Alessia Citro 0:02
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Alessia Citro 0:54
Hello, friends. Welcome to a special series on Mindset Monday. This is a multi part series on money mindset. So this is money mindset Monday, I'm really excited to be bringing this information to you. And here is what prompted me to record this series. A couple of weeks back maybe a little longer than that. Now, I was a guest on the getting magnetic podcast with Sandy and Wade, and Wade and I did a bonus episode all around money mindset. And he asked me a question. I can't even remember what the question was now. But afterwards, I was like, I have a way better answer that. And so it set me off on this course of really diving in to like the brass tacks of money mindset, like why are we the way we are? Why are we doing things that we don't want to do that aren't in our interest of like, coming into the money that we say we want all of this. So we're gonna do a deep dive in this series. The first part of it, which is today is on the neuroscience and why your brain is keeping you broke. And it's to keep you alive. So we're going to dive into that, I want to give a couple sort of like ground rules before we jump in. So the first is that we live in a culture where we're taught to not talk about money, and that it's uncomfortable, and that it's tacky and all these things. So if at any point in listening to this, if you feel triggered, I don't want to say good, but in a way, good. If there's something that's triggering you, that is something that you need to explore more because there's something there. So look at triggers as a clue to dig in deeper. So I invite you to do that. Also, before we really kick off into this, if any emotion comes up for you, while you listen to this, I want you to do one of four things, or multiple of these four things to process it. So the first thing that you could do breathe through it, you can move through it, maybe it's standing, stretching, dancing, whatever. Another way to process emotion is by crying, those tears. And then the fourth and final way is through sound. So if you want to, you know, let out an audible sigh yell whatever, as we go through some of this, do I think you're going to need to do that now, probably not, but you never know. And just know wherever you are. Let it out.

Alessia Citro 3:19
Alright, so without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in. So your brain is keeping you broke, in order to keep you alive. It all starts in the sub conscious. So this is fully formed. By the time we are seven years old, I want to take a quick pause here. If you are the parent of a child who is younger than seven, like my daughter is about to turn three. And when I found this out, I was like oh my gosh, Have I already screwed her up beyond repair. Or if you know you have a kid that's over seven, you're gonna think Oh, no other subconscious is fully formed. So I assure that not to bum you out or make you think it's too late. Not at all. It's just something to be aware of what essentially forms the programming in our mind. And it's never too late to rewire it. That's the good news with all of this, we have neuroplasticity, our brain wiring is not fixed and it can be changed. So the beliefs in the subconscious, they're going to be formed by the things that we see in here in our environment. So that's why there could be big disparities based on how you grew up and who raised you and so on. And then the final thing to note about the subconscious is that it controls 90 to 95% of your behavior. So if you have no idea about that fact, and you have a lot of programming in there that is not serving you that is going to be running the show with you having no idea that that's the case. So to start us off, let's talk about some of the common limiting beliefs that we have around money. So the

Alessia Citro 5:00
First one who's heard this in their life, money is the root of all evil. You know, that's not the full quote, by the way, the full quote is that the love of money is the root of all evil. So not the money itself, but the love of money, right. Another one that we've all heard at some level is that rich people are greedy. Another thing that you've maybe heard is that rich people must have screwed someone to make their money. This was the impression that I got at a young age, from who I don't know, but I just had that imprinted for some reason. Another thing that people might worry about is that they won't fit in with their friends or their family if they become rich. Or you know that if if they do come into money that their family and friends are going to want something from them and expect help and these kinds of things. It's also common, I mean, we hear this all the time in the political spectrum that you know, the rich need to pay their fair share. So there's this insinuation that, you know, rich people aren't paying what they ought to be right? That rich people are selfish, perhaps you have a limiting belief that you need to work really hard to make money, and that perhaps to become rich, you won't get to spend time with your family, because you're going to have to be a workaholic. So we'll explore that a bit. We've also heard, I think it was Jay Z, wasn't it? He said more money, more problems might be some truth to that, depending who you are. But nevertheless, it's something that is imprinted. And then the final thing I wanted to share those of you who grew up with a religious upbringing, perhaps you've heard this Bible verse, Matthew 1924, it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. So one of the things we're going to do mostly in part two, next week, but a little bit today will give you a little bit of a preview, we're going to debunk a lot of these limiting beliefs. Because