Manders Mindset
Hosted by Amanda Russo, The Breathing Goddess, who is a Breathwork Detox Facilitator, Transformative Mindset Coach, and Divorce Paralegal.
Amanda's journey into mindset and empowerment began by working with children in group homes and daycares. She later transitioned to family law, helping people navigate the challenging emotions of divorce. During this time, Amanda also overcame her own weight and health challenges through strength training, meditation, yoga, reiki, and plant medicine.
Amanda also shares her personal journey, detailing how she transformed obstacles into opportunities by adopting a healthier, holistic lifestyle.
Discover practical strategies and inspiring stories that will empower you to break free from limitations and cultivate a mindset geared towards growth and positivity.
Tune in for a fun, friendly, and empowering experience that will help you become the best version of yourself.
Manders Mindset
Overcoming Shame, Trusting Yourself With Money, & Finding Freedom with Brigitt Thompson | 117
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This episode of Manders Mindset features Brigitt Thompson, writer, coach, and host of the Thriving in Plain Sight podcast. Brigitt shares her journey of embracing vulnerability, overcoming shame, and using somatic awareness to navigate life’s complexities. She opens up about her experiences with financial challenges, entrepreneurship, and the lessons that inspired her book, Trust Yourself With Money. Brigitt offers powerful insights on reframing saving as self-care, the importance of connecting with the body, and how small mindful choices can transform your relationship with freedom and agency.
This episode is filled with inspiration, practical advice, and deep reflections on the connection between mindset and life’s challenges.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
•Why vulnerability is a gateway to growth and deeper connections.
•How Brigitt Thompson uses the “cartilage metaphor” to reframe the way we think about saving money.
•The role of somatic awareness in calming stress and reclaiming personal power.
•Lessons from Brigitt’s entrepreneurial journey and the challenges of self-employment.
•Why focusing on small, intentional choices can create agency and shift your life.
Episode Timeline Highlights:
[1:10] - An introduction to Brigitt Thompson and her work as a writer, coach, and podcast host.
[2:49] - Brigitt’s core focus on agency and the power of personal choice.
[6:09] - Her academic background in communication and design and its influence on her career.
[9:07] - Insights from self-employment: the challenges and lessons of building a business.
[19:45] - The courage to write Trust Yourself With Money and share her vulnerabilities.
[29:22] - Somatic awareness and its power to transform emotional and mental challenges.
[38:28] - The cartilage metaphor: how reframing saving as a cushion for self-care changes everything.
[53:12] - Brigitt’s journey in podcasting and how it became a space for mindfulness and healing.
[1:05:22] - Brigitt’s advice: the importance of slowing down and embracing humanity.
To Connect with Amanda:
~ linktree.com/thebreathinggoddess
~ Instagram @thebreathinggoddess
~ TikTok @thebreathinggoddess
~ Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!
~ Follow Manders Mindset on Instagram HERE!
~ Explore Amanda’s NEW podcast: Breathwork Magic(Available on all major platforms or you can listen on Apple!)
To Connect with Brigitt:
~Brigitt Thompson’s website: http://www.brigittthompson.com/
~Thriving in Plain Sight podcast: Apple or Spotify
~Trust Yourself With Money: Build Financial Confidence Through the Simple Art of Saving by Brigitt Thompson: Purchase here on Amazon
Resources Mentioned:
•The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers and a variety of other people when your host, amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective and her guest's mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Amanda's Mindset, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to shift your life. I'm your host, amanda Vucer, and I am here today with an awesome guest who I am so excited to speak with. I am here today with Bridget Thompson, and she is a writer, a coach and a teacher, and she is also the host of the Thriving in Plain Sight podcast. She is the author of two books Trust Yourself with Money and what you Know. In her work, she explores freedom, power and personal agency through a somatic lens, and I am so excited to be here with her today. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3:Thank you for that beautiful welcome and introduction. I'm really happy to be here with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. So that's an awesome bio, but who would you say Bridget is at the core?
Speaker 3:A person, a human being, a person, a human being, not a to-do list, not a robot, not some you know object stuck in a hamster wheel.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm a person and my work deepens into that identity, you know, deepens into humanity being more than just the you know, the kind of autopilot, ritualistic, robotic behaviors that we get pulled into quite naturally through where we work and who we hang out with and what we listen to. Sometimes our brains shed down and what we listen to, sometimes our brains shed down. So I would say, at the core, I'm a person who tries to wake up over and over and over again all day and to remind myself that I have choices all day. And I'm doing that through embodiment, work, through a somatic practice. But even before I was doing that, I was still trying to figure that out, and that's a lot of what I explored in my book. Through the lens of money, but still just talking about, hmm, I wonder if I do have any choices, you know. So that's really my central interest in my work and my life is where is my agency? Where are my choices? How can I grab hold of those?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'd love if we could backtrack a little bit and if you could take us down memory lane. Tell us a little bit about your childhood family dynamic foundation, however deep you want to go with that.
Speaker 3:Oh, child of immigrants, beautiful family, I really won the lottery with my parents, grew up in a Caribbean household. I was born in the United States and so always kind of straddling identities, the kind of West Indian, caribbean identity and the American identity. Growing up as a person of African descent, as a Black person, and noticing that there are different kind of elements within that kind of diasporic community. You have people from all over the world who identify as Black. So in the United States Black means one thing, but that's not what it means all over the world, you know. So, trying to kind of locate myself in terms of culture, ethnicity, nationality, race, all those things, and when I think about my growing up years, I think not knowingly, but that's what I was navigating Grew up in New York, so there's the whole New Yorker identity.
