10 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety About Money

by mandyythomas4, posted in Ending Anxiety Around Money, Money Mindset

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10+ Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety About Money

Woman standing in a field with arm out to the side looking up at the sky

 

I wanted to share different ideas for things you can do when you are feeling really anxious and stressed about your finances or your perceived view of your finances. The reason that I say perceived view, is because you can be doing really well with your money, managing it well and not even be in debt, but if your thinking and feeling around money and the world is scarce, then you will still experience just as real stress and anxiety in your life, as someone who is struggling pay check to pay check and also has debt.

I can speak to this from personal experience. I grew up in a family where we didn’t have a lot of money and there were so many fights because of it. You would feel the tension and anxiety in the air.

Then in my adult life, I was earning 6 figures and managing my money really well and didn’t have any debt (besides being a homeowner), and my anxiety around money was still very very high.

Even though I wasn’t struggling financially and I was managing my money very well, I kept going back to those thoughts and feelings of financial scarcity and it caused me anxiety which lead to binge eating, adrenal fatigue and many digestive problems.

Struggling Mental Health and Anxiety due to Financially Scarce Mindset
Struggling Mental Health and Anxiety due to Financially Scarce Mindset

When I worked on my money mindset, I was able to overcome my anxiety around money. If you want more help with this, you can check out a post I wrote, How I Lost 10lbs From Working on My Money Mindset, where I talk more about it.

Anxiety & Binge Eating due to Financially Scarce Mindset
Anxiety & Binge Eating due to Financially Scarce Mindset

But it takes time to work on your feelings, thoughts and beliefs around money. While you are working on your money mindset to feel more abundant, here are some ways that you can use to help reduce your anxiety around money, when you are in that awkward stage of uncomfortableness as you are growing as a person and strengthening your mind and in turn, your mental health.

Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety About Money:

1) Work on Your Money Mindset

Work on your money mindset and how you think, feel and perceive money. This is one of the first things that I did and it really helped to actually change my entire thought process around money. Reading about abundance and money mindset really helped to affirm to my mind, that had been feeling so scarce around money for 20+ years, that money is in fact abundant. I have read tons of money mindset books and I continue to read them to keep developing my money mindset further each day. If you want a list of my favorite money mindset books you can click here.

2) Have Something to Calm You Down in the Moment

When I was starting to feel uncomfortable and needed something to help me right in the moment to reduce the stress and panic feelings, I would use my essential oils that helped to calm my autonomic nervous system so it wouldn’t go into overdrive and overthinking. I found that we often make up these stories in our heads of the worst possible scenarios and then we wonder why we feel so scarce and anxious. I always affirm to myself as well, that 99% of the stories that we make up and tell ourselves inside of our heads, never actually happen, so why am I so focused on the “what-ifs” that almost never come to fruition anyway. The oils that I personally found to help calm me the most are lavender, balance, wild orange (this is the oil of abundance, one of my most favorite oils) and copaiba. Other oils that I love using to help me feel more grounded are Douglas fir and cedarwood. I carry my oils with my in my purse and everywhere I go, so I have them available to me right in the moment when I need it most.

 

Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

3) Get Out in Nature

Going for walks in nature was a huge help to me because I found that in nature, I was able to calm down more. I was able to silence the worries and just be able to enjoy the here and now. I also believe that alone time where we can just feel peaceful, where everything is quieter and the world seems a little slower, is so powerful. Learning how to slow down is a part of the process because when our minds are going a million miles a minute and our brains are bombarded with overthinking and overanalyzing, we can start to feel the anxiousness setting in. Going for walks and just observing how incredible nature is, can be a tremendous help to lower your feeling of anxiety around money.

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4) Give Affirmations a Chance & Be Consistent

One that I am sure you have heard many times, but maybe not actually truly tried, is affirmations. Nowadays you hear affirmations this, affirmations, that. But have you actually done it? Have you read them out loud to yourself on a consistent basis? Yes at first it may seem silly and honestly, you may not believe yourself, but the more you affirm it in your mind, the more you believe it, the more that it becomes your “truth.” My suggestion here is to pick phrases that resonate with you. Saying ones that you don’t connect with, isn’t going to give you the improvements that you want to see. But using ones that do resonate, will help you to believe in abundance and reduce your anxiety about money, a little more each time you read them. There is a TedTalk that talks about how standing in a powerful position (your posture and body physiology), actually changes how you think and feel. So when I say my affirmations, I do them in the Wonder Woman pose and it seriously helps me to feel like a badass and to really believe what I am saying.