none of these stand up to criticism and logic. Let's talk about the camel through the eye of a needle. This blew my mind when I learned this. Did you know needles did not exist during biblical times. So what's Matthew talking about? Right? Well, you can Google this if you want, since I can't provide you a visual on a podcast. If you go and Google I have the needle biblical times, it's gonna show you in Google Images, what this looks like. So imagine like a wall surrounding a biblical city. And there's a tiny passage way to get through the wall. Because you know, back then you had to fortify the cities and defense and all that. So the weigh in was really tiny. And that was what was referred to as the eye of the needle. And so if you Google one of these pictures, you can see it's very narrow. So could a camel fit through it? Probably, but not that easily based on the one that I'm looking at. And so that's what it's referring to, it's not referring to a camel literally going through the eye of a sewing needle. So it's not as hard for a rich man to enter heaven, as you might think, have you heard that quote? Okay, so these are all beliefs that people have pretty much any background, any race, any gender, you know, any way that we might identify as individuals, we've all heard some of those limiting beliefs. But if you are a woman, there's even more that layers on to this, when I interviewed Dr. Valerie rain for episodes, 17 and 18, highly recommend listening to those all about patriarchy, stress disorder, she called this concept, the intersection of trauma. So you know, you've heard these negative things about money, you've maybe had trauma around it. And then if you're a woman, you can also layer on some of that on top of it. So let's just go through a few examples. So if you're a woman, it may have felt unsafe for you to have desire, you may be chronically over capacity. And the thought of working any harder to make money just makes you want to lose your marbles, right? Also, us women are in our masculine energy all the time we're giving, giving, giving, giving, which is a masculine piece, not receiving which is the feminine. We've been taught that our intuition can't be trusted. We maybe have no personal examples or role models of people who have become wealthy women, let's say with with good balance. There's also I think I've shared this statistic on a few episodes, but it bears repeating. Not until 1988 were women in the United States able to take out a business loan without a cosigner. So there's some major healing that needs to happen around that. We also have ancestral and just collective trauma are on showing up in our full expression. There's also things that happen in the workplace. For instance, women asked for higher pay less often than men, but when we

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Do we get less than what men do when they ask? So there was a discussion paper called Do women ask. And it found that when women ask for pay raises at the same rate as men, men are 25% more likely to receive? Yes, there's also the book The Confidence Code. And they argue that men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women do. And when women do negotiate, they asked for 30% less money than men. So suffice to say, if you are a woman, you have some additional stuff around money that you probably need to work through. So now we've gone through some of the limiting beliefs and the programming and conditioning that has been put into our subconscious. Here's what happens with it. All this gets stored in the subconscious, these beliefs, these things we've heard, you know, the workaholic dad, perhaps like all of that goes into our subconscious gets stored there. And then it is reinforced by our brains survival mechanisms. So let's talk a little bit about the brain. There are three layers to the brain. So you have the bottom layer, which is the reptilian brain or the primal brain, that was the first layer to develop. Then the layer on top of that is the limbic system. That's the emotional brain. And then the third layer on top of that is the neocortex Neo as a new the newest part, and that's where cognitive function happens. Another way to remember this is that your reptilian brain is tasked with survival. The limbic brain is all about tribe, connection relationships. The neocortex is concerned with thriving. Put another way, your reptilian brain helps you get by that's what it's concerned with. Your limbic brain is concerned with getting along and the neocortex is concerned with getting ahead, put another way, reptilian brain concerned with safety, limbic brain, concerned with the social elements, neocortex concerned with status. Put another way, because repetition helps us learn. The reptilian brain is tasked and concerned with protection, prediction, preservation, the limbic brain with partnership, and the neocortex with purpose, possibility, and potential. So this overlaps with Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So picture a pyramid at the bottom of the pyramid, you have your basic needs. So there's two layers here, the bottom layer on the pyramid, the widest part is physiological needs. You need food, water, warmth, rest, those are the main things to continue living right. Then above that, you need safety security. Above that, the third layer, this would correspond with the limbic brain. And it's the belongingness, the love and need for connection, relationships, friends, and then the top two layers of the pyramid one is around self esteem. The one on top is self actualization. So here's what's interesting, most people get stuck on the middle layer of that pyramid and the limbic part. Because you know, here's the thing, pretty much anyone listening to this, I could be