millionaire mindset: parenting yourself

0:00Tiffany Aliche:Everything you've been told that's woo-woo or crazy are actually the things that are going to make you wealthy. Millionaires don't rely on motivation or self-criticism. Instead, they rely on self-trust, structure, and basic self-care, a.k.a. parenting themselves. The most successful people I know do not bully themselves into success. Instead, they take care of themselves like someone they're responsible for.

0:26Tiffany Aliche:But first, a word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We love Squarespace. We've been using them forever and we think you should use them too. Squarespace is the place to get your website, payment platform, whether you're selling content or products or time. All of that can happen inside Squarespace as well as donations and so much more. We appreciate you supporting Squarespace who has been supporting us since the chauffeur started in 2021. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is your best friend. They're going to give you everything you need to claim your domain, to showcase your offerings, to grow your brand and get paid all in one place.

1:02Tiffany Aliche:And you can buy domains in Squarespace too. Head on over to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FFpod to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain. I love learning. I wouldn't be hosting a podcast if I didn't like learning from people, but you might not host a podcast. Statistically, you probably don't. So the next best thing to host in your own podcast is Masterclass. You can go to Masterclass and find the world's best instructors teaching you anything you want to know, whether that is fitness or cooking or improv from Amy Poehler. It's all there.

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2:19Tiffany Aliche:Hi, my name is Tori. I'm a financial expert, a multimillionaire, and I've helped 5 million women be better with money. And welcome back to Millionaire Mindset. It's our exclusive series we do here on Financial Feminist. And it's not just for millionaires, and it's not necessarily just for people who want to be millionaires. It's for anybody who wants to take themselves more seriously, who wants to up-level their life, who wants to build better relationships, and yeah, who wants to build their wealth. And if you haven't listened to the first episodes in this series, we've done two so far. The first on taking risks, and the second on time wealth.

2:49Tiffany Aliche:And today, we are talking about parenting yourself. Now, I'm not a therapist. I'm going to say that right off the bat, both because my lawyers want me to say it and also because I think it's helpful to hear. I am not a therapist. However, this concept of parenting yourself seems to be everywhere right now, and for good reason. I think it's a really, really helpful tool. But I wanted to give you concrete ways that I think about parenting myself and why I think it is the most crucial thing you can do if you want to actually hit your goals and if you want to like yourself more. First, we have to acknowledge where we're all at.

3:25Tiffany Aliche:Everyone is tired right now. Everybody is exhausted. They're behind, and they're also trying to optimize their lives. But at the end of the day, discipline often gets equated with punishment, and self-care often gets equated with indulgence. So if you want to be disciplined, it means grinding it out at all costs, right? Even though we know that discipline is actually a really helpful tool. And self-care, because it's largely been talked about by women in the Black community, gets branded as this indulgent thing, this thing that you only have time for if you've done all of the productive things first.

4:04Tiffany Aliche:The most successful people I know are not bullying themselves into success. They're not talking down about themselves mentally. They are not forcing themselves to grind harder. They are instead taking care of themselves like they're a child. And I mean that in the most pure, loving way. They take care of themselves like somebody they're responsible for. But ultimately, people feel really good at taking care of their future selves at the expense of their current selves. I literally just did one of our 100K calls. So if you hit your 100K, your first 100K, being part of our 100K club, part of the perks of that is that you get to hop on a call with me and my team.

4:51Tiffany Aliche:It's a one-on-one call. I get to celebrate you for your 100K milestone, but also give you some tips and tricks and answer questions about where you're heading next. And I literally just did one of those calls this week with a woman named Michelle. And we were talking about this exact concept. She's like, I hit my 100K debt paid off. And she also hit her 100K invested. So she had not only paid off$100 ,000 of debt, but she had also invested over$100 ,000 towards future her, future Michelle. And the thing she talked about is she's like, you know what? I have an easier time protecting and thinking about future me.

5:27Tiffany Aliche:And I have a really bad time taking care of current me. And what I told her was, one, that's normal. And two, I would not be surprised if that's the case because you see future you as a different person. You see future you not as a part of you, but as someone to take care of in the abstract. So what I invited her to do is the same kind of framing that has worked for her of seeing this future person as someone to take care of that is slightly removed from her. What if she could apply that to current her? What if she could think about taking care of current Michelle as well as she takes care of future her?

6:13Tiffany Aliche:So the one thing that I have done that's completely transformed my life is I am in constant dialogue with current me, but I manifest current me as Tori at about nine years old. I can see her very clearly in my mind. Okay. She's wearing glasses much like myself, but way nerdier and different. She's going through about a pair of glasses every six months because her eyes are changing so rapidly. Around this time, I went through a headband phase every day at school. I wore a headband so I can see her with a headband. We're starting to get some pimples on her face. It's not full-blown acne yet. That comes later at about 11 or 12, but like we're starting to get going.

