Kate Northrup: Being the first person in your family to start a business is not going to feel familiar. So even though you’re ambitious and even though you want it and even though you know you can have it, there’s also a very real part of you that is going to contract. So what do we do about it? Welcome to the inheritance series. This is a four part series that’s inspired by a new book that I’m working on that’ll be out in 2027.

And part one of the book is about our inheritance, but not in the way you think. It is the inheritance that is our relationship with money that lives in our nervous system, in our psyche, and in our deeply ingrained patterns, some of which began before we were even conceived. And so this series is an invitation to look more deeply than you’ve ever looked before at what’s running underneath your relationship with numbers. Deep below the spreadsheets, deep below the math, deep below the income statements, and really ask, what am I bringing to the table that I consciously signed up for? And what did I inherit that I can use?

And what did I inherit that I can transform? Episode one is about the father wound and money. Episode two is about the mother wound and money. Episode three is about money and your emotions. And episode four is all about you creating what your ancestors never had the chance to have and how they can have it through you.

So check out the series, enjoy, and welcome to Plenty. 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. Welcome to the inheritance series. This is part four of a multi part series where we’ve been talking about the things we inherit when it comes to our money that are not actually financial assets. So I’m not talking about, you know, money being passed down or property being passed down. I’m talking about emotional patterns being passed down, anxiety, pressure, and financial joy because all of these things can be part of our inheritance, and we all have an inheritance.

And today, we’re talking about the ancestors who never got to have this. This is for the people who have gone beyond where the people who came before went. So whether you were the first person in your family to go to college, the first person to become a millionaire, the first to own your own home, the first to start your own business. This is a conversation about the feeling that is not always joy when we go beyond where our lineage has previously been. And I wanna talk about it because we have this assumption that expansion always feels good.

Right? Who wouldn’t wanna be the first in their family to become a millionaire? Who wouldn’t wanna become the first homeowner or the first entrepreneur or the first person to go to college. And yet, there are very real energetic and epigenetic factors that create barriers that are invisible yet incredibly real. So let’s get into that part.

When you go out beyond where, you know, your mom, your dad, your grandparents, your great grandparents, all the people before you, and the the people who have passed over and also the people who are living. When you go out beyond where they went, it’s uncharted territory from physiological somatic perspective. I remember when I called my dad on his birthday, the year he turned older than the year his father had passed away. And I remember the conversation and how he felt different on this birthday than he’d ever felt before because he had officially outlived his father’s lifespan. And now there was no obvious…

Not that he was following in his father’s footsteps explicitly by any means, but I I don’t know about you, but I think about my parents at my age. And I think about different milestones in their lives, and I think about what they were doing. And if we outlive the age at which one of our parents passed, there can be… Or at least he reported this feeling of kind of open uncharted territory. And open uncharted territory is such a blessing because the feeling of freedom and, wow, I can do whatever I want.

I no longer need to follow in any kind of pathway even if you weren’t explicitly doing that on purpose. Anyway, it it… It’s a real blessing. And also, it can make us feel untethered. It can make us feel as though we are betraying the people who came before us, and there can be a real sense of survivor’s guilt.

So let’s talk first about the epigenetic aspects of our financial inheritance. So there are multiple types of trauma that our bodies can hold on to, and I just wanna describe trauma. Trauma is essentially when something happens to us that is emotionally activating or physically painful, and in that time period, we don’t have the resources, the support, the capacity, the bandwidth, the skills to fully process that experience, and so it stays stuck in our body, in our tissues, literally in our cells, and our unconscious, our nervous system, attempts to, quote, unquote, solve or complete that trauma cycle over and over and over again. Now one of the wild things about trauma is it can be inherited, and that is through the study of epigenetics explains this. So there was a landmark study, which you may have heard of, and they had mice in a laboratory.

And these mice got shocked at the time that they smelled the smell of cherry blossoms. So they would pipe in the smell of cherry blossoms, and they would shock the paws of these mice. And so, you know, very Pavlovian. Right? They got the association between the feeling of physical pain and the scent of cherry blossoms.

Now mice reproduce pretty quickly, and so they were able to take the two generations away. So the grandchildren of these original mice, and what they found is when they piped in the smell of cherry blossoms, those grandbaby mice had a physiological response of fear even though the grandbabies were not having the shocked paws. So the grandbabies had never actually personally experienced the feeling of being shocked. They had no personal pain associated with the scent of cherry blossoms. And yet, the scent of cherry blossoms created a physiological response of fear in these mice, a couple of generations away from the original mice who had the pain with the scent.

Isn’t that wild? So epigenetically, we actually carry DNA patterns passed down from our grandparents, from our great grandparents, and possibly even from longer before. And when they went through particular financial struggles, we may be carrying imprints of those things. So it may be that your grandparents went through the Great Depression. I know mine did.