wrong. I'm willing to bet though, that all of you who are hearing this, you have shelter, you have food, you have water, you have warmth, you probably have safety, in some level of security, there's no imminent threat, you don't have you know, a bear chasing you or you're not, you know, living under a bridge or something like that, right? Maybe you are and if you are good on you listening to self improvement podcasts, but really that middle layer, the limbic brain, that's where people get stuck. So if you are someone who has a hard time, letting go of what other people think of you, and being afraid of, oh, it's so and so going to say, this is the layer that you're stuck in, right, because you're afraid of getting kicked out of the tribe. We're going to talk a little bit more about that. But that is usually where people get stuck. So they don't end up getting to the self esteem layer of this pyramid. And they definitely aren't getting to self actualization if they're, you know, to concern with what Aunt Rose things right? Or what their friend from high school thinks about them doing this new business or whatever it might be. Also worth noting, we talked about the subconscious being formed by the age of seven guess what else is your self esteem? So you have quite a bit that's going on before that age that's going to drive your ability of how high on this pyramid you can ascend without you consciously

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Overcoming it. Alright, so there are a few things that might hold us back. So we talked about self esteem. The second are the accepted beliefs that we have. And there's this really interesting thing about accepted beliefs. There's an area of your brain, it's called the anterior cingulate cortex are the ACC, and it's your brain's conflict detector. So if there's a conflict between your subconscious belief and your conscious desire, you're going to have a problem, it's going to look an awful lot like self sabotage, it's gonna look a lot like quitting. And why is that because your brain cannot have internal conflict, it just can't. So let's just say, you think that money is evil, that rich people are greedy, that rich people are selfish, that your friends won't like you anymore, that they'll judge you, but you really want money? Well, your ACC is gonna say, conflict here, we don't actually want money, because rich people are bad money's evil that added up, and it will go to work to ensure that you do not do the thing to reach the desire. Until you reprogram that belief, or you become conscious of how this all works. And you override it, you are going to keep butting up against this obstacle. The other thing that holds people back, they're afraid of change, they have an excessive need for control, they might worry about how something's gonna happen. And I gotta tell you these two things control and worrying about the how, or the antithesis of manifestation, which is a conversation for another day. Also, we talked about this a little bit already, but there's tribal banishment. So if you are worried that you know, going to this new level, whether that's wealth or knowledge, or whatever, is going to Outcast you from your group of friends or from your family, well, you probably are going to end up doing the thing to get to that level then. And real quickly on the note of the tribal banishment, like why is this something that people care about? Well, it's from an evolutionary standpoint, to keep you safe, and to keep you alive. If you think back to when we were living in villages. And in tribes, if you did something to get kicked out and get kicked into the wilderness, you were dead, there was no way that you could survive on your own. So that is why it is so deeply ingrained in us to care about what people think. But the good news is, these modern day threats around tribal management aren't going to kill you. So you can override this if you know that you need to. And then the final thing that holds us back is not having a strong enough why you have to have a why that makes you cry, like an onion, there's lots of layers to a why. And if you aren't crying, by the time you get to the bottom layer, it's not deep enough. Alright, so before we talk a little more about modern day threats, and how they won't kill you. The first thing to know also is that everything that we do is for reward. So what are examples of rewards, primary ones, survival, food, sex, shelter, secondary rewards, these are goals we've been conditioned to value, maybe it's getting a diploma, maybe it's a fancy car, maybe, you know, it's getting a huge, huge rock on your finger. When you get engaged, you know, whatever it might be, that's more of the societal things that we've been conditioned to think are important. Your neocortex really wants to attain rewards in the form of dopamine, that this is a double edged sword that we'll talk about in more depth, because you get a dopamine hit when you quit, as well as when you achieve a goal. Or when you avoid a threat, which maybe quitting is avoiding a threat, we can talk about that more too. But all of those release dopamine. So what happens if we, we have a behavior and we get rewarded, we repeat it. Now it's positive reinforcement, that becomes harder to break. And so again, you're going to be rewarded, whether you avoid a threat or achieve a goal. And what do you think people spend more time doing? Because they're going to get the dopamine hit either way? Do you think most people are spending more time avoiding threats or moving towards their goals? They're definitely spending more time avoiding threats. So now that you're conscious of this, you can look at your day to day and see what are you avoiding more of or I'm sorry, what are you doing more of? Are you avoiding