7:01Tiffany Aliche:She is in her school uniform. I can see her little squirt. I can see her little sweater. I have a very, very clear picture of what nine-year-old me looks like. And she is the one I am taking care of because she still lives inside of me. And when we talk about parenting yourself throughout this episode, I don't mean this in a way that is infantilizing you or is speaking to you like a child, parenthetical, derogatory. I mean speaking to you and your inner child, parenthetical, complimentary. Okay? I am trying to get you to tap into being somebody that you can rely on and taking care of yourself like you would take care of a child.

7:51Tiffany Aliche:So this is not inner child journaling. This is about energy, about time, about follow-through, and becoming the person that you can rely on most. Because the truth is, most of us cannot rely on ourselves. We cannot rely on ourselves to do the things we say we're going to do. Most of us cannot rely on ourselves to speak kindly. We cannot rely on ourselves to think kind thoughts about ourselves. And if you are not someone that you can rely on for your own needs, for your own desires, for your own self-regulating, then how are you supposed to achieve all of the goals that you want. If you cannot parent yourself and rely on yourself, how are you supposed to get better with money or build a career or build a family or do the things that you want so desperately out of life?

8:53Tiffany Aliche:Ultimately, parenting yourself is a wealth skill because you cannot out-hustle a dysregulated nervous system. Burnout, brain fog, decision fatigue, they all cost money. Wealth building requires consistency, it requires energy, and it requires emotional regulation. And these do not come from shame, these do not come from guilt, and they also don't come from ignoring your needs and not speaking to yourself in a way that's in tune with who you are and what you want. Self-discipline without true self-care is just self-abandonment. So I want to give you some very tactical ways that you can start getting connected with the inner you.

9:43Tiffany Aliche:For me, that's nine-year-old me. It might be three-year-old you for you. It might be 13-year-old you. It might be you from a couple years ago. But you need to get in touch with the younger version of yourself because they are often the ones running the show. When they have a temper tantrum, they're running the show. When they're on like a hyper crazy productive spree where they can't think about anything except this one obsession, they're in control. So here's how we actually start taking care of ourselves like we're children. And again, I mean this in the purest, most giving way. First thing you can do, pack snacks.

10:27Tiffany Aliche:Think about a mom. Think about either your mom or the moms you see or maybe yourself as a mother, okay? Moms always have snacks. A mom at Disney World has the goldfish and the water bottle and the carrot sticks. They've thought of everything, right? They have like a whole pharmacy in their bag. But the reason they're packing snacks specifically is because when their kid has a meltdown, the kid's probably hungry, right? And when we're adults, we forget just how important it is to feed ourselves properly. How many adults are walking around underfed, underrested, and overstimulated? How many more fights are you getting into with your partner because you're hungry?

11:17Tiffany Aliche:How less productive are you at work because you forgot to pack your snacks? Hunger plus exhaustion just equals worse decisions, worse financial decisions, right? Worse career decisions, interpersonal relationship decisions. So we have to treat food, water, and rest as non-negotiables. And the easiest way that I think you can immediately start doing this is packing snacks. So I'm going to tell you a story that changed everything for me. Last October or two Octobers ago, I was going with my friend to the pumpkin patch. We were going to get our pumpkins. We were going to take some cute photos. And most importantly, we were going to get the apple cider donuts that exist at this pumpkin patch.

11:58Tiffany Aliche:It is the thing I look forward to every year. These apple cider donuts, they're little mini donuts. They come in like packs of sticks. Oh my God. They like drizzle apple cider syrup on them. They're so fucking good. So you know what I did is I said, okay, I'm not going to have breakfast this morning because I'm going to save myself for the apple cider donuts. Okay. I usually eat breakfast at like seven or eight, but I was not meeting my friend till 11. So I get in the car, we go to the pumpkin patch. I have not eaten since really like six or 7 PM the previous night. So we get our pumpkins. It's 11, 12, 1230.

12:31Tiffany Aliche:We stand in line to get the pumpkins. It's 1230 before I have donuts. Okay. Now, before I go any further in the story, this is not a donuts are bad. This is not a, I shouldn't have donuts. There's no demonization of donuts in this story. But I decided to house six donuts at 1230 after I hadn't eaten in over 12 hours. And you know what happened? I felt like shit. And I don't mean like, I don't know, I felt bloated or I felt bad about myself for eating donuts. I literally mean like I started getting dizzy. Like I started getting dizzy. I didn't feel well. And I realized, oh, I ate one of the most sugary things, which again is fine, but I ate a very sugary thing on an empty stomach, completely empty stomach.

