Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Rich Woman Rising podcast. I am Eloise Tomkins and I'm the host of the podcast. I'm a money coach and psychologist, and I love helping women to heal their relationship with money by being able to tune in to your body.
And today I want to talk about how and why. The body is such an important piece of the puzzle. And because it's something that I harp on about and I talk about so much because true success, wealth, and not even just money and your business, but anything that you do in your life comes down to how grounded and how connected you feel to your body. And for a lot of women, we are not connected to our body. We have learnt to disconnect from our body from a very young age. And what that then does is means that we're not actually being true to ourselves. That sucks. It really sucks because, you know, you think I have so many women that I don't even know what I like, what I don't like, whether it's me that decided that I liked this or whether it was someone else, whether I'm the CEO of my company because I wanted to be or whether because I was trying to get my mum's approval. That is the power of not listening to our body. So if that is the power that not listening to our body has, imagine the power that we can have when we, you know, do listen to our body.
Now, you might be thinking, what do I even mean when I'm talking about listening to our body? Oh, this is such a big one, you know, because listening to our body, it's not just going, oh, yeah, I have a body. Because duh, like of course we know that we have a body. Listening to our body means being able to tune in to those very subtle cues that are happening. So when we think about how we as humans receive information, information comes in via our senses. So our sense of sight, touch, taste, sound and hearing. Every time I have to think through, I'm like, which one did I miss?
So the input that you're receiving right now is coming through your ears. It's through your sense of hearing. And that information that comes through, our brain is processing and our brain is analyzing that information so, so quickly. And it's working out, okay, is this safe or is this unsafe? And in milliseconds, it is scanning experiences, trying to work out if it needs to activate your danger alarm, which is your fight flight response, your anxiety response, or whether you can just carry on throughout your day.
Now, the problem is with women is our ability to tap into our body, listen to our danger signals or listen to our safety signals were overridden. They were overridden by experiences due being conditioned as a woman in the world or as a young girl in the world to not listen to those. And so we started not to trust our own body signals. And we call that a lot of the times intuition and listen to your gut. And I love that advice, but we don't actually know how to do it. And often we're listening to our gut, which is communicating to us, but we don't know how to interpret the messages, like trying to read a map when you don't know how to read maps and you have no freaking clue on what you're doing. So how are you going to get to your destination if you don't know how to read a map?
So that's why it's so important to be able to tune in and listen to our body, because when we're able to do that, we're able to act in accordance with our own truth. And when we don't do that, we're often looking for external validation from people because that's what we're being conditioned to do. So, for example, when I think about childhood and those experiences that a lot of people, a lot of women had as young kids, It's things like being at school and being praised for putting your hand up to ask a question. Oh, you're such a good girl. Thank you for putting your hand up. What's your question? And comments like, well, boys will just be boys when they're rowdy. Those words and situations that we experienced conditioned us to, quote, do the right thing, not cause a scene, not make a fuss, be good, be quiet. We learn not to just go with what feels right to us.
And, of course, we need to learn boundaries and behaviours that are appropriate socially and all of that kind of stuff. I'm not talking about those things. I'm talking about those situations that we're in that felt really uncomfortable to us but we weren't able to express it. And, oh, gosh, I had this, for an example, when I was a kid, my mum used to put me in these, like, blue, not even blue, but just, like, frilly dresses and have those little socks that folded over with those little frilly bits down the bottom in these cute little Mary Jane type shoes. And, look, it looked really cute, but I hated it. And when I got older, I remember in year six I was the, like, I don't know what it was called. It was like the valedictorian of the year level. And mum was so proud. My parents were so proud, but I didn't tell them that we all had to wear dresses because I didn't want to wear a dress. And I rocked up in pants and a t-shirt and I looked pretty good. Like, you know, there was nothing wrong with my outfit, but I just wasn't wearing what every other girl was wearing. And that was so bad I got in so much trouble for being true to myself for wearing something that made me comfortable that still looked fine but it wasn't the norm at the time you know growing up in the like it just wasn't appropriate at that time for my parents and so I learned oh gosh I can't be myself and obviously it's not just one experience there's many experiences that we have.
