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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.
Control is a trauma response. Safety doesn't come from control. It comes from connection. So if you want to play the money game well, you need to play the people game well. When we pour into relationships, we are expanding, opening, and building new channels for abundance to flow.
Kate Northrup:Welcome to Plenty. 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 plenty. Let's go fill our cups.
Disclaimer:Please note that the opinions and perspectives of the guests on the Plenty podcast are not necessarily reflective of the opinions and perspectives of Kate Northrup or anyone who works within the Kate Northrup brand.
Kate Northrup:What if the most profitable thing you could do this year is not a new strategy, but instead learning how to feel safe enough to connect and truly connect. I'm not talking about networking. Right? I'm not talking about transactional relationship. I'm talking about true heart to heart connection where you actually recognize another human, and you have meaningful transformational relationships and interactions that change your life and change the world.
Kate Northrup:So we're gonna talk about that today. Okay. Quick story about this. Back in the day, I was taking classes at Mama Gina's School of Womanly Arts with Regina Thomas Hauer, and she had a networking night. And during this networking night, there was this speaker who came, and she was so vibrant, and she was so funny, and I really deeply resonated with her.
Kate Northrup:She talked about business and money in such a fun, embodied way, and I just knew this was somebody I wanted to connect with. However, after her talk, she got so mobbed by all the women in the class. There was like a huge line, and people were vying for her attention, and I just didn't like that energy. It felt graspy. So rather than try to quote, unquote figure out how I could connect with her and be overly strategic about it, I just set the intention that we would connect in divine timing some other time.
Kate Northrup:So I opened up for universal support, and wouldn't you know it, about a month later, I was in warrior two in a yoga class in Sag Harbor, New York, and right across from me on the other side of the room in Warrior two was this woman. So in a really organic way, I got to connect with her after class. It was Marie Forleo, who's the founder of B School, and she, you know, basically was the pioneer of the personal development, personal branding online world for female entrepreneurs. And Marie coming into my life catalyzed me growing a profitable online business, and and really that particular meaningful transformational connection has sort of spawned millions of dollars in revenue, but not only that and not even close to the most important that, it's it's been one of the more meaningful relationships in my life with so many adventures, insights, tears, laughter, and she also opened up my world to so many more of my deepest friendships. That's a story of how we can create connection through a feeling of trust and safety.
Kate Northrup:And in this episode, I'm gonna give you some really interesting data around connection, trust, and safety that you can bring into your life, you can bring into whatever organization you work in, whether it's your own business or whether you work in somebody else's company or in the nonprofit world, and we're really gonna talk about connection as wealth. I want to normalize the fact that we've really been conditioned, especially those raised in masculine forward, masculine centered work cultures, which is really most of us. We've been conditioned to believe that the more you can control things, the safer you are. But the truth is control is a maladaptive survival strategy. Control is a trauma response.
Kate Northrup:When you're trying to control things, you are in a dysregulated state, and, actually, safety doesn't come from control. It comes from connection. So let's dive into that now. So money really is a relational current. Right?
Kate Northrup:If you think about how money ends up in your bank account, it always comes from another human being making a decision to pay you or to transfer money or to, you know, buy something from you, to do business with you. That's how money ends up, or it's from an inheritance, or it's from an investment that also was relational because investments increasing in value and therefore putting money in your bank account is relational. It's based on the perception of that investment in the marketplace, whether it's a real estate investment, a stock or a bond, crypto, something like that. It's all relational. Money is a human relational current.
Kate Northrup:So if you want to play the money game well, you need to play the people game well. And I don't I don't mean playing games with people. I don't mean manipulation in any way. I just mean improving profoundly your relationship skills. That energy of exchange is between nervous systems because every human being has a body.
Kate Northrup:And the primary ruling factor in our bodies, the thing that is ruling 99 of our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors, and our energy, the energy that that other people feel in our presence, is our nervous system. So relationships and money are a nervous system game. Now when your body is in fight or flight, the brain prioritizes protection, not connection. Right? And that means when we're in protection mode, it means scarcity, it means hypervigilance, and it means trying to be in control.
