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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
The 2024, I had invested a bunch of money in something that was not paying back, and I had so much shame around that investment. I felt actually more proud of paying that off than I even did my student loans. I didn't realize how mad I was. I knew I had shame, but I never went to the depths of the anger that I had and that was really really helpful.
Kate Northrup:Today is part of a really fun series that our listeners always love, and that is our series of behind the scenes stories of our students. So today, I have a story, a wonderful woman named Melissa from South Dakota. She is an RN who helps women to really feel amazing in their bodies with how they eat and their hormones and just just feeling amazing in their vessel. And she had had an experience where she'd made an investment in a mentorship in a program that did not deliver, and she was having a lot of personal shame around that when Relax Money came into her life. Many of our listeners can relate to that feeling of you invested in something, you didn't get what you thought you were paying for, and there's a real hangover after that, and the feeling like I'm never gonna get that money back, you know, and I I screwed up.
Kate Northrup:And so that's where Melissa was. And today, we're talking about what happened after that, how she moved through that feeling, and what has happened on the other side in her personal life, in her business life, how she made an unbelievable accomplishment in her relationship with debt, and so much more. So enjoy the story of Melissa Ike. Welcome to Plenty, a weekly recalibration of power, money, and safety for high 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.
Kate Northrup: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.
Melissa Eich:Hi. Hi. Thanks for coming. Thanks so much for having me.
Kate Northrup:I really appreciate you being willing to share your story.
Melissa Eich:Well, I'm so excited and more than happy to. Awesome. So you live in South Dakota.
Kate Northrup:I do. And you're a nurse practitioner. You work with women around their physical health, their also emotional and energetic health, would
Melissa Eich:you say?
Kate Northrup:I'm an RN.
Melissa Eich:Yeah. Not advanced practitioner, but I'm an RN. And I now operate full time in my coaching business, helping women feel at home in their bodies. And so we start with nutrition. We bring in the nervous system, healing of hormones, and digestion so that they feel like they are connected to their bodies, they understand their bodies, and are the powerful beings that they wanna be.
Kate Northrup:So great. And you also work with human design. Right?
Melissa Eich:I am who I am starting to bring in human design as well. It was very special for my evolution, and still am. Right? But I find that it's also very important for women to understand their energy and why they feel they the way they do, and it's just another tool that helps them understand themselves better. Amazing.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. So what was going on for you in your life when Relaxed Money came across your radar?
Melissa Eich:Yes. So the 2024, I had invested a bunch of money in something that was not paying back. And it was very apparent to me that I continued to do these things, like outsource myself into programs, and coaches, and things that I thought were going to make me feel like I've got it together, and like, I'm gonna do it, and that I'm gonna be successful, and I'm gonna get this business running in the way that I want it to run. And it just wasn't it wasn't coming to fruition. And I had so much shame around that investment, and it was I think because it was in when I look back at myself, that was the last time I was going to do that.
Melissa Eich:And I really needed to feel that shame in order to take that next step to be like, you don't have to keep doing these things to have a successful business and to have, like, the title of bringing in this much money or making this much profit. So when I saw Good With Money, the workshop, I signed up for that right away. Actually, I think I was trying to enroll in Money before that, but I was like, oh, I have to wait.
Kate Northrup:Sorry.
Melissa Eich:So yeah. So then Good With Money came, and that I think was the the first step for me really understanding why I was doing the things I was doing outside, and why I was feeling the way I was feeling. Yeah. So
Kate Northrup:you were in a place of never again, And this this shame of making these investments sort of outsourcing power, something else is gonna make me finally feel whatever. What made you feel like relaxed money was something different than that? Do you know what I mean? Because sometimes people come in and they're like, I've tried other things. I've been investing in my personal development.
Kate Northrup:I don't wanna just do that again. So what made this how did you
Melissa Eich:know that this was gonna be not that? The nervous system piece. Because it wasn't just a do this and get that. It was a use your body, and then discover more of yourself, and you, like, then you create your own breadcrumbs to where you're going versus following somebody else's map. And I appreciated all the so much of your knowledge and guidance along the way, but it was also helping me develop those breadcrumbs that I needed to understand myself better within my money to be able to get to where I wanna be with my money and the relationship I wanna have.
Kate Northrup:That's great. So you knew this wasn't gonna be another moment of outsourcing to just somebody else's strategy that you were gonna try to fit yourself into that hadn't originated from yourself.
Melissa Eich:Yes.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's great. I love hearing that.
Kate Northrup:When you signed up, what were you hoping to get?
Melissa Eich:I was hoping to get a deeper understanding of so, you know, the under I wanna understand myself, but what we really want is, like, the, like, the freedom. Right? Like, I want freedom with my money. I wanna be able to create money and enjoy my money. I wanna be able to have money and feel safe having my money, and knowing where my money is going and why it's going these places.
Melissa Eich:So ultimately, like, the freedom and the relationship with my money is what I really wanted, and also to along the way to understand myself deeper. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. What hesitation did you have, if any?
