Money Musings 💭 progress is step by step 👣
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy (almost) Kwanza for those who celebrate! 🎉
I have a tendency to want to go go go (some have affectionately nicknamed me “turbo” 😂) and that means I don’t often take time to reflect. Once I achieve something, I don’t take enough time to pause, celebrate, and evaluate what I could do better before moving on to the next thing.
I was recently with a group of friends who also run businesses, and we went around the table and talked about our 2019 highlights. We shared what we accomplished during the year, what we learned, and what we’re most proud of.
It was so much fun to celebrate my friends, and it was really eye-opening to recap how much had happened even in just the last year. I realized – we need to do this more often!
One memory that really stood out to me was that before my book came out in January, I was terrified of being on camera. 😫 I could hardly bring myself to do an Instagram story. It’s hard to believe!
Fast forward through lots of coaching and feeling really uncomfortable, the Ashley of 2018 would have been shocked (and proud) to see my TV appearances 🎥, me starring in my own music video 🎧, and the keynote 🎤 I gave in front of 550 people. Instagram stories are now a daily occurrence.
As you’re spending time with friends and family this next week, I highly recommend going around the table (maybe over some dessert or hot cocoa) and having each person share the highlights of their 2019 - what they learned, what they accomplished, and what they’re most proud of.
I’d love to hear from you, too! 🤗 Hit reply and let me know.
Money Move of the Week
Make a powerful 2020 money mantra. We often think of mantras as positive but they are just words or phrases we say to ourselves over and over. Unfortunately, when it comes to money, they are often pretty negative. The issue with having a negative or non-serving money mantra is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We tell ourselves “I’ll always be bad with money” and that leads us to take action that’s not in line with our goals, or we don’t take any action at all. In turn, we’re not happy with our results and that further enforces our negative belief. We can stop that cycle by replacing our non-serving money mantra with something much more powerful. Take on a powerful money mantra for 2020. Create one that resonates with you and gets you excited (even if it’s a nervous kind of excited). Remind yourself of it often. Make it the background of your phone, put it on your desk, or repeat it to yourself in the mirror each morning. It can take time to replace these negative money mantras (we’ve had them a while!), but over time we’ll confirm our new money mantra with our positive results!
You Gotta See This
This month we saw some major, positive headway when the federal government gave its 2.1 million employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave for new parents starting October 2020. Hooray! 👏 Why is this important? The federal government is the largest employer in the US, so not only do 2.1 people now have some paid leave that didn’t before, but there is hope that it will set the tone for many more employers to follow suit. The US is the only industrialized country that does not have federally mandated paid parental leave. This doesn’t change that but it’s a move in the right direction. Is 12 weeks enough? Hell no! Lauren Smith Brody, author of The Fifth Trimester shared that the 12 weeks most of us know and 😡 is an arbitrary number, and that studies show that six months is the point where mom and baby’s health is most protected.