The Secret to Separating Your Self-Worth from Your Net Worth - Episode 117
Have you ever felt stressed about money? In today's episode, I talk with Hanna Morrell, a financial coach who helps people feel better about money. She shares her story of struggling with finances and how she created a new way to manage money without guilt or shame. Hanna explains why many of us connect our self-worth to how much money we have and how to change that. She also gives tips on making smart money choices that match what really matters to you.
About our guest
Hanna Morrell is the creator of the Pacific Stoa Financial Coaching Curriculum. Frustrated by traditional financial advice that focuses on punishment, shame, and mechanics, she developed a holistic approach that combines financial knowledge with behavioral and emotional tools. Basically Hanna teaches people how to trust themselves with their money.
With over eight years of experience working with diverse clients, Hanna has crafted a curriculum that addresses the root causes of financial struggles. Blending financial literacy with principles from psychology, philosophy, trauma-informed practices,and cognitive behavioral therapy, she empowers individuals to overcome financial challenges and build lasting wealth.
Hanna’s proven methods have helped countless people transform their relationship with money, set achievable goals, and create a brighter financial future. She is passionate about sharing her expertise with women, couples, and small businesses.
https://yourworthcoach.com/intentional/
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema: [00:00:00] What's up my financially intentional people?
I am honored to be joined by Hannah Morrell and we are going to talk about Money, trauma, trauma, money, all of those good things. Welcome, Hannah, to the Financially Intentional podcast.
Hanna Morrell: Thank you so much for having me.
Naseema: Of course, but before we dive into that, let's talk about your introduction to the money space. How did you get into personal finance, into talking about financial trauma, all these things?
What's your background?
Hanna Morrell: Gosh, as I go back, let's say 12 years in time. Actually, if you go back to the beginning of my adulthood, which was a long time ago I've always felt like I was walking the razor's edge on my finances, right? Sometimes I made almost nothing as far as income. Sometimes I was making a whole bunch.
If you go back 12 years in time, I was making okay money. I had a stable enough job that I was fairly good at. And I could never understand why I was never quite able to save [00:01:00] enough money. I was never quite able to pay off my debt like I wanted to. I was , Always just a little bit late on rent, just a little bit, just a little bit.
I was absolutely like laying awake at night and doing the math on the ceiling. Like, how am I going to make this work kind of a thing? And I could never understand what the problem was. I was not a big spender. I wasn't like buying fancy cars and flat screen TVs all over the place. So I could not get what was wrong with me basically.
So I did with a lot of people do, which is you reach out into the world. To look for some assistance on that. And what I found or what found me was financial services and I was for a very short time attached to financial services. I was fast track to being a financial advisor, which is not impressive.
They'll fast track. Anybody don't get excited.
Naseema: and just explain what financial services
means.
Hanna Morrell: okay. Thank you. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good clarification. So that is life insurance sales, financial advising and on the far end of the [00:02:00] extreme CFPs or certified financial planners. So I was on the life insurance sales side of things. And I was not good at it. I was pretty bad at it. And I was asking them over and over and over for exactly what I needed. I was telling them, I need you to help me disconnect my self worth from my finances. And so I knew enough to know that that's what my core problem was.
And they kept saying, sell more product. And I was not good at that. I ended up for most of my time with them. Training. So I'm a pretty darn good trainer. So and I enjoy that. And that was just what I did. And I languished there for far too long. And I was frustrated. I was angry because I kept asking them.
I'm telling you what I need. Please help me. And they couldn't or wouldn't. So in my anger, I reached out into the world again and looked for exactly what I'm doing now, and I could not find it. So I was a little mad about that too. After about six months of being mad about that, I get mad a lot. I was mad about a lot of things back in the day.
[00:03:00] After about six months of that, I realized that if I couldn't find that, then I needed to build that. So that was probably about 10 years ago. And I began building the curriculum that We use today. And I begin building it first and foremost for myself, who I say that I'm my first clients and my worst clients.
I'm my longest lived client. I'll never not be my own client. I'm the absolute worst. So that was the beginning of that was. Was just Realistically the beginnings of the curriculum was just a little collection of life hacks. Like why is my brain doing this? That's silly and then I would because I'm a nerd I would go research that and come out with a tool for that and then Somewhere in there.
I got my first batch of Pro bono clients. Let's just call them what they were, which was guinea pigs. They knew they were my guinea pigs. they were failed sales from the financial services side of things, from the insurance side of things. So I never actually sold them, but we kept like meeting and having coffee.
And [00:04:00] I was beginning to coach at that point. And then about a year and a half into building the curriculum then I started to take my first paid client. So that's the long story long of how I started this process.
Naseema: let me clarify, like, when you were doing an insurance sales, you said you kept on having this struggle was a struggle. You felt like that wasn't helping to solve your problem specifically. And you were just like, I got into this. To find a solution to help me with my financial problems.
