The Prosperity Show Podcast. Financial Health | Business Success | Peace of Mind Joan Sotkin - Prosperity & Mindset Mentor

I have been doing this podcast for more than 10 years and it feels like time to find new ways to express myself and connect to people. In this episode I say my goodbyes and tell what’s coming up in the future.







Here are the links to the things I mentioned:



The Money Workshop on Friday, March 14 and 21

The new newsletter on LinkedIn



I will let you know about the membership site via my email list or LinkedIn in about a month.



In the meantime, you can get in touch with me via LinkedIn or joan@prosperityplace.com

When most podcasters talk about money and emotions, they talk about how people feel about their money. My approach is quite different in that I look at the emotions you are acting out through your money. In this episode, I talk about how what you feel when dealing with money is never about money – and what it is about.





Highlights:



You can use your money feelings to understand your emotional makeup.

If you are afraid of running out of money, that indicates that you are feeling alone.

If you think you need more money, you are saying that you need more people because money is always attached to people.

Feeling like there’s never enough means that you feel like not enough.

The fear of losing what you have is often the result of abandonment stories.

The idea is to recognize the feeling and express it.

When you hear yourself thinking that you need more money, ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”

How you were brought up – either in poverty or wealth – will affect your money emotions.

If you let yourself deal with the feelings, you aren’t going to have to repeat the dramas.

Learning how to manage cash flow can mollify financial fears.

When you learn how to put off purchases, you can manage your money better.

I talk about learning how to delay gratification.

If you learn how to manage your need for gratification and your dopamine signals that you need more, you can feel better about yourself and your money.

You can use the Covid pause to retrain your emotional responses.

Focus on what you have, not what you don’t have.

This is a good time to learn to recognize and deal with your emotions.

Small business owners and many practitioners have trouble talking about money. Yet, if you want to be comfortable financially, then you have to learn how to talk about money with potential clients, vendors, and financial practitioners.



Highlights



Sex and money are the two hardest things to talk about. A lot of people would rather talk about sex than money.

Both sex and money are about sharing personal energy, which can be scary especially when there is a lot of shame around both issues.

Always remember, money issues are never about money. They are about the emotions you’re acting out through your money.

People in every financial bracket don’t like to talk about money, especially how much they have or don’t have.

It’s very freeing to be able to talk about money and to realize that you are not your money. It’s just something you use to interact with the world.

How much money you have or don’t have doesn’t change your value as a human being. You have value even if you have no money.

Having a lot of money is not necessarily easy because you have to make a lot of decisions and it’s not that easy to talk to people other than financial advisors for whom you are a source of their money.

If you’re part of a peer group that struggles with money, when you start making more they might treat you like an outsider.

People often feel validated when they receive money. But money is not the answer to anything.

If you think you need more money, you actually need more people because money always comes from people.

For people who are in business for themselves, there’s a lot of uncertainty about income and unless you train yourself otherwise, that causes a lot of anxiety.

When you love, except, acknowledge, and appreciate yourself, you’ll make more money.

It’s important to counteract negative self-talk. I talk about how to do this.

Trusting and acknowledging yourself are important.

Being comfortable asking for money is essential if you’re in business for yourself.

How do you feel about talking about money?

Understand the value of your uniqueness.

Do you ever say, “ I don’t care about the money, I just want to help people”? As someone in practice or as a business owner you have to care about the money. That’s part of being in business.

If you suffer financially commonly no one is going to rescue you. You have to rescue yourself.



Links

To set up a time to talk to me click here.

Because of everything that’s going on in the world right now, many people are experiencing stress and its side effects on the body and mind. In this episode, I discuss the causes of toxic stress and offer a few suggestions for dealing with it.





Highlights



Toxic stress often starts early in childhood and continues throughout life. This can lead to many physical and emotional problems.

Most major diseases are caused by stress. I give examples.

Stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are meant to be released for short periods. When you’re under constant stress it wears out body parts and systems.

You can teach yourself to manage stress, but first you have to make the decision to do it.

If you’re always trying to make things happen rather than allowing things to happen, that can cause stress.

When you feel uptight that’s a signal that you are responding to the external world in an unhealthy way.

Notice when you feel contracted. That’s when you’re under stress. Take a deep breath and imagine you’re expanding.

It’s the pushing to make things happen and to reach specific goals that cause a problem.

Wanting to be the best parent and being hyper-vigilant about your children’s activities can cause stress.

You get to decide how you want to respond to the stressors in your life.

