KELLY
[00:00:00] How do you conceive of
KATE
money? Like what do you think it is? I think even six months from now, certainly a year from now, probably the way we interact with money will be wildly different. But what I do know will remain constant is human beings will have a way of exchanging what we deem, quote unquote valuable.
Money becomes a reflection of our personal values, but also the collective consciousness. We have a money nervous system thermostat. We have an amount of abundance that we feel safe with because it’s based on the energy, the environment, the vibe in our childhood home. And then any time we expand beyond that, we will register that expansion as unsafe.
We have to also understand the larger systemic narrative. For thousands of years, it has been very much on purpose. That quote unquote, they have been [00:01:00] programming us in two different ways. One,
KELLY
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Head over to Kelly Brogan md.com/rws. Hi, and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan, and today I sit down with Kate Northup, who is a friend and an ally, and an esteemed colleague, and also author of the bestselling book Money A Love Story. Do less and the top ranking podcast plenty, which I had the pleasure of sitting down with her to CHI Chat on recently.
And we talk all things depth consciousness with regard [00:03:00] to money, including what it means on a nervous system level to feel safe with money. We also talk about why not to budget and why she hates that word. We talk about the balance between having and wanting and how to strike it, and we talk about why it may be time to shed the program that says you have to work hard to earn more and what it takes to shift into the habit of working less and attracting.
More abundance. So how it is that you can decode and defra that very, very well crystallized program and belief that is keeping you constricted and playing small. There’s so much gold in this episode, and I’m so [00:04:00] happy to put you on to Kate’s World, her ecosystem, and her resources because they’re super special in the noise around abundance and investing and wealth and finances, these layers of meaning and awareness and humility and story.
That she brings to bear in the conversation about money, I find to be equal parts refreshing and validating. So enjoy, welcome Kate to the show. Hi. It’s so, so, so nice to have you. I know it’s always so funny thing when we’re in the same geographical location but talking through the pixels and that I am about to lose you from Miami, no, to the northern regions ish.
And I dunno, is Nashville the north? It’s, I mean it’s, it’s, I mean, it could be sideways for all I know about geography. However, you are such an early shifter and an early adopter that I [00:05:00] imagine there’s no small possibility that I could be your neighbor in a
KATE
couple of years. Oh, I will be seducing you to Nashville.
Trust
KELLY
me. I do not doubt it. And that’s why I’m so excited to talk to you today about the subject of money because I still remember, I dunno why this happens every once in a while. With a particular video or message or book, I can remember exactly where I was like in my physical environment in the moment that I experienced something.
And often it’ll be like, you know, a somewhat, no offense, mundane memory, but I remember reading your book Money A Love Story. I remember exactly where I was years ago. Like this must have, yeah, it must have been in 2016. Does that make sense? Wow. It was a long time ago. That’s amazing. Yes, because I’ve been, you know, a fan of your family for a long time.
And I also remember the feeling that I had, [00:06:00] which was, this is really important information and I’m not quite ready because I had a couple more years of a very unconscious relationship to money to get under my belt and. Regardless. Even just the title is something that has reverberated throughout my reclamation experience of wealth.
I’ll call it like at that umbrella term, because I remember also it was probably only two years ago, the first time that I publicly said the phrase, I love money. And of course that evokes right the, the time that your title like seeded that into my awareness and my consciousness. And I am so excited to unpack the dimensions of money, what it means, and the stewardship of it that I know you embody, you live with your family, you live as an [00:07:00] entrepreneur and the nuances, because so many folks now are talking about, you know, building wealth, the legacy of wealth, how to.
You know, work soft, how to make money easily. But you were at this a long time ago. I was.
KATE
We’ve been at this a really long time. Yeah, I’ve been like, I mean, I feel
KELLY
that way about gluten-free. Okay. So I’ve been doing this for like over 20 years. That’s amazing. It’s in the zeitgeist. But this is what I mean, like I am your avatar because I was also not, not quite ready for your message.
So I wanna start out with sort of a metaphysical question. ’cause why not jump in the deep end. Perfect. And really just ask at this point in time, how do you conceive of money? Like what do you think it. Because even when I say I, I love it, I could come up with some existentially oriented descriptions of [00:08:00] what I think money actually represents.
And of, of course, as you know, uh, an arch conspiracy theorist who questions everything, including our financial system and our fiat currency and all of the, uh, you know, fake history we’ve been fed about it. I still enjoy now the simplicity of experiencing money as a yes to life, as a slip, as, uh, an energetic relationship to the material realm.
Right. The bridge.
KATE
How do you think about it? Yeah. It’s so funny, like as you’re talking about that I just was called back. I have literally never talked about this. I was called back to this project I did about the ancient fania and like at in, you know, when I was like 13 or 14, I made some diorama. It was totally a diorama.
And how the origins of our current currency system were planted back in the day in the like fertile, what was that? The fertile Crescent. Crescent. [00:09:00] My living rent free
KELLY
these days.
KATE
Essentially, you know what you’re talking about. Like we are at, I think even six months from now, certainly a year from now, certainly five years from now, probably the way we interact with money will be wildly different.
Whether it’s because of crypto and decentralization, whether it’s because of AI and the nature of our changing workforce, like I don’t know. But what I do know will remain constant is human beings will have a way of exchanging what we deem quote unquote valuable with one another. Whether it’s like I am trading my zucchini for your, I don’t know, what’s another vegetable, green beans?
