Kate Northrup: Am I optimizing for what really matters, or am I optimizing for something that I’ve been conditioned to think matters? Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high capacity humans. I’m Kate Northrup, best selling author and creator of Relaxed Money, and this is where neuroscience meets ancient wisdom meets real wealth strategy. This is the sacred conversation at the intersection of money, the body, and the life you’re truly here to live. If you’re ready to reimagine what’s possible for yourself and for the world, you’re in the right place.

Let’s go. Hello. We are back from a summer of travels. The girls go back to school a week from today or a week from yesterday, actually. We are in our final week of summer break here in Tennessee.

I counted it up, and the girls will have had by next week 11.5 of summer, which is more summer than they used to get, which I love, love, love. These were just in this sweet age of eight and 10, almost 11, where our kids still wanna be with us, and they also are really fun to be with, and we can all do things we love together. And it’s been a great summer. And as we transition in our family from summer into back to school, even though it is not even close to near fall weather here in Tennessee. We really won’t get fall weather until probably October.

I wanted to mark the moment for myself and do a transitional life update episode and share with you some of the things I’ve been thinking about over the summer. Because for me, summertime is so nostalgic. There’s something about kids being out of school and more formlessness to our days. And even though Mike and I have still been working, we take our foot off the gas for sure while the kids are out of school because we know that these years with them in this window are so precious and that the window will inevitably close. So there’s this nostalgia about summer that has me always slowing down to some degree even though we travel and it’s crazy and we’re sometimes sleeping in four different, you know, four different places in one week.

But it is a time that I am present to what really matters. And it’s a time when I ask myself, am I optimizing for what really matters, or am I optimizing for something that I’ve been conditioned to think matters that actually, at the end of the day, doesn’t truly matter for me? So I’m gonna share a couple of moments from this summer, a couple of things I’ve been thinking about, and it’s with the intention that you too have a moment of pause. You may be not even close to transitioning into fall energy, but maybe you’ll listen to this and it will plant some seeds for intentionality as we move into the next season. One of the things that I find is if we listen to the cycles and we follow the cycles happening inside our bodies, in the world around us, in nature, in even in, you know, financial markets and with the moon, that we can find a rhythm that brings us closer to alignment, closer to who we actually are as opposed to who we might be performing as or who we might be feeling pressured to be.

So first of all, the girls have gotten out of school. They got they get out of school in Tennessee before Memorial Day, which blows my mind. And so the Thursday before Memorial Day was the last day of school. So we’ve been kind of in summer vacay mode ever since then. And one of the things we did this year that was different than previous years is in so the girls go spend a week with my mother-in-law every year with Mike’s mom.

She is just an absolute dream of a human. I love her so much, and the girls love going to spend a week with her at Camp Mimi. And in the past, Mike and I have taken that week to travel. Usually, we go to some sort of expensive resort or have some kind of international experience. And this summer, because we had just bought a new house and moved into this house, and we have moved 11 times in fifteen years, and it’s been a while since we have had a home to call our own that we know we’re not gonna be leaving anytime soon, we decided to do a staycation that week.

It’s also the week of our anniversary, and this summer we had, I think, our twelfth anniversary. Yeah. Our twelfth anniversary. So we did a staycation, and we had no set plans. We weren’t working.

The only thing I was doing is writing my book. So my commitment is to touch the book every day. I went from the commitment of writing a thousand words a day to the commitment of touching the book every day. That has been so much easier to follow through on. So if you’re if you have something that’s a daily commitment, you might consider what is a bar that’s low enough that you’ll actually do it.

And because what I was finding is with the thousand words a day, especially when I’m on vacation with the kids or we have family visiting or it’s a you know, whatever. Actually, travel days, I tend to write a lot. But I wasn’t doing it because the bar was too high. But with the bar lower, I’m finding that the resistance has melted a little bit. I will be honest.

I still resist doing it every single time, but that has been really, really helpful. So we did a staycation. We just stayed at our house, and it was the best. And I was blown away by, a, how much I love staying put. One of the things that has been echoing in my mind over the last couple of years is the phrase, bloom where you’re planted.

Looking for ways to love the life I have even more as opposed to add other things or go other places. And this idea that there’s something else outside of my home or there’s something else in another state or in another city or there’s some other offer for the business or just that there’s something else that would be better than here, that is 99.9% of the time false because we can only be where we are, obviously. And so I’ve had this bloom where you’re planted mantra echoing, and it’s been so helpful as a guiding light to just look at how can I make this life right in front of me, this moment, as yummy as possible, as full of plenty as possible? And so the staycation was absolutely amazing. A, obviously, I mean, I think this is obvious, we saved a bunch of money, which was not the primary intention, but in a season where pretty much every single inch of our home is gonna need a renovation at some point, it was it’s and also, you know, we’re gonna need furniture and all this stuff.