Speaker 3:When I hit college I was really fortunate I spent a semester abroad. So I was in Kenya when I was a teenager. That was pretty interesting and I just had a lot of interesting experiences that seemed to pull out this kind of translator aspect of who I was. You know, I was interested in talking to people from different backgrounds, different cultures, and finding what we shared in common and also translating my own ideas to be understood. You know, that's how I would kind of sum up the way that I think of myself and my background, and I think I just kind of took that forward once I hit adulthood.
Speaker 2:Did you have any siblings?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have one brother, my younger brother, who is a psychology professor and one of my greatest heroes, and you mentioned my podcast. I actually have a couple of episodes where I talk to my brother. He's just one of the most brilliant people I know and we're very close, so I'm lucky in that regard also.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, were. You guys close growing up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was kind of the big sister we're three years apart and then somewhere in my 20s things flipped and even though I'm the big sister, he became like a mentor, a guide, a cheerleader for me. I'm getting kind of choked up thinking about it and, yeah, it's the kind of peership that we share is such a gift, you know, and to be able to have a friend who's also your sibling and who you can kind of talk to about the things that really matter. That's what I have in my brother and it's just the two of us, so we don't have any other siblings.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned you went to college. Where'd you go to college?
Speaker 3:Oh well, undergrad I went to Hofstra University, which is Long Island, near where I grew up. Then after that I went to graduate school. So I was really in school from the age of five to the age of 25, because I did two back-to-back master's degrees. Then I was done. So I went to Hofstra for my bachelor's in communications and I focused on journalism. I was always a natural writer, so that's where I landed for my undergraduate studies and I had a major in journalism and a minor in speech arts. And then, when I was done with that, I went and got a master's in communications at the University of Pennsylvania, at the Annenberg School for Communication. And then after that I did a master's in what they then called publication design. Now it's called communication design.
Speaker 3:But it essentially was a graphic design program that integrated writing, which was perfect for me, because most graphic design programs at that time were in the fine arts realm and I didn't have any fine arts background at all no illustration background, no painting, no, nothing. So to be able to come into the design world through the writing door was wonderful for me. I was very excited about it. So this is 25 years ago more than that actually and I became a designer. I learned all about typography and I learned all about you know figure, ground and balance and grids, and you know organizing information visually.
Speaker 3:So the work that I did following that you know age five through 25 you know age five through 25 schooling was design work, it was marketing, it was advertising, it was communications and I did that for a very long time and it was really the work of helping people to absorb information. That's really what the work was. It was through the lens of design and copywriting, but it was for me. That was the point of it. So, archetypally, I think of myself as a teacher and I think I always brought that element to my work. So it wasn't just about making something that looked visually appealing. It was about is this clear, you know, am I helping people to understand? And I think I just generally have tried to bring that idea and that ethos to my work in a lot of different realms.
Speaker 2:Post your master's degrees, then where'd you go from there?
Speaker 3:Then I went into the wild world of self-employment and learned about entrepreneurship, learned about client relations, learned about business building, learned about marketing not just others but myselfed about the administrative aspects of being in business. It was rough at times and I talk a little bit about that in my book Trust Yourself with Money. When you have a business, you create your own structure and I don't hear a lot of people talking about the kind of metaphysical, invisible, emotional side of being an entrepreneur and what that really means. You know we look to external entities for structure, like if you have a job, you're expected to be in certain places at certain times doing certain things, and then you're assessed and you're evaluated and people let you know how you're doing. But when you're in business for yourself, no one's doing that for you.
Speaker 3:You really have to kind of build a city you know from scratch and build your own culture and create your own structure. And create your own structure. And I didn't understand that in my 20s, but that's what I was doing and I have a lot to say about it now in my early 50s. But that was really the work. It wasn't just the work of doing what you were hired to do by the client. It was the work of being in business, so I have a lot to say about that now, having had the experience for these many years 30 years- so you started working for yourself right away.
Speaker 3:I started working for myself right away and the first time I had a full-time salaried position was like 10 years, so I was in my 30s the first time I had a full-time job. Wow, didn't last too long. It was hard because I was bringing in that self-employed mentality and it was so hard to adjust. You know, I had a hard time because I was going and thinking, okay, how can we be effective and efficient and make things better and can we clean up the supply closet? Can we do this and do that? Everyone was just like shut up, you're giving us more work to do, just shut up, you know. And I also had a hard time with the rigidity. The first person I worked for who hired me was the kind of boss and supervisor who said as long as you get your work done, we're good. So I loved that, you know, because I was giving her reports she didn't ask for, and you know, progress reports and all this stuff and just getting my work done and saying, hey, you know, is it okay if I come in at 730 and leave.30? She was like sure, and I was like, yes, I have a bigger part of my afternoon to myself and I liked that. And then, unfortunately, she left and was replaced by someone who was a lot more traditional and conventional and said to me I don't want to walk by your cube and I don't want anyone to walk by and see an empty chair. You need to come in from nine to five and you need to be more in line. So that was pretty hard on me.
Speaker 3:At that point I was in my thirties, early thirties, yeah. So I didn't last a lot longer after that and then I went back to self-employment. In my life I've had a few full-time jobs. I've had three full-time jobs, but they never really lasted too long because I just had a problem just on a kind of intest an employee. There were things I loved about it, but overall it was a really hard. It wasn't a good fit. It was a really hard journey for me when I was inside of those kind of really rigid structures for work. My talent was still there and I was able to do good work, but personally I was not very happy in those structures.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Did you know all along that you wanted to work for yourself? You wanted to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3:I did when I was in college. I was temping and doing some things for money income, signed up with a temp agency in my late teens and worked in offices and everything in me was just kind of like oh no, I don't think this is going to work for you, my love. I was not the kid with the lemonade stand. I was not the kid with the lemonade stand. I was not an entrepreneurial kid and I didn't really have a kind of thirst or hunger for business. It was just that I knew that I wanted freedom. That's what I wanted. That's what led me to entrepreneurship just a craving and desire for freedom.
