The Thoughts You Keep Thinking About Money

And Why They Keep Becoming Your Reality

What if the thoughts you repeat most often about money are quietly shaping your entire life?

In this episode of The Brave & Balanced Fundraiser, Erin McQuade-Wright explores the hidden “money mantras” many of us inherited in childhood — beliefs like money is hard to make, there’s never enough, I have to sacrifice myself for money, or people with money are selfish — and how those unconscious thoughts continue to shape our nervous systems, fundraising, relationships, leadership, exhaustion, and sense of self-worth.

Erin shares personal stories, practical examples, and reflective journaling prompts to help listeners uncover the financial beliefs they absorbed before they were old enough to question them — and begin intentionally choosing new beliefs that create more peace, possibility, and alignment.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  How unconscious “default mantras” about money are formed 
•  Why your brain continually searches for evidence supporting your beliefs 
•  How scarcity beliefs show up in fundraising and leadership 
•  The connection between money beliefs, burnout, hyper-independence, and over-functioning 
•  Why receiving support and abundance can feel emotionally unsafe 
•  A simple exercise to help you identify and upgrade inherited money beliefs 

Erin also explores how the nervous system often prefers familiar struggle over unfamiliar expansion — even when the old patterns are painful — and why changing your internal story about money can begin changing your external experience of life.

Journal prompt from this episode:

• The money belief I inherited was…
• The belief I want to practice instead is…

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Transcript

0:02

Welcome to The Brave and Balanced Fundraiser, the podcast I wish I'd had during my 15 years as a professional fundraiser. I'm your host, Erin McQuade Wright. This is your space to breathe, realign, and reconnect with the part of you that chose this work for a reason. Together, we'll explore tools and practices that help you show up less stressed and spread thin and more grounded, brave, and on purpose. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started