This is not helping me. Not only that you want me to sell other people. This product does not help him.
Hanna Morrell: Not just the product, but also bring them into the business and I was also terrible at that big surprise, but it only occurred to me like sometime later that that wasn't their job, right? The job of financial services to sell financial products, and occasionally we need financial products.
So that's their job. Their job is not to help me. [00:05:00] Separate myself forth for my finances. So my frustration was a little misplaced, but still like
Naseema: I think it was misplaced because you actually. Needed to help and actually wanted to help people and didn't really feel like this is a solution to do that. And I think it's interesting. And we don't even have to talk about the specifics of the company or anything that you are working for.
But I think that that's interesting is that a lot of people go into this looking for help and then are offered like this opportunity of a lifetime to not only help themselves, but to help other people and. Get caught up in the being person that sells this product versus a person that is actually utilizing the product.
And the whole purpose gets lost because they still are in the background struggling. And the fact that you were able to be like, hold on, let me move away. I can use it for what it's worth. I love the educational piece of it. And then that's one piece. [00:06:00] However, there's a whole piece where I still need to fix my finances.
And, maybe this is not the route. So thank you for sharing that story because it's really impactful. And I do know that there's people out there that are in that situation that can't separate themselves. So to hear that you did that Is wonderful. And so you said that there was something out there that you just kept on struggling with.
And you know that you were looking for this thing and you couldn't find it. So you built it. Do you have a specific like name or what is it that you felt like you were trying to like, find what was missing?
Hanna Morrell: So initially it was purely, I know that I need to disconnect myself from my finances. I knew that there was something going on there that I was commingling those two things. I didn't know how I needed to do that. I need to know the steps to take to do that. That's what I was looking for. And what this has evolved into over the years has been that basically my job is to teach first [00:07:00] myself and then others to teach others how to trust themselves with their money.
And when we can trust ourselves with our money. That then we are resilient, right? Then we can handle the, the peaks and valleys that the world is going to throw at us. we can achieve the changes that we want and we can be calm and regulated and intentional with our spending or saving or investing all of the things when we can do that.
We can trust ourselves with our money. That is when the real change begins to happen. So that it started off with. I know that here's the thing that I need and I don't know how to get there to the solution of that being, aha, this is it, this is, I need to trust my, I, the first realization, of course, is that I don't trust myself with
Naseema: hmm. Mm
Hanna Morrell: I can think about all of those historical things that I could tell you about to this day, that all of the ways that I should not be trusted with money. In the work that we do, because what we do is what's called trauma informed. We, and I know that you had a when he was just telling me about the a nurse that you had on recently, a [00:08:00] doctor who's works with nurses and she was talking about.
Trauma as well.
And this bleeds into the financial world deeply. We are given lots and lots of experiences in our world that teach us the message that we can't be trusted with money. And that becomes deeply traumatic over time. And it compounds, you look like you were about to say something.
Naseema: No, I was just wondering, like, why do you think that that means that we have to separate your self worth.
Hanna Morrell: yeah, not separate yourself. That's that could be like avoidance and bad things will start happening there.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Hanna Morrell: Our self worth doesn't need to be wrapped up with your net worth. That's
Naseema: Mm
Hanna Morrell: we've all heard that saying your net worth is not your self worth, but. that's only okay, so how, right?
And this curriculum is the how, and part of that, how is learning the tools to be resilient and trusting ourselves and reframing the stories that we tell ourselves around money.
Naseema: And I love that you started with [00:09:00] yourself. You started saying I have this issue that I know is not being addressed in the community. Let me stepwise try to figure this out. And while I'm figuring this out, let me educate other people. That's actually like how my platform started.
It was just like, I know I'm too smart to not understand this money thing. Why is it that I can't figure this out? out. Let me figure it out for myself. And when I started figuring out for myself, I was just like, everybody needs to know this. Like, why is this a thing?
Yeah.
Hanna Morrell: I had no intention when I began this of teaching this to others, but then it became, as I'm sure you've noticed, like people just come out of the woodwork because they need it. Like , I remember like walking around for a whole day thinking like, is this a, is this a business?
It's what am I doing right now? It's crazy, right? And just stepping into it, finally realizing, and that was like. That was about six months into what I now call the curriculum build. And that took a year and a half. I didn't tell anybody what I was doing for almost a [00:10:00] year and a half.
I, those, I had those little guinea pigs folks coming in, but they knew that I was doing something, but I think they knew before I did that this was an actual viable business.
Naseema: And to build out this curriculum, what were the resources that you relied upon? Mm. Mm.
Hanna Morrell: Um, it's a Frankenstein's monster. So there's elements of cognitive behavioral therapy dialectical behavior therapy. There's elements of philosophy. My favorite philosophy is called stoicism, but there's other philosophies in there. There's certainly psychology built in. There's behavioral economics, regular economics, macro and microeconomics, all sorts of things.
