Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.
Welcome to episode 45. So, today, I want to talk about something I see in a lot of my clients and students inside of Money for Women Physicians, is grappling with wanting more money.
They want more money to make their lives better and for many other amazing reasons, and they also feel bad, guilty, or ashamed for wanting more money.
I especially see this for some of my clients who also have their own business, whether it’s their own practice or non-clinical business. I hear things like, “Well, I should be grateful. I already make a lot compared to most people.” Or I’ll even see people saying things like, “Well I’m happy with what I make right now, I don’t need any more money.”
I see a lot of people think that they might be labeled as, “Not a good person,” if they want more money, have more money, or if they spent it on things that aren’t necessary. So, I wanted to unpack this a bit today.
And first, I just want to say that this kind of thinking is very common. We all do it. And what I mean by that is it’s really common to think in absolutes. This is what I mean by that.
Another way to describe thinking in absolutes is a concept called all or none thinking, meaning that you have to either be one or the other versus both.
And I thought about this for a second to see why this is so common. This happens to all of us, by the way. And not too long ago, I did a Tony Robbins conference. I did his flagship Unleashing the Power Within, or UPW. It was virtual this year. This was last year actually, 2020, the year of the pandemic. It’s still the pandemic now in early 2021.
And so, he talked about the five driving forces of humans. And I’m not going to go through all of them, but the two, or sort of the top for most people is certainty, meaning feeling certain about something.
And this kind of makes sense. Our brains want to make sense of the world and it feels better if it feels certain about things, if it feels right about something. And it has a hard time seeing gray areas or vagueness or in-between things.
So, what I see a lot is women thinking that they can’t be a good person if they want to have or make more money, or that they have to choose having a lot of money or being happy. Another thing I see is that they feel that they can’t be kind-hearted, generous, and have a lot of money.
And so, for some reason, we think it’s like a multiple-choice question where we can only choose one answer. Except we can actually choose all of the above, right? Meaning you can be a good person and be rich. You can be rich and happy. You can be rich and an amazingly generous kind-hearted person. You can be a good person and sometimes do not so great things, and even do bad things. You can be a great mother and sometimes miss the mark. You can be an amazing doctor and sometimes not do a great job with your patients. It’s not either-or. It’s and.
And one thing I think it does for you when you allow sort of the – I don’t want to say good or bad, but when you allow for all the things to be acceptable and okay, really what you’re doing is allowing yourself to be human.
We’re not supposed to be 100% perfect. We’re not supposed to be 100% awesome and good all the time. It’s just not true. No one is. No one. And even the people that you think are really bad people, they’re not 100% bad. Even the ones you really think are pure evil.
So, my question to you today is, do you want to make more money? Can you allow yourself to want more money and still be an amazing generous person? Can you allow yourself to acknowledge the good days and bad days that you have, or good moments and bad moments and be okay with that?
I hope you are able to give yourself permission to accept all the parts of you that you like and the parts that you don’t like. That’s all I have for your today. I will talk to you guys next week.
Hey, if you’re a woman physician who is ready to practice medicine on your terms, then you’ve got to check out my program Money for Women Physicians. It’s part-course and part-coaching and 100% guaranteed to put more money in your pocket. Go to wealthymommd.com/money to learn more.