Purging Negative Money Memories Takes Time (Part 2/4)

In this series...
Purging Negative Money Memories Takes Time (Part 1/3)
Purging Negative Money Memories Takes Time (Part 2/3)
Purging Negative Money Memories Takes Time (Part 3/3)
Purging Negative Money Memories Takes Time (Part 4/4)

A negative emotionally charged incident related to money can scar or even traumatize a child, especially if the child is sensitive. Just because our body has aged chronologically, it doesn't mean the inner child has recovered from the scar or trauma.

Just as neurobiochemical pathways of thinking or feeling about money were negatively wired, it is up to us now, as adults on the soul maturation path, to unwire and rewire those fear and scarcity dynamics. 

Once you do, you are free. But freedom takes time. Here's the proof.

(I define maturation time as the time between the negative money incident and my realization of its gifts.)

Alchemy of Negative Money Memories Into LESSONS and GIfts No. 9-16

GIft NO. 9 • Pattern Breaking

Money Memory • At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I wasted ENORMOUS amounts of time and energy fidgeting with free apps, trying to force them to synchronize with each other to meet all my online business needs. 

Lessons / Gifts • Only when the chaos got too overwhelming and an invoice or two fell through the cracks did I finally properly invest in an all-in-one online business solution. I realized I was operating from the financial fear and scarcity that my dad lived with his entire life. I vowed to break that pattern now and forever. So I plunged $3,000 for a year's worth of software, hosting and apps, which was 10X more than the previous year. To my fear-based ego, that kind of spending felt like eminent death. But to my wise geeky soul, that $3,000 represented a mere 3.75% of my income at the time. I can afford it.

Maturation Time • 2 years + 3 months

GIft NO. 10 • Resilience Practice

Money Memory • Just could not comprehend how others' parents bought them a car or condo and here I was buying my parents/family a car and putting a down-payment on their townhouse, in addition to my own condo. Swimming in a soup of confusion, burden, resentment and injustice that I wasn't supposed to or allowed to feel.

Lessons / Gifts • No matter how heavy the load, I can carry any load like a champion, without complaining, to the very top of the mountain. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Not only will I always arrive at my destination, I'll have developed mofo emotional, physical and spiritual muscles that make the next part of the journey easier than the one before. It's almost like invincibility practice.

Maturation Time • 13 years + 2 months

GIft NO. 11 • Alchemy Skills

Money Memory • Mammoth stress of paying a mortgage higher than expected on my luxury condo by the beach, exacerbated by the unexpected $6,000 front window repairs, $7,000 back window repairs, $12,000 elevator replacement, and $4,000 balcony repairs, while building 3 businesses at the same time. No one had my financial back, no one would catch me if I fall. I didn't have a sister whose basement I could live in should I fail, nor a nurturing mother who'd nurse me back from Burnoutville.

Lessons / Gifts • Failure was not an option or a luxury that I had. So success became my only path. I began practicing mindfulness and meditation to access presence and inner peace, to reduce the stress on the inside. I learned to block my time and set boundaries, to reduce the stress on the outside. I stumbled upon AirBnB yeeeeeears before people even heard about it and made tons of passive income to free up my time and cover all my Earthly financial responsibilities. I was so successful that I retired for 8 months in my early 30's. Under tremendous pressure coal turns to diamond. I became the alchemist of my life, turning the coal that I was into the diamond that I am.

Maturation Time • 2 years + 7 months (+ the decades of accumulated skills and resilience)

GIft NO. 12 • Sisterhood to the rEscue *

Money Memory • Having a nervous breakdown when one of my real-estate deals fell through because my dad, who was my co-signer, suddenly passed away. I was about to lose my $45,000 deposit and the dealmaker was nowhere to be found.

Lessons / Gifts • All those years of meditation and inner peace paid off. I had the wisdom to allow myself a full blown panic attack. After that, I lay in a soup of silence and stillness, regret and self-doubt, self-hatred and self-compassion, praying for guidance. I reached out to a dear soul sister for help, since she knew the dealmaker. Thanks to her generosity of spirit and kind heart, and my patiently trusting that it would all work out, I got my $45,000 back, with an extra $2,500 in my pocket. Phew. I couldn't have been more grateful to that soulsister friendship and bond, that I had tenderly cultivated through out the years. 

