Untangling Your Self-Worth From Your Bank Account

by Shawn Fink | Jun 19, 2022 | Financial Wellbeing, Recent

Your self-worth isn’t found in your bank account.

Or anywhere else for that matter.

It’s time to unlearn some of the ways you feel enough as an entrepreneur.

Have you have ever felt like you’re not good enough because you’re not making enough money or because your business is not where you want it to be? 

Perhaps, you often feel low because your bank account has been dwindling, or you want to make more but you keep plateauing. Or you just aren’t getting the sales you want.

Or, maybe you just are barely making enough to get by?

If you feel low while thinking about your money or sales it’s possible your self worth is tangled up in your bank account. 

Or, it is tied up in the tactics you use to earn money.

Let me start out by asking this: Where where do you think right now you seek and find your self worth? 

Give yourself a minute to allow yourself to just think about that. 

• Where do you find yourself worth? 
• Do you seek it through other people? 
• People pleasing may come up for you. 
• Do you find it by seeking approval from other people? 
• Are you looking for tips passively by learning everything that you can so that you know everything.
• Do you find your self worth in your social media likes comments engagement reach? 
• Is it found in your bank account or net worth?
• Is it found in your productivity and how much you get done each day? 

I’ve been studying, teaching, coaching, and working with women on enoughness and self worth for 10 years. When I ran my first business The Abundant Mama Project, we talked endlessly, daily, weekly monthly about establishing and feeling and reaching a state of enoughness. 

• When are we enough? 
• When do we have enough? 
• When do we feel like we have finally done enough? 

Today, I’m talking about a very specialized department of self worth — the connection between your self worth and the money that you earn that you equate to your self worth and your bank account. 

Listen to this episode on the Brave Yes CEO Show now.

For years, I worked with a lot of women who weren’t making any money because they were staying home with their kids as full-time. caretakers.

And their self worth plummeted.

They didn’t feel enough for a lot of reasons but mainly because they did not have contributions to make to their family finances and so they relied heavily on their partners for financial sustainment. They did not feel worthy. 

So, a lot of the work we had to do in the program and group coaching was help them find their worthiness in other places. 

Now, it’s kind of funny, maybe not funny, funny is probably not the word.

I’ve been doing online creating for 15 years and full-time making an income from it for 10 years. My work helps pay the mortgage for the house and the life that we have as a family of four.  We do not have a lavish life. My business is designed for creative freedom and flexibility for caretaking of our twin daughters, now 16.

But I take my work very seriously. It is a full-time business. Not a hobby.

When I first started creating online and writing online and receiving money in return, I started out very high scale, in terms of numbers, high numbers of clients and customers, low cost offers, I’m talking $10 offers $15 offers $30 offers. 

That’s that was for most of eight years. 

And so you learn very early on in a model like that, that money can come in all day, every day. 

It was not uncommon for me to open my email and see, you know, 10,15, 20 sales of something that I was offering. Sometimes my entire email inbox was flooded with sales.

This multi-daily action flooded me with dopamine as well. I opened my email repeatedly to see the sales coming in and, in the process of that, I became addicted to opening email where I would find for evidence of MY value and worthiness. 

I am worthy because look, there’s a sale.

So because it was a lot of passive income, it was just so easy to see the money flowing in all day.

Unless it wasn’t.

Over time that pleasure seeking started to unravel my self worth. I literally began to equate money making to being worthy. 

And I would check my email constantly to see if sales came in. 

It didn’t matter if they were $10 or $100. 

If something came in, I felt worthy. 

I felt enough. 

If no money came in, I felt terrible. 

And I would slip into despair and feeling irrelevant. 

The truth was that I was looking at the day to day.  And not the big picture. I wasn’t tending to my holistic financial wellbeing. I was just reacting to the ins and the outs, and the ebbs and the flows, and I wasn’t able to see the big picture.  All I was seeing was myself being not good enough if money wasn’t coming in.  I was missing the actual problem that was there under the surface.  Instead of focusing on my greatness, I focused on my weaknesses when money wasn’t coming in. 

Once I woke up, I started to see this kind of dopamine attaching my self-worth to my net worth was not good. 

I now work with many entrepreneurs who have struggled with this, who still struggle with this, so I’m not speaking like I was alone in this kind of thinking trap.

It’s fair to say, I feel worthy when somebody pays me that they value my work enough that they’re going to actually give me money in exchange, that’s fair to see that as a little gold star. 

What I learned, though, is that to untangle my self worth from my bank account meant finding my self-worth in other places, and starting to really understand what self worth really is. 

And that’s when I started my own self worth journey, which is what eventually led to me, completely closing down my first business, the Abundant Mama Project, because I realized that part of what was going on for me, by the end, was that I felt like I was not really living into my my full self. 

I didn’t feel whole anymore. And I certainly didn’t feel valued in many ways.

And so I needed to switch things up, I began to really tune into my own creative journey, and figure out what the next thing was. And part of that was really understanding my true innate self worth. 

I started a self worth journal, and a self worth practice, all of which I use with my clients in Brave Business Coaching who struggle with confidence and believing in their own value.

And I began to dig deep into my own spiritual audacity, and resilience and wellbeing practices, all of which I also use with my clients, who want to untangle their identities and their productivity, and their bank accounts from their self worth, and really start to shine in their industry. 

All parts of your life are impacted when your worth is tangled up in your bank account.

Researchers call this financial contingency of self worth.

And as it turns out, it’s bad for your mental health. 

And I, as I have said, can fully attest to that. 