It feel it felt nice to prioritize staying where we are and be able to utilize that money in a way that feels more meaningful right now than getting away. I’m actually feeling a real call to staying planted, staying where I am. So that was great. And just waking up every day and not having any agenda, not having, to make breakfast for the kids, We literally only ran the dishwasher one time the entire week. Obviously, we were eating out some, but it there was just, like, such minimal cleanup, minimal kitchen time, you know, all of that stuff.

We barely did laundry. So much of the daily household tasks were reduced because our kids weren’t here, and this is not to say that the secret of happiness is having your kids go to their mother in law’s to your mother in law’s house, although it’s not to say that it’s not. But what was so beautiful about it is just realizing how much Mike and I genuinely like each other and how much fun we had just being together and figuring out the day. One day, we test drove cars spontaneously at 08:15 in the morning, and we went to the we watched a movie in our we actually have, like, a home cinema in our basement, which is so cool. And we just did so many chill things.

One day, I literally wrote all day long, 09:30AM until 06:30PM, and I barely got up, and it was so joyful. So if you have not taken a staycation lately, I highly, highly recommend it. Not only does it save a bunch of money, it also helps you to bloom where you are planted. So that was number one. We also were home where I well, we’re home here in Tennessee, but we went.

I I interchangeably call our home in Tennessee home, but also Maine home. So we went to Maine, which we have done almost every summer, and we stayed in my hometown. We did a week in our Airbnb, and it was so lovely. I love being there. It’s very cozy.

It’s very beautiful. It’s a quiet neighborhood. It’s a great location. We can get into town easily. The kids have friends in the you know, right down the street.

It’s all great. And, also, every time I go to my hometown, I feel this sense of sliding doors where I can feel the life that I could have had, and I feel the contrast between the life I chose instead of the life I had planned. And we all have our versions of those. Right? Like, the marriage that we almost went through with that we ended up deciding wasn’t aligned.

The move we made, the, you know, the the business decision, the job decision, whatever crossroads we’ve come to in our lives where one life would have unfolded in a particular way, but we made a big enough decision that we now have a completely different life perhaps than the one we had originally imagined. And maybe it turned out even better than you could have imagined, and maybe there’s some loss and grief involved. For me, both of those things are true. And it was a great reminder. One of the things I wrote about it in an Instagram post is that our nervous systems don’t know what year it is.

And when I find myself, especially in these nostalgic days of summer, we were home for something called the clam festival, which has been going on in my town, I think, since the fifties or sixties. And it’s a time when, you know, people people come home from all over wherever they’re living, and there’s, like, a great there’s this parade, and there’s, you know, an art show, and people literally race their babies on the library lawn in something called the diaper derby. It’s just, you know, pure wholesome fun. And whenever I have these nostalgic slower moments, I it it brings me to a truth, which is that it is very possible to feel more than one thing at the same time. I know people say you can’t feel more than one thing at the same time, but I my experience is that they’re wrong.

So I felt joy soaked grief and grief soaked joy almost all week with my kids playing with our old neighbors in the next door neighborhood where we used to live and just, like, the sweetness and the safety of that. You know, just this one night all standing in the street in the twilight as the kids, took turns climbing the streetlight post. Ruby is an excellent climber. She got much higher than I was comfortable with. Like, from those moments to sitting in my mom’s backyard as she played the harp, to having new friends come into town and meet some of my old friends and kind of that intermix of the life I have now and the life I thought I would have.

And there’s not really any point to this other than I was really grateful to be present for it. I get almost a satisfaction in even those moments where my heart is heavy and I feel sad about the things that are no longer, like that neighborhood, like being so close to my family, like this small town life where, you know, it’s very much I cannot go anywhere without running into somebody from my childhood. And there’s a real safety in that. There’s a real warmth in that. There’s a real coziness in that.

And then there’s also the double edged sword or the other side of the coin, which is that it feels a little stifling. Right? And so there are these places, and there are these things, and there are these situations that fit us maybe at a time and don’t fit anymore. And for me, going to visit helps me to clarify everything that was important from that life that I thought I was going to have that I can create in a different way in the life that I’m building instead. So for example, when I stand on in the middle of the street with our friends from our old neighborhood and watch the sun go down as the kids play and run from yard to yard, I can really ask what is the pulse of that moment?

What is the heartbeat of this? What makes it feel so yummy? And the answer is community. The answer is my kids are pouring into relationships that they get to come back to year after year and kids that they can grow up with. Maybe not all year round, but in those sweet summer evening moments.

