Sick of shame sabotaging your fundraising? 😣 Turns out our money baggage builds invisible barriers between us and the resources we need. But together with my soul sister Shulamit Ber Levtov, we’re busting through old stories to unlock flow! 💸
In this week’s episode, Shula and I get real about how oppressive systems and early traumas wire our minds for lack – and why fixing feelings is the fast track to funding. We explore simple but powerful practices like self-compassion, boundary setting, and rewriting scarcity scripts that help shift stuck energy inside and out.
The truth that transformed my money journey? Healing shame and embracing our worthiness is an inside job, but community makes it possible. So if pesky inner blocks have you chasing (not attracting) dollars, join us! With compassion and clarity, we can rewrite old narratives into sources of strength for serving true abundance. 💗
Now let’s drop faulty core beliefs to unlock core purpose! Hit play as Shula schools me on reconciling mind, body and money for good! 🎧
Important Links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shulamitberlevtov/
https://www.instagram.com/the_entrepreneurs_therapist/?hl=en
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners. It’s Rhea Wong with you once again, with Nonprofit Lowdown. Today I am speaking with my friend Shula McBurr Levtov, and we are talking about No More Money Shame. Shula is the Entrepreneur’s Therapist, and I’m so excited to talk to her because I met her through a course I’m doing called The Trauma of Money.
Shula, welcome to the show. Thanks, Rhea. Happy to be here. So before we jump into all the questions that we have about money shame, tell us a little bit about yourself and your practice.
SHULAMIT 00:42
Sure. As you said, I’m the entrepreneur’s therapist. So that means that I work one to one with women entrepreneurs to support their mental and emotional wellbeing as business owners in an era of relentless stressors that makes you want to lose your crap on the daily.
Because running your own business or being self employed, being a consultant is an emotional roller coaster, never more so than now. And. When you think about this and our relationship with money, because we’re earning our own money, it can be even more of a rollercoaster. It’s a very intense, emotional, and demand demanding experience.
And I find people benefit from support. And that’s why I do this work for sure.
RHEA 01:24
And even though the folks who listened to this podcast are certainly not. Entrepreneurs in the way that you’re talking about, I would say social entrepreneurs and they’re running nonprofits. So very much running.
SHULAMIT 01:37
Yes, exactly.
Leaders, people who are responsible at the head of and responsible for the wellbeing of any organization, anybody in a kind of leadership position. For example, if you’re the ed of a nonprofit, you’re not necessarily self employed exactly, but you are. You’re not necessarily the direct fundraiser, but you are co responsible for bringing the money in for the organization.
RHEA 2:04
And in my opinion, that’s a self employed as it gets, think everyone was responsible for bringing in the money, but that is a whole separate. Yes. So let’s just jump into it because the title of this webinar is no more money shame. And can you talk us through where does the shame come from?
Because in my work, I know people have lots of. Feelings about money, we make money mean so much to make it mean survival, power, prestige, control. You name it, I’ve seen it. Where does the concept of shame come up?
SHULAMIT 2:31
I’m just considering where to start because it is such a big, wide ranging, as you’ve pointed out, wide ranging topic and phenomena. and I guess I’ll start with the trauma of money approach, which you are familiar with. Also, one of the precepts of the trauma of money or one of the assumptions is that living under capitalism is traumatizing because.
Under capitalism safety and self worth are directly related to money and constantly under attack when we live in a world where money is everything. And so when your money is threatened. Your sense of safety and self worth is threatened, even when it’s not the actual having of the money, but rather your money status, let’s say in quotation marks is attacked, then your sense of safety and self worth are attacked.
It goes much deeper than that, but I would start there.
RHEA 3:33
So let’s just jump one level down, because I know lots of folks who listen to the podcast are women and women of color. And so how does being a woman of color further muddy the waters of shame and relationship to money?
SHULAMIT 03:45
I would actually take this a layer up.
I wouldn’t say down. I would say up because it’s a, when we think about what I just said, if we think of things in terms of a big umbrella, like money, And shame and self worth and safety, I would see as under here, because bigger than that are all the oppressive systems of capitalism of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism.