Melissa Eich:Like, my past patterns, like, what if this is another thing that I, you know, end up investing or not doing, or doing all the way through, or another way for me to outsource or throw money at my problems? So that would be the fur I mean, the hesitation because you always, you know, don't always know. But Yeah. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:During the program, knowing that everybody takes the program in different ways, and I never expect, you know, somebody to just, like, follow it in the way I deliver it and go through every single thing in that order or whatever, you know, do it all. So sometimes somebody implements, you know, 25% of it, and they get it, like, way more than their money's worth, and so it's super worth it. And sometimes people do show up for every single call and do every single exercise in this linear way. So just knowing that, there's zero expectation with this question. What was it like for you going through the program, and how did you go about it?
Melissa Eich:I am so I'm a Capricorn, and I love structure Great. Containers. And so beginning in the program, I every week that there was a module, I blocked out my calendar. And that was my money date with myself to sit and to learn and to apply it. I even remember telling, like, my best coffee partner being like, I'm sorry.
Melissa Eich:We have to switch our coffee date this day because I have to show up for this.
Kate Northrup:Amazing. I'm I'm gonna
Melissa Eich:do it different this time. I'm not just gonna say I'm gonna watch the module later because if I'm honest, I have courses, and I never watched the module. So I knew I needed to sit down and do this, and so I did block that time out for myself for those thirteen weeks.
Kate Northrup:Incredible.
Melissa Eich:And I didn't do everything, but I took what felt like this is something that I can do in bits and pieces, and then apply
Kate Northrup:it You're the mindset.
Melissa Eich:Forward. And being able to have the, like, the actual tangible tools, when I would feel my body being like, I don't wanna do it today, there's a lot of other things that feel way more important that I'm going to do instead. And just being able to honestly do butterfly tapping would always be like, okay. You can just do it. I love that.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. So it would unlock the energy that you needed to then do the thing that you wanted that you knew you needed to do, but didn't always want to do.
Melissa Eich:Yes. Yes. And also somebody telling me that just do this, or this is a helpful tool for you, help normalize my feelings so much. Because I really thought that I was the only one going into chaos when she sat down at her computer to pull up her bank account. Yeah.
Melissa Eich:And I'm like, it shouldn't feel like like, or maybe I thought, like, I'm the only one that feels like this. Nobody else freaks out when they sit down at their computer to pull up the numbers. And knowing that there was a whole community of people that were doing that, I was like, oh, that's okay that I need to tap my shoulders a little bit.
Kate Northrup:There's nothing wrong with you. Yeah. I mean, money is complex, and and as much as people wanna say, oh, your relationship with money should be neutral, I think that's just a tall order. We can, over time, begin to neutralize our relationship with money through finding access to safety and freedom in our bodies and finding that access to worthiness inside ourselves, but it does take time, and you can't just flip the switch. You can't just be like, oh, cool.
Kate Northrup:Right now that you told me to be neutral with money, now I can just do that. Yeah. It just is not that simple. Our our bodies are more complex. So for you, which parts of the methodology really stood out as the levers that made an impact in your emotional well-being and also your results with your money.
Melissa Eich:The like, having money dates, like sitting down, actually looking at your money, not waiting long periods of time, not relying on hope or running away, that will someday it'll just fix itself. Setting aside that time to actually sit down and look at my numbers and feel comfortable or develop the ability to start to feel comfortable with your numbers regardless that they were high or low or whatever they were. And also knowing, listening to my body when it came to certain numbers as a way for me to also be able to, like, verbally tell my husband, this is what I need. Because in our relationship, he is naturally good with money, and I am probably the one that is not, and since I'm here. So when I was able to then that helped me develop the skill to be able to tell him, like, my nervous system needs to see this amount in the bank account.
Melissa Eich:Even though I know that you know that this makes sense, I in order for me, I have to have a nervous system that feels very calm and doesn't feel emergent when I see a number in our bank account. So I'm gonna ask you to leave that money in there so that I can feel calm when I go out and I do generate money versus being like, I have to create this money right now, and feeling really scarce and just dysregulated to my body about it. So I think also being able to know myself with numbers and being able to, like, communicate that with my husband has been helpful as well.
Kate Northrup:That's great. Yeah. That's great. And what has changed for you as a result of implementing this work on a on a practical or specific level? I mean, you you just told me one thing.
Kate Northrup:But
Melissa Eich:Yeah. So eyebars were, like, the thing for me that I really worked on and applied.
Kate Northrup:In the rest of the world, that's called debt. But Yes. In our world, we call it invoices for blessings already received.
Melissa Eich:Yes. I have always approached my relationship with them as, like, get rid of them as soon as possible. They're bad. You don't want them. And so in the past, anytime I've had debt, I'm like, you know, take all your money and throw it out there at it so that you don't have to look at it, you don't have to feel a certain way about it.
Melissa Eich:So when it came to paying off the debt that I had so much shame around, I did it slowly, and I did it in a very controlled, like, slow way. It was very slow, and I did it, and I kept the debt off, and I was like, goodbye to you. I felt actually more proud of paying that off than I even did my student loans. I felt like so so proud of how I handled it, and healed. Like, I healed my relationship with myself, the past patterns I had about outsourcing myself to other people as well, and healing the the bitterness that I had towards that program that I that I invested in when we did the journaling exercises, the three days Yes.