13:25Tiffany Aliche:And what I should have done is rather than waiting to eat and being ravenous and eating really without thinking, and then also having no protein, no fiber, no anything else with that, I could have packed myself a mozzarella string cheese. Even just so simple. I could have packed a string cheese. I could have packed a protein bar. I could have just taken a satsuma or something in my car with me. That would have been so much more helpful. And that was the day I literally realized that if I am not packing snacks for myself, if I am not parenting myself in this way, I will feel worse. I will feel dizzy.

14:05Tiffany Aliche:I will feel gross. I will feel dehydrated because I don't have my water. So before you go to work, before you go and run a bunch of errands, before you think, oh my gosh, I got to do all these things today, you need to pack your snacks. Okay? You need to think about what your mom bag would have, except you're both the mom and the kid. Planning low effort food for busy days is the best thing you can do to feel prepared. This is going to allow you to make better decisions because you're not ravenous, you're not cranky, your blood sugar's not low, right? This isn't being high maintenance. This is being prepared.

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15:19Tiffany Aliche:This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've been using Squarespace for so long, you're probably sick of me talking about it, but it's because it's one of the best tools that you can use to grow a business, to be a freelancer, because you need a beautiful website. And that's where Squarespace comes in. One of my favorite parts about Squarespace is that they make it really, really easy to drag and drop so that you can design a website in literally a weekend, which is what I did with my partner's website for his new business. I also use Squarespace to help him be able to process payments within the platform so you're not spending money on an additional payment platform.

15:52Tiffany Aliche:We love Squarespace at Financial Feminist and you'll love them too. Whether you're just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace is your best friend. They're going to give you everything you need to claim your domain, to showcase your offerings, to grow your brand and get paid all in one place. And you can buy domains in Squarespace too. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod for a free trial to check it out. And when you're ready to launch, you can use offer code ffpod to save 10 % off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Squarespace.com slash ffpod.

16:25the second thing I need to tell you think about the way we settle kids down for bed at night

16:34Tiffany Aliche:they have typically a set bedtime and then we work back from there they maybe get a bath they curl up into bed they get a bedtime story right especially younger kids why do we do this for kids? Well, because routines are important. Routines mean safety. Routines are predictable. And the entire first part of the day may have been very unpredictable, right? They may have had an incident at daycare. They may have taken a test at school. The reason we provide them a safe morning and nighttime routine is so that they have structure to their day, that it's easier to wind down before bed or wind up before your day.

17:20Tiffany Aliche:This is very intentional. We do these routines on purpose, right? Talk to any parent who has a normal nighttime routine with their kids and then doesn't do it one night. It's chaos, right? I have friends who have kids and they talk to me about like traveling with their kids and even just going to like a time zone that's two hours ahead screws up their entire kid's schedule, especially younger kids. Like it screws up everything. So why do we think we're any different? Like, yeah, we're more resilient than young children, absolutely. And we have better, in theory, regulation tools than young kids do, especially with our emotions.

17:55Tiffany Aliche:But these routines exist for a reason. And you don't need a perfect routine, but you just need a minimum viable day, okay? Or a minimum viable process. When I am treating myself like someone to take care of, I make sure that I am eating well, I eat a good meal before bed, I wind down before bed, I'm not on a screen right, right, right before bed, right? I tuck myself in and I read my book and I have my little water bottle by my bed and I drift off into deeper sleep than I normally do. Like, that is the power of this. So you can't say, I want to sleep better or I want to be better at my relationships or I want to enjoy my own time more and then not think about winding down and making that a consistent part of your life.

18:55Motivation is unreliable.

18:57Tiffany Aliche:Expecting yourself to just feel motivated, to feel like, oh, I can do this today. That's unreliable. That comes and goes. Structure, routine, that is scalable. One of my favorite things we've ever heard on this show was our previous guest, Amanda Goetz. She has this great part of the episode, and we will link it in the show notes. Please go listen to it, about building transitions into your day. So she was discussing how if she's in CEO mode, it's very hard for her to then go into parenting. Because of course, it is two kind of different parts of yourself. It's two very different parts of your day.