Maturation Time • 6 months (the 6 most nerve-wracking months of my life!)

GIft NO. 13 • PTSD Healing

Money Memory • Massive money hemorrhage, time vice-grip and nervous system assault to be summoned home by family financial crisis and to clear dad's estate, debts and house for sale, while running on empty fumes and working full-time. Having invested so much time, care and tens of thousands of dollars in the down-payment of this beautiful showroom worthy house, I was crushed to be handed back floors of black mould and packrat junk that I had to pay for to be hauled away.

Inner Child Learned That... Money doesn’t grow on trees. I was the tree. You shake me and money will fall out of my leaves. The more violently you shake me, the more money is supposed to fall out. "Dear Money Tree" in Chinese was what my dad and granddad called me as a kid.

Lessons / Gifts • I remember one day during the estate and house clearing process, I woke up and couldn't move. I could blink my eyes, but couldn't move anything else, couldn't even make a sound. I was fully mentally conscious, but physically paralyzed. Being the responsible one to hold up the sky, I never had the privilege of freaking out, so that's never my first reaction. My first response was, "Uh oh, this isn't good," but my decades of self-development, coach certifications and spiritual maturation all calmly knew that this too shall pass. So I lay there peacefully from morning until sunset, until I could move my upper body. I messaged by psychotherapy supervisor-mentor right away and she sent me straight to a Somatic Experiencing facilitator. Turns out, I had 31 years of trauma and PTSD stored in my body, from childhood trauma, school bullying, narcissistic abuse, etc. etc. etc. As soon as I acknowledged my own trauma was when all my clients were willing to acknowledge theirs. Who knew it took this vice-grip experience to open the floodgates of PTSD healing.

Maturation Time • 5 weeks (+ 31 years) 

GIft NO. 14 • Freedom Lifestyle + Financial Independence

Money Memory • All the students on my high school graduation trip to Paris had their trip and spending money provided for by their parents. Most even had their parents' credit card on hand. I only got to go on that trip because the school principal offered me a sponsored plane ticket, based on my outstanding academic performance. I paid the remaining $300 from my own savings, which I'd been accumulating since I was 6 years old. My parents couldn't afford such "useless" travel, as if having fun was a frivolous and useless activity.

Lessons / Gifts • It was only when I hit the road to travel 16-countries-in-16-weeks, with my entire life packed in a 23kg suitcase that I recognized how full circle I had come. I had alchemized the deep lack of resources in my youth into:

• a location-independent business that fulfilled my soul's calling,
• a freedom lifestyle built on financial independence and free choice to live wherever and however I wanted,
• becoming THE most nimble, unmaterialistic and adaptable person I know, and
• an embodied beacon of joy, play, fun and global shenanigans!

Maturation Time • 16 years

GIft NO. 15 • Shame REsiliency + Courage Training

Money Memory • Having to get down on my knees in deep shame to borrow tens of thousands of dollars from X to cover my family's new home, where the real estate purchase prices was double that of the previous house.

Lessons / Gifts • When I got trained in The Daring Way™ with Brené Brown, almost a decade later, I realized that that memory wasn't about money, but about shame and how as an empath I had absorbed / inherited all of my lineage's shame. I also recognized how these trials and tribulations were tests of humility, of devotion to my family, and of shame resiliency. I couldn't be the courageous person I am today, if it weren't for years of practice to become immune to shame.

Maturation Time • 9 years + 3 months

GIft NO. 16 • Miracle Worthiness

Money Memory • Skipping a day and a half of meals because I lost my newly purchased smartphone, thinking that starving myself was the solution to make up for the lost money. (Sigh, f*cking ego, what insane reasoning!!)

Lessons / Gifts • Thanks to the kindness of the female agent at my phone company, I got a replacement phone at no extra charge! I listed one of my bestfriends as an employee of my company, so she could pick up the phone in person. Within 3 days, my friend placed the shiny new phone into my hands because we had already planned a trip together in Asia 5 months ago. Talk about pre-destined! I believed in miracles... for other people, but not for me. This was the first time I felt worthy of receiving a miracle.

Maturation Time • 3 days