I love that. We can pull from so many different domains. we have access to everything, every bit of knowledge in the world now on our phones. I don't know if I could have built this curriculum this quickly 15, 20 years ago. Definitely not 30 years ago. Of course, I would have been still [00:11:00] too young to do this now.
Um, yeah, it's been cobbled together. I've never limited myself for any one thing. One of the tools that we use comes from a concept called lucid dreaming.
I don't know if you know what that is, but that has nothing to do with really anything. And we've pulled a concept from lucid dreaming of all places into the curriculum, adapted it
to be a useful tool for our clients.
Naseema: I love
Hanna Morrell: know if that
answered your question or not.
Naseema: No, it did. It did. Because I think the benefit of having going through a curriculum or a program like this is shortcutting all of those hours of research you
can do.
Hanna Morrell: I did it for you. I got you.
Naseema: Okay, this person has spent hundreds of hours on.
Hanna Morrell: yeah.
Naseema: Mining this information and putting it together in a way that is digestible and understandable and in a way that, is something that can impact you. So, I appreciate that. It just, it is the Frankenstein [00:12:00] approach. I appreciate that because, I think that often people look at just like there's this one way, and one wrong way. And that's not always necessarily the case. And yeah. I'm very interested to learn more about your curriculum, how it works, and how people usually flow through the program.
Hanna Morrell: So I do want to say that the single biggest factor in the development of my curriculum has been my clients. So I want to call out, hello, all of the clients fast and in the future is like what they need, like they'll come to the table with, they need something and my job isn't to fix them. My job is to provide them with a tool so that they can make those changes themselves.
Part of this is a listening experiment, too. I'm listening to them, and they say, I need this. And my job is to say, no, you don't need that, which is what the financial, a lot of financial wisdom in the world says. You don't need that. What are you doing? Just get your, you know what, together. My job is to develop a tool, sometimes in real time, and sometimes I tell them we are now, experimenting with it.[00:13:00]
Let's try this. And if it works, then I'll try it again and again and again.
So I work with individuals and couples. And I can and have done group coaching and, in person and also virtually that is something we every month we have a free group class. And anybody is welcome to join that. Most of the in person group coaching and the other, virtual group coaching that I do is contracted through nonprofits.
Not always the case, but mostly the case, but yeah, so we work kneecap to kneecap with clients and I found that that is deeply, deeply important. , if I knew that, like session, when we talk about this in session two, we talk about this and say, if that worked, I would have recorded this.
Four years ago. And this is, I wouldn't be, I'd just be taking naps with my cat all day long. That doesn't work. We need the person to person sort of interaction and everybody has a different pathway. So in general, there's three sorts of phases that people go through as they're working through [00:14:00] the coaching phase.
One is we're going to be talking about relationship. So this could be the relationship between you and your money. The relationship between you and your partner and the communication specifically around money or all of those things. And we stay there as long as we need to, because the relationship piece of our relationship with money, that's where the financial trauma aspect comes in.
And it's important to talk about that. Before we talk about any dollar amounts, people just want to jump in and talk about dollar amounts. And that does not work. We'll end up really, enhancing the financial drama or at least the responses to that. So we work first on your relationship with money and or communication around money if needed then we move into phase 2.
Which is problem solving and decision making. So that's where we're laying in like little foundation, like I call them scaffolds, like here's a little scaffold for decision making. And you could take this little scaffold and you could use it for thousands of different choices, little ones, big ones. We talk about, [00:15:00] Making money choices in line with our values.
That's we don't do restriction. You can't really see my sign. We don't do restriction here. What we do spending, saving, investing in line with your value. So that's what we're working on somewhere in phase 2. we start talking about actual dollar amounts and then we move into phase 3, which is the system build and the system is a budget, but it is also again, a reflection of our relationship with money.
Naseema: Mm-hmm.
Hanna Morrell: The frequency moves from every week at the beginning to every month at the end. Once our clients are graduated, which is not really a ceremony, we need to make some sort of an inventive, silly ceremony, we ask our clients to come back every 6 months to do a check in with us. That's not charged for.
But if you go start very 1st session to the Congratulations session is about 6 to 8 months, a little less for individuals about maybe a touch more for couples. So it's not a long span of time. [00:16:00] At the beginning, it can be pretty intense as far as scheduling, but if we need to, we can stretch it out.
. We're all very agreeable to understand that people are busy. And so we try to work around people's schedules
Naseema: I wanna know, what are people who go through your program most surprised about
Hanna Morrell: Oh, I love that. That's an excellent question. They are surprised, and I hear this all the time, about how gentle it is. Because I think people come into this work expecting to be told what to do, like you were talking about that a little, we get directed, we get corrected, we get told to get our act together.
