Money Magic & Alchemy

💸 Exploring my limiting beliefs about money 💸

Money is a tricky subject, there is so much wrapped up in money. It is so personal. As individuals we have different thresholds for the amount of money we are comfortable holding on to and the amount of money we are comfortable spending. Some people don’t think twice before spending their entire pay check, others reliably put a small amount away each pay, and others still have large savings they feel unable to touch.

We like to think we make rational financial decisions but lately I’m noticing how much of what I earn and spend my money on, is emotionally driven instead. More and more I am coming to the realisation that humans make emotional decisions that they attempt to justify with logic, rather than being primarily rational creatures. Whenever I feel indecisive or agonise over a decision, I already know exactly what I want to do. I am just trying to line up the logic to support the choice I have already made emotionally.

In the past I have felt extremely uncomfortable spending my savings. I had a pattern of working high stress roles and saving all of my money because I knew I would inevitably burn out and quit. Then I would live on the savings I had amassed while I recovered, before repeating the cycle.

Over the past year I have been working a more sustainable, although sometimes unreliable, part-time job and I have become, through conscious and unconscious effort, a lot more comfortable with holding onto less money. But here is what I am really interested in. Rather than being ok subsisting on less, is it possible to get my nervous system comfortable with making more money for less and/or more enjoyable work?

I have held a couple of long-term negative beliefs about money and work.

1. You have to work really hard to make a lot of money. Harder perhaps than you are even capable of working.

2. In order for work to be paid it has to be really hard and unpleasant work. i.e. work is work and play is play and play doesn’t pay the bills.

I translated the second belief into my creative work by pursuing processes and techniques in my work that felt literally agonising to me and that I hated doing. I liked the outcome of some of the processes and produced creative work I liked, but the process, the experience of the work itself, was really tough and really unpleasant. Subconsciously I thought that was what it had to be, in order to make me money.

The breakthrough came in realising that I would rather work a job I hated for someone else who treated me better and didn’t require that of me, than work for myself in such a way. What is the point of having your own business or your creative work supporting you if the foundations of the work are so unpleasant? Isn’t that what we are trying to escape in self-employment? In passion-based work?

I decided to commit to exploring ease and joy in my creative work. What comes naturally to me? What processes are enjoyable and easeful and what kind of things can I make from that place? What gets me into creative flow and keeps me there, and how can I lean into that more?

This doesn’t mean it’s always EASY. This newsletter comes from a place of ease for me, its a style and a voice that feels natural. I am not trying to fit my work into some other framework or write in a way that takes a lot of effort. That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes struggle. This current newsletter is, I think the third or fourth I have started for this week. Sometimes it takes me some time to figure out where it is going and what I want to say, but the process of getting there is, at least sometimes, enjoyable.

The first belief is a very tricky one, logically I know it is not true as there are countless examples of people doing very little and making a lot of money. And there are people working very hard and making very little. But how can one start to emotionally embody the reality? To become comfortable giving less and expecting more?

I want to explore this, and I want to approach it from multiple angles. Because if there is anything 2025 has taught me, it is that we can logically know a bunch of stuff in our heads, but we need to experience the reality of it in our bodies and in practice. In order to reprogram our brains and our beliefs we need to work on multiple layers and levels of our experience.

I have not read a lot about money. Something in my body and brain revolts against listening to, or reading traditional financial advice and has also resisted for many years doing internal work around my relationship with money.

Therefore my first instinct, was to turn to other spiritual and somatic practitioners; their courses, their advice, their podcasts. But in the spirit of trusting myself and shifting out of student mode into experimenter mode, as I wrote about here, I decided to consult my own internal wisdom, my body intelligence, my spiritual guides and form my own plan of experimentation and alchemical process to shift these beliefs.

I want to begin this work from a place of comfort. I am not currently in financial distress and I am not feeling desperate for any of this experimentation to work. I think that is an important prerequisite and allows me to undertake this alchemical work in right relationship. If this is also true for your current situation and you feel so called, I invite you to follow along.

Exploration:

The first tool I felt drawn to use was the Tarot. I designed this small spread to investigate my relationship with money. When you draw the cards, try to notice and write down what stands out to you, and what that could mean both symbolically and personally, before consulting the guidebook or others’ interpretations of the cards to fill out your understanding.

As discussed above, I already have some idea about my key limiting beliefs. If you are unsure about yours then I suggest free-writing about your relationship with money for a set time, ideally at least twenty minutes. Aim to write non-stop for the full time, and then review what insights, both expected and unexpected came through. Here are some fill in the sentence prompts if you get stuck:

1. Money is….

2. My relationship with money is…

3. People who have a lot of money are…

4. When it comes to money, I …..

5. People who have no money are….

6. When it comes to money, I can never seem to…

7. I spend money like…

8. Making money is…

9. Growing up money was…

10. When I think about making more money I feel …..

11. When it comes to money, I always ….

12. To make more money I would have to ….

Lastly, I have a personal practice of connection with my own spiritual team and I consulted them for any insights they felt would be useful to me at this time, for this work. If you have a personal practice like this already then great, if not, you don’t have to worry about this step, the tarot spread and the free-write should give you more than enough information to make a start.

Review everything you have gathered. What stands out to you? What are the key takeaways from the practices? Did anything come up multiple times? Did anything surprise you?

Next week we are going to look at how we can use this information we have gathered to design our own plan and process for shifting these beliefs. Subscribe so you don’t miss it!

Support The Spiral Path

If you would like to support this newsletter, one-off donations are always welcome here.