Understanding Your Relationship with Money

Our Virtual Mindful Money Challenge is designed to help you build a more confident, grounded relationship with your finances. Instead of diving into complicated spreadsheets or high-pressure goals, we start with something far more powerful: understanding the beliefs, stories, and emotions that have shaped how you relate to money.

For many women, the word money makes our shoulders tense, and our stomachs clench a little – if this is you, you are absolutely not alone. Many of us reach midlife carrying a quiet storm of worries: I should have saved more by now, I don’t really understand investing, what if I outlive my money, what if it’s simply too late? 

Many of us are also afraid to discuss our financial concerns and money.

The good news is that it's not too late to change that story, and change doesn’t have to involve shame, complicated spreadsheets, or becoming a savvy financial planner overnight. What matters most is beginning with the inner work—understanding your relationship with money, facing your fears with compassion, and taking small, human steps that gently shift how you feel, think, and talk about money.

Money Beliefs Start Early

For most of us, our struggles with money didn’t start with adulthood—they began much earlier. We learned about money through tone, atmosphere, urgency, silence, or conflict. Maybe money was tight growing up, and every purchase felt like a negotiation. Maybe money was abundant but never discussed, leaving you with a sense that it was mysterious or taboo. Maybe you watched parents argue about bills or saw a caregiver handle everything alone. Even if you don’t consciously remember those moments, they often shaped how you make financial decisions today.

When money brings up anxiety, it’s rarely because we’re “bad with money.” More often it’s because money is tied to safety, identity, worthiness, independence, or our fear of the future. The panic you feel when you open your banking app or think about retirement is not about the numbers on the screen. It’s about what those numbers mean to you. Seeing that clearly is the beginning of healing your relationship with money.

A huge part of this inner work involves recognizing the emotional rules we’ve carried for decades. You might have absorbed the belief that wanting more is selfish, that talking about money is impolite, that you’re supposed to just know how finances work, or that if you didn’t learn earlier in life, you somehow missed your chance.

These beliefs don’t come from personal failure—they come from culture, family dynamics, and the expectations placed on women. But once you recognize these inherited rules, you can begin rewriting them.

Let's Talk About Money

Another essential piece of shifting your relationship with money is learning how to talk about it. So many women hold money fears in absolute silence. We carry the weight alone because we’re embarrassed, or because we don’t want to burden anyone, or because we assume everyone else has figured it out except us. But silence is where shame grows strongest. 

Shame thrives in secrecy; it dissolves in conversation.

There is something powerful about putting your money fears into words. Saying “I’m scared I won’t have enough” or “I never learned how to manage money” or “I avoid looking at my accounts because it overwhelms me” is not a confession—it’s a release. The moment you name what you’re feeling, the grip tightens a little less. The fear becomes smaller, more manageable, more human.

Talking about money with someone you trust also helps you realize how universal these worries are. Almost every woman, at some point, has felt unprepared, embarrassed, overwhelmed, or behind. When you hear another woman say “I feel that way too,” something shifts inside you. You stop believing you’re the only one. And when you stop believing you’re the only one, growth becomes possible.

This kind of open conversation also dismantles another deeply ingrained belief many women hold: that we must figure everything out alone. For generations, women were told that money was someone else’s domain—usually a husband, father, or institution. Even today, many women feel a strange combination of guilt and pressure when they ask questions about money, as if they’re revealing a flaw. But asking questions isn’t a weakness. It’s the beginning of wisdom. And speaking honestly about your fears is a sign of strength, not failure.

Once you begin exploring your money story and talking about your fears, you create emotional space for a different kind of relationship with money. You begin to understand that money is not a moral test or a scorecard of your life. It’s not a measure of how responsible, disciplined, or successful you are. It’s simply a tool—one that can support your values, your needs, your dreams, and the life you want to build next.

Connect With What You Really Want

This inner shift also helps you reconnect with what you truly want. For many women in midlife and beyond, money anxiety comes from a gap between what they think they “should” want and what they actually desire. Maybe you don’t want the big house or the brand-new car. Maybe what you want is freedom, stability, meaningful travel, or the ability to say yes to small joys without guilt. When you strip away comparison and cultural pressure, your real priorities reveal themselves.

Understanding your own desires makes money feel less intimidating because you’re no longer chasing someone else’s definition of success. You’re aligning your decisions with what genuinely matters to you. This alignment creates emotional clarity long before it creates financial change, but that emotional clarity is what makes lasting change possible.

You may be surprised to discover that healing your relationship with money has very little to do with knowing all the financial terms. It has everything to do with how you feel when you think about your finances. When you move from shame to curiosity, from silence to conversation, from fear to understanding, everything else becomes easier. You become more open to learning, more confident asking questions, and more grounded in the decisions you make.

It's Not About Perfection

This process is not about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about understanding where your beliefs came from, talking honestly about what scares you, and slowly replacing old stories with new ones that feel true to the woman you are now. It’s about building a relationship with money that feels calm, respectful, empowered, and rooted in self-worth.
You don’t need to fix everything today.

You don’t need to be fearless. You just need to be willing to listen to yourself. Willing to speak your truth. Willing to let go of the quiet shame you’ve carried for years. And willing to imagine that your relationship with money can feel different—lighter, kinder, less tangled, more free.

The inner work is the heart of financial change. When you shift the way you think and feel about money, the practical steps become far less intimidating. You move from dread to openness, from avoidance to awareness, from isolation to connection.

And you don’t have to do any of this alone.

LEARN MORE > Virtual Fitness and Lifestyle Challenges