It was March of 2021.

We’d just moved to Miami temporarily (or so we thought) for my husband’s health.

We were suddenly paying for 2 households and private school unexpectedly.

And my partner in parenting, business, and life was pretty much down for the count.

(If you’re new here, the Cliff’s Notes are that my husband and business partner, Mike, has had a 5 year journey with Topical Steroid Withdrawal, or TSW, that comes with nearly debilitating eczema at times. Imagine the skin on your entire body being so raw, peeling off over and over again, and feeling like it’s on fire 24/7. That’s how he’s felt at its worst.)

Every couple of days (and sometimes more) I found myself hiding in my closet screaming into a pillow. The financial and caregiving pressure was leaving me beyond bloated emotionally.

I wish I could say I was able to tap into deep wells of compassion and stand by Mike’s side as he navigated his second round through the worst of this illness that had already brought him to his knees in pain in 2018, but that’s not what happened.

Instead, I was resentful AF.

I felt financially burdened and tapped out as a parent.

Plus, as the author of a book called Do Less, I felt embarrassed to admit that I was burned out.

(Teaching about avoiding or healing a certain ailment, doesn’t make one immune to that very ailment, I realized, much to my chagrin.)

In short, I was tired and pissed.

My shocking response to our therapist’s prompt to imagine Mike bringing home $10 million dollars was what shook me out of it.

“Close your eyes and imagine Mike’s just told you that he’s made $10 million dollars and that you don’t have to do anything to make money anymore,” David said to me from the other side of the world during our therapy session on Zoom.

“Oh my God,” I replied, “I can’t believe this.”

My visceral response to this imagined news was galaxies away from what I would’ve consciously assumed it would be.

“I’d feel dead inside,” I said.

At that moment, I realized that I was using stress and pressure as my fuel for life.
When I imagined the source of that stress and pressure (money) being removed, I felt flat-lined.

I knew if I kept living on pressure and adrenaline, I’d eventually get sick and my girls couldn’t have two sick parents.

So, I did something radical.

I decided to do a relaxation experiment.

Despite all the evidence indicating that this was not a good time to relax with double our usual expenses and half of our dynamic duo’s energy needing to be devoted primarily to getting well, I decided to do it anyway.

I gave myself a stop gap of 90 days or a certain amount of money I felt comfortable going in the hole.

At the point that whichever one of those things came first, I’d reassess and see if I needed to ramp back up and reapply pressure.

The result of my experiment?

We hit all of our financial goals while I relaxed.

I decided to stop waiting for my financial circumstances to change before I gave myself permission to exhale.

I exhaled and the money followed.

It’s not like I did nothing. (My book is called Do Less, not Do Nothing.)

But I slowed down enough to change fuel sources.

Instead of fueling my revenue generating activities from stress and pressure, I learned how to source them from relaxation and pleasure.

When Mike broke his knee 2 months later and then got hit by a car 18 months after that, I had my moments of rage and collapse, of course.

But I was able to find my way back to relaxation much more quickly and to stay there much longer.

Financial relaxation has become my default instead of a distant longing that I get to have someday when everything in my life is finally perfect.

We have it all backwards when it comes to money.

We think that having a certain amount of it will finally make us feel a certain way.

But actually, when we learn how to feel the way we think money will make us feel now, regardless of our financial circumstances, we get to feel that way immediately; we take off the financial pressure, and we get way better at magnetizing the abundance we’ve always wanted.
(Note: What I’m describing applies to your financial situation once basic needs like food, shelter, and physical safety are taken care of.)

What’s one way you could find relaxation today without a single thing in your external reality needing to change?

Find the exhale first. It’s the secret to everything.

Love,
Kate