And so that helps me then plan next year. That helps us to allocate our money where we want it to go because for us, just like you listening to this, there are an infinite number of things that we can do with our time. There are really an infinite number of things that we can do with our money. But what our time and our money both want to be used for are the things that really matter. The things that make us feel whole and that make our hearts feel full.

And so summer for me is this opportunity to cut out some of the work and structure of school and activities and, you know, the work schedule and all of that and spend more time on our family, spend more time on friends, spend more time on the personal part of our life, although in our life, there’s not much of a boundary between our personal and professional life, but to the extent that there is, and ask, okay. What made us feel most alive? What really opened our hearts? When did we feel most ourselves? And, of course, we can ask those questions about the entire year, but there is something about summer for me that brings those things into high definition.

And so what I’m gonna do with Mike, I will enroll him in this, is to sit down with maybe it’s over a date night. Maybe it’s over lunch one day when the kids go back to school. But to sit down and really ask ourselves, what were the best moments of this summer? What were the moments that felt like too much? Because I will be honest, every summer, we we hit a point where we’re like, this is too much.

We did too many things. We need to do less next summer. And this is me as the author of do less saying, I very much wrote the book that I need over and over and over again because oftentimes my eyes are bigger than my schedule. Can you relate to that? So it’s a wonderful time to sit back and just ask what really mattered, and how can we optimize for that next year financially and schedule wise?

One of the things, we were in Ellicottville, which is a small town in Western New York where my mom is from and where a lot of my cousins live and my aunts and uncles. And we go back there almost every year. And, you know, there’s something really special about cousin time. So my kids playing with my cousin’s kids. And I was with my aunt who put on this incredible horse camp for my girls.

She’s an incredible horsewoman of multi, multi decades. And she we were telling her about our summer, and she was like she’s also an absolutely phenomenal entrepreneur. Her, my uncle and her company is is set to do 15,000,000 this year. So they just absolutely provide an incredible livelihood for so many people in that town and create a great product. So she goes, I don’t there’s there’s not much work in that schedule.

How are how are you when are you guys gonna work? When I was telling her about all our travel plans, and I said, you know, I am so aware that this time with our girls is so precious. So soon, they’re gonna wanna be with their friends instead of us. And, of course, sometimes they already do. But so soon, they’re gonna be off and running with so many things in their own lives that won’t have anything to do with me and Mike anymore.

And I just figure if it means choosing between going hard in my business life and going all in on family and that I’d I’d rather miss out on some work opportunities and be able to really soak in the time with our kids. So that’s one thing I know that as we look at the year as a whole, I never regret the time that we take off from work and make ourselves available to soak in those family experiences, whether it’s watching the show at the end of horse camp, whether it’s going to coffee with my cousin in the morning. And, you know, of course, we are very blessed that our work can kind of fit in the nooks and crannies because we run a virtual company, and it is somewhat seasonal. So there are these ways that we can really, fit things in in the in betweens, and I’m grateful for that. So for you, I wonder what has made this summer special or whatever season you’re in no matter when you’re listening to this.

What are the moments in the last ninety days that have made the biggest impact that you really remember? What do those moments have in common, and how can you prioritize more of that in your schedule, and how can you make your spending a reflection of more of that in your life? Because underneath the moments that mean the most to us are our values, are what really truly matters to us. And when we schedule that in intentionally and when we spend our money in that way intentionally, our life becomes infinitely more abundant without needing to spend infinitely more money on it. The other thing I’ve been thinking about, and I think this all is just related to the theme of what really matters, is that I have been thinking a lot and reading a lot various substacks and just paying attention to what’s going on in my industry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about attention versus connection, and the attention economy of social media and the whole metaverse and the difference between attention and trust. And I wanna give a shout out to my friend Ryan Leveque who wrote a great book called Return to Real that is out September 29. He’s also a guest on a future episode of Plenty, so stay tuned for that and make sure you’re subscribed. But he talks about the difference between getting attention and building visibility and building trust. And I heard someone say something about wanting to build their platform to a certain number of followers as a really big goal, and I just was like, why?

Why? What what is the desire there? Like, what is the dream there? Because for me, that’s a different dream. I feel really filled up and nourished by going deep over a long period of time rather than creating a lot of visibility.