What
KELLY
was that? My donkey? Obviously.
KATE
For your donkey, yeah. I mean I, that’s like, that’s probably a lot of zucchini for your donkey. But anyway, like what money is, is ju is simply a standin for [00:10:00] what we value individually. And then what’s interesting is we cannot interact with our own money without bumping right up.
Against the collective consciousness. So there’s what we deem valuable, but then there’s also what everybody deems valuable. So money becomes a reflection of our personal values, but also the collective consciousness. And the collective consciousness is values. So I used to oversimplify things and say money is just a stand in for what.
We value, which is true, except then we get into like, okay, well how come, you know, all the helping professions are not, you wanna make more money, you need to add more value. I used to always say that, and I still think it’s true, but we do have to understand that in the economy, every, every time we are receiving money, we are receiving money from another human being.
So this, we are never in an isolated relationship with money. Our relationship with money is [00:11:00] inextricably linked with everyone else’s relationships with money. And so we have to really tune into that place where it’s like, what matters to me and what matters to everyone else, and where’s the intersection?
Especially from the perspective of. Commerce and you know, I’m a business owner, so I’m always thinking about what will somebody pay for? What is the transformation worth to them? And that’s never someone alone. It’s always connected to all of us.
KELLY
Somebody came up to me recently at an event that I was at and she said, one of the most important things I’ve ever learned from you, she goes to me, is that the government is not an entity.
It’s always a person that you’re interacting with. And I’ve never applied that to monetary exchange. That even if it’s the IRS, there’s a human, there’s a human at this point
KATE
anyway, right at this. Right. I know. Who knows. But at this, like the number of students I have who are freaked out about their, you know, outstanding taxes or just making a call to the IRS, I’m like, listen, there [00:12:00] is a human being that you are calling and they ate breakfast this morning and they are not judging you, I promise they are just picking up the phone.
And it is one heart to another heart. Just be a human.
KELLY
Yeah. So that. That is where the interpersonal dynamics of currency come into play, right? Because there are experiences that we can have of closure and constriction around spending and saving and also opening. I’m reminded of this. I’ll tell like a quick story.
I was at Milo’s here in the grove of this grocery store, and I’m not a coupon girl. Like I don’t collect coupons, whatever. It’s just logistically too overwhelming for me, whatever. But for whatever reason, I had this like $10, oh, I think I just moved, I had, I had this $10 like coupon or whatever. So I go in the store, I do my shopping and I forget the freaking coupon in the car.
Naturally. Yeah. I’m like, alright, I am, I am like, I’m not [00:13:00] super busy now, so I, I’m just gonna go get it. Okay. So I go get the coupon and as I’m going to the car, I. I see this, he seemed like maybe like a tween or a teenage guy. And he is playing the violin and he is with his mom and they are like, I don’t know, they’re performing for money, right?
This is in the parking lot in, in Miami. And I ended up getting the coupon and I ended up, the only like cash that I had was 10, $10, so it was the same amount of the coupon. So I gave this duo a $10 and I went in. To have the $10 taken off of my bill from the corporation of the supermarket. Right. So it’s like somehow the feeling of expansion that I felt, I mean, I had like tears in my eyes just, just, just considering projecting who knows what the experience of this family and then the entity of the grocery store that I could give honestly zero fucks about and like what it was to, to, to take back my $10 [00:14:00] from them or whatever.
And how that ultimately is like a constricting energy in a lot of ways, right? So I could feel this contrast the same $10, right? And how that was one of the points of awareness that I had in a developing consciousness around opening and closing with regard to money and how probably my relationship in many ways to money has been defined by never close, right?
Like always spend with a green light. And I’m very curious about those polarities because I know that you’ve come to, I mean, you have, you have programs, you have the Money Love course, right? And you have relaxed money. And then you have this book that, of course I’ve referenced and you teach probably not just women, I was about to say women, but
KATE
chiefly women primarily.
But we do have more men coming than ever before, which is amazing. Okay, so there you go. So you teach
KELLY
folks how to relax that [00:15:00] constriction to do less right? And to access ease in a terrain that is rife with scarcity by our very programming and all of the associated, you know, agendas, but also our family legacies and the messages that we got about money growing up.
And so I wonder, you know, these days how you. How you describe what it is to have like a healthy, if that’s a word, relationship to money. What does that look like? Is it, is it just that it’s like open and fun and celebratory all the time? Or is it that you have like this faith that it will always be available?
Is it more in the mundane rituals? Like the practices of the daily experience of spending and, and saving? Is it budgeting and awareness? Like how, right. Or all the things probably right. But like when you think about like taking a, an evaluation of [00:16:00] somebody’s situation with regard to what is it that you’d be looking forward to say like, okay, this is in flow.
KATE
So there’s two things. I love that you used the word flow because my favorite metaphor around this is a river. That is healthily flowing. So it’s not so aggressive that if you like jumped in, you drown. Right? But it has a healthy flow. It’s like one of those lovely rivers, rivers that you would rent a tube and like flow down, right?
They’re strong banks. They are not eroded. They are just strong directing the current to where it needs to go. And the current is healthy and it’s going in, you know, it’s, it’s not like flopping over the banks and turning into like a muddy quagmire. And there are three places that I look to see and a lot of people, so my beef with the personal finance industry is that there’s so much conversation only about the 3D.