If that worked, we'd all be fine. It's super sneaky the way that we that's why the pathway is what it is, is by the time we make it to the system, but we're talking about a budget, we've already done, we've already laid in all the groundwork that we need to get there. And people are. Very often surprised the first time they make a budget.
I've gotten a couple emails from people like 15 minutes after [00:17:00] that session where we made a budget the first time they're like, Hey, did we just make a budget? And I'm like, yeah, we did. Like we're going to sneak up on that sucker. Cause that's, it is so surprising to people that it does not need to be.
There's no shame involved. I don't allow shame. Like I've never had to teach anybody how to be shameful about themselves on money. It's, it's in fact, the absolute opposite of that.
We practice something called unconditional positive regard. Like we work very hard on making this a safe place to talk about money, which we don't get very often in the world.
And that means that people have the ability to heal their financial trauma. Sometimes that happens long after graduation, usually actually but definitely reducing the impact of that financial trauma. And once we do that, people are capable of so much. When I'm meeting with someone to see if I'm going to work with them or that person, I'm asking myself a question all the time.
And the question I have, the bar that I'm watching [00:18:00] for is , if I gave this person or this couple 10 or 15 years, would they be able to figure this out on their own? And if the answer is yes, I could work with them. They already have everything that they need. I'm just taking that 10 or 15 years and I'm scrunching it down to 6 to 8 months, right?
Like you talked about I've already done the digging around in the basements of libraries and things, literally and figuratively, right? You don't need to do that. If the answer is no, they wouldn't get there, On their own or 10 or 15 years, then I can't work with them. Then they need something besides Hannah.
They need therapy. They need the MDR. They need something like they need another tool before they should be working with me. So my job isn't to fix people. My job is to teach them tools. Bring out what's already there and get the heck out of their way and that's what makes me You know makes this fun and satisfying for me But it's also like this is not gonna be lifetime work Some people will go and need to go to therapy for the rest of their lives.[00:19:00]
This is not this that kind of a thing I'm I'm not a rescue like financial rescue. This is short term and meant to Enhance what people already have. I said that
Naseema: do you think you bring to the financial services, finance, personal finance industry that you felt was missing when you were like looking what is your program in itself do for people that you feel like I could have never gotten this using traditional personal finance or financial services?
Hanna Morrell: This curriculum, what we do, respects people's intelligence. I don't know if I can say that in
Naseema: Yeah, yeah,
Hanna Morrell: you go out into the financial coaching world, financial wisdom world, and I think we can all think about two or three names that are right at the top of that list. None of that respects our intelligence, right?
It's all being told to get it together. Stop doing that. Start doing this. You should. These blanket statements. Everybody should be saving a thousand dollars a month. That's not realistic, right? [00:20:00] So it's not customized and it definitely does not respect our intelligence. And I was deeply frustrated by that.
And thank goodness. I'm like, a little rebellion's hanging on. Not a bad thing. It's pretty good. Look,
Naseema: I really like that. And that's what people don't understand is personal finances and is personal. And I think what people think that they're going to get or should get and when they seek financial help is they just. Want somebody to do it for them or tell them what to do and it'll solve all their problems when they don't understand that.
Sure. Somebody can do that. And yeah, it might temporarily solve maybe 1 or 2 problems, but if you don't do the actual work, the problem is still going to be there.
Hanna Morrell: that is basically, you could go right this second, go on Google and you can get like dozens, if not hundreds of like budgets. They're all going to say they're the right one. They can't be right. The right budget, the right [00:21:00] system around money is the one that has been built with you and for you.
And that's, we custom built every single system. That is. It is labor intensive for us and our clients, but it gets easier, the easier it is to use and the more customized it is to use, the longer, the better it works and it has to change, right? It has to be a flexible system, has to have a certain amount of structure and a certain amount of flexibility, but it has to be customized to you and your life and what you want.
Naseema: Is there a particular area of personal finance that you really lean into? I know we talked about budgeting, but budgeting is usually just like a baseline for, helping people with debt elimination or investing or what do people typically come to you for help overall?
Hanna Morrell: When I'm working with couples, they're almost. Like the 1st thing out of their mouth is the communication around money. And even individuals struggle with that because we have been told that we are not [00:22:00] supposed to talk about money. yes, we.
Naseema: taboo. Don't talk about it.
Hanna Morrell: And we know in our little hearts, we know that if you're ashamed of something, you don't talk about it.
So here's a whole bunch of things we don't talk about, so therefore, it must be something shameful. So here's a couple who's trying to talk about money, and they're wondering why they're not doing it. And I'm like it's because we don't have any good tools, right? So we have not been given good tools to adapt our, to change our own relationships with money, to trust ourselves with money, and then to trust our partners with money.
