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Have you ever felt that you are not earning enough to match your skills and expertise? That you deserve more? Have you ever felt that you earn a lot more than you deserve? Have you ever experienced guilt because you think you have spent too much? Have you ever experienced an uncontrollable urge for spending even though you have to take a loan for it?

Truth is that a lot of what happens in our daily lives is inextricably tied into how we think about and use our money.

How much we earn, save, spend, give, lose, take and receive can become a source of joy or sorrow, guilt or pleasure.

We often don’t acknowledge the various ways that money affects us and how tied up our everyday emotions are with our surreptitious relationship with money.

In fact, many of us don’t acknowledge that there exists any kind of relationship with money. There is a school of thought which believes that money is simply a means to an end and has no more influence on our lives. If you have ever been stressed about the interest cost on an EMI or can’t stop smiling when you received an unexpected bonus from work, you know that money does have influence beyond its utilitarian role in our lives.

If you have a good relationship with money, you are at ease with little discomfort in achieving what you set out to.

If the opposite is true and your relationship with money is strained, you will feel the pressure and will struggle to live the life of your dreams.

When this happens, there is a need not only to acknowledge how a strained money relationship may be holding you back, but also, to consider reaching out to a financial coach who can guide you towards empowering change in your money relationship.

You have the key

Financial coaching is not about finding prescribed solutions to your money worries. Neither is it about therapizing your money relationship. Rather, financial coaching is a mix of therapy and guidance. A mix that empowers you rather than advises you. A coach can help you discover those money beliefs which are holding you back and empower you to find solutions most suited to your unique self which can then help you move forward.

In other words, a financial coach is there to listen and guide you forward, clearing that cloud or fog around money which is preventing you from achieving all that you are capable of.

The critical part here is that the focus is always on YOU. You are the one presenting the problem and you are the one who can ultimately arrive at the solution. The coach is merely holding your hand and assisting you in this process.

There are no judgements 

There are so many possible reasons why we have the money beliefs that we do. So many reasons around why those money beliefs hold us back and stop us from achieving our dreams. We feel shy, awkward, underconfident, greedy, audacious, powerful or helpless when it comes to money and whatever the emotion around it, we feel that saying it out loud will bring judgement from others. Coaching is a judgement free process. What your reality is can be understood only from your perspective, there is no good or bad, right or wrong, only deep and honest reflections matter. A financial coach will have no opinion about your emotions around money and your money beliefs.

They will only help you realise the direction in life that you want to take and how to make money a useful resource in that journey.

A financial coach does not come with a pre-determined map of emotions, rather they will act as an empty map for you to bounce of your emotions and create your own unique map.

The assisted tools to help you reach the goal

It’s hard to set goals by yourself and even harder to stick to those goals without being accountable to another person. Financial coaching is about giving you tools, first to understand your money relationship better, then to enable you to change it to your benefit and lastly, to be your accountability partner who can stand solid till you reach the outcome you set out for.

Who you are and how you are around money is a deep-seated subconscious level of your existence and bringing that to the forefront is what financial coaching tools can do for you.

Further, a financial coach can become the perfect, emotion-free and unattached accountability partner to support you through the change that you are empowering in your life.

Defining an outcome right in the beginning will clarify what your financial coach and you together can work on achieving. Trusting the process and allowing yourself to think deeply is what will help you arrive at this outcome. Coaching is a highly inward process and the added benefit is in understanding yourself better, with a clarity that was missing previously.

Give yourself this gift and start the journey towards a stress free and positive relationship with money, reach out to a financial coach who will listen but, without judgement.