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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.
And our life is so finite. Our time here on earth is so incredibly short. Why would we spend our lives disapproving of what is? The fastest way to get what you want is to approve of the way things are right now. Welcome to Plenty.
Kate Northrup:I'm your host Kate Northrup and together we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy, and to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of hunting. Let's go fill our cups. So I wanna dive in around this topic because this can be one of the most frustrating experiences to feel like, I'm trying so hard to change. Why is it not working?
Kate Northrup:So there's a couple of things that aren't as common to discuss when it comes to my external life does not match what I want, and I've done everything, and it's still not working. Let's address them. There there's there's really three of them that most people I don't think are understanding or talking about. One of them is the secondary gain. So I was talking to a woman on a coaching call the other day, and she was having the experience where she was a really sick kid.
Kate Northrup:And so her whole early life was around her caregivers surrounding her to make sure she was gonna survive. It was very much tied into illness was intertwined with love and care. And throughout her life, despite having created beautiful success, she ends up getting sick a lot at these key moments of expansion. And one of the things that can happen, I don't know that this was true for her, but she definitely in this example had an early imprinting of when I am sick and having trouble physically, I get love, care, and attention. And her whole early imprinting was that, was this is love.
Kate Northrup:Love is I'm sick, I get cared for. And so it made sense that now in her adult life, she was still getting sick all the time because that was her primary way of relating from early days. And so in a situation like that, someone would want to work on, Okay, what ways am I unconsciously manifesting manifesting a a situation of being sick or having trouble because that's the only way I knew how to get love or attention, or those just got patterned together. And there's no judgment here, right? Like neural patterning is neural patterning.
Kate Northrup:It's not a choice. It's not a character flaw. Right? Like a baby whose nervous system is developing, whose brain and body are developing, it's not like they're choosing to say, oh, sickness matches with love. No.
Kate Northrup:Their nervous system is just wiring that way. And so it just takes practice as adults to rewire for different pairings, for different neural patterning, and and we'll get into that in a minute. But in her particular case, there was a pairing of oh, when I'm like this, I get I get love, I get care. Other examples of this might be that as a child, you may have needed to act out in order to get love and attention. You may have needed to achieve your parents proud in terms of sports or academic achievement.
Kate Northrup:You may have needed to look a certain way in order to get love or approval. So all of us have these different neural patternings associated with when I do this, I get love and care. And that's normal, but it's not always healthy as we get into our adult years. And so that was one piece that I wanted to say, that if you are finding that no matter what you do with quote unquote working on yourself, you keep getting the same result, it is very likely that there's a deeper neural patterning in there that is associating the result that you keep getting that you don't want with love and care and safety. And what would need to happen in that case is to practice consciously signaling to your nervous system that it's safe while doing a different kind of behavior.
Kate Northrup:So for example, if if you're somebody who gets sick all the time at moments of peak expansion, when you are headed towards the big success, right, like when it's looking like, oh, wow, I'm gonna have the biggest launch of all time, or when you start to really succeed at your job, or when you're about to publish your book, or whatever it is, that's the time you need to double down on signaling to your body that you're safe so that at the peak of that mountain or at the peak of that roller coaster, right, you're climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing, the roller coaster then doesn't need to bottom out and, like, take you back down. It can actually just continue to go flat or even rise again. That's when you need to use your tools for neural repatterning. And there's, you know, if you're just tuning into Plenty for the first time, I teach a lot of these inside my programs, but one of them that I really love that's simple is you can notice gravity. So this takes a little practice, but you can do it right now as I'm talking, you're listening.
Kate Northrup:But as we sit here together, you can notice the weight of gravity on your body. And you can do that while breathing, and you might be like, really? This is it? This is the whole tool? And my answer will be yes.
Kate Northrup:Yes, it is. Nervous system repatterning can be shockingly subtle. And that's why we oftentimes discount it because we're like, there's no parade, there's no fireworks. Like, that couldn't possibly be effective. We're so used to quick fixes.
Kate Northrup:We're so used to some kind of fanfare. We're so used to, you know, really intense stimulus. But actually, nervous system repatterning is pretty subtle. And it's small changes over time that compound to a completely new reality. The thing that many personal growth folks totally discount because they just don't know is that if your nervous system thermostat is set for a particular experience and you haven't invested any time or energy in the embodied experience of shifting that set point, no matter what you do in your three d reality, your reality externally will not change.
Kate Northrup:Because always, always, always, our nervous system is going to bring us back to the thermostat setting that feels like home. So you've got to work on your nervous system. Okay, so that was thing number one. Thing number two is secondary gain. So secondary gain is the thing that we get to experience or not experience or keep doing or keep being or keep, you know, or not do by not getting the thing we want.