Speaker 3:Now, entrepreneurship does not equal freedom. It depends on how you build your business. You can just recreate the same dynamic that you have with your employer. You can just recreate that with your clients. That happens all the time. So there's a nuance there that I didn't quite get, but you know, that was my motivation. I wasn't the kid with the lemonade stand who was trying to be the next whoever. I just didn't want to have the rigid kind of limited experience of the office, the cubicle, et cetera. A lot has changed, though, especially in the past five years, since a lot has changed for all of us in terms of how we work and how we're used to working. It has not been smooth. There've been a lot of stories lately about big companies forcing people back to the office and you know, we're experimenting with different ways of working, with remote work, with virtual connections, and we're seeing what the pros and cons are. We're still figuring it out culturally.
Speaker 2:That's very true. Now, culturally, that's very true. Now, you said you've worked three full-time jobs in your life.
Speaker 3:When were you last working a full-time job? The last one was right before the pandemic. Yeah, I had a full-time job at the hospital in my 30s I was around 32. And so that was beginning of the 2000s. And then 15 years went by and then I had my next full-time job at a college and right after that I had a third one. So the last one ended right before the pandemic and then I left and wrote my book and went on a whole other journey.
Speaker 2:Okay, Why'd you leave that full-time job? If you don't mind me asking.
Speaker 3:I think it was the same thing. You know, I've had experiences where I've worked with wonderful people doing good work and it still wasn't enough, because I did not want to be in that kind of rigid environment where you have to be at this meeting and you don't have any freedom, you don't have any power, you're an order taker, not because anything's wrong, but that's just the structure of that environment. So I've been really lucky in some cases where I loved my coworkers and I even sometimes liked the work I was doing, although over the years it got a little boring, as one might imagine. You do something for a long, long long time and it's hard to keep it interesting sometimes. I think the aspect of it that was most difficult was just that part where it's the stay in your lane type of idea. You need to understand, if you're part of a kind of institutional setting, where you fit, where you are in the hierarchy, how that's going to work, and it was always difficult for me to respect that adequately. So it wasn't really about them as much as it was about what I needed.
Speaker 3:I like latitude, I like being able to speak my mind, I like being able to turn down work. I like being able to control my own schedule, my comings and goings. And so there were things that were perfectly normal that I found oppressive, like the little green dot on Teams or Slack that lets people know if you're there, surveillance to me. I don't want to be under surveillance. So that's kind of what it was. It was more of a kind of cultural preference than anything else.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. So you left the last full-time job right before the pandemic and from there you started writing your book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was a crazy time because everyone I knew was well, we were all freaking out. We were all freaking out in those first days in March of 2020. And everyone I knew was just like, oh, thank God, I have this job and meanwhile I had left my job and I didn't tell anybody at first. Didn't tell anybody Nobody except for the people at the job who knew that I did. But you know it was.
Speaker 3:I didn't want to answer questions like how are you going to make it? This is the absolute worst time for you to do something like this. Are you crazy? Like I didn't want to answer any questions. So it took about six weeks for me to come out of the closet and let everybody know that I had left my job. Come out of the closet and let everybody know that I had left my job. And then it was like, okay, you know, but I always had that compulsion, that drive to be free, and I care about work. The way that I work really matters to me and the way that I feel when I'm working, it matters a lot. So that was part of that decision and I had had this book in me for a long time. I'd wanted to write about my experience with money and what I was discovering for a while, so I just decided to take some time to get that done. It was really hard, but I was really proud of the outcome.
Speaker 2:Now. So you've thought about writing the book for a while.
Speaker 3:Well I would say at least two, maybe longer, probably around three years that I thought about it and would write some paragraphs here and there, write some chapters, and kind of made a go at it, but was too afraid to reveal myself really myself really and so it took a while for me to have the capacity and courage to really even tell my story. I had a lot of shame and embarrassment around the mistakes that I made and the ignorance and the things I still had to learn. It was very uncomfortable because I liked the idea of presenting myself as this expert and someone who had a great reputation and new things, and it didn't really mesh with that. So it took a lot of courage for me to reveal my vulnerabilities, which is really what was required in order for that book to be published is there something that helped you Like now you quit the job, the pandemic's happening that gave you the ability to be more vulnerable.
Speaker 3:I have been fighting vulnerability tooth and nail the whole time, so I'm not going to make something up and say, oh yeah, I did this and then I was so vulnerable. No, I mean, even now I'm like I hate this, I hate vulnerability so much, but it's really the doorway to such a beautiful life. I still don't like it, but it's just kind of like this is it's kind of like well, you got to take I-95 to get from here to here. You got to get on that road, whether you like it or if that's where you want to go, that's how you're going to get there.
Speaker 3:So that's how I look at vulnerability. I don't have a very warm, fuzzy feeling about it, but I do know that as I move through my own experiences and really strengthen and grow and blossom and flourish, that vulnerability is always a part of it. Being willing to feel, being willing to grieve, being willing to be seen in your imperfection that was not something I was willing to do 10 years ago. It just wasn't. And frankly, it's still difficult but it's a lot easier because I practice.
Speaker 2:When did you start practicing being more vulnerable?
Speaker 3:Well, three years ago I took a class that was about trauma healing and somatic work.