And if you don’t conform in any number of ways. And this is the whole umbrella. This is the big picture thing. If you don’t conform in any of those ways that are outlined as having value and privilege under white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, then you, again, your safety and your worth as a human are attacked.
And so as a woman of color, I would say, I have white proximity to white privilege. I’m Jewish. So I have white skin privilege, I pass. So I’m speaking from like the intersection of those, but I obviously don’t have brown skin. So I obviously don’t bump into this situation. So I’m only speaking from an analysis and not from lived experience.
And to come back to this, I would say that when you ask me about a woman of color, the very fact that you don’t conform, not because you choose not to conform, but because the systems have defined conformity and you’re not in there. That’s traumatizing as well. It’s a direct, you’re devalued as a human.
and your literal lives are threatened, right? That’s your safety, your survival. So that’s traumatizing as well. And when you’re in this kind of safety mode that approach can impact your relationship with all kinds of things, not just The systems of oppression in which we live, but your relationship with money and with your beloveds and, all across the board.
RHEA 05:39
Yeah. Where did it even begin? So one of the things that really blew my mind when we started money training was, this idea that, oh we just need to teach people about financial literacy. Oh, and they’ll, then they’ll have different behaviors around money. And what was interesting to me and what I did not fully appreciate until I started this course and talking to others is the ways in which the trauma that we experience either under these oppressed systems or intergenerationally, epigenetically, or systemically or relationally impact our behaviors.
So for example, being a shopaholic would be a good example, right? As a survival mechanism to the oppression that you’ve experienced, so I just wondered if you wanted to add anything there because to me that was a yes.
SHULAMIT 06:32
Yeah. So I should contextualize this a little bit to say that before I worked exclusively with entrepreneurs, I was a trauma therapist.
So I’m trained and experienced in treating trauma. My awareness of how trauma comes into play is rooted in that training and experience. And again living under white supremacist patriarchal capitalism puts us in this Fear slash safety mode, like my number one priority.
And it’s a very narrow tunnel when you’re in this fear mode, your very narrow tunnel is focused on immediate wellbeing and immediate safety on an emotional level where you might not actually be under threat for your life, but your nervous system, your emotions, the distress is so intense. Just living on it like nothing bad has to happen to you as a person of color, especially a woman of color in the everyday world for your distress to be through the roof already just because of the way the world is.
So you come home and you’re like, I can’t even. ANd you don’t necessarily have a range of skills or sufficient access to privilege and resources to make choices that might be more supportive longer term of your organism. So it’s a very narrow, it’s what have I got at hand now what’s available to me, and some for some people it’s substances, and for some people it’s behaviors that change the hormonal.
Emotional experience in your body. So that at least what you’re feeling now is not what you were feeling before, which was deeply unbearable. And so like shopping gives you a dopamine hit and that can help you feel better. Consuming alcohol, smoking a joint, like all of those things are totally legitimate and powerful ways to shift the state of your nervous system so that you are no longer.
Feeling what you were feeling before that was so distressing, and I cannot emphasize that while from the outside, they might look. eSpecially a lot of people in privilege who don’t understand will look at people who don’t have privilege and be like, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Why are they doing that? It’s because it’s the only option and it’s the most brilliant option and it’s the most powerful option in that narrow tunnel that in which they are. Confined by the nature of the world in which we live and the limited access to privilege, which they have, I don’t know if this is responding in any way, but that’s where it’s taking me.
RHEA 08:54
Yeah, totally. And the other thing is, I think it’s really linked to shame as well, because if you are practicing these sort of survival behaviors in the moment, and then once you come out of it, and you’re like, Oh I did that today. Why did I do that? I’m bad with money, right? It just reinforces this.
Shame loop that you have, and this story that is disempowering that you tell yourself about. They’re right. I’m not good with money. I’m, I do all these self defeating things. I’m a bad person, et cetera, et cetera.
SHULAMIT 09:23
Yeah. So this is where fault tolerance, or we could call it self kindness or self compassion that when we come out of it, like you say, we come out of the tunnel and we’re back to the wider vision, we’re more resourced in one way or another to be able to say, so with trauma of money, there’s the two aspects, right?
