Ep #46: Procrastinating Around Money? Here's How to Break Free Starting Today

Hey coach, I bet there is somewhere in your business or your life where procrastinating with money pops up regularly. We all do it. We procrastinate about looking at our money, about making a clear debt payoff plan, about opening a high yield savings account, which I'm a huge fan of. We even procrastinate about making money, which is weird to say, I know, but it's true. 

I'm Kendall. Tune in to today's episode where I'm going to share with you three insightful strategies so that you can take your power back from procrastinating easily and swiftly. I'm giving you three self-coaching questions that instantly stop procrastination in its tracks because you are not a procrastinator. You are amazing. This episode is going to show you how to be amazing with money. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in. 

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hello, beautiful coach. Before I jump in, I have a question for you. I would so love it if you shared this episode with the women in your network, in your community, and tagged me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is @KendallSummerHawk. All one word, no spaces, no punctuation. I want to double the number of downloads in the next 60 days, and I need your help to achieve that goal. So thank you in advance for sharing and tagging. I appreciate you for your support. 

So last week in the last episode, we talked about perfectionism, which was an amazing episode. So if you missed it, definitely check it out. I will link to it in the show notes below. I realized that if perfectionism had a sister, it would be procrastinating. Hence the idea for this week's episode was born, and specifically procrastinating about money. 

Because I'm here to share with you that we all do it. We procrastinate about looking at our money, looking at our bank accounts. We procrastinate about making a clear debt payoff plan or opening a high yield savings account, which I am such a huge fan of. We even procrastinate about making money, which I know sounds so totally freaking weird to say, but it's true. I'll be the first to raise my hand on that one.

So today I want to support you in easing up on the guilt or the shame associated with procrastinating. I want to provide you with simple strategies to support you in taking action. Today, not tomorrow. Because money loves action. Money loves flow, and money loves speed. 

So first, let's take a look and gain insight into what procrastinating might look like for you. Because how we procrastinate looks different depending on your personality type. So, for example, it can look like just flat out ignoring your numbers, or not ever logging on to your online bank. Or it can look like waiting until the last minute to pay bills, or to take care of payments, or to deal with anything money related.

Another way money procrastinating could look is avoiding making decisions. I know that's a big one for me. That might surprise you, but it actually is. I'll think, and I'll think, and I'll think about what my money goal should be, for example. Meanwhile, time marches on by, and I'm floating without that money goal, which for me never feels good, and it isn't good for my long-term desires. 

So any of these types of money procrastinating behaviors have a certain drama to them. There's energy, there's emotion, but it's all on the high drama side, not the exciting, celebrating side. Or maybe you're the type that doesn't change or doesn't up-level her money decisions. So everything stays flatline or status quo year after year. That can create a feeling of comfort and safety for certain, but status quo is just that, it's not growth. Money loves action. It loves movement, and no growth is no action or movement.

Another way procrastinating might look is telling yourself that you're not good with money, or that you hate money, or that money is complicated, or whatever. Something bad, something terrible, something awful, definitely something to be avoided. 

Or maybe it's that money is boring and beneath you in some way. So you just don't think about it. You don't handle it, or you go into a place of feeling emotionally helpless. It's like money is more powerful, and therefore it's just something that you're going to avoid because you don't want to feel helpless or unsuccessful, or you don't want to feel dumb. Now believe me, I get you. By the way, it's not money that can make you feel that way, but I'll get to that more in a moment.

So I'm curious which of these you might recognize yourself in, or maybe there's another way you might find yourself procrastinating about money. The main point I want to make here is that first, you're human, and procrastinating is part of the human experience. What matters is not the way that you let procrastinating get a hold of you.

What matters is discovering the three simple strategies that I'm going to share with you that you can shift in order to, use these strategies to shift things in order to release procrastination's hold on you and shift into the strong, resilient, wise, intelligent, and intuitive woman that I know you are.

So let's go through what these three strategies are, and what I recommend is using these as a sequence each time you need to work with or handle or make a decision about money so that you experience that freedom to move forward easily and from your source of power. 

Strategy number one, you are not a procrastinator. This strategy is about no longer self-identifying as a procrastinator. Procrastinating may be something that you do or something you experience, but it's not who you are. So if you've ever said oh, I'm a procrastinator, that language, it stops now. It stops today. Because no, you are not. Self-identifying as one is only going to allow its tentacles to take hold of you even deeper.

So if you find yourself thinking or saying that, you got to course-correct it right away. Just switch it up into something like I'm a person who loves to get things done, or I am a person who loves to learn new things, which are both probably true, even though you may not have thought those things about yourself in the context of money. That's okay, you will start to now. 

Now I know this sounds simplistic, but trust me, after money coaching thousands and thousands of women, I'm here to tell you that identity is the most powerful asset you have for making change, and making change feel flowing in the way that you want. So strategy number one, you got this. 

Strategy number two, encapsulate why you're procrastinating at this moment into a single sentence. This is such a nifty trick that I created. So let me explain what I mean. If you can look at procrastinating a little more objectively and hone in on why you're finding yourself procrastinating at this moment, that's a key thing, at this moment, it breaks the grip. 

