What If Your Money Problems Are Really Identity Problems?
I recently heard a person I follow, Master Shi Heng Yi, say:
“We suffer because we want to be someone.”
I love this statement because I find a lot of truth in it.
Master Shi Heng Yi, a Shaolin warrior, delivers these truthful nuggets in a recent podcast.
It struck me as I've been working on this newsletter, and how identity plays out in our relationship with money.
I’ve been immersed in the study of identity because of how profoundly it shapes our choices.
Especially our choices with money.
When I'm helping a client change a financial pattern, we can work on the behavior.
We can create a budget, increase income, pay off debt, change spending, build savings, or create better business systems.
But underneath the behavior, there is often a deeper question:
Who do I believe I am?
And perhaps even more importantly:
Who am I trying to prove that I am?
Recently, during one of my astrology deep dives, I discovered something called the Chart Ruler, which astrologers consider an important clue to the way we're meant to move through life or our astrological purpose.
I discovered that mine is Mars, and my Mars is in Sagittarius in the house of money.
Well… that explains a few things.
Mars in Sagittarius is associated with adventure, philosophy, exploration, learning, teaching, and travel.
Put that in the house of money, and suddenly my lifelong obsession with exploring the deeper mysteries of money makes even more sense.
It also explains why I was probably never going to be fulfilled being just a an Accountant or CFO.
Not that there's anything less than in those career paths, they're super valuable in the world, but not my purpose.
I need money to include exploration, psychology, philosophy, spirituality, adventure, and the study of human potential.
And I'm grateful for having found my purpose in the blending of these things with the study of succeeding with money.
But the more interesting realization was this:
There is a difference between discovering who we authentically are, and constructing an identity we need the world to validate.
And money gets tangled up in that distinction all the time.
When Money Becomes Evidence of Who We Are
Ideally, our sense of worth develops from a secure internal foundation.
But most of us didn’t emerge from childhood with a perfectly intact sense of identity and worth.
So a part of human nature is to attach identity to things outside ourselves.
Money is a big one.
And paradoxically, so is the rejection of money.
The subconscious belief might sound like:
If I earn a lot of money, I must be delivering value.
If I own a gorgeous home, I must be secure in the world.
If people can see evidence of my wealth, I will be accepted in society.
If this client chooses me, I must be good at what I do.
If this person chooses me as a partner or lover, I must be desirable.
If I am smart, attractive or well liked, I must be enough.
But it can also work in the opposite direction.
If I have too much money, people might think I’m greedy.
If I drive an expensive car, people might think I’m materialistic.
If I ask for too much money, I may be perceived as money hungry like the billionaires I disdain.
If I become wealthy, I may be considered capitalistic (by myself or others).
So we may unconsciously limit what we allow ourselves to earn, own or desire because we don’t want to become someone we or others judge.
Both are forms of identity attachment.
One says, I need money to prove I'm worthy.
The other says, I need to reject money to prove I'm worthy.
I Found This Pattern in Myself
I’ve been unpacking this personally since selling my home and deciding to rent during this chapter of my life.
I noticed that when people asked whether I was buying or renting, part of me wanted to quickly explain:
“I’m going to buy again.”
Why?
There is nothing inherently unsuccessful about renting.
In fact, given what I actually want for my life right now, renting makes the most sense.
My vision is to buy my next home with a soul partner.
I’m in a transitional chapter, and I don’t feel called to purchase a home simply so I can say I own one in Boulder County.
Yet I could feel the identity attachment.
Shouldn’t I own a house?
Isn’t buying always smarter than renting?
What will people think, a Financial Coach with no house?!
That’s when I realized I wasn’t only making a financial decision.
I was disentangling home ownership from identity.
Owning may be the right financial and lifestyle decision during one season.
Renting may be the right decision during another.
Neither determines our worth.
What Have You Attached Your Identity To?
I’ve tracked something fascinating in my own life and in my work with clients.
The places where we most heavily attach our identity often become the places where life challenges us.
If your identity is attached to your relationship, being single can feel like evidence that something is wrong with you.
If it’s attached to money, fluctuations in income can become fluctuations in self-worth.
If it’s attached to your business, a difficult business season can feel like a personal failure.
If it’s attached to your home, selling, downsizing, or renting can feel like losing part of yourself.
If it’s attached to how many clients you have, an empty calendar can become evidence that you’re no longer valuable.
And if your identity is attached to being a “good person,” you might even limit your own prosperity because having or wanting too much conflicts with the identity you’ve created.
Maybe these challenges aren’t always here to tell us we’ve failed.
Maybe sometimes they’re asking us to discover who we are without the thing we’ve been using to define ourselves.
I’ve experienced this repeatedly in my own life.
One of the earliest and most important pieces of my financial work was dismantling the connection between my identity and money.
Paradoxically, as I loosened that attachment, my relationship with money became stronger.
Self-Worth Is Something We Practice
This brings me to something I believe deeply:
Self-esteem and self-worth are not just things we think ourselves into.
They're things we practice ourselves into.
We build self-esteem by doing esteemable things.
We build self-worth by behaving in ways that demonstrate to ourselves that we're worthy of our own trust.
Financially, that can look surprisingly ordinary:
Paying your bills on time.
Knowing how much money you actually have.
Living within your means.
Saving consistently.
Opening your mail.
Paying off debt.
Paying your taxes on time.
Getting back to people.
Not overcommitting.
Keeping your word.
Making financial decisions based on reality rather than how you want to be perceived.
These aren’t glamorous acts.
But every time you do one, you send yourself a message:
I can trust myself. I am a person of integrity.
And that's a very different way of building an identity.
Are You Looking for LAVA?
There is an acronym I love for identifying when we may be operating from attachment:
LAVA: Love, Attention, Validation or Acceptance.
When I’m wrestling with a decision, I can ask:
Am I doing this because it is genuinely aligned for me, or am I trying to get LAVA?
Do I want the house because I truly want all that goes with home ownership and I can do it within my means?
Or because of what owning it says about me?
Do I want to grow my business because I feel called to meaningfully contribute more value in this way?
Or because a certain revenue number proves I’m successful?
Do I want this relationship because it is healthy and purposeful?
Or because being chosen proves I’m lovable?
Do I want to live on less because it feels so good to save?
Or because I need to feel like I am not perceived as selfish or materialistic?
Once you begin seeing LAVA operating in your life, it’s difficult to unsee it.
And that’s a good thing.
Because now you have a choice.
Who Are You Without the Proof?
Perhaps this is part of what Master Shi Heng Yi meant when he said:
“We suffer because we want to be someone.”
There is nothing wrong with having an identity.
We're human. We have egos. We have personalities, gifts, desires, and paths.
But there is tremendous freedom in no longer needing the external world to continually confirm that identity for us.
You can make money without money proving your worth.
You can own a beautiful home without the home proving your success.
You can build a thriving business without your revenue proving your importance.
You can experience extraordinary love without another person proving you’re lovable.
You can be a good person and have wealth too.
And strangely, when we stop requiring these things to tell us who we are, we become much freer to create them from alignment.
Not to prove our worth or our virtue.
But as an expression of who we already are.
That is a very different relationship with moneyAnd perhaps a much more prosperous one.
If you’re ready to explore the deeper patterns shaping your relationship with money, this is exactly the work I do with clients.
We work with both sides of financial transformation: the subconscious patterns underneath the numbers and the practical financial structures that allow wealth to grow.
Schedule a complimentary Discovery Call here.
Or start by uncovering the hidden patterns influencing your financial life with my free Prosperity Patterns Quiz.