A study out of the University of Buffalo in 2020 found that those who see their self worth and have it tangled up in their net worth tended to be more socially isolated and lonely. So while they were so busy trying to earn more money, more money, more money, they actually were cutting themselves off from other important channels that could improve or sustain a positive mental health outlook.

Maybe you’ve been experiencing this as well as entrepreneurs, it’s really hard not to see your value in relation to the income you earn. 

It’s even harder when there are so much attention being put to six, seven and eight figure businesses, which doesn’t necessarily mean you get paid a six-figure salary, by the way. Many high income business owners have a lot more overhead and aren’t earning what they would like personally.

And you wonder maybe why that’s not you why that’s not happening for you yet, and what might be wrong. 

Money is often the only evidence, especially these days, is often the only evidence that your work is valued. 

I know when I get evidence my work is valued in other ways, I feel just as great as I do that when I as when I earn income. 

For instance, when I opened up and launched the Brave Yes Museletter, my weekly newsletter that I have on Substack I felt so great that people were subscribing. And, recently when a handful of people came up to me at an event to tell me they truly love my emails, I felt so wonderful.

My hard work is being seen and valued.

But, that’s just it.

Your WORK is valued.

However, the work stands alone. The work is what is being valued when money is paid.

The work, then the marketing is being valued when people sign up or say something or give feedback. 

The work is not about YOU, not your self-worth. The true you has nothing to do with your self worth as a human being. 

It’s just evidence that the work that you’re doing is valued the work. 

The material, the resources that you’re putting out, are valued. 

So while money is essential, we must make it, we need it.  This is why my work focuses on money, meaning and the greater good as business owners. We needed to take care of ourselves and be prosperous. We can keep serving, keep creating and inspiring people and keep serving the world and our highest possible way.  We also need money to influence the change we want to see in the world. 

However, how much we earn, or if we earn at all has nothing to do with our self worth as human beings. 

Your self worth is innate, you’re born with it, your life is worthy and value just for being born and it has nothing to do with your net-worth.

How amazing is that? 

You’re sitting there right now questioning all the things and you are so worthy, just for being alive? 

The question is, do you value yourself?

This is my favorite starter work to do with my private coaching clients. We work together discover your authentic, beautiful inner strength, inner self leadership skills, inner worth and our trust and our self awareness, self confidence, all of that. We build it together, you get to find it and discover it and shape it and sculpt it into a beautiful package that differentiates you, that really helps you shine and feel confident. 

Your self worth though is not the same thing as your self confidence. 

Your self worth is when you can truly say this: I am a valuable human being worthy of love, being seen being heard and taking up space. 

When you feel that, when you believe that, when you feel that in every part of your body, you can walk into any room you can make any sale you can deliver any speech or say what you truly believe.

Because you know you are worthy to be there. Were they to be standing on that stage, were they to be a speaker in that workshop were they to be putting your message out there. 

Self esteem or self confidence is what happens when we finally bring enough when we finally bring everything that we think, feel and believe into alignment and show up more boldly and daringly that’s getting on the stage and actually saying the things that you want to say, for real, like no holding back. 

That’s confidence. It’s what you deliver. It’s how you deliver it your presence. 

But just the fact that you’re up there, and that you believe that you believe that you deserve to be up there that self worth.

When you tie your worth, when you tangle that up in your bank account and all the other places where you might be seeking your self worth — you forget that what you’re really trying to do is believe that you are worthy to be doing the work that you’re doing. 

So I want to invite you want to invite you to consider where you are currently seeking your self worth. 

And dig a little deeper to see if it’s something you can start to untangle from one string at a time. 

Because I can tell you that you can’t find your self worth and your bank account, your career choices, your number of invitations to social events, your list of accomplishments, awards or certificates, your relationships, your weight, your education, your age, or your gender, your possessions, who you know, or what your house looks like.

Your self worth is innate, and it is based on your own authentic gifts and strengths, which you can use in every possible moment. 

So start tuning into what authentic beauty you could bring to this world if you just believed a bit more in your self worth. That if you could show up without striving without toxic productivity or destructive perfectionism, you are still worthy when you make mistakes. When you get rejected, when you don’t make a cent in a week, you are worthy, worthy to be who you want to be, say what you want to say, do what you want to do, you can start to develop that inner self leader who wants to be more authentic and courageous in your own way, by developing self confidence. 

Confidence begins with believing in your own worth and knowing that you are a worthy human being, no matter what’s in your bank account. 

And so when I started to really tend to my well being financially, and made that a top priority, not an afterthought, I really started to see the diff how I could pull my money making story away from my worth away from my enoughness. 

One of the ways I began to untangle my worth from my bank account many years ago now, it was starting to tend to my financial well being financial well being is one of the eight spokes on my well being wheel that I know that we need as human beings to thrive. 

So I have been maintaining a weekly ritual that I call Friday Financials that nourishes me in mind, body and spirit that that weekly Friday financial check in is all about maintaining a grounded balance and intentional practice, have tended to my current Money Story. 

Rather than put my head in the sand — and I have clients who come to me saying I put my head in the sand when it comes to money — rather than suffer through the feast or famine ebbs and flows with the head in the sand, the financial wellbeing check in ritual is as much about goal-tending as it is about paying the bills and invoicing clients. 

It is much about seeking peace around the state of the bank account as it is about making sure that I am staying in check around my mindset around money. 

I am sharing my own financial well being check in ritual now.

It is a system. It is a ritual. It is a well being aspect, but it’s just one of many. 

And so you are invited to go and grab that it is completely free.