225: Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life

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. 

So this episode is coming out the last week of December. And I know many of you are busy, maybe on vacation, maybe in a warm place. We used to get away every winter break because it was so cold in the Northeast. And this is the first year in a while where we are not leaving because the weather is relatively warm here in Tampa. 

And so what I wanted to do today for today’s episode is actually do a replay of episode one. Many of you are probably newer to the podcast, and I’m just guessing it’s highly unlikely that you started from the very beginning. It’s a short and sweet episode, and it really lays the ground as to what my podcast is about and why I talk so much about mindset in addition to practical money strategies. 

And so if this is relatively new to you, or you just want a refresh on what a mindset is, why examining and really looking at your money mindset is everything when it comes to reaching your money goals. And also, it’s a great episode to refresh your memory so that we can really start 2025 powerfully. 

So this episode, coupled with episode 223, which is all about reflections, and then the following episode, the first episode in 2025, first of all, isn’t it crazy that we’re in the year 2025? That episode will be about how I think about making goals going forward, but obviously in the context of money, because what I’ve realized is most of us kind of get it wrong. And what I mean by that is we focus a lot on how much money we need to be stable, to feel secure, how much we need in retirement. And that is actually not the right question, or at least it’s not the first question. 

And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about in the next episode. And I’ll also be doing my first workshop of 2025 that’s really going to tie in these three things all together. It’s called Design Your Wealthy Life. I’m going to be doing it twice because I want you to really have the opportunity to attend live. Obviously we will be recording it in case you truly can’t make it live. 

And it’s going to be January 15th, a Wednesday at 8PM. And then we’re also doing it again on Saturday, January 18th at 11AM, both times are in Eastern time zone. And so I want to make sure you’re saving the date. And if you go to my website, wealthymommd.com/class, and there should be a little banner up top so you can just click it and save your spot and you’ll be able to add it to your calendar very easily. 

And so I really encourage you to come not just live, but it’s really going to set you up for 2025 and, well, just your life in general. And so I really hope to see you. Again, go to wealthymommd.com/class to reserve your spot. Here’s episode one. 

Welcome to the very first episode of Wealthy Mom MD. I’m Dr. Bonnie Koo. I’m a board certified dermatologist. I’m also a certified life coach with The Life Coach School. I’m also a mother to a toddler, Jack. He’s about two and a half years old, and I have a bonus son who’s 13, and I have a fiance. 

I started the blog, miss Bonnie MD in 2017. And then last year I rebranded to Wealthy Mom MD. In terms of my career, I started out in academics in New York. I was the director of inpatient consult service for dermatology. What that meant was I actually did show up when you called the consult. I did. 

Then I switched to private practice and then last year I switched to locums. I’ll talk about my switch to locums in another episode. Right now I work on my business, Wealthy Mom MD, and I see patients mainly via telemedicine. 

So today we’re going to talk about the lens in which you view and live your life. This is called your mindset. So I went to medical school along with 150 other classmates at Columbia university. And if you asked each of us how medical school was, you’ll probably get 150 different answers, right? Some will say it was awful. Some would say it was hard. Others will say it was easy, a breeze, and they actually had fun. 

But we all went to the same classes and learned the same material. So how can that be? It’s because of how we experienced it through our mindsets, the lens in which we live our lives. And we know this to be true. We all know people that always have a positive outlook on things, and we all know people that are negative Nellies who always seem to have a black cloud over them. 

Now, I’m betting some of you, maybe most of you listening to this right now think your mindset is fixed and can’t be changed. Like I’m just the way I am and you’ve accepted it. Well, I have some great news, at least I hope it is, that you actually have the ability to change this. And once you learn this critical life skill that no one taught you, you no longer have to wait for X, Y, Z to happen to feel all the good feelings. 

Many of us go through life thinking that we feel the way we feel because what happened or because something like seeing your checking account balance. So let’s say you had $10,000 in your checking account balance, different people will have different feelings about this number. So what is it that makes us different? The number is the same, right? 

In fact, I’ll say the number itself is actually neutral. One person might feel anxious when seeing this number. Another person might be ecstatic. What differs between these two people is what they think about the number. You know, that little voice in your head that’s always talking and judging. Those are your thoughts. So newsflash, you are not your thoughts. You are the watcher of your thoughts and you actually have the ability to choose and think different things. 

Now, here’s the thing, for us adults that are in our third or fourth or fifth decades of life the bad news is that we’ve been thinking certain thoughts over and over again, and they have become cemented into beliefs. They are ingrained. And in fact, they’re kind of like the truth to us, right? Not only that, but our brains like to be super efficient, so it’s just so much easier to think these automatic beliefs instead of entertaining new possibilities. 

So basically you’ve got to retrain your brain. It’s kind of like lifting weights. It’s not very easy at first and somewhat painful as you’re building up new muscle or new neural pathways, but eventually it gets much easier. Well, the same holds true for rewiring your brain with new thoughts. 

So then you might ask, well, why is it so important to be able to create and choose new thoughts and beliefs? Because it directly affects how you feel. And why is this important? Because your emotions affect what you do or don’t do. 

So if you’re the one that sees $10,000 in your bank account and freaks out and feels anxious, well, you may just avoid dealing with money and making a plan. Now, we each respond differently to different emotions, so one person’s anxiety might actually be productive where another person’s anxiety is counterproductive. 

So let’s summarize what we’ve gone over so far. I know it’s a lot, right? Your thoughts affect how you feel, which affects your behavior. And why is this so important? Because over time, over decades, these thoughts become beliefs and these behaviors produce outcomes. And these outcomes ultimately become your life, what you have or don’t have in life, right? 

So I would hope it would behoove us to learn how to manage our thoughts, because the other way means we are completely powerless. It means our feelings, our emotions are totally out of our control and that we’re at the mercy of other people’s behavior and what happens to us in life, which is not a great way to live. 

I promise you no one or no thing out there can jump inside your brain and make you feel an emotion. The emotions are under our control by our thinking. So I suppose the bad news in all this is that you are a hundred percent responsible for your thoughts and feelings. This might make some of you feel really great because now you have all the power back, but some of you are not going to feel great about this, but it’s okay. These are just your thoughts. 

But I think it’s so freeing to know that no one can just jump inside my brain and cause a feeling and that no thing or circumstance, no event out there can force me to feel a certain way. 

Now, this isn’t about choosing positive thoughts, by the way, it’s about understanding how your brain works and also having compassion for yourself and other people, because we all have the same human brain and it’s capable of amazing things. And it’ll always continue to offer up thoughts that aren’t necessarily helpful. 

So throughout the next several episodes, you’ll learn how to work on your own lens, how to slowly rewire your brain. But for now, I want you to just become aware of your thoughts, become the watcher of your thoughts. And when you notice thoughts that aren’t really serving you, write them down. Thanks for listening and stay well.

Hey there, thanks so much for tuning in. If you loved what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode. And if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts, I’d love for you to leave a review. Reviews tell Apple that this podcast is, well, awesome. And it will help women find this podcast so that they too can live a wealthy life. And finally, you can learn more about me and what I do at wealthymommd.com. See you next week.