Speaker 3:Somatic soma means body, somatic soma means body, and somatic work is about recognizing how you're feeling physically and paying attention to the sensations in the body as a way of calming the nervous system. Well, not necessarily, but just paying attention to what you're experiencing. Well, not necessarily, but just paying attention to what you're experiencing and the effect, the overall effect is a kind of change in how you're reacting to life's threats, how you're reacting to uncertainty, how you're reacting to danger, how you're reacting to your own thoughts. And when I took this course, I had a phenomenal teacher. I wrote the book before I took the course, but I think it was a desire that I had in my heart to just make peace with reality and not be fighting all the time. So the somatic work for me, the embodiment work, the work of paying attention to the body, has become very central for me, and now I'm coaching and that work is very present for me in my podcast and it's just my daily practice every day.
Speaker 2:Well, that's great. Now you mentioned you thought about writing the book for a while and you weren't able to be vulnerable before. Now I get what you mean by like. There's even like facing ourselves. You know, there's a little bit of that like, whether we want to admit it or not, all have this, this outward identity, that like we show to the world, versus like, maybe that identity that we don't show to everybody. You know, but it's not easy, but it's a great way to really bridge together like connections. You know what I mean. Like you never know who will relate to what you say or what you're feeling or thinking if you don't say it or express it. Like somebody could be going through or have gone through something so similar but might not even know if you don't mention it. And it could be a simple thing or it could be a big thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I found that and I couldn't have said it more perfectly. When people think you're so perfect, they don't share anything with you. You know it's like, oh, she wouldn't understand. You know it's like you don't know what. You really don't know what people are going through. But people feel a lot more safe and a lot more warm when you share what you've been through. It took a while for me to understand that, because I always had a little bit of a know-it-all thing, even as a kid.
Speaker 3:I was always that annoying know-it-all kid, so for me, to be vulnerable was not my forte. So you're absolutely right, it creates deeper connection with others and it's so important to not be in this world alone. You know, you can be surrounded by people and still be in this world alone because you're not opening your heart, you're not sharing, you're not really revealing who you are. For me, deepening capacity for that has been part of the practice that I do when I just notice where I'm holding tension in my body and just letting it go a little bit. That has deepened capacity for me over the last three years. Just dropping my shoulders, just wiggling my toes that's my practice every day. Interestingly, that helps me to deal with those feelings of, oh, I don't want to do this, I just physically relax, and then that helps me to relax emotionally and mentally as well. It helps me to relax emotionally and mentally as well, and I'm still finding language for how this works. But that is what I bring into my coaching. That's what I share on my podcast.
Speaker 3:It's like all of us have a body.
Speaker 3:We're not paying attention to it because we're doing the things we do. But if you switch your attention just in a five-second period, in a 10-second period, and say, oh, now that I think about it, I am feeling a little bit of a pain in my belly, or I am feeling a little bit of tension in my jaw, or I am clenching my hands because I heard this person say this thing, or whatever. As you start to switch your attention and your focus, it really deepens your ability to deal with life and to deal with the things that are causing the constriction. There are a lot of different people who speak beautifully about this. Some of them are neuroscientists, some of them are spiritual teachers, some of them are trauma healing professionals, some of them are somatic therapists. There's so many people who talk about embodiment, who talk about coming back to the present moment and the importance of that, and I think that's everything. So it's really. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you about this whole journey, because it's been a very rich journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I want to transition a tad bit to the book, a little bit more. I loved everything you said in the book and it was very relatable. I know your main theme was money, but there were quite a few different little gems that stuck out to me. I feel like we're relatable in so many areas, Like even early on you mentioned about you don't have to have all the answers, just be willing to try. And I think so many of us get stopped or prevent ourselves from doing anything because we're not taking the step, Even if it's the wrong step. Like try something you know. Like if you don't, nothing's going to work, if you don't try anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's where the missing link was for me, because it is humiliating in certain situations, with certain people, in certain contexts, to make a mistake, not be right, to trip, to fall, to fail, and so, rather than do that, we do nothing and we get frozen. So there's a kind of tenderness that I have toward that version of myself who didn't want to show that I needed help or that I was making mistakes or that I had things to learn. I feel a compassion for her because she didn't want to be humiliated, because in some circumstances you'd pay a price for being willing to make mistakes. Now, if you have a practice that holds you while you're feeling humiliated, so that you can kind of get up again and dust yourself off and go back in, now you can be iterative, now you can try things, now you can experiment and you can kind of express that courage and benefit from it. But it's not easy. So a lot of us struggle with that and that feeling of being frozen is also a trauma response. You've heard of the fight flight freeze. We've all heard a lot about that lately, and so there's an understanding too that if we feel like we're encountering danger, which is sometimes just the danger of rejection or being judged we might freeze in that moment. So to bring in a kind of awareness of the physical reactions in the body, as well as what I'm thinking about, who I am and who I should be or what I should know by now and all that stuff, there's a lot of compassion required to really make changes in your life, to make any kind of transformation in your life. It's not just knowing better. Like I read this article, I read this book. Now I'm going to go do. No, there's still other things kind of slowing you down and holding you back. That's what I'm interested in now.
Speaker 3:So with the book, yes, it was kind of like that process of realizing. It was like a light bulb came on, like, oh, I don't need to have all the answers, I just need to be willing to look for them, I just need to be willing to think to myself maybe I can do this, that's it, and that's enough to pull me to the next place. But that was a really life-changing moment for me. Friend of mine, a dear friend of mine, suggested that I read a book that I mentioned in my book, Nathaniel Brandon's book. I forget what it was called, but he had a concept called self-efficacy, and reading about that just changed my whole life. Essentially, self-efficacy says I think I can do this, I think I can figure it out, I have it in me, I don't need to know, I just need to be able to be willing to figure it out. And that gave me the little stair step that I needed to keep going.