And there may be other major world events that they may have experienced poverty, or famine, or the holocaust or all of these, you know, the world wars, these incredibly traumatic events that would have very real impact on the sense of scarcity in the body. And regardless of your lived circumstances, you may be actually carrying those imprints. And that’s why we say that when you heal, you heal seven generations back and seven generations forward. So when we’re talking about the things that we are experiencing that our ancestors never got to have, it’s important to remember that we are… On behalf of our entire lineage, we are changing the pattern.

We are changing the pattern. We are just one element in the whole lineage. And when somebody does the work to change the pattern, when somebody invests in their healing, it actually upgrades and enhances and heals the entire lineage seven generations back, seven generations forward. Now if you have ancestors who had very real experiences of scarcity or who were oppressed or who had associations with finances and trauma, like money and trauma. Maybe they were persecuted for having money.

Maybe they had large amounts of money stolen from them. Maybe becoming powerful made them stand out. They were persecuted for it or harmed for it. All of these things, every single one of us probably has in our lineage if we were to go far enough back. Most of us will never know the actual stories, but our bodies remember them.

And so knowing that, it’s really important that we understand that when we go out beyond where the people who came before us had gone, there will be a sense of tension. There will be a sense of fear. There will be part of you that feels like, this is wildly unfamiliar. I should not go here. I remember really well walking down the aisle at my wedding.

I had my mom on one side. I had my dad on my other side. My parents are no longer married, and they were not married at the time of my wedding, but I asked them both to walk me down the aisle, and they they agreed. And I remember this real feeling where it was almost as though the air became viscous, thicker. And as we walked and as they walked me down the aisle and then I hugged both of them and walked up to the altar to get married, I could feel myself almost passing through this invisible but felt portal where I knew I was creating the kind of relationship that no one in my immediate lineage had been able to experience yet.

I knew I was now bushwhacking. I was trailblazing. I was doing something that had not been done before, and I didn’t have a model to follow. And there have been times around that particular example, but also financial examples where I have felt a real sense of guilt and of is it okay to go for these things when other people who have come before me did not get to have them? And I’m wondering, you know, if you’re listening to this, I feel like it’s pretty likely that you have felt the same thing.

So I wanna explain what’s happening in our nervous system. Our nervous system wants to keep things the same. We are designed as animals for survival, and the parts of our brain, the the lizard parts of our brain, the older parts of our brain that are wired for survival take over, especially in times of increased stress and pressure. And those parts are always searching and sifting for what is familiar. What have we experienced before?

What do we know are going to be the results here? And then anything that’s outside the familiar, any possibilities, any opportunities for financial expansion, new jobs, going to college, making more money, all of those things will register as a threat to a very real part of us that is trying to keep us alive by continuing to make sure that we only experience that which is familiar. And that which is familiar includes the things that our ancestors experienced. And so if the normal sense around money was that money was a struggle, money was scarce, or any other kind of story, because that doesn’t have to be your your story. Maybe there was a story of, like, great gain and then great loss.

I don’t know, you know, what your story is, but you do, or perhaps you can sense it even if you don’t know the stories of your ancestors. What happens is that our nervous system is wired to make sure that we continue to maintain the familiar. And if the familiar is different than what you desire, right, being the first person in your family to go to college is not familiar. That’s not gonna be familiar. Being the first person in your family to start a business is not going to feel familiar.

So even though you’re ambitious, and even though you want it, and even though you know you can have it, there’s also a very real part of you that is going to contract. It’s also really important to understand that our nervous system felt sense of familiarity and our nervous system, what I call our money nervous system thermostat setting, is set based on not how much money there was growing up, but the felt sense of what people made money mean. So I know people who grew up with quite a bit of financial abundance, like a lot of money, who have a felt sense of scarcity because the relationship with the money was out of scarcity even though technically there was a lot. And then I know people who grew up with a lot less who actually have a felt sense of plenty and abundance, and there’s more where that came from because the relationship with the money, matter how big or small the resources were, was one of abundance. Isn’t that interesting?

So our nervous system does not do math. Our nervous system doesn’t do numbers. Our nervous system does energy and how something feels. It literally reads frequency and vibration and energy. And so if there’s a constricted, contracted felt sense around money, that will be your money nervous system set point.

And if there’s an expansive relaxation open flow felt sense energy around money, and there was in your lineage, then that will be your money nervous system thermostat. And you might be like me where there were actually competing settings in your household. So I had one parent who was more in scarcity, and I had one parent who was more in abundance, for, you know, for better or worse. My mom was more in a state of diffusion. My dad was more in a state of constriction.

And if you want to learn what state your money ecosystem is in, you can go ahead and take our hidden money ecosystem quiz, and you can go to katenorthrup.com/field to download a guide that has that. Okay. The tool that we then use to help us to go out beyond and receive what our ancestors never got to have in their lifetime, but in many ways, they are now receiving it through us because our bodies carry their DNA. Right? We are the living legacy on the planet of them.