And When we have those experiences, we learn that it's more important to put other people's needs ahead of our own and we can disconnect from what we want. And it leaves us going, who am I? What do I actually want? And that holds us back financially. It's really interesting because when we look to other people for approval, the way that it holds us back financially is because We want to make other people comfortable. So we don't want to say, hey, I want to make money. I want to be financially independent outside of my partner. I want to earn my own money. I want to whatever your goal is. We find ourselves dimming our light, dimming our shine to make ourselves palatable for people around us.
And then on the flip side of that is people who are out there, who are women, sorry, let me be clear, women out there who are taking up space, who are saying what's on their mind, and they're speaking freely, and then other women judge them. And I find that incredulous because I We want to be able to have and do what they're doing. But then we go as women and judge them. And it's this very vicious cycle that we get stuck in. And you may have found yourself judging women. Now, you might be sitting there thinking, no, I definitely don't judge women. But I want you to really reflect on how you feel about other women's success. because you might not outwardly judge them. And if you feel jealousy or envious on the inside, that is a sign that you want what they have. And maybe you're not judging them, but that jealousy is saying that you are desiring something that they have. And that desire is telling you that you want it and you can have it.
But we don't need to judge women who are out there going for what they want and saying what's on their mind, even if we disagree. And, gosh, there are some women out there that I very much disagree with. I'm like, wow, you say some outlandish. I went down this rabbit hole on Instagram the other day and I was like, holy moly, there's corners of the internet where I'm just like, what the fuck? I couldn't believe, I didn't even know how I got down that rabbit hole. I'm like, why? Instagram showed me those videos on the real thing. I'm like, it baffled me. I was not impressed. But then I got, went down the rabbit hole of watching it. And now Instagram keeps showing me more and more videos. I'm like, no, Ellie, stop watching it. But it's like a train wreck. I can't take my eyes off it.
But anyway, my point is with that is there are women out there who have learned not to give a fuck what anyone else thinks. And that helps them go and create a really strong audience, really helps them to connect with the people that they want to connect with and help. It helps them to deliver their message because they're not held back by trying to impress their partner their friends their family they're out there doing what feels right to them and there's something so powerful about that but the difference between them and us who when I say us I'm talking collectively you know like women who struggle with that is being connected to our body.
Because in order to have that and to be able to speak your mind and to speak your truth, you need to be able to feel safe in your body. You need to feel psychologically safe. And what I mean by that is your nervous system needs to know how to regulate. Because if somebody says to you, your prices are too expensive, on a one-on-one discovery call, then it's understandable that if you had an audience of a hundred thousand people on your Instagram and you posted a video and it had a strong opinion and people were leaving some nasty comments, it's understandable that your anxiety is going to go through the roof because your nervous system is not regulated. Whereas if you are able to tolerate those smaller moments of having that discovery call and having someone go, you know what, your prices are too expensive. And your nervous system is able to tolerate that. You're able to kind of brush it off and go, okay, no worries. Um, who's that? Ariana Grande. Thank you. Next. Is that, I don't even know if that's who sings it. Thank you. Next. Um, But that's the kind of vibe that we're going for, because if you're able to say thank you next in a way that's kind of like, yep, no shade to the client, whatevs, I'm just going to let them go. Great. You're making space.
But if something like that freaks you out, then it's going to be really hard to move to that next level of success. So we need to break free from our conditioning so that we can become confident in ourselves, so that we can trust ourselves, so that we know that no matter what happens, we are always going to be able to come back to ourselves. We're always going to be okay. That is really powerful. Like, can you imagine what it would be like for you if somebody said something mean and you were like, oh, Okay. I mean, that's not particularly nice, but okay. That's your opinion. And you are able to detach from their opinion of you or their opinion of your prices. Like, what would change for you if you were able to do that in your business? I'm guessing a lot would change.