Like, and then our collective consciousness assumes [00:17:00] that if you make more money, you’re good with money. That if you make more money, you have a healthy relationship with money and that you have no money problems. And I can tell you that is a so not the case. In fact, some of the healthy whatever, I mean, it’s just both ways, right?
Like I, I know people who have an extraordinarily healthy relationship with money who make bank, and I know people who have a super toxic relationship with money, who make tons of money and, and vice versa. People who are relatively low earners, who have a super healthy relationship with money. So it’s not about the amount, it’s about the relationship between you and the money.
So three places we look. Number one is a fundamental nervous system. Like how does money feel in my body and how is that impacting my psyche, my unconscious, my subconscious, which is ruling all of our emotions, all of our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors, and therefore our results. So we start there and we can either be and we toggle constantly between these two things, but, [00:18:00] and you know, we’re not supposed to like be static in our nervous system, right?
But a regulated, healthy place to be around money is more towards the side of I am expanding at all times. My capacity to feel safe with money and to receive money and to hold. Money, like to be able to do all of those things. So I ask, okay, are you more in a protector mode around money from a nervous system perspective or more in an expander mode around money and a protector?
I, I don’t say like, it’s not necessarily bad because we are just wired that when we’re scared we go into compensatory protective strategies. It’s just our biology. So there’s never any judgment when I’m looking at this with folks. So am I more expansive or protective in my nervous system? Then there’s, okay, how about in terms of how I’m actually relating with money in my life?[00:19:00]
Am I more chaotic, disassociated, not paying attention, or am I more organized and like I have systems, there’s a flow, there’s a beautiful masculine structure. Those river banks. So, you know, all over the place. Avoidant, chaotic. I got, you know, bills wadded up in some drawer somewhere. I don’t even know what’s going on, or I’ve got, I’ve got some sort of a system.
Then finally, what is my experience with my actual assets? Do I feel like I’m in abundance most of the time, or do I feel like I’m in scarcity most of the time? And I don’t say, is there abundance or is there scarcity? Because again, you can really be in a, in an experience of scarcity with tons of money. I, I come from half of my upbringing, it comes from money.
My dad is a trust fund baby. My but who also became [00:20:00] an orthopedic surgeon and earned really well. My mom does not come from that kind of background. The generational wealth was not like, I’m not a trust fund baby. So it’s been really interesting to witness the difference between the. Inherited patterns around money that have come through, a family that had money many generations back, versus a family that had resourcefulness many generations back, which are two very different things.
And I experienced so much scarcity consciousness and the side of my family who comes from money and so much abundance consciousness in the side of my family who does not come from money. And it’s fascinating.
KELLY
These polarities are so fascinating to me and I wonder how you would diagnose now, I’m just gonna get a personal consultation over the course, this interview, have many questions.
Uh, but I wonder how you would diagnose this because you know, [00:21:00] I come from. I mean, what, how my parents made work, their circumstances of respective like abject poverty in different situations. And actually that were very, in, interestingly expressed, one in America and one in Italy. How different it was like for my mom.
I mean, she, she talks about her memories of growing up poor in Italy as being like some of the most fantastic, fulfilling like wonderful wild adventures. And yeah, it’s very different obviously here, but they, you know, as ascended through their own creativity into, you know, um, I don’t know what it would technically be called, but let’s say the, uh, middle class, you know, middle over the course of my, um, upbringing and I was raised with a lot of the classical beliefs around, you know, around money that so many of us are working with scarcity based beliefs, right?
And. My hack, as I’ve mentioned, is that I love spending. I assume it’s always [00:22:00] there. I have a very like open purse with my kids. My kids, I have never uttered the phrase, we can’t afford it. I don’t have money for that. That’s too expensive. Literally, I don’t ever say stuff. It just doesn’t even occur to me.
My daughters, for better or for worse, can have whatever they want. Literally anything they want, I will buy them. I have never said no. And you know what’s interesting? They have never asked me. For anything. And if they watch me buy like a $400 silk skirt, they get upset with me about that. So they are the ones holding, they’re holding the polarity of scarcity.
They’re holding my
KATE
subconscious scarcity. But of course it’s still there. It’s just not conscious. Fascinating. Okay, so, so here’s what, so now we’re back to the river.
When it comes to flow, the only way we get [00:23:00] flow is with boundaries. And I don’t know, I don’t actually think there is any right way to parent when it comes to money. I think there’s only like, am I awake? Right. Like that’s just the question. It’s not how the manifestation of our patterns I think is less important than that.
We are just aware of like, oh, this is what’s happening here. My mom was really similar to you. Like we just, whatever, like it was, so, and then when my parents got divorced, oh my gosh, the shopping trips, I mean, and it would, I, I would notice a feeling of panic in my body on these shopping trips. And it’s interesting ’cause my, my dad has more the polarity of like a lot of constriction and that’s, you know, manifested all over my story.
But. I think it’s so fascinating that your girls are holding the, the, the boundary, like the [00:24:00] masculine structure. And it would be so interesting to have a conversation with them about like, huh, I’m so curious. Like when you watch me buy this $400 silk skirt and you feeling upset about it or whatever, like, what is the fear?
