered. And to think that I would be. Representing myself as the face of the company, doing podcasts with people, networking on Zoom with people, was so far out of what I thought I was capable of.
If that was on my schedule and I had read down it, I would be like, no, I'm just go back to work. I'll just, figure out a way to just be numb at work.
Laura Rotter
So interesting to hear, and especially from someone with your background, with your sort of very analytical background, to have the courage. Which I'm understanding you.
It didn't feel like courage because you were being drawn by passion as opposed to being pushed by fear and but to have the courage to go forward without. Well, as you put it without a plan, I just stopped myself from saying it entirely because you did have a plan. You created financial security for yourself.
So if, Someone is listening and feels like, Oh, I want to hear more about how Molly works. Can you give some specific examples of what a coaching relationship is like, how long it lasts, how often you meet it, and what kind of work you do?
Molly Brown
Yeah, absolutely. All my coaching is one on one and that's intentional because I was really good at hiding and giving the right answer so that people thought I was getting it and I was growing and I was feeling safe and I wasn't getting it.
I wasn't growing and I wasn't feeling safe. I just knew how to, like, make people think that so they would leave me alone. And the experience of that was just very lonely and not safe feeling. So my coaching is one on one to just, you know, make sure that, to meet the right person. That person. Who is that?
It has the same kind of properties and characteristics of myself. A coaching relationship starts with just six months together, and that has been calibrated. I've been doing this a little over three years now, so that's been calibrated through my time working with people. There's a point at which You're cleaning your room when you take everything out of the drawers, and the room looks a lot worse than it did when you started, but you are on the, you are on the path to going where you want to go if that was necessary.
That happens around, you know, two or three months.
Laura Rotter
Great metaphor. Love it.
So I, I really want to have people in a container that we know up front to expect that, and we're going to move through and past that. And coaching is, it's showing up, it's being present with each other. So it's Zoom. It looks like Zoom, just like this.
Everybody I have is remote. Pick your safe space, pick the safe time in your schedule. My schedule is It's not like a work life balance, like I say, like, you know, for me, my schedule is very fluid, interacting with people so that they're in their safe time and their safe space to show up fully. And then it's answers.
So it's, it's being willing to ask and answer questions honestly, and the honesty will, you will learn about yourself. Through a willingness to be honest and a continual prodding from a coach to be like, I'm not falling for that one. That was a defense mechanism. That was a very funny story. Thank you very much.
We're going to move on to the thing that you put the funny story in front of to protect yourself from like to just to have somebody who's on your side to keep pulling the thread into the honesty. And I have, I have a model that I'm working within that I'm teaching and I'm sharing with other people of.
and what you really are. That is, it's so much more freeing, it's so much more expansive than what I learned in church, in elementary school, being told to sit still at the desk, in, in college, in any kind of academic setting, saying this is the curriculum, you need to learn this, I'm grading you this way, do it this way.
In a business where they say this is your job, you do this. And I won't go off and do that either. We'll just agree that, that we'll both do this together. You know, I'm not saying that all relationships are like that, but we,
so just a model that is so much more expansive of, of who and what you really are and what is keeping you safe. It's not the money that's keeping you safe. The money is fantastic. And when you feel safe, it's really easy to make money. When you feel safe, it's really easy to grow money. When you feel safe, it's really enjoyable to spend the money going out and doing things so you don't feel like you have to hold it in.
Your experiences around everything, money, education, food, other people, travel, the world, it completely changes when you understand inherent safety. When you embrace it. Body your own safety. So, you know, part of what I'm doing with people is holding space and helping them be honest and learn about themselves that way.
And within the trajectory within this model of an expansive being a safe, inherently valuable, inherently purposeful. Being inherently healthy, inherently beautiful, all of these things that we think are earned or come from the outside and to have a different understanding of them and then to take action that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, whether it's finances or health or relationships, whatever it is to really understand that mechanism and that makes it, you know, back to my familiarity with an engineering design process.
I'm like, this is no different. Then a new technology where we haven't been to Jupiter before. How are we going to get to Jupiter? We're going to start with a blank sheet of paper and we're going to start asking a bunch of questions and we're going to start looking at things differently. We're not going to take the sheet of paper from the moon and say like, all right, can we draw this line longer?
Can we, can we, can we make this bigger? Can we make this lighter? It's you, it's a new thing and you start from scratch and, and that. urge to hold on to the old baggage and scale it for your new life. And that's the scary part, to be there, to give people permission to feel safe, dropping the old baggage and stepping out without it and into that six months of lived experience of like, oh, It's nice to have my hands free.
I can pick up new things that I like when my hands are free and not holding all of these garbage bags. And so people are, have their momentum in that, that new way of being.
Laura Rotter
And how much of this is experiential and how much of it is, More intellectual, writing things down on that blank piece of paper, just to get a sense of how this works.
Molly Brown
All experiential. But we meet, we meet ourselves where we're at. And most of us are at our heads. We're stuck intellectually in our head. So we start doing things, like having conversations. Journaling, reading books, not all books, there's a lot of information in books, it's not very helpful, but there's some, there's some books that are very helpful to expose you to ideas, listen to other people having the dialogues that are expansive, that you want to be true for you, and you start in your head, you meet yourself, where you're at.