And I texted my friend Julie Solomon not long ago, and I said, you know, all I want is to make great money, be able to spend as much time with my friends and family as I want or spend, you know, spend quality time with my friends and family and to make a difference in the world. And the truth is I already have that. I do that, and I’m so, so grateful for it. I don’t take it for granted one single day. But we can get so distracted by thinking either, a, that some sort of huge growth in visibility and audience size if you’re a business owner or even if you work inside a company that, you know, more eyeballs is the solution and that on the other side of getting more eyeballs is everything you want, or we can make the mistake of thinking that on the other side of making more money is going to be getting what you want.

But I wonder for each one of us, is what we want available now if we actually were to slow down enough and do the numbers and look at, okay. Do I actually need more visibility, or could I, if I run a business, make the amount of money that creates a sustainable life and pays my people well based on the audience size I already have? Do I need more visibility, or could I build more depth with what I already have? Which I guess is not different than the mantra that I shared at the beginning, which is bloom where you’re planted versus or is there a way to live the life that I want to live in a deeper way now? So if I’m thinking like, oh, I will be happier when I have a renovated kitchen, or I will be happier when I’m hitting $10,000 a week in my business, or, you know, a $100,000 a month or whatever, or I will be happy when I get my bonus at the end of the year.

And while financial resources are absolutely necessary to live a good life in the world that we live in, the truth is that after a certain point, more money does not increase our overall sense of well-being, but making choices that are in alignment with what truly matters actually really does. And so another invitation for you would be to look at what is it that you really want, and then ask yourself, how could I rearrange my life, whether it’s my offers or my spending and investing, to have it now or have something much closer to it now? And I’ll tell you a little story about this that is it’s kind of a sad story, but it was a good awakening story. So back in 2021 when Mike was really sick and we I felt like I was at a breaking point of being the primary parent and at that time, the primary driver in our business. I we were paying for two lives all of a sudden overnight, and Mike was so sick.

He was sort of dropped out of parenting and to some degree, certainly dropped out of the business, and his full time job needed to be getting better. And, we had a lot of expenses for health cost as well. So there was a real financial need, and there was, like, a a tightness that I felt all the time and this pressure that I felt all the time. And I just kept saying to Mike, like, I’m so tired. This is so much pressure on me, and I had so much resentment against him.

And he kept saying to me, what do you really want? And I said, I just I just wanna take time off. I just wanna only be able to write and go to dance class. And he was like, great. So do it.

You could do that now. And because I was so caught up in the pressure and my nervous system was so dysregulated, I couldn’t actually see the possibility of what he was saying. But the truth is he was right. I could have because we had just sold our house in Maine, I could have absolutely taken some time off and given myself a real genuine break. Now what I did instead is I took a 90 coast season, and I’m so grateful for that.

And it actually completely changed me. But he kept saying, you could just stop, and I didn’t see that as a doorway. And in retrospect, when I look at the math, it actually was a doorway I could have walked through. So I’m not saying that everyone has the possibility of just stopping for three months, but could you do something like I did where for ninety days, I only delivered on what we had already promised and didn’t create anything new? And instead, I focused on feeling my feelings, which was uncomfortable, but in the end, completely changed my life, and it’s, you know, it’s really what created the basis for Relaxed Money.

So I’m slightly off track here, but my invitation as I land this plane is to ask yourself what were the absolute sweetest, fullest, yummiest moments in your last ninety days, whether it’s been your summer break or not, and how could you allocate your time and your money towards more of that over the next ninety days over the next year? And then the second question would be, what is it that you wanna be experiencing in your life? What do you really want? And is there a way that you could reallocate either things in your business or things in your financial life or both if you do have a business? So or just or your schedule so that you could have more of what you actually want right now.

I will say that for all of this, a precursor of a certain amount of capacity in your nervous system really helps. And so if you don’t know what I’m talking about and if you don’t know how to reset your nervous system so that you have the capacity to see the bigger picture in your life, to actually see creative solutions, to be able to think more creatively, to be able to see your numbers straight, If you’re feeling like you’re just running, running, running, running, running, and it doesn’t feel like there is a door, or if you just feel like, I’d love to know what this lady is talking about. Yes. I’d love to increase my capacity for possibility thinking and possibility behavior by resetting my nervous system, then head over to katenorthrup.com/reset where you can get the money reset, and it will help you to understand why your money nervous system thermostat is set at a particular number. And it will help you to know the beginning steps of how to reset it so that you can actually ask these bigger questions and see the possibilities that are right in front of you, but that you cannot see when you your nervous system is in a state of dysregulation, in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.

Okay. Thank you for joining me for this episode about seasonal transition and what really matters and a little life update on the side, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. What if managing money felt effortless? You’ve worked so hard to earn money, so why does it feel stressful? Well, I wanna introduce you to something brand new that I’ve created called the money reset because abundance starts in your body, not in your bank account.

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