Speaker 3:And I still am so grateful that I came across that idea, because it shifted a lot of things for me. You know, just to have the spirit of willingness in your life. When you don't know, when the answer is not apparent, the answer is not clear, when there's a lot of uncertainty, when there's a lot of fear or panic or urgency, in that moment you're flooded with a lot of different reactions, biologically as well as mentally. So that's why I'm such a huge proponent of somatic work, because it helps to kind of calm you enough to be able to say oh, my glasses are on the top of my head and I've been looking for my glasses for 10 minutes. They're already here.
Speaker 3:So there are a lot of times where we have a problem or a challenge and some of the solutions that may be available are they're invisible to us because we're so activated, you know. So I think writing that book was the beginning for me of being willing to explore. Hmm, do I have any choices here? Are there possibilities for me? Can I figure this out? And I certainly did. And then I learned that there were more problems to solve. But what else is new?
Speaker 2:I like how you mentioned the danger of rejection. You know I don't think it's often talked about, even if it's not money-related, even if it's advancing your life in any aspect, whether it's health like I talk about my weight loss journey whether it's professional. A lot of times there's some level of shame. You know, showing this other side of yourself to the world. For example, even when I first started my weight loss journey, when I joined the gym, I had a little bit of shame around even going, feeling out of place, feeling like I don't look, like I fit in at the gym. You know what I mean. Like even something as small and as subtle as that, like the shame around. Do I actually belong here? Because I don't look like everybody else here? When I first started going, you know even that little identity piece and being like okay, and like having to tap back into myself to be like okay, amanda, like yeah, you do. You do have everybody just as everybody else.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think not everybody touches upon that. You know, like it's like you have a choice. You can just do it, which, yeah, of course you can, but like sometimes, oh, mine's always the nicest. You know I say all the time to like my clients, like our minds are not designed to keep us, make us smart, sexy and successful. They're designed to keep us safe. You know it's not here to help you. Like it's here to keep you safe, even back in the caveman days. You know, like that's what it's for To make sure you don't get killed by another caveman.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's so critical to remember that and that lets us give ourselves a little more compassion.
Speaker 2:I like how you mentioned the book. I think it was the Six Pillows of yeah self-esteem.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yes, oh I. That book in 2015 was like you know, it was like the. The heavens opened and the. You know, the sunlight started streaming in. I loved that book that my friend recommended to me because it just gave me a little thing to hold on to. You know, like when you're doing the rock climbing, it's like where is my hand going to go next? Where's my foot going to go? It gave me a little foothold to say okay, okay, maybe I'm not. You know, maybe I don't need to be hopeless. You know, like people will say I'm screwed. You know, maybe I'm not screwed, maybe I'm, maybe I'm okay, maybe I can be okay. And that book back then was like a really important step in my development and then it just went on from there.
Speaker 2:I loved everything you talked about in the book. You know, I feel like you touched upon a lot of different money aspects that are not touched upon very often. I haven't read all of the money books. I've read things in your book that I have not read or heard anywhere whether it was a podcast, whether it was from a guest and I was blown away at some of it. You know like even the base balance. You know like even the base balance.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you Because I wrote it, because I hadn't seen it. And I'm still exploring these invisible aspects of money and what money feels like, what it represents to us and how we navigate. Sometimes it's not about the dollars and cents, it is about shame, it is about embarrassment. We do let opportunities go by because of those things, and that's important to me. So there is an area of study called behavioral economics, but that's still a little different. That's more about well, if you say something costs $4.99 instead of $5, people might not realize they're paying $5. You know it's like that kind of stuff. But I'm talking about something much more interior, tender, you know emotional, and I'm talking about decision making. I'm talking about identity, I'm talking about self-concept.
Speaker 3:I start the book off by telling the story of realizing I had to sell my home because I couldn't afford to pay my mortgage, and how embarrassed I was. And the process of having a friend's husband sit down with me. He was an accountant and he was like you have a decision to make, my friend. If you just keep going as if nothing's going on, you're going to have to file for bankruptcy. So take the hold, take the reins here, make some intentional decisions. And it was really hard to do that because I was embarrassed. At the end of the day, yes, it was just a house, but it was more about you should have done this, you should have done that, and so the shame was so active.
Speaker 3:And I'm still encountering places in my life where I'm like, oh hello, shame. Here you are again, you know, and now having much greater capacity to be with that and to understand that I can move through it. I don't have to let it crush me, I don't have to let it rule me. It's a willingness to be with the difficult, the kind of uncomfortable, difficult, ugly elements of life. It's a willingness to grieve what could have been or what didn't happen. That has been very important, yeah, to have a kind of different relationship with grief and discomfort and to know that it's a part of life. Life is not supposed to be Bridget, striding down the road with a big grin on her face 24-7, 365. And if it's not that you failed, you know life is being a whole person, which is where we began To be a person, a real person With a range of experiences and having a way to hold them and move through them and still know who you are, you know, still be willing to have your self-concept morph and change and not be so rigid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a very courageous and vulnerable way for you to start off your book. And you mentioned you don't like being vulnerable. I'm so blown away that you are able to be as vulnerable as you are, especially after reading the book, when you say you still don't like being vulnerable. Hey, you still don't like being vulnerable.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll tell you a secret. After I published the book I was just throwing up and I don't really have that usual reaction, unless I have food poisoning or something my body was just revolting. My body was like no, you can't tell anyone any of this, what are you doing? That is what happened. I don't talk about that publicly, so I'm just sharing that now. But after I published the book, I was physically reacting to the vulnerability. So then it was like, okay, it was more important for me to share the story. I had to figure out the rest of it.
