What I Didn’t Learn About Money…
Posted on:
June 22, 2017 | Doula Business
I, Deb Pocica, love to talk about money. It’s such a taboo topic…money. But, who better to talk about it, than me: A person that encourages people to eat their placenta for a living…
Last October at the ProDoula Share The Vision conference, I spoke about money and how much I have grown in my personal ‘money journey’. I shared that I used to believe that money was bad.
I believed that anyone that wanted more money than the bare minimum for survival must be greedy. Thanks to ProDoula, I learned that was NOT the truth. The more money I earn, the more I am able to help others, myself and my children!
I learned that money was actually pretty fun!
last year things were really going smoothly for me financially. I had actually made it off the poverty charts!!
I believed I had finally “made it”.
I was living with my partner, so between only paying for half the monthly household expenses and my businesses going well, I could do what I wanted! I found out that I wanted a lot of stuff; vacations both with and without the kids, and ALL THE SHOES!!!
Then life happened. In December, after years of couple’s therapy, my partner and I decided that we shouldn’t live together any more.
Randy’s words played over and over in my head…. live with them because you want to, not because you have to. No amount of compromise that we were willing to make, would fix this. On January first, the kids and I moved out.
Suddenly finances changed. My housing costs went up by 3x the amount I was previously paying.
In January and February business was… SLOW!!
Within three months I had drained almost all of my savings and my expenses were higher than my income. While this had previously been normal in my life, I had gotten used to not worrying about things like food and electricity.
I was back there again….
I realized that while I had learned part of my money lesson, I didn’t learn it all!
I missed the part about being prepared for the ups and downs of owning my own business.
I wasn’t nearly as financially responsible as I could have been and I’ve avoided that bad word… BUDGET, for far too long.
You see, I was busy dealing with the hurt and guilt of a failed relationship, the fact that finances weren’t where I had hoped that would be, and my inability to LOOK GOOD (again with the shoes..)!
All those things sent me sliding down, feeling like I had failed yet again, that I would never really “make it”.
I was at the point that I didn’t even want to try.
It’s easy for me to work when I am secure with myself and my life. It’s much harder to do when I am not secure.
Nothing felt secure.
I was scared.
I was frozen.
I spent a good part of a month feeling pretty sorry for myself. I thought about getting a job so I would have steady income. Then I realized that working at some retail job, wouldn’t make me enough money to help. I needed to figure out what to do on my own…
Then it hit me.
YOU KNOW WHAT?!
I am in charge of my life!
No one is going to rescue me from it.
If I want to “make it”, then I have to do the work.
It’s time now to COMMIT!!
Committing isn’t just trying to do something. It’s a full out decision to do everything in my power to pull myself back up by the super cute bootstraps, that I found out I loved!
I have to do the things that terrify me.
My life won’t end if I experience rejection.
Randy talks about how the work we do now, will pay off in three months. I am committing to putting everything into my businesses. In a little over three months there will be another ProDoula conference.
By that time I will have yet another story; the other half of what I didn’t learn the first time around…
How to love my inner self and not just my outer self!!
How to plan for the future no matter what it may hold.
How to bounce back… YET AGAIN!
I can’t wait to see what the future holds and I know that I will “make it”! Will you commit with me so that we can celebrate our success at conference together?!
XO,
Deb Pocica