So for example, maybe you've been avoiding looking at your bank account, super common. So what is the most basic reason why that is? That's the question to ask. What is the most basic reason why that is? Probably because you're afraid or maybe you're anticipating feeling guilty or feeling shame. 

You don't have to go into deep psychological exploration here. Simple will do beautifully. You're just naming the reason beneath procrastinating at this moment. Let's take a different example. 

Let's say you've been avoiding making a decision about a money goal. Now this sounds simple, and maybe not all that big of a deal, but it actually is because having a money goal acts like a North star. Not having one can leave you feeling adrift or directionless and can even trigger, you guessed it, procrastination. 

So what is the most basic reason behind not choosing a money goal? If you've been thinking about it, but you can't decide or if you've been feeling conflicted in some way, the reason may be fear of making the wrong decision, or maybe the most basic reason is wanting to avoid feeling disappointed if you don't achieve it. 

So by having this simple, most basic reason behind the procrastinating at this moment can reduce its power. It gives you space, a feeling of space between the task at hand, like looking at your bank account or making a money goal decision, a space between that and procrastinating. Within that space is your opportunity, specifically your opportunity to think, to breathe, to choose new thoughts, and to come from your wise, powerful self.

Which leads me to strategy number three, trust yourself. I mean, really, really trust yourself. Specifically, I want you to trust yourself to make good decisions and trust yourself to learn new things. So did you catch that? Those two things, to make good decisions and to learn new things because I know that that's what you can do brilliantly.

So one of the reasons so many women procrastinate and avoid doing basic money tasks like checking their bank balance, paying bills on time, making money goal decisions, choosing to earn more money, creating a debt payoff plan, any of those types of things is that they're telling themselves that in some way they're not good with money. I never believe that about anyone. So if you've ever told yourself that, I don't believe it.

What I have witnessed is women not trusting themselves to make a good decision or not knowing basics about money and not feeling comfortable asking for help in understanding money or asking the wrong person and being made to feel dumb. You are not dumb. You are a grownup woman, fully capable of understanding money and you can trust yourself. If you ever ask somebody for help understanding money and you feel dumb when they're talking to you, ask somebody else because there will be somebody else who will not make you feel that way. 

All right, so I want to give you three simple coaching questions that you can ask yourself every time you start a money task. So, for example, right before you log on to your online banking or right before you look at a bill that needs to be paid, whatever it is.

So the three questions are this. What do I want to find out? What decision do I need to make? Who can I ask for support? So what do I need to find out? What decision do I need to make? Who can I ask for support? Let me give you an example. 

If you're clear before logging into your online banking about the answers to those three questions, then logging in to check your bank balance is simple because you are the one asking the questions, which always puts you in the power seat. Remember, whoever asks the questions is in the power seat. Because you're giving what even is a simple task, you're giving a purpose. So let's make this into a practical example.

Before logging into your online banking, you ask these three questions, and let's say the answers are this. What do I want to find out? Oh, I want to find out my balance and check my auto pay so I know how much money is going to be coming out of the account in the next week. Simple, clear purpose.

What decision do I need to make? The decision I want to make is if I need to move money around or change a payment date or change a payment amount or take some other type of action so that my balance does not dip below a certain amount. Who can I ask for support? Well, if I have a question about the account, I can do a chat messenger with the banking support. For example, maybe the auto pay date is not convenient every month, and I can ask to have it changed.

So you see how this works? With these three simple coaching questions, any and every money action or activity is one that you can handle. You're putting the power into your own hands. 

All right, so to wrap up, procrastinating is not who you are. It's just something that you do with money sometimes, and you can change that because now you know that procrastinating isn't something that's born into you like eye color or your height. It's just a way of avoiding feeling something that you've been perceiving as unpleasant, but now you know how to encapsulate that into a single, simple statement which takes the sting out of it and you can trust yourself. You have the power using the three simple self-coaching questions that I gave you.

I had originally wanted to include tips on setting a money date and what to look at and all kinds of other fun little money habits that for me, as a money nerd, I love to geek out on, but we don't have time today. So I will save that for another episode. 

So to close out today's episode, if you have not yet taken my Sacred Money Archetypes quiz to find out your top money archetypes, oh my gosh, you have to do that right away. It's an incredibly accurate quiz that will reveal exactly what your money personality is, and the bonus videos I include with it all for free will explain in depth about your money archetype, the gifts of your archetype and the shadow side and how to work with that. So I'll link to the quiz here in the show notes and you can take that and really have fun. You're going to learn so much about yourself. 

So I want to leave you with this. Procrastinating happens. It's not a big deal. You and money can have a beautiful, close-knit, prosperous, harmonious, peaceful relationship, I promise.

All right. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your loyalty and drop me an email. Drop me an email at podcast@kendallsummerhawk.com. Ask me any question you want about money, coaching, pricing, anything to do with money and coaching, basically. I am here for you. All right, I will see you next week in our next episode. 

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