And for individuals. Because I, most of the individuals that I work with are women that, that also means like they're having trouble like communicating within their crew, like about finances too, and especially younger women are better about communicating, but that is
one thing that I see an awful lot is the tools, the skills for communicating around money. Debt payoffs certainly is something that we work on with most clients. Not all of my clients are in debt and then, of course, the planning, the [00:23:00] prioritizing, the planning and that kind of a thing. Sometimes we talk about investing in very general terms.
I'm no longer licensed. I found that to be a conflict of interest. So I don't sell product and haven't for a probably eight years, that right? I don't know. Math is not why I think so good right there, but I know we can talk about if the different kinds of investing in very general terms, traditional investing, non traditional investing.
But that is just, it's education. but that is probably the biggest thing that we do is , we make money more intentional, but less. impactful, like it's not as, it's not taking up all of your bandwidth to do your money life. It's, but it is way more intentional. sure if I answered.
Naseema: Yes, I do. I do. Is there anything in particular that you gave that you use as a metrics like across all your clients like to measure their going through your program? Mm [00:24:00] hmm. hmm.
Hanna Morrell: let's say you're sitting down to coffee with somebody and they're agitated or they're totally withdrawn. You can kind of like, see that you can get a vibe for that. And in the beginning of the work, we see a lot of that, like really agitated, like interrupting, pushing forward. Like Hannah, we got to get going on the money.
That sort of. Microchips are found in straws. That's why I say macrophages. Microphages is also what we call micrological. Microchips, they're things that are inside the blood. They're like ingredients in food that you put in your brain to make it work. These are actually called macromolecules.
conversation, people flip back and forth between that. Then there's an interesting turnaround session where people show up and you could tell they're there and they're ready to work there. What the, the psychologist would call regulated, right? So they're chill, their brain has settled down and it's time to start working.
So that is one of the bigger things that we notice is as we go through the work and it may not be like. A session that [00:25:00] just, it's just changed like a light switch flipped. But you could tell like session 1 to session 7 or 8, there's a distinction. You can look back at those times and think, ah, we're very different now.
And people are leaning in more, asking questions about the future. When my clients start to ask about the future. Okay. Okay. But what about. That in the future, what do we do about retirement? When my clients naturally start pulling into the future, I know that we're getting somewhere because when we're stressed out, when we're in crisis, when we're dysregulated, we can't write our brains.
We'll think about right this minute hand. We gotta stop the bleeding right now. We gotta figure this out right now. And then when they begin to naturally think about the future then I know that they're the work is getting done. That is not a clear threshold. Yeah. When they can trust themselves with money when they're adapting and changing their budgets on their own without me Beautiful.
I know that we're real close to being done. I typically I'll exit just a little bit before everybody's comfortable I like it's time for him Hannah to go now. They're [00:26:00] like, wait a minute. What are you doing? I have I have learned especially with couples if I stay too long then I'm the only reason those conversations are happening.
I'm the only reason the budget is happening. So I call it first mile, last mile, right? They, you did the last mile. I'm sorry, you did the first mile without me. You could do the last mile without me. Another analogy is I don't know about you, but when I got my driver's license, I was not a confident driver.
Not even a little bit, right? I got that license and then I became a confident driver after some more experiences. So that's what I like to equate this to is that for this to be truly sustainable and be truly theirs, I need to exit a little bit early. Okay. I got some resistance from that.
Naseema: I bet people are like, hold on too soon, but
she got ripped the bandaid off. Let's go.
Hanna Morrell: I, we don't, I'm always supportive. We're always there. As the coaches are, I have three apprentice coaches as they come online, they will support my clients. When it is [00:27:00] time for me to exit this business and, 150 years or whatever that is so they will always have support.
But it is important that they do this on their own as well.
Naseema: And then as far as like those six months check ins, is there a typical like general theme of people like being confident or typically where are people at at that six months?
Hanna Morrell: So usually we've been in a little bit of communication. In between there, maybe just by email. So the six month check ins, I love them so much. About half of the six month check in is literally just talking, just chatting.
It's just like catching up, right? Not too long ago, I I was meeting, I was doing a six month check in and this kid walked by in the background who's that kid?
And they're like, that's the baby. There's no way that's the baby. That's a full grown adult. Who is that child? So it's time. How are the dogs doing? It's
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: time for us to check in and get caught up and just chitty chat a little bit. And then about half of it is checking in on the system.
For couples, that's also checking on the [00:28:00] communication and doing some fine tuning. This could be viewed as a recalibration. Occasionally, not often people come back in for paid coaching. I'm pretty proud of the fact that it's about 2 or 3 percent of the time.
Naseema: Wow. That's really
low.
Hanna Morrell: so it's, it's really low. I'm again, if my job is to make sure that my clients are sustainable, then they don't need to be returning for paid coaching.
And when they do, it's typically a life change right there. I had 1 couple come back for some paid coaching in. 2024 one. And they graduated before the pandemic and they came back cause they were prepping to buy their first home. It's that kind of a thing. Sometimes it's a divorce is the reason, but sometimes it's a marriage.