Erin McQuade-Wright 0:41

I wanted to create an episode for you that would allow you to walk away with a clearer understanding of the story you're telling yourself about money. So we're gonna get into how those stories show up, what we can do to change them, and how you can shape your story to have the power and the impact that you wanna have in your life. I'm excited about this episode. Let's get into it. If I were to ask you, "What is your mantra about money?" What would you say? Some of you might say, "What's a mantra?" Fair enough. So the idea of a mantra comes to us from Hinduism and goes back to meditation. It's an incantation or a word or a phrase that's repeated to bring you back to center as you meditate. And I'm using it here more as like what's in your mind? Like what are the thoughts that you keep thinking, whether you're intentional about it or not? And what I've come to understand is that you either have an intentional mantra or you have a default mantra. You either have a thought that you're implanting in your mind by thinking it several times a day and returning to it, or you're using old ideas that aren't really that helpful for you as your mantra. If you don't intentionally choose the mantra that you wanna have, you still have them, but you just inherited them instead. So what are some of the default mantras that you might have about money? You might think, "Money doesn't grow on trees," or, "There's never enough," or, "I have to work hard for money," or, "I only get to have just enough, no more than that," or, "Money causes problems." That's a popular one. Or, "People with money are inherently corrupt, and I don't wanna be corrupt, so I need to have as little money as possible." Or, "I'm bad with money," or, "Money just runs right through my hands. I can get it, but I can't hang on to it. I'll never get ahead. I'm too exhausted. You know, nobody believes in me." Um, these are all ideas that could be your default mantras And when you think of it that way, I'm gonna ask you the question again, what is your mantra about money? I just read a list of default mantras to you. If you got a little ooh in your belly when I said one of those, guess what? That's your mantra Oh, I actually do have a money mantra And most of those beliefs that we have that are sort of rattling around in there and we never really questioned them, they come from a very specific place. They come from usually before we were six years old Our parents told us things, our caregivers told us things, and we took it as the truth We absorbed certain beliefs before our critical thinking came online And if our own caregivers didn't have evolved or healthy beliefs about money, then the baggage that they brought becomes our baggage. We overhear conversations, or we take things in from the wider culture or our faith community, or maybe even our little friends and the problems that they're having at home. I remember having a belief that I needed to not want material things, that it was more spiritual if I didn't want material things. So when it came time for us to go on a family vacation, and we were piling out of the van to go into a gift shop, and my parents said, each of you gets one thing. Pick out one, one item that you wanna get at the gift shop," my default was to say, "No, I don't need anything. I don't want anything." Because I had overheard conversations about how the vehicle was having trouble, and there might need to be an expensive repair coming up. So I took it on myself to say, "Let me not get a souvenir. That's me doing my part." Is it any wonder that I grew up to be a professional fundraiser? "Oh, I don't need much. I'll just do for you instead." Right? So these things get introduced to us at a young age, and I was never told, "Erin, don't have any needs of your own." Nobody ever said that to me. That's the meaning I made of my surroundings. In my little child brain, I said, "Oh, here's how I can be in a really good position to get my needs met. When we go to a souvenir shop, I'm gonna say no." Got it. That sounded like a good idea at the time, right? So children don't evaluate beliefs that other people have or that are being introduced to them. They don't evaluate it. They absorb them. And your nervous system, if you're anything like me, your nervous system may be operating from old beliefs and conclusions that happened in childhood before you knew what you know today. And when we repeat those patterns over time, we become really comfortable with them. It's like riding a bike. "Oh, got it." I don't get souvenirs from the souvenir shop. I only get exactly what's necessary. I only get exactly as much money as I need to cover my bills, nothing more. And then the brain is such a meaning-making machine that our brain will go out and find evidence of whatever we believe. So if we believe people are inherently bad, then our brain will find evidence day after day after day that people are inherently bad. We might become listeners to true crime podcasts. Nothing against true crime podcasts. It's not my particular flavor, but people love it, right? So we'll-- That's one way our brain might find evidence that people are inherently bad if we believe that. Or if we believe people are inherently good, our brains will find evidence of that. So w-we don't understand as a young person how finely attuned our brain is to bring us evidence of whatever we already believe. But if your mantra is, "Money is hard to make," then your brain is going out and gathering proof of that. It becomes a detective to constantly gather evidence that, "Yep, I was right. Money is hard to make. It's always a struggle for me." Right? So this is how we are creating our reality, by shaping our beliefs. We first shape our beliefs, and then we see them played out around us. It's a tremendously powerful thing to be a human with a human brain. But if we don't know that that's how things work, it can be really easy to fall into a trance of, "Life happens to me," right? "I'm not controlling things. I'm not powerful enough to do that. Life happens to me, and I just keep making this just enough salary." Right? So I wanna tie this directly into fundraising, but this is for everybody, not just fundraisers. If we believe I have to overwork to deserve money, or I have to over-deliver in order to justify my paycheck, that can show up as burnout, as overwhelm, as needing to prove ourselves, inability to rest, over-functioning, over responsibility, right? If we believe rich people are selfish, that can show up as discomfort around our donors, judgment of them, hesitation to build a relationship with them, or the inability to receive large gifts comfortably without our nervous system going all out of whack. If we have the money mantra, "There's never enough," that can show up as scarcity mindset. There's never enough money for me. There's never enough donors for my organization. It can be fundraising that comes from a place of panic or clinging, or a nervous system that's chronically activated and dysregulated. It can look like jangly nerves 'cause we're finding scarcity everywhere we look when we believe there's never enough. If we believe or have the money mantra, "I have to sacrifice myself for money," that can turn into a martyrdom that includes our bodies breaking down, autoimmune conditions, right? Our bodies just crapping out on us. Tolerating toxic workplaces. Hey, I've been there We're wearing our exhaustion as an identity. I don't remember the name of the academic, but they coined the term rushing woman syndrome. Rushing woman syndrome. That is in itself a scarcity-based approach to life, where we're rushing everywhere, breathlessly, busy, and wearing ourselves out And if you believe the mantra, "I am not supported," that can show