What are you concerned will happen? I’m just so, I would be so curious if they’d be able to articulate what’s going on with them. I, because I have, yeah. Yeah. I’m sure you’ve asked that you’ll run out.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
KATE
Which is not, which is not how you operate that I have at all. And they’ve never experienced
KELLY
that.
Yeah. Yeah. They’ve never experienced it and it’s. It, it’s a reflection. Exactly. As you’re perceiving of my unwillingness. Like I, I, I dunno if you’ve ever seen it, there’s a hilarious, I think it was on TikTok or something, anyway, video where this, this guy has like a French accent and he is talking about his like, denial method of, of spending money.
And he just goes like, you walk into this, this store and you go, boop, and with [00:25:00] the credit card and you don’t look, make sure not to look. And that’s my method. Like I don’t, I don’t look and so it keeps me open. I’m not saying this is, you know, anything I would recommend to anyone.
KATE
I know this pattern super well.
This was my pattern. However, I was in this pattern when I was in my twenties and didn’t have a high income like you do. So I ended up in credit cards at, because I had really, like, especially as my parents got divorced, I went on the side of my mom, which in terms of like her relationship with money, because it was way more fun.
So it was like. There’s always more where that comes from, you know, which is true. Like there is always more where that came from. And so I think that what I also wanna say around like what is a healthy relationship to money? The other part I didn’t say is that so many people make their, make money, their source with a capital S, where [00:26:00] it’s like, this becomes the most important thing.
So whether it’s now they’re working and not paying attention to their health, their children, their and, and, and unconsciously they’ve made money an idol, right? Where everything else gets sacrificed at the altar. The truth is our source of abundance is source with a capital S, right? It’s our connection to the divine.
It’s, you talked about your parents with their creativity and their ingenuity and how they created that is because of source. Our ability to turn and manifest and, uh, essentially like turn the unseen into something and make something out of nothing. Is entrepreneurship, is creativity is our ability to make manifest abundance on the physical plane.
So on the one hand, like I actually love the, there’s just more where that came from, so we don’t have to look [00:27:00] on some level. I will say that if there’s not in a system, what I notice if is there’s not. Um, uh, it’s like if you had, um, I mean the best example I can come up with right now is not really a good one, but, and okay.
A wedding tent. So like you’ve got a wedding tent, one of those gorgeous ones that looks like a sale from far away and it’s canvas and whatever, and like it’s a windy day. You need those little stakes that go in the ground so that the tent can do its job and, and be this abundant place for our party. We need stakes in the ground around our money actually, not to limit the abundance and not to restrict in any way.
’cause I don’t believe in the boundaries as a restriction, I believe in the boundaries as a way to cultivate an even more optimal flow. And so a boundary doesn’t have to be a no. I like to think more in terms of a money boundary as a yes. So [00:28:00] what is money for? Like, what is money for? I just took my daughter and her best friend on a shopping trip to Zara over the weekend, and I was so aware, uh, they were both like, is there a limit of number of items we can get?
And I just in that moment, like, we’re about to leave Miami and this is the first time we’ve done this. You know, they’re nine. And I just remember how fun it was to shop with my mom. And I was like, no, there’s no limit. Just buy what you want. And we just like, it was so fun, and they got these matching outfits and like, but I also knew how much our children’s clothes at Zara, right?
Like, I knew we’d be maxing out at 500 bucks. Like it’s not, you know, come on, whatever. Right. So in the grand scheme, because I know my numbers in my life, I know that that number is not going to make a difference in my aligned spending plan for my life. It’s just not. [00:29:00] And I get that that’s an abundant place to be.
So we have like these abundance agreements in our household. So my husband and I, if we’re spending more than, it used to be a thousand dollars, it’s probably closer to five now, but it’s like if we’re spending more than that, there’s a conversation, not a permission, but a like, Hey, this is what I’m gonna do.
’cause we have a hundred percent shared expenses and and income. So that’s an example of like one of those little tent pole tethers that makes me feel safe and it makes him feel safe and it actually helps money feel safe with us. Because just like a child, if you have a kid, like if I, my children are seven and nine.
If I am like, cool, you never have to go to bed and you can just run free in the neighborhood, that’s scary for them. Like I need a boundary with them so that they feel [00:30:00] safe. Like I remember growing up going to friends’ houses where their parents drank and it was such a direct feeling of like, no one’s actually home.
Like someone’s home but no one’s home. I didn’t go back to those houses ’cause it felt scary. So that’s how money is when we don’t have some abundance agreements in place. Not a budget, I don’t like that word.
I call it an aligned spending plan that’s wildly adjustable as we go throughout the months.
KELLY
Absolutely love this. This is such gold and no pun intended. And what I am hearing is that there, there is an unconscious expression of that necessary. Restriction or there’s an intentional and conscious boundary.
I would call it a [00:31:00] container. Right? Because I just Correct. A container is a great word. Yeah. Right. And it, it really feels, again, I haven’t thought of this in particularly like this way, but it feels a lot like the way that many of us subconsciously interact with our health, right. Is to develop a restriction so that you don’t have to learn how to say no or yes.
Right. So if I have chronic migraines, I don’t have to say no to the dinner party. I just got the migraine. My head will do it for me. Exactly. Totally. And I don’t have to learn how to ask for the attention validation and, you know, experience even of guidance that, that I long for because my, my diagnosis will do it in the same way.