Until you have the trust, until you feel safe to take the action and get the experience. The only thing that will change you is taking the action and getting the experience. It, it physically becomes who you are and there's neuroscience around it, there's physiology around that, and you don't need to know any of it intellectually.
In fact, you go off and you study all of it intellectually. It won't help you take The dive off the deep end, none of it will help you quit the job, leave the relationship, ask for the raise, spend the money that you have in your savings account. None of it will help you do that. It's only you, you just, it is always just a dive, you know, like a, just a, a leap.
Laura Rotter
A leap into the unknown.
Molly Brown
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's, and that's life. And what a fantastic way to be Living life is recognizing I can leap and be safe. I can leap and be safe. I can leap and be safe. Instead of like, I can't leap, it might be bad. I can't leap, it might be bad. You just, you just unlock an entire world. And the people living in this world, we're co located.
We're all mixed in with each other. And some people are living just liberated and free. Free in a world of safety and beauty and right next door in the same house is somebody living in a world of terror and fear and smallness, and it's, it has nothing to do with the space around you, the people around you, the money has everything to do with how you're experiencing it in your head.
And that's the most empowering thing because it's immediate when you shift it, it's, you don't need anybody else to change. You don't need the money to show up. The people. Different people will show up, money will, whatever resources you need to create, the thing that you want will show up in ways you cannot predict, you cannot measure, you can't even count on to be repeatable because the next time it'll happen differently.
But you live in trust and you live in understanding that that mystery is the mechanism, that that mystery is repeatable, that that mystery is the substance of the world. And you allow yourself to trust. And you allow yourself to act in that and you find yourself free and it can happen just immediately.
And then it can unhappen and you have to make it happen immediately the next day or an hour later. Right. It's, it's the work and it's absolutely worth doing the work.
Laura Rotter
And like you said, it can happen one day. And then because we're human, because you're of course reminding me that I took a leap at the end of 2013 to walk away from my almost 30 year career on Wall Street and my relationship is now in a very good place. But, you know, it really set off a lot of uncertainty on the part of my husband, because I was the primary breadwinner and he sort of thought we had signed a contract that that was going to be our lives forever. And I hadn't remembered signing that contract and was a very, Liberating leap, and then you can find yourself again in constrictions again in the next life of sort of, you know, holding on to the old stories of what will create security and what won't.
I'm curious, Molly, who you enjoy working with when you look at, do you have a particular kind of person in your client base that you Work with that you were drawn to working with
Molly Brown
So like profession wise my clients are all across You know working in different kinds of things, but they tend to be analytical number, you know kind of people like me and People that need to be met in the intellectual in the cerebral space That there's, there's a lot of spiritual, the spiritual path is so much shorter than the intellectual path.
If anybody out there has a choice whether to be on the intellectual path or the spiritual path, just go with the spiritual path. But for those of us who just can't let go of the intellectual path and we need, we need to be met there, those are a lot of my people. Also, because that's where, that's where I, you know, was and often still am.
And they're also, I don't know. I meet, I meet my clients and they, they seem so different than me. And then we start working together and I'm like, Oh yeah, same as me. And I, I feel like, I mean, I, it just, everybody I, I meet ends up that way. Right. As when you become one on one face to face with another person, it's, you just, Start realizing like, Oh, you're the same as me.
Even if even a person in pain, even a person in sickness and fear, you're like, I have those. I'm afraid I can be afraid. And you just realize like, Oh, Oh, we're the same. And, and not in an, not in an. Dropping to their level and moving in their story with them in, in the, the way that enables me to see, like, I believed that story too.
I had that misunderstanding of myself too. I had that misunderstanding of the big bad world too. And I came. Through diligence and work and commitment to understand it differently to clear up that misunderstanding that I had about man money and all the, you know, all the things that the misunderstandings of where these things come from that I used to believe that too.
Experience the pain and limitations that the person is telling me they're experiencing the pain and limitations of their misunderstanding and I know that experience to be true. I had that experience and I no longer have the misunderstanding and the pain and limitations have gone away and I didn't do it by fighting the pain and limitations and I didn't do it by applying work to the pain and limitations.
I did it by understanding. recognizing the misunderstanding. And so when I meet people where they are, we're looking for the misunderstanding. And if you don't believe that you're healthy and you don't believe that you're valuable and you don't believe you're free and abundant and beautiful and loved, you have a misunderstanding.
You are right now, all of those things. And for us to find where is the virus, where's the misunderstanding. And when it's not even a. Therapeutic process, we don't need to know a lot of detail about why it's there and how it got there and all the things that it's done in your life, we just need to identify it and throw it, throw it away and make the commitment to putting something from a blank sheet of paper to replace it.
And that's, that's the work and that's the process, so. All of my people have a misunderstanding that's causing pain and limitation in their life and they've recognized, I don't have to have this pain and limitation. That's what, that's what gets somebody to go to a coach, to go to a therapist, to get whatever kind of help, wherever you are on looking for help, even to go to a doctor.