Kate Northrup:Now we all know when you try to control another human being, it does not end well. It's actually energetically pretty repulsive. Like when I try to control how fast my daughter gets out the door for school in the morning, she goes into resistance. It actually slows down the whole process, and it disconnects us rather than connects us. So control is actually the thief of connection.
Kate Northrup:Now it also leads to isolation. So when we're in a fight or flight response, not only do we experience scarcity, hypervigilance, we also experience isolation. It makes it hard to connect. Now when your body feels safe, though, it opens up to creativity, generosity, and trust, which are all prerequisites for abundance. So safety is a prerequisite for abundance.
Kate Northrup:Safety first, then prosperity flows. Now Stephen Borges, who is the founder of Polyvagal Theory, says that our capacity for connection and co regulation determines our ability to feel safe enough to engage, create, and receive. Said another way, the degree to which we can connect with others will be the degree to which we can create, relate, and receive, which are all the things that make life the sweetest. So he talked about the vagus nerve's role in shifting between defensive states and social engagement, and then there's another really interesting study from Cohn, Schafer, and Davidson, and these links will be in the show notes, the links to these studies, where they show that holding a loved one's hand actually reduces the threat response in the brain. So what this shows is that safety through connection calms our system and helps us feel safe.
Kate Northrup:Now what's tricky about this is when we are in a fight, flight, or freeze response, we feel isolated, and it actually prevents us from reaching out and connecting. Many, many people, when they're dysregulated, will isolate. But the very balm we need to heal that state is connection. And so I wanna remind you that when we are in fear, when we're in scarcity, when we're in shutdown, that's the time to reach out. Because the connection itself, the co regulation itself activates the parasympathetic response, which is the feeling of safety in the body.
Kate Northrup:So whatever you can do to remember that rather than isolate, you need to connect, and that will create safety, and it primes the pump. It's this beautiful self fulfilling cycle where safety allows us to feel connection, and feeling connection allows us to feel more safe. So it's this beautiful abundant cycle. Now we have been taught, as I said, that control creates safety, but it actually blocks the flow of connection, and therefore, it blocks the flow of wealth because money is relational. Money comes from connecting.
Kate Northrup:All abundance comes from connecting. So masculine conditioning in all genders says, I'm safe when I'm in control, but control is a protection survival response, not a creation response. The body in control mode is tight, future focused, and closed. We actually can test our nervous system resilience, our nervous system regulation through different assessments that will gauge our range of motion at points of rotation. Why does that work?
Kate Northrup:Because when we are in a fear response, our body armors up. Our body tightens, and it tends to show up the most in points of rotation. So in our neck rotation, in our rib rotation, in our shoulder rotation. So if you can open up your ability to rotate, that's actually a sign that your body feels safe enough to soften and have movement and flow. And then in our external world, the metaphor for that is energetically that when we can soften to allow more flexibility and ease in our life, we actually are able to allow more flow of resources as well.
Kate Northrup:Now the body in connection mode, however, is present, attuned, and open. And we know that when we're talking to people who are in fear, who are totally future tripping, who are in a control mode, it doesn't feel as good as when we're talking to somebody when we're in relationship with someone who is present and attuned and living in the moment. That actually feels really good to our nervous system. When you shift from how do I make it happen to how can I be in right relationship with what's happening, you move from isolation to abundance? So instead of how can I make it happen, that's very me focused, isolation focused, ego based, to how can I relate to what's happening?
Kate Northrup:That is an emergent, fertile question. Now money thrives in relational spaces where trust, resonance, and co regulation are shared values, and there's some interesting studies about that. One is from the neuroscience of human relationships, and it says that the brain is a social organ. The brain is a social organ, and that connection regulates our stress response, so reduces stress and enhances creativity and resilience. Don't you think that creativity and resilience are probably pretty important attributes or qualities to create and steward wealth?