Sometimes it's a big move, right? So usually if people are graduated and coming back in for paid coaching, it's real short, two or three sessions is about the normal. They've already got a good foundation of all the other tools. Yeah and the other thing that we do in those six months check ins is if I'm working on a new tool I may practice it on them.
I may [00:29:00] they'll and with their permission, of course, again, because they are skilled and they're knowledgeable about maybe a half to two thirds of the curriculum, they have good perspectives on, on new tools. So I could, they can, I could cast them back in time and say, go back to the beginning of the work.
And I'm trying this on you. What do you think? Yeah. Sometimes they'll give me they always give me good feedback. It's not always like that was great. Sometimes like that was terrible, especially that with anybody else, but they're safe for me. And I know that I can trust their feedback.
Naseema: And I know like during the program, you do introduce them to certain tools and you were saying like, Hey, we're trying this tool out. How do you know when a tool is working for someone versus when you need to switch it up? Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: We actually, because, a lot of what I'm asking them to do is experimentation. Then we kind of like, yeah. We use the language, not quite scientific language okay, so how do we know if this is going to work? So let's say we're practicing a new tool. We want to know what it looks like if we're working, if this works and what it looks like if it [00:30:00] doesn't.
I can't think of any new tools that we've got on the. Okay, so here's a newish tool.
So I could say to somebody, I'm going to, I'm going to teach you this newish tool that we're working on. And. The way that I'll know that this is working for you is if if you have more awareness of this or that
Naseema: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: And then we'll try it out and are you feeling any more aware of that? Do you want to go away, practice it and come back? And then we revisit that. So it depends on the tool. Like the, the one I'm thinking about right now is something called the exposure hierarchy. And here again, pulling from different disciplines is let's say we're talking about.
Let's say I've got a couple I'm working with and one partner is really, really hesitant to even look at the numbers. And Nope, that's not going to look. And every time they try to, they're like, I'm going to do it. This is the time. And it blows up for
Naseema: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: The exposure hierarchy comes from psychology, and it says, basically.
It's related to phobia. So if, if a therapist or psychologist is working with somebody with, let's say, an arachnophobia they would [00:31:00] make a list of all the things that are scary, like a picture of a spider, a line, a child's line drawing of a spider, being in the same room with a spider, having a spider crawl in my face, and they make a list of all of these things, and then they rank them.
So let's say the least Terrified thing is a child's drawing of a spider. So you sit and look at that. And basically it's getting your, brain and your body comfortable with being uncomfortable, basically. Back to my couple, my imaginary couple here, or 1 partner is super hesitant to talk about money.
We might start with, okay What are all the ways that you could do this? You could have to sit and input the data into a spreadsheet for four hours. I'm like, okay, so that's one end of the spectrum. Maybe the other end of the spectrum is you put the tracking form. Basically, one of the things we do is basically custom build apps for people.
So you put this little app. So that's on the low end of the spectrum is you put the app on your phone. Don't open it. [00:32:00] Just put it on your phone, right? So you put it on your phone and you're like, okay, chill. How's that going? So let's say I'm working. I'm wanting to test this new tool out And the people that I they know I'm testing a new tool It almost helps to know that you're helping me test a tool
Naseema: uh
Hanna Morrell: Right, because we're not and this is another common theme.
We never evaluate you. We're always evaluating the tool, the
Naseema: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: And that makes it like, it didn't work so good for me. And I'm like, thank you so much. That was like, it didn't maybe we went too fast. Maybe we went too slow. Maybe we didn't do enough diligence on it. And all of that helps me build.
So I feel like I'm not answering your question. Like, how do
we know when a tool is working?
I know what I want the outcome to be for a tool, and I can state, if I can't state that clearly, then I probably shouldn't be trying out this tool. I know what the intentionality of each of my tools is, so I want you to feel a little more comfortable.
My intention with this tool is for you to feel more [00:33:00] comfortable talking about money. My intention with this tool is for you to trust yourself with money. My intention with this tool is blah, blah, blah. Anyways.
Naseema: No, I like that. I like that. I really love that. It is like a mind hack. Like it's not about evaluating you. It's about evaluating a tool. It takes a lot of pressure off of an individual, especially when they have all this angst around money. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to borrow that.
Hanna Morrell: Oh,
Naseema: I love
Hanna Morrell: it. Take it. Steal it. Use it and teach it to everybody else. And that comes down to even spending choices. We are not evaluating you. We're evaluating the choice that you're making.
What is
the purpose of this?
Naseema: Yes, I love that. I love that because a lot of that guilt and are a lot of the things I hold people back from seeking help is because they're going, they feel like they're going to be personally attacked for who they are, and not because, oh, it's not you. It's just maybe.