Kate Northrup:Okay? So here's an example. When I was in my early 20s and I was overspending and I was really unconscious with my money, and I wasn't paying any attention to what I earned or what I owed or how much I made or any of it or how much I spent. I was just in full financial avoidance. I said I wanted to stop doing that, but I wouldn't actually change the behavior, and there was a nervous system healing piece in there, but there was also secondary gain.
Kate Northrup:I got to continue to be a child when I was financially avoidant. I got to not grow up. I got to keep being a little girl in certain ways by not actually paying attention to my money. The secondary gain felt really good. And honestly for me, there's a lot of ways that I grew up really early, and I didn't feel like I could fully be an immature child when it was age appropriate to be an immature child.
Kate Northrup:So I kept that shit going on into my twenties around my money because I was getting a secondary gain out of the behavior that I said I wanted to stop, but actually there was a big part of me that didn't actually want to stop because I wanted the secondary gain more. So for you, ask yourself, just be ruthless about it. No one else is listening. Just get out your journal or ask yourself in your head, what am I getting out of not getting what I want? What is my secondary gain here from not getting what I want?
Kate Northrup:And just see what comes up. A second layer of that is not really secondary gain, but it's but it's related. And that's another question you can ask yourself that's a powerful self coaching question, and that is, what am I afraid would happen if I met the person of my dreams, if I built muscle and got really strong, if I built a business that was paying me, you know, $50,000 a month, if I got the book deal, if I, you know, finished the painting and sold my first painting, whatever it is for you. Ask yourself, what am I afraid would happen if I insert thing you want, that you're frustrated isn't happening yet. And then just see what comes up, because it may be that unconsciously or subconsciously you have a fear that is overriding actually getting the thing you want.
Kate Northrup:For example, if you say, what am I afraid would happen if my business brought in $500,000 a year? Well, and then you just let your psyche give you the answer. Right? This is not like, oh, let me think logically about this. You want to let your psyche give you the answer.
Kate Northrup:And if the answer comes back, oh, I'm afraid that my family wouldn't love me anymore, well then yeah, obviously you're not going to take the actions you need to take, or you're going to subconsciously make sure your business never makes $500,000 a year, because of course you don't want to have your family not love you anymore. So there's little gremlins, you know, hanging out in there. There's these little parts of us that are afraid, and we want to give them a voice, because once we give them a voice, the very act of voicing it, saying it out loud, writing it down, makes it so that that part of ourself can still be there, but that part of ourself no longer needs to run the show because now we're acknowledging it. It's not about getting rid of these parts. It's not about silencing these parts.
Kate Northrup:It's not about even letting go, necessarily, of old patterns. It's about consciously It's letting those parts of ourselves have a voice and speak so that they don't have to try to get our attention unconsciously by sabotaging our behavior or sabotaging our reality. It's really amazing when you just let those parts, those scared parts speak, or whatever parts they are, how much less power they have over us. And then they get to still be here, but not drive the bus. Okay.
Kate Northrup:So that was secondary gain, and what are you afraid would happen if you actually had the thing you want? And then the final piece of this is approval. What do I mean? Well, my friend Regina Thomas Hauer, aka Mama Gina, says, The sooner you get into agreement with what is, the sooner what's next falls in your lap. What does that mean?
Kate Northrup:What does getting into agreement with something mean? It means finding a way to actually approve of and get pleasure out of what is right now. Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is, is another amazing resource for this, but Mama Gina's work is great. And so what does this mean? It means learning to practice, being appreciative of how things are right now, and find the perfection in the way things are right now, exactly as they are, no changes.
Kate Northrup:Why is that powerful? Because disapproval and resistance to what is sucks our life away. And it is the surest way to prevent I mean, is the surest way to assure that we never actually enjoy our lives. There will never be a moment when your life is perfect. There will never be a moment when your ducks are all in a row.
Kate Northrup:There will never be a moment when you have everything squared away. Ain't never gonna happen. But every single moment of your life, you're here. Your heart is beating, and our life is so finite. Our time here on Earth is so incredibly short.
Kate Northrup:Why would we spend our lives disapproving of what is? The fastest way to get what you want is to approve of the way things are right now, unabashedly. Unabashedly. So what's an example of this? Well, an example of this is like, right now, I live in a neighborhood that I don't like.
Kate Northrup:We've lived here for three and a half years. We're about to move out, but I live in this neighborhood I don't like. I don't like it for a variety of reasons. Number one, there's stray cats everywhere. Number two, it's like crawling with roosters and chickens.
