In today’s guest post money coach Helen Collier shares some of her experience and knowledge on a topic that can be a stumbling block for coaches (and their clients):

If money was your lover how would you describe your relationship?

By Helen Collier

I often ask groups this question. It usually causes embarrassed laughter. Then responses start to come. Delivered boldly or as aside mutterings,

• ‘In separate rooms’,
• ‘Solid’
• ‘Divorced’
• ‘Tense’
• ‘Comfortable’

and so they go on.

We all have a relationship with money which others may puzzle over, criticise or admire. Some of us have more money than others. Some of us spend what we haven’t got. Some of us hoard and refuse to spend even on the essentials.

Money and emotions run deep

Recently I heard Sir Bob Geldorf describing a time in his life when he had very little money and although he is now a successful, wealthy business man he said ‘I can’t escape the panic that I’m back there’

It’s not unusual for me to meet people who say

• “I earn loads of money and I’m broke”
• “I thought I was doing all the right things and I know the universe will provide but the money isn’t coming, what am I doing wrong?”
• “I just hate spending money, I get a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach”

Beneath these statements lay deeper feelings and emotions, often rooted somewhere in earlier experiences.

We all have a personal money story which charts the way money has shown up throughout our lives. As children we learn lessons about money. Quite often many of the lessons aren’t about anything anyone directly set out to teach us. When we are very young we are powerless to have much influence over what happens in our family around money. We make our own sense of what can be a very confusing and contradictory world and we can carry that sense on into our adult lives.

My mentor Deborah Price of the Money Coaching Institute would say that Money is a core survival issue. Woven into the fabric of that £10 note in our purses and wallets are a myriad of beliefs, emotions and reactions which far out weigh the actual monetary value. Am I worth it? Is there enough? Am I enough?

It’s my view that not enough of us have taken the time to really look at money and how it shows up in our lives.

So let’s start now and share some thoughts on this blog.

Here’s that question again and a few more

If money was your lover how would you describe your relationship?

As coaches what sort of issues arise for your clients around money?

How grounded do you feel in relation to money?

What work have you done on your own issues around money, so you’re in a clearer and cleaner place to support your clients?

About Helen Collier

My work as a money coach grew from a growing disquiet before the financial crisis that there was something amiss in the world of money and it wasn’t just £’s and pence. Seeing what was happening in the financial world, a growing reliance on credit and a sense that we could have everything now left me feeling uncomfortable and led me to explore more about the emotional side of money. I trained with the Money Coaching Institute in California to become an accredited money coach. I now work with clients from the inside out, facilitating an understanding of how their past is showing up in their present and, armed with that knowledge, coaching them as they transform their money lives. If you want to contact me click here

Connect with Helen via:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarmoneyLife

Linked in:uk.linkedin.com/in/helencollier/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Harmoney/324194636947?fref=ts

Access one of Helen’s free webinars on Money Types at http://www.survivedandthrived.com/Money-Quiz/