The choices [00:34:00] could have been better and this is why so I like that evaluating the choices. I know 1 of your biggest things is not believing in kind of this restriction mindset and restricting yourself from choices because you got a sign back there.
Hanna Morrell: I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if you can fully see that. My camera won't go. Yeah I don't have this cuz we're on
this one. I don't know if you want to say it. You can say it I won't I don't want to
Naseema: I can't read the whole thing. Is it like
restriction?
Hanna Morrell: is bullshit
Naseema: Is bullshit yeah. The restriction is bullshit. Walk us through that. What does that mean exactly?
Hanna Morrell: conventional financial wisdom is rooted in restriction we, the another way to think about this is the wants versus needs thing. And that is also bullshit. So that the wants versus needs that tells us that there's correct choices to be made. You just have to figure it out,
right? There's a perfect [00:35:00] choice to be made here.
And you have to be smart enough and take this seriously enough to figure it out. Oh, you didn't figure it out. What's wrong with you? Here we're back to evaluating you, not the choice at hand.
So restriction does really terrible things to our brains. It dysregulates us. It gets us like lost in scarcity mindset, loss aversion.
It makes us harder and harder and harder for us to think about the future, which is the thing that we need if we're going to get through hard times or get to a future that we want. Restriction. Is easy to deploy. You could do it right this second, right this second, because that's it. No more having fun.
But anytime our brains sense that we have choices taken away from us, even if we're the ones that are removing that choice, which is all restriction is, we're going to get rebellious and resentful. Sometimes both at the same time. And that rebellion and resentment is not a personality defect. It is a pattern of our behavior, not just our species, but every other species.[00:36:00]
If an animal feels like it has choices taken away from it, it's going to get rebellious and resentful. That's what restriction is doing to us. So that's, but the opposite of restriction, because I have people say, okay, what does that mean? You just do this with your money, Hannah? What's ah he's spending no, no, no, no, So the opposite of restriction.
is not willy nilly, mindless spending. The opposite of restriction is intentional spending. And that kind of calls back to what we were talking about a little bit ago. It's understand the purpose behind what we're doing. What is the purpose of this spending is a tool. It's a real small tool, but it's a tool that we teach people.
It's like, when you spend money, just ask yourself the question, what is the purpose of this spending?
Naseema: Yeah.
Hanna Morrell: And again, that is refocusing us, not on ourselves. And occasionally people will say I worked really hard and I deserve this. I'm like, okay, that's the purpose of it. But over time, as people practice this skill, we refocus onto.[00:37:00]
The thing itself, the choice, like if I'm buying groceries tonight, what is the purpose of the spending? What's dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow? If I'm getting gas in my car, what's the purpose of putting gas in my car? Spending money on gas to get to my family. Like that. So again, refocusing, not judging ourselves, not evaluating ourselves, but evaluating the choice at hand.
That was a long way to answer your question,
Naseema: no, I love that because that's what I'm about like intentional intentionality
around your spending. It's you can spend money in a lot of things, but what people don't often understand is that once they start really looking at their spending, they don't even understand why they. Purchase those things, and if they actually focused on the things that they bought, they can spend more on the things that really, really matter and less on the things that they just like, forget I didn't even know I had this thing.
I don't even know why I bought this thing. And then
now, With the advent of Amazon and all these [00:38:00] one click buy things, reducing the friction of you even having to think a lot of people are mindlessly. Purchasing things
and they don't even understand why it comes in the mail. And they're just like, when did I buy this for him?
What
Hanna Morrell: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Naseema: And yes, I'm a big proponent of intentional spending
because
Hanna Morrell: it.
Naseema: then I really get to spend on the things that I love. And I think that that restriction is what a lot of people think budgeting is. And I tell people, no, budgeting is a.
Spending plan, it gives you permission to spend on those things that you really, really care about and not have to spend on things that don't really matter in your life.
So I love
Hanna Morrell: And not just, yeah, not just permission. Permission is also rooted in that language around allowed and not allowed. It's not some, what we talk about is not having permission to spend. It's the expectation of spending.
Naseema: Yes. Mm-hmm
Hanna Morrell: So, it's I expect that I'm going to spend this much money on.
groceries each month. I [00:39:00] expect that I'm going to spend this much money on cat food. I expect that if something is truly important, I can't think like books. Okay, that's a little that's like I expect to spend this amount of books. Like I'm not going to restrict myself if and let's say something goes wrong in our budgets or.
Something goes wrong in our economy. We know where to not cut, but we understand how to change our expectations of spending. That's what a budget is in this curriculum is that these are adaptable changing expectations of our spending. And you're the person who sets those expectations out, right?
Naseema: love that.
Hanna Morrell: so
yeah,
Naseema: what I expect to fit in.
Hanna Morrell: Yeah.
Naseema: That is so great. Now you did talk about you having some apprentice coaches like under you. What was the decision? Or when did you get to that decision where you were just like, and I can't do this alone. I need to bring these people on board.