You know, I just am feeling your daughter and her friend in the store. It’s like. One of the gifts of that experience was that they oriented around their own desire with a degree of personal responsibility that they wouldn’t have taken. If you [00:32:00] know you couldn’t afford more than $30 of a budget or whatever, then they can’t have the skirt because mama can’t afford it.
Right. Or something like that. Right. It becomes this externally imposed source of constriction that is ultimately serving a purpose. Right? So it’s not a value judgment, as you’re saying, where one is a bad way of doing and one is a good way. It’s just that that is a less intentional bless. Conscious and potentially less personally responsible way of expressing the no and the yes, but the polarity
KATE
is always gonna, it’s always gonna be there.
We cannot, we cannot erase the need for the polarity and, and I will say, like in that shopping trip example, my friend’s daughter wanted to buy, she had on this pair of shorts. And I was like, so here’s the deal. They don’t have your size and these shorts are adorable and you are going to grow out of them in a month, and the next size up is three sizes too big.
So I was [00:33:00] like, do you think if those shorts were any smaller than they are in this moment, you will want to wear them? And she said, no. And I was like, yes, exactly. You are growing. So I was just helping ask some shopping coaching questions so they could like feel their own discernment.
KELLY
Yes, yes. Which when you’re in, and I can’t afford it.
Lifestyle. I would say habit, subconscious habit. You never examine with any degree of conscious attention what you want, right? So like,
KATE
yeah, no, it’s just like letting so, so whether it’s our health and we’re deciding that like our doctor is in charge of our bodies, or whether it’s our money, we might be deciding that like the government or our, or our boss or our husband, the number of women who come into my world don’t even get me started, who say, my husband [00:34:00] won’t let me spend the money.
I’m like, girl. Welcome to 2025. I am. We’re going to have a sit down about this because whether or not the money is actually in our account. What I really love to help people to own is that we always have choices. We always have choices, so I love to replace. I can’t afford that even if the money is actually not in the account, because that can be true.
I’m not trying to like bypass the vast array of incomes we have, but if the, if instead we can say, I’m choosing not to buy that right now. And when we get super conscious around our aligned spending plan that is based in what makes our heart come alive, then we can make a choice that actually feels really good.
For example, I drive. A Toyota Prius. I actually don’t know what year ’cause I am not a car [00:35:00] person. I don’t give a shit about cars. I just don’t care. I also walk 99% of the time, my car costs me like $25 a month maybe in guess that’s it. I have a lot of money left over for other things because I’m not investing that money in a, in a thing that culturally, as you know, in Miami, driving a fancy car is sort of like a social imperative in this city.
I don’t care. Like, so that’s an example of, but I do care about like nice meals out. There’s a lot of things I love to spend money on, so I love encouraging people to spend money on what really does it for them, because if I spend, you know, a thousand dollars on something that is a high value of mine, like a spa day with a girlfriend, I’m getting like a 10 x to a hundred x return on value, versus if I spent a [00:36:00] thousand dollars on like alcohol, which I don’t drink, so that I wouldn’t, but I’m just saying like I would get like a negative a hundred x return.
On that, you know, so this is, I, I really encourage people to like dig in about their genuine desires and to understand that their IMP imprints and their values are going to be different than their best friends are going to be different than their neighbors. So there is no, like, this is just how we should spend our money.
That is the, we’ve gone to sleep collective unconscious versus like, now I’m awake. Oh, cool. This is a tool that I can use to design my life that actually lights me up.
KELLY
I believe that movement is medicine and even though I prioritize exercise and dance, I’m definitely not walking five miles a day barefoot to get the micro impact that my biology is expecting.
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The code is Kelly 300 to get $300 off at checkout, and your future body will thank you if you don’t completely love it. After six weeks, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. Enjoy. That’s why I love this concept. You talk about on a nervous system level of safety with money, because.
Well, we’re calling money is really just, [00:38:00] it’s the flow of vital Force through you, right? So if, if I, if I live a life where money is quote unquote, no object, right? Which is how I choose to, and, and I think my taste, right? So I made like $4 an hour for many years of my medical career and my training or whatever, and I shopped at Forever 21.
I never wanted like a, I still am not like really a brand name shopper necessarily, but like, I never wanted Gucci or whatever. So my tastes somehow have have, you know, been oriented around my means so that I have this feeling of I can have whatever I want off of the queer answer rack at, you know, at at h and m or whatever fast fashion nightmares I used to be into.
So if the, if however, the ethos is, money is no object, there is. A relationship that I am invited to develop with my own impulses, with my own desire. [00:39:00] Because for example, when I decided that I wanted to take voice lessons a couple years ago, I didn’t have, you know, the average voice coach is like $200, let’s say an hour.
And I, I, I hired a coach who was almost a thousand dollars an hour and worth every penny for that life-changing shame alchemizing experience. Okay? So if I didn’t have that built in, wow, I need to save up for that, or I’m not sure it’s worth it, or that’s quote my, my least favorite phrase, that’s so expensive, right?
If I said any of that stuff, I wouldn’t have had to really trust that this impulse was valuable to me and not just some one of Kelly’s crazy, you know, whatever whimsical ideas. Because I didn’t have that built in. I was in a position to really look at and assess whether this was something I value, whether it actually is a priority, and whether I [00:40:00] trust that I am making a decision with my resources that I’m not going to quote unquote regret.