There’s a reducing shame and increasing discernment. Okay. So you come out of the tunnel and you’re starting to shit on yourself, to shame yourself to engage your discernment and go wait a minute, whose shame is this? And that’s a really powerful trauma of money move. Whose shame is this? And to look at, okay, sure, I’m feeling shame in the moment.
Something in me is a part of me is feeling shame. And maybe there’s also a part of me that’s feeling sadness because my resources are so limited. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s feeling anger at the systems that have limited my resources and my possibilities. And that deplete me on a daily basis, right?
I’m actually just going to pause and take a moment. And folks listening along, if you’re feeling activated, you might want to do this as well to place your hand on your heart space and take a breath, which I’m going to do
because the emotions are coming for me. I’m just especially feeling the anger. And this is, I’m demonstrating now a little bit of the discernment process that a person might learn to go through with themselves when they come out of the fog and into the present moment and into relationship with themselves and start shaming themselves. so folks who maybe want to exercise choice, who maybe want to check in with their capacity to hear something that might. Resonate with their personal experience in a way that might be distressing for them. I’m not going to go into details, but I am going to refer to some things.
And so I’m going to offer folks a moment to consider if they want to continue listening or come back and I’m going to take a breath.
So I’m thinking of survivors of child sexual abuse and even of sexual assault, adult women or folks of any sort who experienced sexual assault. who hold shame around it. And part of the work in the recovery is to recognize that it’s not our shame, actually, it’s the shame of the perpetrator. But because we live in a society where it’s supposed to be secret, and that we’re vilified when as people, victims, in quotation marks, people who’ve experienced harm, name the harm that has occurred to us and name the person who caused the harm, we are vilified for rocking the boat.
We ruined his life. We’ve ruined the family. Now we can’t have family dinners anymore because Uncle Bob isn’t welcome and now it’s a whole big thing about who’s coming and who isn’t coming, right? And you’re where if you had just shut your mouth everybody else would be happy but in that situation the willingness to stand up and to say actually it’s not my shame and I’m not ashamed and this is what happened and I’m naming the forces That cause harm in this situation, bringing this back to money right to stand up and name the forces that are causing the harm to be the squeaky wheel to be the person who disrupts other folks and their complacency.
This is part of the work of trauma of money, we may not choose to necessarily do so publicly but we can certainly rise up at our own inner dinner party and say, No, this is not my shame. I’m feeling shame. I’m having a, an experience of shame, but it does not belong to me. The wrongness here, I’m not wrong.
The systems are wrong, the banking is wrong. The credit structure is wrong. The capitalist system is wrong. That’s the wrongness. The wrongness is not in me. It’s out there.
RHEA 13:00
That’s so powerful, Shula. And I love the inner dinner party. I think that’s a really powerful pool. What’s occurring to me, though, is it’s really resonating with me.
And I think there is this tension of understanding the ways in which exploitative capitalism hurts and traumatizes us and having to operate within that system, right? So for folks out there having a fundraise, that often means, entering into predominantly white spaces and feeling. Aggression, microaggression or macroaggression.
Yes. Yes. Against their personhood. So how would you recommend that folks reconcile it? Because what I see is a very high level of folks of color, and particularly women of color, just burning out in the field. Yeah. At the same time that we need them in the field to be able to do the important work.
So what do we do?
SHULAMIT 13:54
All I can talk about, I have no idea what to say to a woman of color. I really don’t. I do, but I don’t. You know what I’m saying? One on one, if I had a friend and they were talking to me about it, I would totally know how to be a supportive listener to them. As a professional, I think it’s like way out of my lane to speak to the experience of women of color.
So I’m going to take a step back from that and say what as a person, a mental health professional who works with folks who come into relationship with systems of oppression. I think first and foremost, like folks end up at my door thinking that there’s something wrong with them, that I shouldn’t burn out.
I shouldn’t be burnt out. I’m smart. I’m capable. I’m competent. I’m educated. I know how to do this. What is the matter with me? I shouldn’t be feeling this way. And I think again, like we talked about with the Tom approach of increasing, decreasing shame and increasing discernment really. Identifying what are the systems at play and what are they, what impact are they having on me so that I can understand that what I’m feeling is a normal in quotation marks reaction to an abnormal situation.