threats? Are you moving towards goals? So here's some examples of modern day threats that will not kill you. Spoiler alert, but your brain still reacts as if they will. You might be terrified of criticism. This might be a threat because if someone criticizes you, you're gonna get kicked out of the tribe. then you go out into the wilderness and you die. Well, that's not going to happen anymore. So let someone criticize you, worth noting, you will never be criticized by someone doing more than you only by someone doing less. All right, next one, rejection, judgment, lost connections, being different, being uncomfortable, maybe losing your income, getting canceled. These are all examples of things that today feel threatening. And our brain still deals with them as if these are lethal threats. I want to share one thing on the note of criticism too, before we move on, I watched a Brene Brown special, it's probably been two years ago now. And I can't remember the name of it, but it's about her book daring greatly. And she shares how she got the name of that book. And it was from a Theodore Roosevelt speech that he gave a long, long, long time ago. But it's so good. And it bears repeating here, because once I heard this, and I read this poem, or speech, whatever you want to call it, I was like, wow, this is this is exactly what I needed to hear to stop caring so much what people think. So here we go. Theodore Roosevelt says, It is not the critic who counts not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who airs who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually survive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who neither know victory, nor defeat. So what our board Teddy was trying to say, if there's someone up in the nosebleeds, who is not in there, busting their ass, blood, sweat, tears, do not listen to what they have to say, until they get in the arena with you, and they see what it takes. Pay no mind to what they think, God, I love that, quote, if it wasn't so long, that would be a tattoo or the type of quote, alright.

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So what are some ways that we avoid threats, so your hippocampus is a perfect history book of your life or a filing cabinet, so to speak. And it helps us avoid threats by predicting them based on past experiences. One of the ways it does this is, again, by the subconscious programming. So think about the things you heard as you were growing up, and parents, you are going to really relate to this, especially if you have a toddler like me, what are things that you find yourself saying to your children over and over and over again? Or that perhaps you as a child heard over and over and over again? Be careful? Don't do that? No, stop? How many times do you think the average child is told some version of No, by the time they turn 18, almost 150,000 times. So if you've been told over and over and over again, be careful, don't do that stop? No, you may be more risk averse and afraid to branch out. So what happens is, you are being told all of these things as you were creating and exploring and making messes. I mean, I do it too. I tell my daughter know, probably 100 times a day, which this is my clue to work on that. But what happens is that now associates creation and exploration with punishment, and maybe abandonment. Like if you were being quote unquote, naughty as a kid, and like making a mess or getting into something that you shouldn't have coloring on the wall, whatever it might be. And then you got like, put in your room and your parents, you know, left or they got mad when it talked to you for a day or whatever it was, well now, creativity and exploration is tied to being abandoned and being punished and what is the greatest of all childhood fears. It is abandonment by the primary caregiver. So if you find yourself scared shitless to take risks, it very well could go back to this time in your childhood. The other way that we avoid threats, like I said, this is predicting the future via the hippocampus. So if there's anything that happened to you before your brain is a calorie conserver it wants to take shortcuts rather than having to fully process everything because there's no way any of us can even be surviving in the modern era. If our brain had a process every bit of information. So it takes a lot of shortcuts. And so one of the things you you may notice, is it easier for you to recall the negative things that have happened to you? There's a reason for that. It's because the negative stuff in your brains evolutionary lens, that's the stuff that could have killed you. So like flashbulb memories. For instance, if any of you have heard this term, like 911 is a flashbulb memory for me. Like I remember that morning clear as day when the planes hit. I'm about to be 36 years old. So I was a sophomore in high school when this happened, that is seared in my memory. Why is it that things like that or other traumas get seared into our memory? It's because we release cortisol, when this thing happens, it attaches to the memory and it sears it in there so that your traumatic memories are probably some of the most vivid, so unfortunate, right? But it's all for a purpose to keep us alive. Okay, so going back to The Parenting piece a little bit. So you heard no all the time. Don't stop, be careful, you know, getting in trouble for exploring, creating. So what are what's the lens that most of us are living our lives with? Its shame and guilt, right? We did this thing that was bad. But when we're a child, we equate hearing that this thing was bad with we are bad. So a lot of us are carrying around a lot of shame, a lot of guilt. And the bad news is that that is a very, very low vibe to be at. I talked about this on my episode with