So all of that responsibility comes with abundance, right? It comes with resources, it comes with the havingness capacity. You know, I just had Gay Hendrix on the show talking about, oh, I love him. Yes, I know, I know. Talking about this, this phenomenon in men and women that we will create the conditions in our real life, our live three dimensional experience to.
Mitigate expansion when we’re not in a position to hold it. So,
KATE
which is the nervous system. I mean, you know, gay’s concept of upper limiting, he doesn’t talk about the nervous system in the big leap, but a hundred percent. I talk about we have a money nervous system thermostat, and it’s very inspired by gay’s work around upper limiting, that we have an amount of abundance.[00:41:00]
And he says, you know, joy, health, all the other things, right? But we have an amount of abundance that we feel safe with because it’s based on the energy, the environment, the vibe, if you will, in our childhood home, simply because the energetics, the emotional tone of our childhood experience gets wired into our nervous system, which includes our brain and body as what it means to be alive.
And then anytime we expand beyond that, especially if we are not daily doing things to metabolize our stress and threat, we will register that expansion as unsafe. Because our nervous system is always trying to make sure that we only experience that which we’ve experienced before, which is in direct opposition to.
Nearly every single one of our financial goals because all of us pretty much wanna experience [00:42:00] something with money that we’ve never experienced before and that our friends never have, often sometimes our friends, but certainly usually that our family of origin didn’t, and definitely not our ancestors.
And so we’re just out here saying like, yeah, I wanna have 100k cash month, whatever, and our body’s like, fuck no. You’re gonna die. Like if you do that. And so that’s why the work about around building the somatic body to feel safe with money, but also the experiences that abundance can create because you know, I have had no problem creating money, but the consistency.
And the restful abundance. That’s just like coming in without any song and dance. That’s been something I really have needed to work on over time. So there’s just a lot of layers here. It’s not as simple as like, some people will be like, will you just need to, you know, decide [00:43:00] on what your normal is, what your threshold is?
Like, okay, well now my new floor is a hundred k and that’s, you know, and that’s it. And I’m like, that’s a pretty vast oversimplification of what’s going on.
KELLY
Yes. If as if it were the wheel based Yeah, wheel based universe, I mean, again, it’s probably through the lens of our own most sticky areas. Like for me it’s been relational.
The real shift for me personally, and I, and I’m, I’m sure you know, I have seen this many times was, was in my capacity to trust my girlfriends with my celebration. Around wealth or money coming in through various sources and streams, and to relinquish my role as the patron, right? So I took, I have taken on in many of my social circles, like I’m the one who subsidizes, right?
Like I’m the one who rents the house. I’m the one. And again, because I have this attitude of like, oh, there’s more where this came from. Like, I got it. [00:44:00] And of course there was like, it, it was almost like a patriarchal energy that I, like a, like a, like a masculine, you know, almost like, you know, I’m the, I’m the patriarch.
It was a very masculine role that I was taking on that I ultimately decided wasn’t serving me dynamically. So all of that had to be dismantled in order for me to move into a more aligned, less covert dynamic with my own abundance and. Wealth and none of that would’ve been available if my own nervous system wasn’t ready to work with these fears and associated shame and, you know, codependent habits.
It’s, it’s very, very deep. So. Yeah. Right. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating to me, and I want to, I wanna talk about the concept of that. You talk about like enoughness, right? Because we, we touched on this having this, I call it having this capacity, um, the upper limit, you know, that, that gay refers [00:45:00] to this concept of enough and what, you know, even David data refers to as like the feminine is like being, feeling full and also wanting more, right?
So being in this dynamic relationship to satisfaction and enoughness, while also expanding still. And I, and I want to, um, actually read some of, of your own writing your own copy, because I think this is so. Relatable, right? So that folks know who, who we’re talking to. So you say, raise your hand if you’ve ever said things like, I’ll figure out how to manage my money after I hit six figures.
Or I’ll start investing my money after I receive an inheritance. Or I’ll start saving after I pay off my debt, or I’ll relax once I get it all done. Right. To-do list life. Um, highly, highly relatable. What do you, what do you think is the path beyond this? [00:46:00] If this happens, then I will kind of, uh, framework.
KATE
Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, I think you’ll appreciate this as a psychiatrist. I don’t know. We’ll see. But I have come to understand that our relationship with money can be very hooked in with our dopamine circuitry and we have a tendency to. Be diluted into the, the thinking that once I get the Porsche, once I buy the house, honestly, once I get married, have the baby lose the whatever, right?
That like, then I will finally X, Y, Z. And when it comes to money, that gets super sucked into, you know, uh, essentially lifestyle creep or lifestyle inflation. And the thing that we have to understand about human behavior and psychology is that once we get the thing, whether it is [00:47:00] the bigger house, the nicer car, the bigger ring, the fancier
adaptation says that. We will return very quickly to our previous level of basic joy and satisfaction and happiness, which is probably back to nervous system, upper limit gay Hendricks. Okay. So that’s the dopamine, which is dopamine. Um, and please feel free to like, after I’m done, fill in any science that I get wrong, but I’m like, I’m always just like, I’m like when I’m talking to a doctor who studied the brain for years, I’m like, well, we’ll see.