If you're sitting there in tremendous pain and you're like, People are in pain all the time. I don't think this is a problem. You don't go to a doctor. You have to have this higher awareness of like, I don't have to be this way. I don't have to be an agonizing pain. I can go to a chiropractor and in 30 seconds, I could feel better.
Like maybe I'll do that. But that idea has to come first that I don't have to experience. experience this limitation. And so if I could broadcast something to just everybody, it would be you don't have to be limited. You don't have to be in pain and you don't have to be scared. It's coming from a misunderstanding.
Laura Rotter
So you may have said this in other words, but as we come to the end of our conversation, Molly, I do like to ask, it's a loaded word, but how was your definition of success or financial success shifted? We started this conversation with you having a goal of man money, and I'm wondering where you are now.
Molly Brown
You know, that's such an interesting question. I, my, my definition of success early, early on and in corporate and, and that seeking of that man money was, it was for security. And then the assumption was once I'm secure, I can be me. That's, that's good. You guys, that's a misunderstanding. Um, but the security was coming from, I know how much I'm making, and I know how often it's going to come to me.
Every two weeks, I get paid this. And if I work hard, if I become worthy, if I prove that I'm worthy, to these people. People who don't want to listen to me, if I somehow convince them that I'm worthy, they will pay me more and more and more and more, you know, over time. And I can project, and I did, I had spreadsheets.
I had projections. If I make this milestone and I get this raise and I get this bonus and I would be, I would make this if my investments did this. And there's nothing, of course, against any of this. Mine was rooted in a misunderstanding. Mine wasn't rooted in freedom and saying like, wow, it's as simple as putting this much money in this account every week.
And then. Look at what it does, but it wasn't rooted in freedom and expansiveness. It was rooted in fear. And so the action doesn't matter nearly as much as the belief that it's, it's rooted in because people fall off taking actions that are rooted in fear. People keep on taking actions that are rooted in excitement and trust that it's working out.
The pattern, the only pattern here is I show up in my life exactly how I want to doing and being in the places that I enjoy. Doing and being in and I do my work so I feel worthy to be in all of those places. And then I show up authentically as myself. And I started talking as myself. And as I just go out in the world and I just start talking as myself, occasionally an ear perks up and they're like, I have that misunderstanding.
Are you saying I don't have to be in this parent pain and limitation? This is just a misunderstanding. And I'm like, yeah, I can. I can help you just pull that right out. You can experience life completely differently in like a really short amount of time. That's. That's it. And so my safety, instead of being mapped to this chess like analytical strategy that I had, my safety is simply proportioned to my willingness and ability to show up in the world authentically as myself.
My success and my safety, which is what I'm, you know, mapping my financial success to, is directly proportional to my willingness to be me. Which is a really freeing way to live.
Laura Rotter
Yes, I would agree. So is there anything you want to make sure you say to our listeners before we say goodbye, Molly?
Molly Brown
So all of my coaching is one on one, but you and I met through this quantum manifestors group.
I, I love. As I show up in the world and I just say all, all the things that are me, one of the places I show up and just start talking like me is this quantum manifestors group. That's a group. It's a group dialogue. It's like a school of fish kind of leadership. Like I show up with a topic, but then like we as like the flock in the school of fish.
Turn and go with it how we do, depending on who's in the room. So if this is an interesting topic, you know, for anybody like come play with us, get in a sandbox, see what it's like to have a conversation about things that aren't measurable, you know, like tip your tip your toe and see how, how you like it and it's different every time because different people are there and different people are different people in different days and different moments.
So it's. Unmeasurable and enjoyable. So come play with us. I think the first and third Tuesday at nine. And then if you would judge a mere Laura, we can get you, you know, in voted to jump in and start playing with us.
Laura Rotter
Exactly. I would recommend it. I've attended twice and enjoyed it. It's definitely intriguing thoughts and conversation.
And I will get the link from Molly to include in the show notes. And I'll also include her website and other information. So it's been so nice to get to know you, Molly. Thank you for agreeing to be my guest.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Molly Brown, the Mindset Engineer Life Coach. And some of my takeaways are, Anything measurable, like money, is adjacent to, and not actually what we want to have. Mollie notes that we actually want security, and safety, and belonging, and freedom. The ability to express ourselves fully.
Yet, we can't measure any of those things, so we use money, which we can measure, as a substitute metric. My second takeaway, be open to your curiosity transforming you. Molly felt drawn to explore consciousness, which, through her own transformational work with a coach, eventually led her to become a life coach.
She's an introvert and would prefer to be behind a screen, but her passion and curiosity for the work she is doing has led her to be a teacher and speaker. And finally, when you're called to make a change, take practical steps. Molly knew that she needed to leave the corporate world and eventually transition from two incomes to one income.
So she sold her house and bought a multi family house that generated rental income that covered her housing bills. So she no longer felt beholden to her job. She felt financially safe because she had taken steps. and done the work. If you also want to take practical steps and understand and organize your finances so that you can move to do work that you feel passionate about, please don't hesitate to reach out and schedule a call with me.
And are you enjoying this podcast? Please don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss the next week's episode. And if you love the show, a rating and a review. Would be greatly appreciated and will help others just like you to find it. Thank you so much.
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.