Speaker 3:It was hard, very hard, to inhabit my own story publicly. It's now four years later, so I can laugh about it. You know, I published the book four ago and I've done a lot of work in my life to be healthy and to be awake and aware and to love myself and to be present with all the shades of myself, lovable and unlovable. So now I can laugh about it and say in a kind of joking way I hate being vulnerable, I hate it, but it's true, you know. So it's almost like it was more important for me to share the details because I thought they needed to be shared. I didn't see this aspect of the conversation about money anywhere, of the conversation about money anywhere, and now I'm glad I shared it. So yeah, that's how I would answer that.
Speaker 3:Like I published it but I also didn't want it to be out there at the same time. You know, I was really kind of at war with myself for a while and it was very difficult to talk about it Like I could have done the whole book tour and trying to get more publicity for myself, but that was really hard to do because I didn't really want to talk about it. I just wanted to put it out there and go hide and let people buy it and read it on their own and not talk to me about me. So it took a couple of years to kind of sit in my own story and to be able to talk about it without having a meltdown, you know, or being really nervous or being really embarrassed or like what are people going to think?
Speaker 3:That journey went on after the book was published. So all of it has helped me rocks and stumbles and scrapes and scratches. It's beautiful, it's my story and I'm beautiful because of it. It's been a real journey to own my own story and publishing the book was just the first step, as it turns out, story and publishing the book was just the first step, as it turns out.
Speaker 2:I gotcha. Well, that's awesome, I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that authentically, exactly like the process and how it really truly felt for you. I really appreciate that. I get it. You know, I loved how you mentioned the cartilage.
Speaker 3:Can you delve in to the cartilage example a little bit? Yes, and it's an interesting metaphor, but what I say is that? Well, first of all I'm talking about savings, and the subtitle of my book is Trust Yourself with Money and something about the art of saving.
Speaker 2:Build financial confidence through the simple art of saving the simple art of saving, so thank you.
Speaker 3:So I was thinking about saving and I was trying to make sense of the idea of what is savings for? How does savings work? What is savings for, how does savings work? Because I would always find myself kind of fighting with myself around saving money and the way that I began to think about it was it's an important exercise to have a cushion, and I thought about it like cartilage, like you don't want bone hitting bone, you want some cartilage so you can function.
Speaker 3:It was a different way of looking at saving and savings and I started playing a game where I would even if I only had $20, I would just subtract five and say, okay, I can only operate with 15. It was just a game I started playing with myself at every level, whether I was making 90 grand at my job or whether I was just down to my last hundred dollars. I would always play this game because it was a way of acknowledging that I have choices. If I have a dollar, I still have choices. I can just spend 50 cents, it doesn't matter, the amount doesn't matter. So that base balance concept that there is a level and I'm not going below this level was so powerful. When I came up with that I thought this feels good to me, this makes sense to me and, okay, I'm going to do that. And so it was about money. But it was also about agency. Agency means where do I get to make choices, where do I get to make something happen? And when it comes to money, our brains shut down. We shut down a lot and we stop recognizing the places where we have choices and agency. So it's been a few years since I published the books.
Speaker 3:I've had a long time to really think about some of the concepts that I introduced and I'm still trying to verbalize, find ways to verbalize the power of some of these ideas, because they're not just about money. They're about who are you and can you be free in this lifetime. You know, a certain dollar amount is not going to make you free. It's what you're thinking and how you're feeling about yourself. So there's a lot of nuance and complexity there, I think.
Speaker 3:But the basic idea is that it's not just about the dollar amounts, it's about how I feel and it's about and it's about just kind of recognizing and remembering that I have choices. I have choices Even if I only have $5, I don't have to spend the $5. I could spend four and keep that $1 at my base balance. That is the level I am not going below today. That is the level I am not going below today. Then another $20 comes in. Okay, maybe my base balance is now a little bit more. Now I get $100. Now I have a $10 base balance. I'm only spending $90. I'm pretending I only have $90. Then I have $1,000, etc. So whatever that number is doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3:It's the practice of remembering you have agency and remembering you have choices, and using that to kind of crane yourself up as other opportunities come in, come in. Another piece of this was I paid off my debt completely, which at one time I thought was completely impossible to do, and when I did that I didn't know there was this whole other journey I would have to take about staying out of debt. That was so hard. So the principles in my book are solid in the sense that they have helped me to go deeper. They've helped me to go deeper and I'm still learning. I get that.
Speaker 2:Now I'd love if we could switch tracks a little bit and talk about your podcast. But I'm curious what made you decide to make the choice to even start a podcast?
Speaker 3:I have to give credit to a business coach that I had an amazing business coach that I had named Steve Johnson. I was part of a minority business program and he was one of the coaches I had and he said you know, I think you should start a podcast and I thought I was thinking about that, but it was just one of those things that was a thought floating around like maybe one day. And when he said that it became an assignment. So the first thing he did was he dragged me onto his podcast and I was a guest on his podcast and then I just started and it's become so important to me. I'm now 34 episodes in and my episodes are little, tiny, bite-size 12 and 13 and 10-minute episodes, 15 minutes, 11 minutes. They're very short and I've been kind of finding my way through my own work through my podcast. So now my podcast has become a practice space for embodiment where I lead my audience through very short exercises in the episodes Drop your shoulders, notice your jaw, relax the muscles in your face, wiggle your toes, slow down.