19:36Tiffany Aliche:Very similar to, okay, I'm done at work and now I'm going to go work out. It's hard to make that transition into the day. It's hard to make that transition into another moment in your day. And she has this beautiful practice of routine. So I believe one of the things she does is that before she becomes a mom, and I'm putting that in quotes, she shuts her laptop. She goes and takes a half hour bath. That is her resettling time to show up as a parent, to transition out of like corporate CEO power mode and into parenting. And I loved that. Find these transitions in your day. find these ways that as children felt grounding that we can emulate for ourselves now.

20:24Tiffany Aliche:The third thing. Oh, I've been wanting to talk about this for a really long time. I have this theory that a lot of the things that we get told are crazy or woo-woo are actually A, feminine things that a lot of women feel to be true, but like patriarchy doesn't, So then they say it's not real. And two, a lot of the things we consider to be like crazy are things like insane people do. One, an example of the first is like astrology, right? Or like tarot. And if you're a cerebral person, you can believe these don't work. That's fine. There are so many people, and especially women, who use these as really great tools in their life.

21:06Tiffany Aliche:They don't use it to predict the future. They don't use it to make the biggest life decisions, but it is a tool. And I think a perfect example for the second is talking to yourself. And I both literally mean in your head, but also out loud. Out loud talking to yourself. Right? That gets labeled crazy. If you do that in front of anybody, they're going to look at you like, who is this fucking person? I love it. I think it's such a useful tool, especially for regulation. Okay. And there is this myth that harsh self-talk equals accountability, right? That when we speak to ourselves, it must be intense and it must be hypervigilant and it must be disciplined, right?

21:53Tiffany Aliche:And again, I don't mean like a good definition of discipline. I mean the like patriarchal version a discipline, right? If shame works, it would have worked by now. You've heard me say that many times on the show, but I'm going to keep saying it. If shame worked, it would have worked by now. If shame works, it would have worked by now. And when we think about talking to ourselves, which we all do, we might not do it out loud, but we all do it internally. If the only message you are sharing with yourself is messages of cruelty, you are not somebody that you can rely on. You are not somebody who is going to feel safe in their own brain, in their own body.

22:37Tiffany Aliche:How tragic is it that most women do not feel safe in their own brains, in their own bodies? Like really, that's what all of this episode today is about, is how do we create safety within your own brain, in your own body? Like how do we lovingly treat the loudest, most joyful parts of ourselves, which often manifest as children, how do we treat those with the utmost respect and kindness? A couple months ago, I woke up and I didn't want to make myself breakfast. I just, I didn't want to. Like the voice in my head was like a four-year-old kid going, I don't want to do this. Like I just didn't have the energy and I think I was on my period.

23:16Tiffany Aliche:And I was just like, I didn't want to, I didn't want to make myself breakfast. But the adult version of me knew that I needed breakfast. I knew that I needed to eat, and I knew that I was probably cranky because I was hungry. And I knew that even though I had to put in this effort, which again was like minimal effort, but I just didn't feel like it. I knew if I put in this effort, I needed protein, I needed nutrition, I needed to take care of myself. So out loud what I did, and again, this might be a little uncomfortable to hear. This is very vulnerable, but this is what I, this is what I did.

23:48I know you're really tired. I know.

23:50Tiffany Aliche:I know you're really tired and you're really sleepy and you don't want to do this, but this is going to make us feel better. We're going to do this. Okay. We're going to pull out the spinach. We're going to get spinach in our hand. We're going to put it in the jar. Nice job. Yes. There we go. Okay. We're going to need half a banana because we got to make our smoothie that we make every morning. Okay. Half a banana. We're going to break open half the banana. We're going to put that in there. Great. We did it. Okay. We have three more steps to go. And then I just kept talking to myself like that.

24:15Tiffany Aliche:I acknowledged when I did something good, even if it was so minor, and I just kept going. I talked out loud to myself. I find that this self-talk, especially the external, the out loud self-talk, is the most helpful tool I have when I am feeling emotionally overwhelmed. When I feel emotionally overwhelmed, I just want somebody to come and hold me, right? I just want somebody to hold me and somebody to tell me it's going to be okay. Often that is not available to me. Or I cannot rely on other people to provide that for me because they're dealing with their own lives or they're not even like physically there or they're not going to give me exactly what I need in that moment.

25:03Tiffany Aliche:So instead, I give myself exactly what I need in that moment. I put my hand on my chest and I put my other hand on my belly and I tell myself, this is really hard. This is really scary. This is really hard. No wonder you're overwhelmed or no wonder you're upset or no wonder you're mad. No wonder you're really angry. But I am here. I'm not going anywhere. You cannot lose me. I love you. And we're going to figure this out together. You're okay. You're safe. and we're going to figure this out together. And I know what you're thinking. If you've never done this, even me saying this sounds insane, right?