Um, so, so the dopamine receptors rule the wanting, okay. And then we have a different set of circuitry in a different set of neurotransmitters, and that’s oxytocin and vasopressin and endorphins. And those are more of the having and the here and now circuitry, [00:48:00] dopamine, when you get the thing, it just creates more wanting.
So dopamine never gives you a feeling of having, it only just gives you wanting. But all of these other parts of our biology create a sense of having. And the way we do that is actually through connection and presence. So the things that create endorphin, oxytocin, vasopressin are hugs, orgasm, looking out at nature, hugging a tree, smelling a flower, like.
Dancing. Those are the things that are largely free, and they create a sense of, Ooh, my life is good I have now. And so in order to expand our capacity for having this, and a feeling that it is enough now, and also I get to have more, [00:49:00] we actually need to work with our neurotransmitters around the sense of havingness.
And most of that is the stuff where it’s a body trip, not a head trip. So it really comes back to pleasure, like and full sensational living. Am I actually tasting my coffee? Am I actually feeling my child’s skin as I give them like a little, you know, whatever. Like every night when I, after I put Ruby to bed, she’s my 7-year-old.
Then when I go to bed, I just go in there and I just like put my face on her little cheek and I’m just like, ah, God, it’s so good. You know, like, that’s it. That’s what I’m talking about
KELLY
savoring. Yeah. And slowing down enough to even perceive probably those opportunities. Yeah.
KATE
Which we can’t really do when we’re dysregulated.
KELLY
So you referenced, which [00:50:00] I relate to as a, you know, recovering chaos addict. I would say you’ve referenced this path that you’ve been walking of attracting. Having without so much to do. Right? Like nothing tilted with song and dance. And I imagine that most of us have this program, I remember when I first started to speak about entrepreneurship, right?
Like to own the fact that I’m, which for doctors, it’s all kinked up, right? To own the fact that I actually am an entrepreneur. I’m pretty decent at it and I have loved many aspects of it. And I also wanna whistle blow many aspects of it, especially as like a female CEO all things. When I started to talk about this, I came out about the fact that I put my, so you, you are the second hour.
I recorded one other interview today of work in my week. This week. I am two hours at this computer for the week. Okay. And [00:51:00] that’s been the case for a while. So I, I shared this thing, right, which is that I work two to four hours a week and. My revenue has been some figures for, for some time, and I’m sure there’s a million things that you could help me improve, right?
I don’t know. It seems pretty awesome. It does. And you know, the energetics of it are something that I’ve also been, you know, very, uh, candid about because energetically my relationship to my, my identity as a career woman, not a woman with a career, okay? And my experience of responsibility and custody for my business has only shifted since I have hired ABLE leadership, true leadership in my business.
Okay? So that’s a whole other conversation. But regardless, I shared that I, you know, my business earns this and I work this, and I got some feedback, some constructive criticism from the social media realm around folks who were very disgusted that [00:52:00] I would flaunt that I’m working so little to make money when people are.
Working so much to make less. And I thought, wow, that is it. That’s it. This, this, this program that is so baked in that we couldn’t even, most of us see it. And I have it too. I totally understand that comment. That is, you must work if you are going to earn, okay? And if you’re gonna have right in in ways that are, um, materially evident, then you better have worked for it.
And once I exited, ’cause I’ve worked my ass off in my life. Are you kidding? I’ve worked a hundred hour weeks for like, oh, for probably two decades. Okay. So it’s, it’s not that I haven’t played that part, but once I exited the amount of time I was in investing in the return on, on revenue, it became very awkward, very uncomfortable.
I was super self-conscious. All, it was almost like survivor guilt, right? Stuff that I was a hundred percent true. And so. This [00:53:00] program is, is a big one. So I wonder how you have titrated, right, somatic terminology, how you’ve titrated into doing less to have maybe even more and relaxed the subconscious compulsion to make it clear that you’re still working for your, you know, hard earned money.
’cause I also know, you know, we go to dance classes together. I also know that you know how to play, you know how to be in your body, like you prioritize sensuality. And I know that that is in a parallel track. It’s, you know, you’re doing it, you’re walking the walk. And I, I think this is one of the most relatable programs that we are all working on, on alchemizing, is how do you, how do you do less?
Experience your relaxation while you are, you know, in the flow of abundance. Well,
KATE
let’s just like get Super [00:54:00] 3D for a minute. The people who hold the greatest wealth are investors. Their money comes passively. Okay? So we have to also understand the larger sy systemic narrative and programming going on, which is that for thousands of years, it has been very much on purpose.
That quote unquote, they, I don’t know, but like, but they have made it, have, have been programming us in two different ways. One. You must work hard in order to earn money, and a certain amount of suffering makes you more worthy, wholly moral. You know, this moral imperative of hard work. So that’s one, and that is a really good way to make sure that the vast majority of people are exhausted enough so they will not [00:55:00] pay attention to the fact that actually though they are the people who hold the real estate, the stocks and bonds, the assets that require all of these other people to be exhausted automatons in order for that massively distant power dynamic to exist.
So I think it’s actually an incredibly powerful act of reclamation and resistance to. Relax and be abundant at the same time, especially for women. And so for anybody to boldly say, I am actually going to figure out how this system works to work less and earn more, that is the only way we are going to birth the new world.