We are the part of them that they left behind when they crossed over. And so when we expand, literally, their DNA is expanding because it lives in our bodies, which is so cool. And so when you’re out there bushwhacking, trailblazing, following no model, and having no example from the people who share your your DNA, you can use a simple process where at the edge of that expansion where it feels like I’m showing up for my first day of college, and I’m the first one in my family to do this. Or I’ve sat down and looked at my numbers. My business just crossed a million dollars for the first time, and that is a win, but it can actually land heavy because of everything I’ve been going over so far in this conversation.

And so what do we do? In that moment when the wind lands, but it feels heavy, we want to use a nervous system regulating tool, and there are so many of them. Co regulation with a safe person is wonderful. You know, that’s why mentorship is so amazing and just having other friends who are also out here bushwhacking because otherwise it can feel really lonely. That’s why we create community within relaxed money.

That’s why there are so many amazing communities around going big so that we can have relationships with other people who are out here on the edge when perhaps our lineage is not the place where we’re going to find that co regulation around this particular experience. So co regulation is one, getting your bare feet on the grass, going for a walk, there are certain breath work practices, and then I studied with neurosomatic intelligence with all of these somatic plus applied neurology drills that I’ve learned that I teach within Relaxed Money. So all of these are options. So you want to signal safety to your body when you’re at any edge, including an edge that is something that you really, really want, that you know you’re stepping out beyond where the people who came before you are stepping. And then you can take the step because you have signaled to your body it is safe to be here.

And then that expanded step becomes increasingly part of what your body registers as familiar, and then it feels safe, and then it doesn’t feel so scary anymore. So you wanna signal safety and then expand. So then do the thing. Send off the college application. Send off the proposal for more money than you’ve ever made before, whatever it is, and then you wanna signal safety again.

So it’s a little safety sandwich. Nervous system healing tool, then expand. Do the thing. Take the step. Take the leap, and then signal safety again.

And when you do that with the small doable pieces over time, this is called titration, you gradually expand your capacity to be all of who you were meant to be. Does that mean there won’t ever be someone in your family who does something, makes a sideways comment, you know, is sort of with tall poppy syndrome trying to tear you down crabs in a bucket sort of thing. No. It doesn’t mean that. It doesn’t.

However, what it does mean is you will be able to regulate yourself through it. It won’t take you out. Because there’s a difference between coming home for Thanksgiving dinner and having your brother say something snide about how much money you make and who do you think you are, and you then deciding to stop growing your business, and you feeling bad when he says that, not loving it, but also knowing how to walk yourself through that so it doesn’t shrink you. We cannot ever make it so that the world is constantly cheering us on and so that there aren’t uncomfortable moments and so that people aren’t saying things that make us feel bad and people aren’t trying to keep us small. There is a part of so many of us who want the people we love to stay where we are because there’s an illusion that if they go beyond where we’ve gone, we will lose them.

Right? I’m sure there may be moments as my girls get older that they may begin to cross thresholds that I never crossed, that I wanted to cross but I didn’t, or you know, that may have just even been beyond what I could have even imagined. There may be a part of me that feels scared like I’m going to lose them, but I will remember this conversation today, and I will remember that when someone who comes after us in our lineage goes out beyond where we were able to go, they’re doing it on our behalf as well. We get to have that too. And so no matter where you are out there trailblazing, bushwhacking, breaking new trail for your lineage, know that you’re doing it for you and you get to have that.

And also you’re doing it for them because through you, they get to have it too. So remember, it is perfectly normal and actually physiologically expected that you will feel crunchy, contracted, scared, anxious, unsure at the edge of expansion when you are doing something that no one in your family has ever done before. And that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, it means that you’re expanding what’s possible for your entire lineage. So signal safety, expand, and then signal safety again over and over and over again until that expanded state becomes your new normal, and you are doing it on behalf of everyone who came before you and everyone who will come after you.

So congratulations for going somewhere that no one has gone before. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time. If you are looking for your partner or you are looking to deepen with the partner that you already have and really truly be in your receptive queen energy in your relationship, I have a free workshop for you with one of my dearest friends, Christine Hassler. It’s called Love Magnet. And over three days for free, you are going to learn how to break through the blocks of lasting love, how to step into your queen energy, and how to let go and call in your beloved or go deeper with the one you already have.

So if you’ve been doing all the heavy lifting in your relationships, if you crave truly being led, if you want to increase polarity and really attract the one for you or really create the relationship you really, really want with the one you already have, then love magnet is for you. And you can go to katenorthrup.com/magnet to get into it, and the link is in the show notes. Katenorthrup.com/magnet. Thank you for listening to this episode in the inheritance series. This is a four part series, and if you want to access all parts of the series, you can go to katenorthrup.com/inheritance.

So katenorthrup.com/inheritance. It will walk you through all four parts so you can make sure that you don’t miss any of them. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time.