up as hyper-independence. "I don't count on anyone else, even when they are really trying to help, I don't take that help." Or distrust around receiving, suspicion of others. So I want you to try these ideas on and see if this is you, if this speaks to you at all, if you find yourself among any of these archetypes So our beliefs shape what we pay attention to And that shapes, that attention that we're paying shapes our interpretation, the meaning we're making. And the interpretation that we're making shapes our behavior, and the behavior shapes our outcomes. So it's a very practical line that goes through from our beliefs to the outcomes that we're getting, whether in fundraising, in, in our love life, in our career, in our relationships with friends and family, right? So it's not life magically happening to us If someone believes people don't support me, then they may avoid asking clearly. They may communicate hesitantly. They might expect disappointment. They might miss available support that's right there for them, but they're not looking for it. Or they might inter- interpret neutral situations negatively And I heard this from a client who said, you know, "They might not be thinking this about me, but it's so easy for me to believe they don't like me. They're talking about me behind my back. They're," you know, like whatever it was. It's easy for us to write the comment bubbles coming out of other people's heads about us, and then we can say, "See? Nobody supports me." And we're back to that belief, and we're back to finding proof and evidence of that. So my question to you is, what would you rather believe? If not these limiting beliefs, what would you rather believe instead? I want it for you to be something that you can actually believe. So it's not meant to bully you into fake positivity or spiritual bypassing. It's meant to create a more truthful and life-giving direction to your attention. So this gets back to what are we focusing on? And so if you don't wanna focus on life not supporting you and resources being scarce, what do you wanna focus on instead? And here's where I recommend you pull out a journal, and here's what I'd like you to write. "The money belief I inherited was," fill in the blank. "The money belief I inherited was," maybe it's money doesn't grow on trees. "The belief I wanna practice instead is," what? "The belief I wanna practice instead is" Money comes to me easily and freely If you inherited money requires suffering as a belief, then maybe the intentional sh- pivot you wanna make is money can come through aligned contribution. Or if you inherited I'm never enough Then the intentiona- intentional mantra might be, "My worth is inherent and I don't have to do anything to earn it." Just by being alive, I am worthy Or if you've inherited an idea like, "I have to do everything alone," Your upgraded thought might be, "I am supported by life, and I find evidence of that support everywhere I look, all around me." So I really want you to break this down and do this exercise. The money belief I inherited was, and write that down, and then the belief I wanna practice instead is what? Write that down. And it's okay if it feels weird in your mouth at first. I remember there was a period where I was a nail painter. I painted my nails. I loved to have painted nails And at some point I just stopped. I don't remember why. I took a break from it, and at first my hands looked weird to me without nail polish, but then I got used to it. And then I had an event or something coming up, and I said, "Oh, let me get my nails painted." And when I tell you I looked at my hand with painted nails after I hadn't painted them for a period of months or years, and it looked so wrong to me. My hand looked like, why is this man's hand with nail polish on it? Now, I don't have particularly manish hands, and if I did, that would be okay, but just the idea of my nails being painted was in stark contrast to the rest of my hand because I wasn't used to it. And you can expect that that could be what you experience with your new money mantra at first. This feels weird coming out of my mouth. Money flows to me with ease. There's support all around me, including there's enough for everyone, including me, right? These ideas might sound strange coming out at first, and I recommend that you stick with it, that you give yourself 30 days of saying it in the mirror. You can write it on a Post-It, put it on your mirror, and as you're finishing brushing your teeth, you say that to yourself. Right? Look right in your eyes and say that new belief that you wanna believe instead And over time, it becomes the new nail polish hands. It becomes like, "Oh, yeah, this is what I do." So you're replacing the inherited belief with the belief that is upgraded for today, for your life now. This is what I wanna believe instead. And your body memorizes beliefs, and some beliefs might feel emotionally unsafe at first. Abundance can feel threatening, and receiving can feel vulnerable I was just listening to a book the other day, and they were talking about if you wanna rec- receive abundance, you wanna receive more abundance, how are you at receiving compliments? And I went, "Ooh." They used the example of someone saying, "Hey, you did a really great job," and the person being complimented said, "Well, it was really the team, it wasn't me." And I have said that. I don't know how many times I've said that, but that really hit home with me. And it made sense. I said, "Yeah, if I wanna receive more abundance, then it's my job to find where abundance already exists and accept it, receive that, build the muscle of receiving with gratitude. Thank you. Yes, thank you. I appreciate that So that's a little challenge for you as well. Receiving can feel vulnerable, but If you want more in this life, allow yourself to receive. Receive a compliment, receive something small, receive a dime that you find on the street. Yes, thank you for supporting me. Yes. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, sometimes the nervous system would rather stay in a familiar struggle than risk an unfamiliar expansion. We like to stick with what we know, even if what we know hurts and we hate it That's very human. If that's you, I just wanna normalize that. That's very human. And when you wanna grow more than you wanna stay the same, this is a great place to start, putting a new mantra in place So I want you to realize, if you haven't already, that your inherited beliefs are not your destiny. They're not your factory setting that you have to keep in place forever and ever, amen. A belief is just a thing that you've been telling yourself, and you can change the things that you're telling yourself Your early beliefs were conclusions that you formed from an earlier environment, and they can evolve. You're allowed to choose the thoughts that you wanna think. Thoughts that create more life, more peace, more possibilities, and more freedom than the ones you inherited So here are your takeaways from this episode. Number one, if you don't consciously choose your beliefs about money, you will unconsciously inherit them. Number two, many of our deepest money beliefs were absorbed in childhood before we had the ability to question them. Number three, your brain will continually look for evidence to support the beliefs it already holds. Number four, scarcity beliefs affect far more than finances. They shape leadership, fundraising, rest, relationships, and self-worth. And number five, a new mantra is not about fake positivity. It's about intentionally practicing beliefs that create more possibility, more peace, and more alignment than the ones you inherited. I hope this is helpful to you. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time