Speaker 3:To me, these practices are a way of recapturing your own power. Regaining your own power. That's what agency means to me. Agency is power, so you can go through life thinking, oh, I don't have any power. And then I would say, well, do you have the power to wiggle your toes? Or and then I would say, well, do you have the power to wiggle your toes? Do you have the power to drop your shoulders? That counts. And then where does that go? Do I have the power to slow down?
Speaker 3:Now there are bigger questions that come about when you engage with these ideas and practices.
Speaker 3:For example, what's come up for me in the past couple years as well, if I am engaged in a relationship whether it's a client relationship or a personal relationship or anything if I'm engaged in a relationship where someone's trying to rush me, someone's trying to convince me that I don't have enough time, someone's trying to rush me, someone's trying to convince me that I don't have enough time.
Speaker 3:Someone's trying to press me or pressure me to do something or not do something. Those questions of obligation and consent and power are very interesting to me and I have a place to hold those questions because of my somatic practice. A place to hold those questions because of my somatic practice, because I go through the day wiggling my toes and dropping my shoulders and noticing where I'm holding tension and choosing to let go a little. So, as I share on my podcast, I'm deepening into my own practice. Share on my podcast, I'm deepening into my own practice. You learn what you teach. So my podcast has become a really, really beautiful space of learning for me and it's also a beautiful teaching space as well, and now it's a practice space.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. How long ago did you start the podcast?
Speaker 3:base. That's awesome. How long ago did you start the podcast? I started the prep, the podcast, at the end of March of this year and I haven't missed a week. That's awesome. I love that. I love that too, because I just think it was important for me to kind of hold onto it and lock into it, no matter what was happening, and I love what it's become because of that. It's changed a lot in nine months or 10 months, whatever. It's been eight months and I'm sure it will continue to change too.
Speaker 2:What's been your favorite part about doing the podcast?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, it's shocking how much work goes into doing a podcast by yourself, on your own, in a DIY way. I don't work with anyone, you know I'm not working with anyone who does podcasty things. I'm doing the editing, I'm doing all of it and it's a lot of work. Even for my little mini-so 10-minute podcast. It's a lot of work. So that's not what you asked me but that's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 3:But I think my favorite thing about it is it's a place to share. It's a place to offer support. I like that if someone wants to work with me and they're like, oh, I can't afford this right now, I can say go listen to my podcast, you'll still get support. I like that can stumble upon my podcast and be supported as they're navigating all the difficulty and uncertainty in the world. I want my podcast to be that place where people can just kind of come and sit down and when I re-listen to my podcast it calms me. So I know it's working. So that's my favorite thing about it is that it's kind of a healing space and I wanted to become more of that and even more of that.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's beautiful, and I love that you mentioned that you're able to help people who aren't able to afford to work with you.
Speaker 3:I think that's beautiful to still provide them some sort of support you know, if I could just do all the work I do in the world for free, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm not independently wealthy so that's not really an option for me at this time, but if it were, I would do that. So I like having the free talks at the library and the podcast and other ways that people can kind of come closer and interact and get support. I like that.
Speaker 2:Now I typically ask my guests if they have. A lot of people have experienced one of these, but I'm curious if you've experienced a big aha moment in your life, something that shifted something internally for you and you looked at the world differently.
Speaker 3:I think the big one for me is that I have a body. There's an author named Michael Singer who wrote the Untethered Soul. There's another author and teacher that I love named Jules Blaine Davis and teacher that I love named Jules Blaine Davis. Both of them have language that helped me to kind of notice. Okay, I'm doing all kinds of things throughout the day I'm driving, I'm cooking, I'm walking, I'm talking but right underneath that there's this experience of the body. Right underneath that, there's this experience of the body. There's an experience of gripping, clenching, there's an experience of reacting to the stimuli in my environment. The big aha for me is that my body is always talking to me, sharing with me. My body is always talking to me, sharing with me. My body is always reacting and if I just take a minute or, frankly, 10 seconds just to notice that, it shifts everything in my experience, particularly over time, it deepens my capacity to be in traffic. It deepens my capacity to sit with someone who's in pain. It deepens my capacity to hear someone say something I don't agree with and not compulsively interrupt and react and have a meltdown. The simple practice of remembering my body does all of that.
Speaker 3:So that has been the biggest aha for me, and you know there are a bunch of teachers. I have a resources page on my website where I list all the people I love, all the authors and teachers, my teacher, luis Mojica, who did the class I talked about that I took three years ago. All of these people talk about embodiment in different ways and that has been the big aha for me. And even when I go back and read my book that I wrote before I had any of this language it's a very somatically oriented book. I talk about feeling like my limbs are heavy, like I'm laying down on the train tracks and I can't get up. You know a bodily experience of freeze, a bodily experience of difficulty of dealing with challenge. So now that I know that that's where I live, that's where I hang out, that's where I do my work and that has been the biggest aha for me.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you speaking with me.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. This has been amazing.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Amanda. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty. Yeah, I've seen him many times, not lately, but yeah, I know exactly who he is. Author podcast former monk maybe?
Speaker 2:Yep, oh, you knew him well. So on his podcast I haven't heard every episode, but I know he does this on most of them. He ends his podcast with two segments and I've incorporated them into mine. Both segment is the many sides to us. There's five questions that have to be answered in one word. Each First one what is one word someone who is meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as Warm?
Speaker 3:Okay, I don't know, honestly, the reason why it's so difficult to answer, that is, I don't know what people are thinking. I don't know what they're thinking when they meet me.