Kate Northrup:So there's just roosters cawing constantly. Number three, people don't clean up after their dogs. So when you walk down the street, you have to, like, avoid all the dog poop. And there's, like, trash everywhere. There's traffic.
Kate Northrup:Everyone in Miami is trying to kill each other on the street. They don't pay attention to pedestrians. It's like a whole thing. And and then it's smelly because people leave the trash. So anyway, that's a lot of disapproval.
Kate Northrup:Right? Like, that's a lot of disapproval. I could walk my kids to school and then take my walk to the office in that state of disapproval, like complaining and whining about everyone and everything, and da da da da. But you know what? That is a solid fourteen to twenty minutes of my day that is setting up the energy with which I enter my day, and it is setting up the energy with which I transition into family time in the afternoon and evening.
Kate Northrup:Am I really going to bring that level of judgment and disapproval into my workday to show up here with you in this recording, or when I'm doing other people's podcasts, or in my writing, or just in my interactions with my team and my husband here at the office? You better believe I am not going to do that because I know that who we are is what we get. And what we choose to put our attention on determines who we are, vibrationally speaking, like energetically speaking. So do I every now and again have to bitch about it and, like, get it out of my system? I do.
Kate Northrup:Am I moving? I am. Because I don't like it. However, I find ways to be in approval as we're walking to school in the morning. So I like, look at how cute the little doggies are on my way by, even if their owners aren't picking up their poop, because the dogs themselves are precious.
Kate Northrup:I notice how funny it is that my girls play in a playground every day at recess where they're chasing chickens. Like, that's funny. I didn't see that as part of their lives. That's a whole life experience that they're gonna remember. It's kind of sweet.
Kate Northrup:It's kind of funny. And I appreciate the cultural richness of our neighborhood. I I I am not going to have this level of chaos again right on my street, and that's kind of fun. Adventure. Right?
Kate Northrup:So those are ways. This is not the most high leverage example, but honestly, we got to use everything we can in our lives to shift us from disapproval to approval. We know this with our children. Right? Like, if you are a parent and you are constantly telling your child what they're doing wrong, constantly correcting them, they are going to eventually just become a mirror for all problems that you see in them versus when you're celebrating them, when you're noticing, oh, hey, thanks for putting your dish in the dishwasher.
Kate Northrup:Oh, hey, thanks for putting your clothes in the hamper even when I didn't ask you. Hey, you are such a loving, kind person. You're so smart. I love you so much. I love just hanging out with you.
Kate Northrup:You're the best. Right? Like, when we pour approval into our children, they get filled up, and we tend to receive the version of them that also is in alignment with what we would want to approve of. Now that doesn't mean we're trying to control our children, and of course kids are gonna have big feelings and they're gonna, you know, not listen to you, and they're we don't only approve of our children when they're behaving the way we want them to, but it's the same with our partners. Right?
Kate Northrup:If you're constantly nagging your husband, if you're constantly nagging your wife, if you're constantly, like, you know, going on and on and bitching with your girlfriends about all the problems, I guarantee you, you are going to be a match for the version of your spouse who drives you crazy. Versus if you start to relate to them as the king or queen that you know they are, as the beautiful human that you know is their most powerful version of themselves, that is the version that will come out to play with you more often. It's the same thing with our lives. So in summary, if you feel like you are doing all the things, and you've put in all this work, and your external life is still not changing, I have three things for you. Number one, you've got to look at your nervous system.
Kate Northrup:Does your nervous system actually feel safe to experience the thing that you say you want? Number two, what is the secondary gain you're receiving? What do you get to experience or not experience or do or not do as a result of not having the thing you say you want? You know, 2.5 is what are you afraid would happen if you got the thing you say you want? And then number three is So we have one, two, 2.5, and three.
Kate Northrup:And number three is, how much are you addicted to disapproving of yourself, your life, and others? Because the more you disapprove of everything, the less you will get what you want. But when you approve of everything as it is right now, guess what? You instantly get what you want because you have shifted yourself from instead of waiting until you get what you want to be happy to instead wanting what you have, which is the surest path to happiness there ever was. I hope this was helpful.
Kate Northrup:Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. 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.
Kate Northrup:This free audio experience will help you rewire your nervous system for wealth, stop the money in money out cycle and create a foundation for true wealth, and relax into a new relationship with money. Plus, it comes with the five minute calm cash flow ritual. So you can have financial clarity and magnetism anytime you want. All you need to do to get the free money reset is go to katenorthrop.com/reset.