Melissa Eich:Or whatever that was, that was a huge part of my healing, was, like, writing that out. And I didn't realize how mad I was. I knew I had shame, but I never went to the depths of the anger that I had, and that was really, really helpful. That really unlocks things, because, you know, there is that sort of emotional frequency scale, and for women,
Kate Northrup:we are conditioned that it's not okay to be angry, and we are conditioned that whatever happened is our fault. So it makes sense that you had shame, but when you went under there, what was actually also there was anger, which is actually a higher frequency in terms of your ability to do something about it. Anger is a is an activator in this beautiful way. Like, there's there's a lot you can free up when you direct your anger positively. So I I love that that came through for you, really celebrating your access to your anger.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. Because you know what? We need to take more responsibility for being in integrity about what people are investing in that we are offering and being a stand for what we offer. And while it is never you know, we have thousands of people in Relax Money.
Kate Northrup:I I can't go to your house and make sure you log in and make sure you do the work. But when you are someone like you who will be in self leadership and self responsibility and do the work, I know it's gonna work. And so I feel great about the value exchange there. Right? Yeah.
Kate Northrup:And sadly Yeah. In the personal development industry, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors because if you're a good marketer, you can really make anything sound like anything. So I just wanna say your anger is valid. Thank you.
Melissa Eich:Yeah. And
Kate Northrup:I am a stand for
Melissa Eich:our industry doing better. Yes. And I will say, like, I totally see that in you. You are somebody who I've followed you for years. I've read your books.
Melissa Eich:I've done all of that, and you always have so much integrity. Who you are behind the microphone is who you are in real life from everything that I've seen, and what you teach is so authentic. And so, yeah, thank you for being such a good leader. You're welcome.
Kate Northrup:So it sounds like you paid off your invoices for blessings already received in a slow, devoted, methodical way. You feel really proud of that. I do. Yeah. Amazing.
Kate Northrup:It sounds like you had some beautiful improvement in your relationship with money with your husband because you were able to stand for and articulate your needs. Yeah. Amazing. It sounds like you also were able to release some shame and also move the anger from this past situation. Mhmm.
Kate Northrup:Anything else?
Melissa Eich:I think it's definitely it also opened up me understanding why I've always behaved the way I have with money, all the way from my childhood and watching my mother with money and watching my patterns, understanding myself so much better when it comes to money as well. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:So yeah. Amazing.
Melissa Eich:All of it.
Kate Northrup:So great.
Melissa Eich:Yeah. So great.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. If anyone's listening right now and considering this program, what would you tell them if you were sitting with them?
Melissa Eich:I would say, again, if you are self led and you are ready to do this work, absolutely, hands down, it'll work for you. You do have to be willing to feel some things because we can't just open up a computer and expect the computer screen to solve things for us. And also, there are so many different things in there that help support you, not only, like, your modules, but your team, and the community is great. And there's so many resources that do help guide you on what to do and how to do it. And this is different than other money solution courses, I believe.
Melissa Eich:One of the things that really helped me understand that this would be for me was when you said, you know, you are doing so many great things, and you are making money, but it doesn't feel like it. And there were times in my business that I had more money than I knew what to do with, and I never felt like it was enough. And when you said that, I was like, oh, yeah. It's not about the amount of money.
Kate Northrup:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa Eich:And so it really isn't about the amount of money. It's really about how you feel with your money. That's something you there's no exchange ever that is going to give you the value of having that relationship with your money that you wanna have. Yeah.
Kate Northrup:It's so true. Yeah. I am curious, how has going through this program supported your business and and the way you're supporting high achieving women? Has there any been any shifts or anything there?
Melissa Eich:Yeah. Absolutely. So I've always coached my clients about their nervous system and how to manage their nervous system. The way that I learned to manage my nervous system when it came to nutrition and my daily stress over a long period of time was actually willpower, and I can't teach that to my clients. Until I realized how triggered my body was with money, and what that actually felt like, I was then able to mirror that back to my clients with their relationship with food, and their body, and their day to day stress.
Melissa Eich:I had to actually embody this on a higher different level to understand my clients deeper. Wow. And so now I would say that that part of my work has expanded exponentially and provided so much better results on helping my clients really understand their bodies, because I I had to feel I had to really feel it differently than what I was feeling it before.
Kate Northrup:That's amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you.
Kate Northrup:I really appreciate your time. Is there anything else that you wish I had asked you?
Melissa Eich:I don't think so. I feel complete.
Kate Northrup:Amazing. Where can people find you if they wanna know more about you and your work?
Melissa Eich:I'm at or on Instagram, I am at Melissa underscore Eich. That's e I c h, and my website is melissamelissaeichwellness.com. Amazing.
Kate Northrup:Thank you for being here.
Melissa Eich:Thank you so much.
Kate Northrup:One last thing, and this is important. The difference between where you are now and where you wanna be financially is not effort. It's architecture. Join me for good with money, my free three day live financial upgrade experience, and we will close that gap together. Tens of thousands have already done it, and you're next.
Kate Northrup:Join us at katenorthrup.com/good. Again, that's katenorthrup.com/good.