Speaker 2:What is one word that someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as Thoughtful? What is one word you'd use to describe yourself? Present, thoughtful, present. What is one word you're embodying right now? Then the final five, and there's five questions, and these can be answered in up to a sentence what is the best advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 3:It's okay to cry. Why is that the best advice? Because crying is healing, Crying is cleansing, and when the tears come up, when something difficult is happening, my conditioning at least is to push it back down and to kind of buck up and, you know, get it together and keep soldiering through self for healing and for just being able to have more of a rich way of reacting to life and to difficulty. So recently I had someone tell me that and it was really, really important and I found that after that I noticed more often when I felt emotional I let it come through To me. That's, at least recently, one of the most important pieces of support and advice that I've received.
Speaker 2:Okay, what is the worst advice you've heard or received?
Speaker 3:I don't even know if I retain those things. I think probably the worst advice I've received is just suck it up. Just suck it up and do that thing you hate and wait for it to be over. That's the worst advice I've received, I think.
Speaker 2:What is something that you used to value that you no longer value?
Speaker 3:I think, honestly, a lot of material things. After the pandemic I was always decluttering and somewhat of a minimalist already, but after the pandemic I think I've had even more of a kind of letting go with physical objects, things that just turned out to be garbage, you know, just stuff, just having stuff Like I just I feel like my minimalism has gone up several notches in the last few years. So I would say I would just say stuff, material stuff.
Speaker 2:If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be, as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?
Speaker 3:Well, I have thought about this one, so it's a little easier, I think, to get into. But I want my legacy to be supporting people in their healing, supporting people in their humanity, you know, and helping them find freedom.
Speaker 2:If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.
Speaker 3:Okay, I have to play along. I wouldn't have this. Like everyone has to follow this rule, I don't think. But slow down. I think that can benefit everyone in every situation. So I don't know that I would legislate that, but if I could give everyone a piece of advice, I would say slow down. Yeah, there's no situation where that doesn't help. And it can be two seconds, it can be three seconds. As we both know, two seconds is a long time. So, yeah, Learn to slow down.
Speaker 2:That's so true. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you too. Thank you so much for the thoughtful questions. Thank you for taking the time to read my book. That means so much to me. It means so much to me.
Speaker 2:Of course, and where can the listeners connect with you?
Speaker 3:G-I-T-T-H-O-M-P-S-O-Ncom and go to the homepage and join my mailing list and you'll get little love notes from me and you can follow my podcast Thriving in Plain Sight on.
Speaker 2:Apple Podcasts and Spotify Awesome and I will link all of that in the show notes so you guys can click it directly, and I do like to leave it back to the guests. Any final words of wisdom, anything else you want to leave the listeners with? Yes, I would like to say.
Speaker 3:I would like to say drop your shoulders, notice where you're holding tension in your body and notice if you can let go a little bit. Let yourself be more than just the things on your to-do list today and let yourself be more than all the expectations other people have of you. Let yourself be a human being, take a breath you know. Love yourself, be your own friend, touch your face, say hi to yourself, be with yourself that Well.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much again.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, of course, and thank you, guys for tuning in to another episode of Mando's Mindset. What an inspiring and thought-provoking episode with Bridget. She shared so many key gems with us and I want to share a few of my key takeaways with y'all, the first one being vulnerability is a gateway to growth. Bridget shared about her resistance to being vulnerable, but also how. That's where deep connection and real healing truly begins. Vulnerability is uncomfortable, but it's truly the way to thrive. Next, bridget shared about the cartilage metaphor for savings, and I loved this. I love metaphors and analogies and this made so much sense. She talked about the cartilage like we have cartilage in our body. It's a cushion to keep us safe. This cushion allows us to keep things running smoothly and, with her explaining this like cartilage, it sounds like self-care and agency and not like a chore or something that we have to do or were quote-unquote supposed to do. It seems like something we are doing to take care of our well-being, which, framing it that way, shifts our mindset around saving money. Next, bridget shared about how somatic awareness create change. Becoming aware of how you truly feel in your body is so powerful. Bridget's practice of tuning into her body, whether that be noticing tension in her jaw or wiggling her toes. This shows how small moments of awareness can really impact and help us manage our stress, our shame and even our fears that we face. It's such a powerful tool that we can all start using right now. One thing that really stuck with me was Bridget's message about choice and agency. Even when life feels overwhelming or out of control, we always have choices. There's always options, even the small choices, no matter how small they may seem. Remember, it's not about having all the answers. Life is full of unknowns. It's about taking the first step and trying. Taking the first step and trying. So here's my challenge to you Take five minutes today to tune in and connect with your body. Notice where you're holding tension Maybe your shoulders, your jaw or even your hands. Take a deep breath and let it go. This small, simple act of awareness could be the first step in creating more peace in your life.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of Amanda's Mindset. I really hope this helps you shift the way you look at money, shame and guilt. Be sure to leave a rating, leave a review, comment on this episode if you're watching on YouTube, send me a message on Instagram. I would love to hear your thoughts and I encourage you to share this episode with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it. And don't forget Mander's Mindset is going on hiatus from February 2nd to March 10th. I will be undergoing a big adventure and I will be back with a solo episode March 10th explaining how my month in Bali went, so stay tuned for that. As always.
Speaker 2:Thank you, guys, so much for tuning in to Mander's Mindset and, as always, remember shifting your mindset is the first step to a shifting new life. Thanks guys, until next time. Step to a shifting new life. Thanks guys, until next time. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you, I'm booting for you and you got this, as always. If you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five star rating, leave a review and share it with anyone you think would benefit from this. And don't forget you are only one mindset. Shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.