If you decide to treat yourself differently and do things like eliminating negative self-talk, within a year or two you’ll feel entirely different from the way you feel now.

If you’re taking responsibility for other people’s feelings or outcomes, that’s a stressor.

When you’re with people, look for commonalities not differences.

Having more money is not going to solve your problems. As a matter of fact, it often causes more problems.



Having body work done is a way of reducing some stress.

I have known therapist Doug Foresta for a long time and we have been talking about how many therapists have money issues. In this episode we talk about that and an event we're planning to help people in the helper professions.







Because we had such a rich conversation, I’m going to include most of the called transcript under the Highlights.

Highlights



Doug Foresta shares his personal background with money and why he was attracted to my work before he became a therapist.

Doug talks about his emotional habits of disappointment and deprivation and how it affected his relationship with money.

He realized that his problems were not about money but about his emotions.

He also learned how to replace the habitual emotions for those that were more functional. It led to some business that he hadn’t expected.

If a therapist can understand how they deal with money, or a doctor or any other kind of coach or practitioner can understand the money piece, they will find more inner peace because they're not going to be thinking about money all the time.

As my money changes, I noticed that so has my identity. I no longer identified as a person who is screwed up about money.

When I think about being prosperous, a big part of that is around love that I have in my life now.

Doug tells the story of how his relationship with his first wife has changed since he’s been making the changes in his life.

He talks about other things in his life that have changed and the new habits he has developed.

When you worry, when you're in a hurry, when you're not able to stay in the moment, that's when you miss opportunities.



Links

If you are interested in learning more about the program Doug and I are putting together, sign up for my list at https://ProsperityPlace.com/joinnow



Here’s the Transcript



Hi, everyone. Joan Sotkin here. And welcome to the Prosperity Show, where we explore a holistic and often alternative path to business and financial success, personal fulfillment, and peace of mind. And today, I have a special treat for you all. A good friend of mine with whom I'm putting a project together, we're going to talk a little bit about, so I want to get right to the interview. And so my guest is Doug Foresta, who is psychotherapist. How do you call yourself?



I call myself a therapist. I'm a licensed clinical social worker, but.



I'm a therapist. Okay. A therapist who is really smart and knows how to do therapy. And I met Doug years ago, and he's been listening to the podcast and following my system for more years than anyone else, and we've decided to do something. So, Doug, welcome to the prosperity show.



Oh, it's such an honor to be here with you, Joe. Thanks for having me on.



So what was it about what I do that attracted you?



Yeah, it's a great question. I think my whole life, so, yeah, I mean, I go back to, like, it was either 2008 or 2009 when I started, when I really started following you. And so my whole life, I kind of have always had struggles with money, but, yeah, I mean, emotional stuff around money, and it was something about the way that you broke things down differently than anyone had ever done. You know, it was. It was always like, practical advice, you know, do this, do that, but, you know, save, you know, save more than you spend, but, I mean, everybody knows that. But I knew there was something else. There was something else because it's like, well, why am I having so much trouble? Why am I having so much anxiety around money?



And so there was just something about the way that you spoke about things, the way that you used the combination of humor, and it just made sense to me, and it just resonated for me. All of a sudden, it was like, oh, yeah, that's me.

In this episode, I discuss the problems caused by unrealistic expectations with an emphasis on how subconscious expectations affect your life outcomes. You will also learn more about how habitual emotions are the creative force behind your life stories.





Highlights



Subconscious expectations that result from past experiences can influence our relationships and financial decisions.

You can learn more about your expectations by recognizing patterns that might lead to disappointment and learning from your mistakes.

I give an example of relationship expectations. Also, examples are given about f how habitual emotions are the creative force behind our life stories and how this relates to expectations.

All of this is happening on the subconscious level.

If you have an expectation that a relationship won't last, you will make decisions and behave in ways that make sure it doesn't last.

Once you recognize a pattern, ask yourself what emotion the  pattern stimulates for you.

People who are overly optimistic often make bad financial decisions.

Experiences that don't have happy endings are not bad, they are just what's happening.

You can never really know what someone else is thinking.

It is best not to have expectations about how other people are going to behave.

If you expect a relationship to fill in the emptiness in your life, that can lead to disappointment.

Nothing can be perfect and the more tolerant you become of other people, the easier your life will be.

It's okay to make mistakes and not do things perfectly.



Links

Click here to learn more and register for the Money Energy Activation.



Interview with Dr. Daniel Lieberman that I mentioned