Kate Northrup:Yes. They are. Another study from broaden and build theory of positive emotions, and again, these will be linked in the show notes. Safety and positive emotion expand. So when we're feeling safe and when we're experiencing positive emotions, which is often easier to do when in positive relationship, it increases our cognition, so we get smarter.
Kate Northrup:It increases our resourcefulness, so we're able to see possibilities where we weren't able to see them before, and it increases our access to opportunity. So cool. When we feel safe, it increases our access to opportunity, and opportunity really is the psychological root of abundance. Cognition, resourcefulness, and access to opportunity are the cognitive roots of abundance. So I'm gonna invite you now to notice where do you armor up in business or money conversations, and where do you try to control?
Kate Northrup:Where is control and armoring up showing up in your relationships and in your relationship with money? And I wonder if in those moments, you could invite your body to soften even one degree. Even one degree. Okay. Now connection really is a form of capital, and I always I voice memo a lot back and forth with my best friend and talk about how if net worth were measured in relationships, we would be billionaires.
Kate Northrup:My relationships are by far the best thing about my life. I have an unusual ability to foster and nurture more close relationships, it seems, than maybe is average. I actually had a funny experience. I was at the Hathor Temple. I was with my friend Emily Fletcher who was leading the pilgrimage, and there was a co facilitator on that portion of the trip named Vujadayuz.
Kate Northrup:He's a great guy. He practices grid work and geomancy, and I loved learning from him. And we had just finished this ceremony in one of the chambers in the temple. I was feeling particularly lit up. I'm maybe I'll tell that story another time.
Kate Northrup:I don't know. We'll see. And Voujja said to Emily was right there, and Voujja said something about I can't remember his exact words, but he said, like, basically, I feel like Kate and I are gonna be best friends. He said, oh, he said to Emily, if Kate and I become best friends, are you gonna be jealous? And Emily said, no.
Kate Northrup:I would love that. And she said, Kate has an unusual ability to actually genuinely be close with a large number of people. And I'll tell you why that is. Because I prioritize it. I know that what I'm telling you today is absolutely a 100% unequivocally true.
Kate Northrup:I make the effort. I send the voice memo. I make the invitation. I generously share resources. I make connections wherever possible.
Kate Northrup:I think of people when an opportunity lands in my lap. I think who else could benefit from this? I'm very quick to make an intro, share a resource, teach somebody something that would help them, introduce two people. I just I and I think about people, and I and I tell them that. And I and I send them affirming voice memos, and I send them little memes, you know, on Instagram, and and I make a point to make sure people know they matter to me because they do.
Kate Northrup:And I prioritize that above other things. There are other things that I do less of because I pour so much into my relationships, and it's real. Right? It's not because I'm trying to get something. It's not because I'm trying to have a network that's some this way, that, or the other.
Kate Northrup:It is because relationships are the greatest form of wealth we could possibly have. So many people talk about feeling isolated, feeling alone, feeling empty at the peaks of their careers, you know, when they're selling companies for, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, when they reach these moments on the ladder of status and achievement and financial, you know, financial resources, it's very common to, underneath that, have a sense of spiritual and relational bankruptcy. And I'm not saying that money makes you spiritually or relationally bankrupt by any stretch of imagination. That's not that's not true. However, what's also not true is that being financially abundant makes us feel full.
Kate Northrup:Having a lot of money, having a lot of resources does not, in and of itself, make us feel safe or connected or a deep sense of belonging. And safety and connection and belonging are the deepest longings that we have as humans. They're the thing that matters the most. Connection is a form of capital, and when we nurture relationships within ourselves, right, our relationship with ourself, our relationship with God, with others, and with the unseen, we expand the channels through which money flows. When we pour into relationships, we are expanding, opening, and building new channels for money to flow, for abundance to flow.
