How you feel about money is just as important as how you handle it.

I HAVE BEEN blessed to watch women grow in the most extraordinary ways since we began our LimeLife journey over five years ago. By many markers, LimeLife has been successful in creating a wave of empowerment. We now have over 30,000 Beauty Guides from all walks of life in nine markets, using five different currencies, and our brand has paid out over $100 million in commission to women and men across the world. Soon, that number will compound into $500 million and then $1 billion. Countless lives will be elevated.

During that journey, we have discovered the approach and behavior patterns that help women create a more joyful life. We have seen how a consistent abundant mindset, the sharing of talents and ideas, an immovable faith in ourselves, our mission and this business model can impact a person’s life. We can change the world by changing our individual worlds to support a transformation of ourselves into more confident, connected, and self-loving individuals as we grow as entrepreneurs and as inspiring members of our family and community.

For every woman who has been moved by the personal empowerment that can come from our LimeLife community, there remains those who are stalled or completely stuck. It’s not always the case that the people who find themselves in this rut aren’t trying. Many show up to the arena responsibly and yet remain unchanged. As I have witnessed this, I have suspected that there was another powerful force at work, strong enough to greatly hinder many of us during our personal empowerment journey—a power that was not as visible as the ones we can tangibly coach away. This elusive force that holds so many of us back is wrapped up in our emotions about money.

HOW DO YOU FEEL?

After this epiphany, I embarked on a mission of studying and researching how our emotions affect our approach to our finances. Over the last year, I have been conducting interviews and collecting data from over 3,000 women. I now firmly believe that the way we feel about money is one of the most significant gauges in whether or not we will be successful in anything we choose to do.

True empowerment will require you to become financially empowered, but if you try to tackle financial empowerment with planning and strategy without addressing your emotions around money, you will most likely fail. How do you create a consistent strategy around your credit card usage if the idea of going line-by-line over your bill makes your skin crawl? Before you can strategize, you have to face your emotions.

Most women harbor deep fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and apathy around the topic of finances. And these negative emotions have real consequences, including limiting your mindset, truncating your results and even causing breakdowns in relationships. To overcome these limiting mindsets and behaviors, I developed a four-step strategy to lead women to financial empowerment.

STEP 1

PUT YOUR BIG GIRL PANTYHOSE ON

When I was a little girl, my mother always made me and my sisters go to the bank with her. For that errand and that errand only, she made us put on a dress and nude pantyhose. We would drive to the bank in our light pink Cadillac—the only car big enough at the time for a family of seven—and she would push us up to the teller, her hands on our backs so that we could have a close-up view of her moving through the transaction with her deposit book and checks.

I never got to ask her why she created such pomp and circumstance around trips to the bank, but I believe she wanted to imprint on us at a young age how money demands respect, and that handling money is something women do.

According to a survey I recently conducted, only 55 percent of women are totally comfortable talking to their spouses or partners about their personal finances. And only about 30 percent of women felt totally comfortable talking about personal finances with a parent or best friend. If you’re not totally comfortable discussing finances with the person you’re building a life with, and even more uncomfortable drawing from the wisdom of the people who love you and can serve as resources, you need to open your drawer, pull out a pair of pantyhose and put them on. They may be uncomfortable, but they will definitely help you get intentional and level up.

STEP 2

BUILD A RELENTLESS ATTITUDE OF FINANCIAL HOPE AND POSSIBILITY

In 2006, a renowned psychologist named Carol Dweck discovered that an individual’s mindset could predict her future success. If individual’s thought intelligence and achievement was something they were born into, they had a fixed mindset. If individuals felt intelligence was something that could be gained through hard work, they held a growth mindset.

Fixed mindsets, Dweck found, believe that: effort is fruitless, risk should be avoided, feedback is a personal attack, life should be lived within certain boundaries, challenges are too scary and the success of others should be deemed threatening.

Individuals with growth mindsets, on the other hand, believe: effort is everything, challenges should be embraced, feedback is necessary for growth, mistakes are an essential part of learning and the success of others is inspirational.

Dr. Dweck’s research has been applied to many areas, but the outcome is always the same—a growth mindset greatly increases a person’s probability of success and leads to a more joyful life.

In our industry, that growth mindset would allow a woman to not be worried about being perfect, about making mistakes or receiving judgment from others. That growth mindset would provide her a vantage point to see how the life she was born to live exists outside of her comfort zone, and that she has what it takes to go after it. When you squarely believe in your success, you emit powerful energy, communicate with passion, tackle tasks, and strategize around that belief.

STEP 4

ACTIVELY GO FOR THAT ENVISIONED LIFE

Having a growth mindset does not mean asking the universe for things and then passively waiting for their arrival. It means waking up every day and doing the things that will make those dreams a reality. Over 54 percent of those we surveyed said they felt anxiety or hopelessness around their current finances. Two percent more—56 percent—had those same feelings when it came to their future finances. There can be no inspiration where there is no hope.

I have witnessed women try to find the aspects of LimeLife that they are most passionate about and focus on those to keep their business moving, but that is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg. If you work on defining an elevated life and are motivated to go after it, you will be passionate about every income-producing action step in your business.

BUILD YOUR STRATEGY

Once you’ve successfully completed these financial empowerment steps, it’s time to create a financial and business plan that will be your foundation for success. To elevate your emotions around your current finances, try daily mantras that can undo some of the fears and anxieties you discovered while dismantling your past. For example, if you recall your parents cursing every bill as they walked back from the mailbox, then you might want to make the trip to the mailbox more fun. Chalk a hopscotch board in front of it and say out loud, “I welcome bills because I have abundant resources. These utilities provide my family with heat, water, power, all of which I can easily afford and have anticipated.”

To reinforce your growth mindset about the future, surround yourself with people who share that same growth mindset. I am lucky to have so many dreamers in my life, including my husband. When he and I were in some of our darkest financial moments, he would always end financial conversations with achievable dreams. One of our favorites was searching through real estate websites for a beach house and dreaming about the trips we would take during colder seasons and the nest egg we would build. After a few years, I began to see the improbable things we discussed become present in our lives.

There are many strategies that can help you, but only you can make the necessary steps and decisions to become truly financially empowered. It’s not only important for you and your life partners to have a growth mindset about your past and present finances, but it’s important to pass this type of thinking down to any children in your life. The key is to have conversations around money that are positive, hopeful and achievable. You are not only building a foundation for your future, but for the future of all those who will follow in your footsteps. Let’s make sure the path we leave behind leads to personal and financial empowerment.