And being able to connect in with our body and know that those feelings of anxiety aren't going to snowball you into Chaos is where it starts. So now might be a good time to just take a little bit of a check in with your body right now. And what I mean by that is just wherever you are. I mean, obviously, if you're driving, maybe, you know, just be mindful of that. But just take a moment to check in with your body. Just take a moment to go, huh, I have a body. Again, I know that sounds silly, but we don't often think about that. And just take a moment to notice what's going on in your body as you're hearing this right now. Is your body feeling alive and energized? Is it feeling a little bit apprehensive? Like, oh, I want to believe that this is possible for me, but I'm feeling a little bit of resistance to that. Maybe feeling a bit of butterflies in your stomach. Maybe you're feeling something else. Maybe you're not really noticing anything and that's okay as well. But just notice that without judgment because that is where this all begins.
This is your wealth building machine. Like your body is your wealth building machine. So let's tune into it and notice what it's saying and get really clear on what is happening in the body because when we're able to do that, we're then going to be able to start making financial decisions and or any decisions that have our best interests at heart. It's really interesting because I remember talking to someone a while ago now, and I remember she said to me, Ellie, if I ever worked with you, I'm scared that I would leave my husband. And my gosh, it was such a powerful thing for me to hear her say. And it also made me really sad because I was just thinking about Your body is giving you so much information. And if you and I work together and we really tuned into your body instead of you remaining disconnected to it, then you'd have to listen to some pretty uncomfortable truths that you already know are there, but you're not ready. And I get it. That's really confronting.
But that is the power of our body because it holds so much. And when we can start to tune in, when we can start to understand and decode the messages that our body are giving us, we can start to work out things like, What feels good for me? Does it actually feel good working sixty hours a week in my business? The answer to that is probably no. So how can we then listen to our bodies that we create a business where we're able to work less? That's there's so much I can't begin to articulate how much power there is and letting go. I hate this about being a woman adult in the world, though, because I feel like as kids we were conditioned so much to disconnect from our body and it helped us survive back then in childhood. And then as an adult we're kind of unlearning all of that. I'm relearning how to reconnect back in with our body and it sucks. We shouldn't have to do that. We should have just been able to connect with our body from the get-go.
But unfortunately, that just wasn't how things are, which is why I'm so passionate about helping women to connect with their bodies now because that's going to mean if you connect with your body, then you're going to really pass that on to your kids because you can't teach your kid how to do something that you are not able to do yourself. I'm not going to go down the parenting path, but we need to be able to embody it. And that's why a lot of women will want to heal their relationship with money because they don't want their kids to have the same relationship with money that they do.
So how do we actually start to trust our body? How do we even kind of get to that point? And I guess part of it is identifying our body just in the moment, like we did before. Okay. I have a body. Yep. Cool. And noticing, just being aware, being aware of what's happening in our body. And I like to do body scans just to kind of scan from head to toe and noticing what's happening in my body at any given point in time. And I go into that in the Aligned Wealth Academy, where we have some really beautiful body scans that help connect us, uh, in a really gentle but guided way and being able to interpret and understand things like anxiety. Anxiety isn't a bad thing. It's just information which we can then use to help us.
And I think sometimes it can be really difficult to tune into our body because when we start to do that, And that means that we start setting boundaries. We start being more assertive. People can push back on that. Our partner might push back or family might push back or friends might push back. That doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong though. In fact, it means that you're doing something right. It's okay to change. It's okay to evolve. It is okay for you to be who you are and being who you are isn't who you have been told that you should be. That's not the same person. And I guess it comes down to a choice of do you want to spend your life being someone who everyone else thinks that you should be? Or do you want to be the person you actually are?
So an example of this, and some of you might already be aware of my story, but for the longest time, like decades, I had this story that I held because it was conditioned into me through lots of repeated experiences with family and that story was men make money women are bad with money which is ironic because my mum was always better at money than my dad um but that was the narrative that my dad had kind of um pumped into me and the narrative that I was also fed was you're never going to be able to succeed financially As a single person, you need a partner to have a dual income because you're never going to survive on your own. Now that was a male partner as well. And again, that narrative, men are the better ones with money, which again, ironic because all the men I dated in the past earned way less than me. I always earned more. So the whole narrative was just flawed, but I still bought into it because that was the story that I had really hooked into. And I didn't trust