How your mental health is connected to your money struggles

5) Put Money Mindset on Autopilot

When you are sleeping, you can listen to hypnosis’s or money affirmations that help your subconscious mind to start to believe in that abundance. Your money mindset is what determines your wealth, not your situation. So the more you can improve your money mindset, the easier it is going to be to build true wealth. And what better way to do this than to put it on when you are about to go to sleep and allow your subconscious mind to be absorbing all of those affirmations. You can look up videos on YouTube and listen to them when your phone is plugged in and charging at night. I really love doing this and I have it on low so I can fall asleep, but I am still hearing the words.

6) Open Up to Your Partner About How You Are Feeling

If you have a significant other, talking to them about how you feel about your money situation is so important. You might feel so uncomfortable about opening up to them and those feelings just continue to build up inside which is dangerous to your own mental and physical health, but also very dangerous to your relationship. If you want more tips on how to actually talk to your significant other and express how you feel about your money, click here to read that blog post.

 

Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

7) Address & Make Improvements to Your Finances

When your finances do need improvement, you putting the time and effort into attending to them, will make a huge impact on how you feel around your money because you have taken action towards improving them and changing the state of your finances. Work on paying off your highest interest rate debts to put you in a better place financially. Figure out the debts that are costing you the most extra money (in interest that you are paying) and really focus on getting those debts paid off as soon as you can. Often our credit cards are the highest interest rates debts, so they are eating away at your money and skyrocketing your feelings of anxiety. If you are ready to attend to the stress from your credit cards, click here to get step by step actions of how to get them paid off so much sooner and how to save you money in interest.

8) Move Your Body & Increase Your Vibrations

When your body is feeling anxious about money, it will be in a lower vibrational state. In order to increase your vibrational state and to get good endorphins flowing that will help you to completely change how you feel, is to exercise. Exercising can help to really combat stress and it gives a way to help move the feelings through your body and replace them with higher vibrational feelings that help you to feel 100x better than you were before. I also found that with exercise, it was often one of the few times that I could feel like I was able to “turn my brain off” and not worry or feel anxious.

How Your Anxiety is Affected by Your Money

9) Gratitude, Gratitude, Gratitude

Something that I have been doing for a few years now is gratitude journaling. It has made a huge difference in my life. Actually writing out all of the things that I am incredibly grateful for and have in my life, has helped me to feel so much more abundant. It helps shift my perspective from feeling scarce, to wow, “I truly am so blessed.” The physical part of writing out what I am grateful for has helped me to increase my feelings of gratitude even more than just thinking them in my head. I see all of the things that I do have in my life, instead of all the things that I don’t have (that scarcity mentality). If you want an amazing journal that can help you through this process, check out the journal that I recommend here.

10) Write Down All of Your Money

One of the other things that I implemented into my life, was writing down every piece of money that comes into my life. Most people just track their one source of income and think that is the only money around them. In fact, at any given moment, there are trillions of dollars circulating around us and there is more money flowing into our lives than we often take account of. You might find money on the streets, someone might pay for your lunch or coffee, you might receive an unexpected cheque in the mail, you might get something sold, there are so many other ways that money is coming into our lives that we don’t even really think of. BY taking account of this money and writing it down each time it happens, you immediately feel more abundant and less anxious about money.

 

Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

Frequently Asked Questions about Financial Coaching

11) Add in Drinks that Promote Calmness, Especially in the Evening

I am a huge fan of using mushrooms powders for health benefits, and one of those benefits is to reduce stress and feelings of anxiousness. Mushroom powders are fantastic for mental health, brain health, adrenal health, stress and so much more! In the evenings I use a hot cacao mushroom blend called Chill With Reishi that helps me to relax and slow down and calm my mind. (and no it doesn’t taste like mushrooms! I wouldn’t eat something just because it’s “healthy” if it tasted gross). Four Sigmas is my go to and you can try it as well and save yourself 10% at checkout using the code “mandyy.”

 

Click here to download my Realistic Budget template! 

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What are your favorite ways to help reduce your anxiety about money and to feel more abundant? Leave me a comment in the comments below and I will respond back to you!

Follow me on Instagram for more financial tips & tricks: @mandyythomas

 

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