Kelsey pindy Ghosts, which I want to say was episode 13. She talks about this emotional frequency scale. So I think it was Abraham Hicks who created this, I could be wrong on that. But basically, it ranks the emotions at a level of frequency since whatever frequency we are at is what we draw in more of. So guess what the lowest two emotions on the scale our shame and guilt is right above it. What's lower than those two, death, which has no frequency. To give you a contrast, the highest emotion is Enlightenment below that piece below that joy, then love. So being in a place of shame and guilt, you are going to draw a lot of quote unquote, bad luck into your life because that is what you're attracting. And like attracts like what we focus on expands. So if you're low vibe, you're going to attract more low vibe, if you're high vibe, more high vibe. That's why you ever noticed, oh, that person gets lucky all the time. No, it's because they're at a higher frequencies, they're attracting more of that. Alright, so we talked a little bit about being a low vibe, shame and guilt, looking for threats all the time. And so if this is the lens that we're in, we can have a lot of different threads coming our way. And depending on the emotion and the state of being run, we're gonna react differently to them. So you know, there could be real threats, there could be imagined threats can be a memory based prediction could be physical or psychological. And by the way, the same part of your brain feels pain from both physical and psychological, interestingly enough, and you can maybe made a prisoner to the familiar as your memory bank grows, as your memory bank of threats grows, I should say, then you've got the amygdala, this is the bouncer of your brain. So it's going to prioritize the strongest emotion and process them first. So if you have anxiety and fear in line to get into the nightclub, so to speak, using the bouncer reference, if those are the two strongest emotions, more so than like excitement and hope, or joy, perhaps those two get to cut the line and go straight to the VIP section. Like their process for their prioritize your other emotions are not registering. So these less strong emotions, they keep waiting in line outside. So if you feel like you're constantly in this state of anxiety and sadness, depression, that's why because those emotions are so much stronger, that they're overpowering the other ones. So when we face the threat, we do one of three things fight, flight, or freeze, fight and flight. Those are obvious. But what does freeze mean? It means you're so overwhelmed, that you can't choose any action. So why people tend to just stay the same, because they're so overwhelmed by what they can do to get out of it. So a couple things that you can do. If you are in this place of freeze, odds are good, you're in your head and you need to get back in your body. There's a strategy that you can do called triple A, and it is to acknowledge the feeling and the Thought, allow it because what you resist persists, and then appreciate it. This thought, even if you don't like it, or this feeling, it's serving you somehow, it's validating your wanting of staying the same. It's protecting you, it's doing something for you. So the more that you can explore why that is, it'll help you get back into your body to understand to take the pause, and to choose a different thought. You can also just quickly take a moment to like, just sit, breathe, and deep note your surroundings, maybe you know, touch yourself on your face on your shoulders, like come back into the body, take a sip of something, take a bite of something, engage the senses. And that can also kind of help you to get out of your head and back in your body. So the good news with all of this, it's a lot of doom and gloom, but we have neuroplasticity, as I mentioned earlier, your brain is not fixed, it can be changed, but wires together, fires together. And if it's no longer firing together, it will no longer wire together. So you absolutely can change this. And I wanted to close on a note from the Bible, we talked a little bit about you know, the camel going through the eye of the needle and the love of money is the root of all evil, both of which come from the Bible. Here's another beautiful quote to end on. Romans 12. Two, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. renew your mind, there's so much out there, I mean, infinite knowledge, we can change anytime we want. We just have to decide to do it. So I invite you to use what you learn today to examine the thoughts and beliefs that you have around money. Where are the potential conflicts? We're going to talk more about this in part two, and how to debunk these limiting beliefs because they do not stand up to scrutiny. And what can you do today to override these limiting beliefs, these thoughts that don't serve you and emerge victorious. I'll see you next week for part two. And that is where we will explore the truth about money. Until next time,

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what you track grows, grow it matters with the 90 day cycle to new habits journal and stay focused on what will move your business forward. Pick up your copy today at 90 day habits.co And use code Citro that CIT R O for 10% off. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If today's episode added value to your life in some way, please subscribe, leave a five star review and share it with someone who needs this. I'd love to connect with you on Instagram and hear how the show has inspired you. So tag me or slide into the DMS find me at corporate dropout official or Alessia Citro. That's ALESSIA CITRO, and two underscores. Until next time, remember that you're a badass, stay focused, stay hungry and dare to drop out