Hanna Morrell: I have a a past client and collaborator who [00:40:00] every single time I've ever talked to him, like they're a couple they're both dearest friends to me before I started this work. And every single time I talked to him, he said, how are you going to scale? Every single time. And I just remember cause he was, so he was constantly like.
How are you scaling? How are you? Because this is not a super scalable business. I'll be very honest with you.
It's not like I can make more widgets, right? I could just so it was already on my mind and I was starting to think about it and I was Connected to someone named Adriana, who's one of my coaches now I had, she had gone through a 40 hour masterclass.
So one of the things that I do for nonprofits is I may work with who they're working with, or I may teach the person who's working with the population that they're working 40 hour masterclass. What we did in that was we customized and structured the tools. For Adriana to work with the population that she was working with.
So she was basically learning my tools and then reteaching them, which
Naseema: [00:41:00] mhm, mhm.
Hanna Morrell: so I thought about her 1st about if I'm going to duplicate myself. I'm going to start with her. So I went to where Adriana lives. And we had a fantastic afternoon together. She basically runs that whole little town that she lives in.
So I got to see her like in her element and come alive in that way. It was wonderful. And I was talking to her. I was again, just I'm just spitballing here. I don't know what I'm doing. And I said I'm thinking about bringing on a coach, like training someone to be To do what I do not to replace me, but to add on to scale.
And she said, basically, why not have several of us? And I'm like, why not? It's a brilliant idea.
Naseema: Yeah,
Hanna Morrell: I don't know if you've had dogs before and I'm not relating my coaches to dogs, but like they train each other,
right?
People do this too. Like we learn from each other. And so that instantaneously got me thinking about other people that I'd run across.
And then I [00:42:00] found them because I was looking for them, right? I found Whitney. I found Harper. I actually know Harper longer than any, any of these three but like I found these three. And the question that I was asking myself when I was, so I told you there's a question I'm asking myself when I'm interviewing clients to potentially be clients.
I was asking something of myself for these three, because this first generation is probably the most important generation of coaches will ever hire. And I was asking myself, could any one of these three, or all three of these together, could any one of these. Run my business. And the answer is yes. I think that any one of these three coaches could run my business, do it beautifully and probably better than I am.
And what has happened as these three have been working together for just over a year now, it's only been a year. That sometimes blows my mind how. Intensely, they have picked up the curriculum and how they have adapted it and changed it on their own [00:43:00] and watching them work together. Their three very associative, very bright brains watching them take.
So let's say I have this piece of information and this piece of information in my brain. It takes maybe 6 months to for me to draw a parallel and find a tool or something in between. I've watched them do that same work in 5 minutes. It's it is the most impressive thing I have ever seen. It's like eating a giant piece of chocolate cake, watching them do this.
And we were together February of this year. Twice a year, we're together for a couple of days for training. And it is just every single time. It is just It just is, ah, that makes me awestruck just to watch their brains go. And they are, yeah, I don't know if I answered your question or just talking about my coaches.
Hi guys.
Naseema: that's great. And so now you're scalable. Like now you're
Hanna Morrell: Yeah.
Naseema: out and, and you can reach more people. So if [00:44:00] people do want to reach you, and I know not everybody is a fit, like you said how do people start working with you and start using your program?
Hanna Morrell: So the website is yourworthcoach. com. Y O U R W O R T H. And let's do forward slash intentional and that will send your listeners directly to a web page that I'll make just for them. So I'm going to have some resources there for them, couple free. I'll have the financial, the healing financial trauma workbook available for them there.
I'll put a little discount code on there too. If they want to start working with me or us, they're welcome to just. Reach out right there on that page. They can go to other parts of the website, but they can absolutely start there. Yeah, I'll make sure that there's some good resources there too. So
Naseema: Awesome. Awesome. Repeat the name of the website again.
Hanna Morrell: it is yourworthcoach. com slash intentional.
Naseema: Nice. And if people want to just learn more about you in [00:45:00] general, where should they find you?
Hanna Morrell: They could go to yourworthcoach. com just, and that'll send you to the homepage. You can find out all about how we do what we do. And , see some stories on there as well. So
Naseema: Love that. I love that. Hannah, it has been a pleasure. I love the work that you're doing. I love all the reframes that you taught me.
Hanna Morrell: Yay.
Naseema: And I can just tell in talking to you that you're a very soothing, like you're, you really make it. Working on your finances, which people think is often the most painful thing they can do in their lives and hence why they put it off make it so much more approachable and just love the work that you're doing.
So I appreciate you.
Hanna Morrell: Thank you. Thank you so much for your time.
Naseema: Of course, of course.
Hey there I’m Naseema
My dream is for everyone to know that financial independence is attainable with a little intentionality. Learn how I can help you finally break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.
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