Money – we want it, we don’t want it, we have it, we need it, the other person has it, we love it, we hate it, we lost it, we made it, we deserve it, we don’t deserve it, we know how to attract it, we’re not the kind of person who attracts it. We each have a very unique and important relationship to money and beliefs around it.

Everyone has a money story, rich or poor, and it’s your money story that either allows you to attract in prosperity or completely blocks you from having what you want in your life.

If you are in a place in your life where your bank account doesn’t reflect what you want, or you have to skimp on what you buy for yourself, or you simply feel as if you’ve gotten a rotten deal and you should have more, or that everyone else around you has more than you, then you can be 100%, absolutely sure that you are operating out of a personal money story that is sabotaging you.

At its heart, your “money story” is a series of beliefs and fears that you have developed about money and your personal relationship to money. These beliefs and fears may or may not be based in fact. However, because you have thought them over and over and over again, your mind comes to believe these messages as truth.

It is absolutely vital for you to get very acquainted with – to actually “Befriend” – your fears about money. Why? Because when you avoid your fears, they take over your actions and thoughts and the result is that you sabotage yourself and your ability to create for yourself.

This happens in a variety of ways: anything from avoiding your work by spending too much time on email to telling yourself that you’re not good enough to apply for a certain grant so you wait until the last minute to do it, to telling yourself that no one will buy your services, so you undercharge yourself to telling yourself that you don’t have enough time to accomplish everything you need to and over-scheduling yourself to the point of exhaustion.

The first step to Befriending Your Fears about money is to become aware of what your fears are. Here are the top 8 fears that come up around money and abundance:

1. Fear of not being good enough to have money & abundance – “I’m scared I’m not a good enough writer to make a living from it”
2. Fear of not knowing how to earn money – “I’m not good with numbers” or “I don’t know how to run a business” or “I’m not the Wall Street type, therefore I’m scared I’ll never make money”
3. Fear of the success and visibility that comes with money & abundance – “If I’m rich, then people will notice me and see I’m a fraud”
4. Fear of not deserving money & abundance – “I’m scared I’m not the type of person, or my family isn’t the type of family, that can make money”
5. Fear that it will take up way too much time to make good money – “If I really go after my dream and make it work, I’m scared I won’t have any time left over for anything else”
6. Fear of losing connection with self or loved ones bc of money – “If I am rich, my sister won’t be able to relate to me anymore”
7. Fear of surpassing loved ones because of money – “I am betraying my father by being more successful and prosperous than him; I’ll be leaving him behind”
8. Fear of getting hurt, used or judged – “My friends will think I’m shallow if I buy a beach house in the Hamptons”

Take a moment now and get clear for yourself – what is the thing you are scared of most around money? Go with the first thing that comes to mind for you, and I want you to write that down, star it, underline it, do whatever you need to do so that you remember it.

Whatever this fear or fears are, once you are clear on them, then you can begin to really work with them and move through the process for Befriending Your Money Fears – leading you to open new doors to creating abundance for yourself on all levels!