Like we were not put on this planet to be exhausted and work our whole [00:56:00] lives so that we can then retire someday and then be sick and then die and completely miss our lives. Like, what the fuck? So anybody who has anything to say about you or anyone else, I, I really would ask like, who are you serving by attacking Kelly and her profound relaxed abundance?
You’re serving Kelly’s Strat is actually the answer, right? Well, yeah. There. So, so anyway, there’s just, that’s just like a greater context. But we have to look at our own, you know, our own belief system. And I always love to ask. Who benefits from me believing this. So if I am like, oh no, I have, I have to really show that I’ve worked hard enough to that to earn this life that I have or whatever.
Like who actually is benefiting from me, dimming my life by getting distracted by that. Oh, well it’s people who benefit from my playing small. Okay, well I know who they are, so I’m gonna not do that. Then. So that, I find that that’s a really [00:57:00] helpful flip around to just, I know you like to get in there and pull all the strings and be like, what happens if I pull this thread?
What’s at the end? And so I love asking those bigger questions. And then really to understand that like power dynamics on planet Earth have depended on people being diluted into thinking that it is more holy, more moral to be exhausted, and then just stop doing that. I mean, and it lives in our bodies and there’s some nervous system reprogramming required, and that’s why I do that every day
KELLY
and
KATE
teach it in my
KELLY
programs.
Exactly. So I wanna make sure that the right people hear this message and know that you’re, you’ve built this empire of resources to, you know, shepherd us from a certain consciousness and a certain set of habits and a certain set of programs into another life experience. So who, who would you say you are speaking to?
[00:58:00] Like, who is it that you love to meet? Right? Like, you’re out and about and you hear these certain phrases, or you know, there’s, there’s a, a stream of complaints about a certain topic and you’re like, Ooh, I, I could help this person if they were ready. Yeah,
KATE
it’s really. You know, I, listen, I have helped people go from like they’re living in their car to now they’ve gotten stable and are being paid well.
You know, we have some pretty vast, incredible stories and I do the best with someone who looks like they have it all together on the outside, but behind the scenes around their money, they’re like, oh, don’t go in that closet. I do, I do. Please don’t. You can go anywhere, but don’t look in the store room around my money because either they are not looking at all and they’re in total dissociation, [00:59:00] or they’re in total hyper vigilance, like lockdown energy.
But my people are the people where there’s a pretty, where there’s some degree of mismatch between how it looks on the outside and how it feels on the insect when it comes to money,
KELLY
which is really. The integration and coherence of authenticity, right? Where you can get to the place where what goes on behind closed doors and the, the whispers and the intrapersonal conversations that you have between your parts is readily reflected in how you’re actually living your life, how you’re making decisions.
So there isn’t so much of that, that polarity induction, like the the unconscious polarity induction. Yeah,
KATE
totally. Because it’s just static on the line. And ultimately, back to our river. If, if you are wanting to have like a more abundant flow in your life, those misalignments are these weird little tributaries.
It’s, it’s an eroded river bank, or it’s like a massive, you know, blockage in the flow, all that stuff. [01:00:00] When you can clear it up like you make more money, there’s just more abundance because misalignment creates blocks when you clear it out. It creates flow.
KELLY
And would you say that these days your relaxed money program is the most expeditious way to transit from these habits?
Yeah,
KATE
it’s the best thing I’ve ever done other than make my girls.
KELLY
Aww, I love that. And I also love that you are in the midst of a major life transition. And before we got on camera, were telling me that you are just like whistling around with a lot of spaciousness and happy to come on my podcast, but you’re literally moving in in two weeks.
And if, if that isn’t living testament to you know, what you have built with your beautiful business that serves so many and your lightness and your playfulness and your beautiful family, [01:01:00] you know, then I don’t know what is, because I too, we’ve talked about this, how I’ve come to the exact same.
Conclusion in terms of the semantics, even that relaxation is power. It’s, it is the modern flex, especially for women to live in your relaxed body when there’s really no subs, semi or conscious reason that we should be feeling relaxed, considering, you know, the millions of things that are awry, you know, in the, in the way that we, we
KATE
live today.
And that’s the, I mean, that’s ultimately like, if we could sum up this conversation, the unlock is you gotta learn to relax despite any evidence that it’s a good time to do so. And then you get everything you want. We think we’ll get everything we want, and then we get to relax. It’s just the opposite.
Yeah.
KELLY
That. Right. And that there’s a, [01:02:00] a body-based path to that. It’s not a gaslight, right. It’s not lying to yourself and telling yourself that you’re not perceiving reality as it is. It’s how you are physiologically responding to the Yeah. To the reality which I, I think you would agree, actually can be accelerated through the permission field of working with you, your communities of people who say this is okay.
Right. The celebration is okay, these small wins to share is okay, right? Like, I’m not your family of origin that might for other unconscious reasons, condemn you for moving beyond the pale of, you know, uh, revenue that our family has ever known. You know, whatever these, these, you know, sort of skeletons in the closet might represent.
So I think that in and of itself, confers safety to. To the system and I, I’m just so grateful that you’re holding this down and anchoring it. And so here to continue to [01:03:00] witness your beautiful journey. And I will be missing you very much in Miami and at our hip hop dance classes and all of the other places at the gym.
I am so grateful for you woman and so happy to connect folks to your, your world, although I imagine most listening already know of the, the Gs that you have put out there. So thank you. Thank you for having me.