Kate Northrup:Now abundance is relational. It moves through trust networks, collaboration, generosity, and shared energy. Safety in your nervous system invites safety in others. That's the invisible return on investment of nervous system health. We actually become the thermometer where we set the tone energetically and and that everybody else can meet our thermostat setting, and that is a huge gift that we can offer to others.
Kate Northrup:When you feel safe, you're magnetic. People feel your availability, clients, partners, opportunities. They wanna be around you. Nervous system health is magnetic. Nervous system health is power.
Kate Northrup:This is true for men and women alike. Safety creates the conditions for contribution, not competition. Because fundamentally, the baseline of competition is scarcity, and the basis of scarcity is lack of safety. So if we feel safe, if we feel resourced, then there's no need to compete because there's more than enough to go around, and instead, we can collaborate. Doesn't that feel good?
Kate Northrup:Now here's a little scientific support from the neuroscience of trust as published by Harvard Business Review. Organizations with higher trust report 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, and 76% more engagement. When there's greater trust within an organization, there's less stress, higher productivity, and more engagement. Absolutely incredible. And here's another one from UCSF.
Kate Northrup:Chronic stress, which is sympathetic dominance, sympathetic nervous system dominance, which is fight, flight, freeze, flop, fun, shortens telomeres, which are an important indicator for our longevity, and reduces vitality. So chronic stress reduces vitality and longevity, but rest and social support restores regenerative capacity in the body, in the brain. So rest and social support makes you healthier, makes you more energized, makes you more vital, and makes you smarter. Why would we not double down and prioritize that? Right?
Kate Northrup:Right now, if you can close your eyes. If you're driving, of course, don't do this, but you can you can do it with your eyes open. Think about someone you really trust right now. Just bring them to mind and notice how your breath changes. Notice how you feel in your body when you think about this person that you really trust.
Kate Northrup:That's really your body recognizing safety, and that's where wealth begins, right there. So as we wrap it up here, I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. Where in your life does connection feel safe and easy? So where is this already working? Where in your life does connection feel safe and easy?
Kate Northrup:Where does your body still equate control with safety? Where's that coming up for you? Is it in particular relationships? Is it in a particular area of your life? Where are you still trying to control in order to feel safe?
Kate Northrup:And then what's the one connection you could nurture? Could you send that voice memo? Could you schedule a walk and talk? That's my favorite way to connect with people. I get my steps in.
Kate Northrup:We have a conversation. It's wonderful. It's on the phone, old school, with wired headphones, by the way, because I don't I don't think we should be having Bluetooth in our ears, and I also don't think we should put be putting cell phones next to our heads. That's another conversation for another day. To bring it on home, connection is not just a soft skill.
Kate Northrup:It's a practical strategy that is based in nervous system intelligence. Safety is the soil of sustainable wealth. If you wanna build sustainable wealth, you need safety first, and we can find safety through connection. It's like a shortcut. When we feel safe, we spend, share, and invest differently, not from scarcity, but from sufficiency.
Kate Northrup:So I hope that this was helpful for you. And if you wanna dive deeper into these concepts, I would definitely recommend making sure that you're on the wait list for Relaxed Money because we practice this in real time relationally. As a reminder, all the links to the studies will be in the show notes. If you found this conversation powerful, maybe nurture one of your connections by sending them this episode and asking them to report back once they listen and let you know what they thought. As always, I'll be back next week.
Kate Northrup:Thanks for listening to Plenty. Thanks for listening to this episode of Plenty. If you enjoyed it, make sure you subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review. That's one of the best ways that you can ensure to spread the abundance of Plenty with others. You can even text it to a friend and tell them to listen in.
Kate Northrup:And if you want even more support to expand your abundance, head over to katenorthrop.com/breakthroughs where you can grab my free money breakthrough guide that details the biggest money breakthroughs from some of the top earning women I know, plus a mini lesson accompanying it with my own biggest money breakthroughs and a nervous system healing tool for you to expand your abundance. Again, that's over at katenorthwick.com/breakthroughs. See you next time.