Again, what’s wrong is out there, what’s wrong is not with me. it’s very easy to say, but it’s hard to do without company because of the level of emotional distress that folks feel when they are aggressed in that way in the world. and I would also say community is enormously important because you and me alone in a box just reproduces the individualistic harms can.
Obviously our relationship would be different, but the concept of healing in a box by yourself with one other person is deeply problematic. And so I would say. Women of color who are involved in fundraising for nonprofits need to get with other women of color who are fundraising for nonprofits, because then you can also see and feel with the whole of you when you’re in a room of your peers, and everybody in the room is going fucking right. Me too. And that’s bullshit, There’s something that happens in your body when you are even if it’s a flat room and it’s a zoom room, but even more so in a physical room to see yourself. In the folks around you and to have their resonance with you, like the healing power of that is so vital.
And I would, those are like the two places. The other thing I would mention is I think I have his name, right? His name is Edgar Villanueva and he has two great books. it’s called decolonizing wealth and is a book and a workbook. and I would recommend reading his because he shares his experience. He’s an Espanol hablante brown man in the U. S. So it’s not exactly what you’re asking about, but his experience I think will be enough of a validating experience for people of color navigating these spaces, the philanthropic and fundraising nonprofit spaces to get some validation from that.
RHEA 16:50
I had the experience and I know folks who are colleagues have had the experience of having situations where, maybe it’s someone who is like. Like there is a microaggression situation happening here. And I think there’s this deep fatigue of Oh my God is it up to me to have to educate this person?
And I think that’s such a deep fatigue around Yes. The emotional labor of having to write the wrongs of white supremacy and exploitative capitalism. So any strategies that you can recommend for folks who are, may find themselves in this situation? I don’t want to have to be responsible for it.
SHULAMIT 17:30
It’s complicated. It depends on who this person is to you and what your intention is for the relationship. I think when you’re fundraising and this is a potential donor, it changes the dynamics.
I think you have a wide range of choices. It helps, again, to come back to this community, when you know you’re going to encounter somebody who’s consistently problematic, to role play it with a peer. How am I going to handle this? You, I’m sure you’ve seen this person around if this is like in this particular scenario, you’ve seen them at a number of Other events, you know how they behave and you can pretty much predict what they’re going to say and do.
And so you can role play it with somebody so that you, there’s nothing like the power of practice and to be able to role play it with a peer who gets where you’re coming from. This is the real benefit of what we call in the online business world, a biz bestie. In this case, it would be your nonprofit ed or fundraising bestie where you and they.
Are on the phone or on Voxer or whatever to one another regularly around what it’s like to be doing this work. And so you can prep with one another before you come into the situation. yOu might decide that you want to walk away in the moment. If you haven’t had a chance to rehearse, it’s perfectly legitimate to say, excuse me, please.
And just walk, just say, I’m sorry, excuse me. You don’t even, I’m sorry. It’s like a reflex. I have, you don’t even have to apologize. You can just say, excuse me. I need to attend to something. And what you’re going to be attending to is yourself, right? I need to attend to something and you walk away and go to the bathroom and do whatever it is you need to do to be able to continue on with the evening.
Another idea that I want to throw out, which is I feel very iffy about this because it is so nuanced and requires support again at least one on one, but also possibly from community is this idea of plenty, Lack of anything, whether perceived or real, and I put real in quotation marks because real is even a very nuanced, real scarcity is very nuanced.
Scarcity reads in our system like a threat to our existence. And so in the nonprofit sector where I have, I worked years and years ago I was not in the fundraising capacity, but I’m familiar with the context. Is always, there’s never enough money. It’s always having to do more with less. It’s always having to like.
put something together with spit and Kleenex and make do. And yet we live in a world where there is, especially those of us, like I’ve lived in poverty other times in my life. And I still my annual income is around 30, 000 Canadian dollars. So that’s within the poverty line in Canada.
And yet those of us who are, have had to survive are enormously creative. And that’s the case, I think, for folks in nonprofits as well, that we have an abundance of creativity, an abundance of community, an abundance of capacity beginning to think when we’re face to face with this person who’s maybe a donor, that this is not the only donor in the world.
That there are other donors and that I can cultivate in my sense of myself somehow that there is plenty. Then it reduces the stakes around the relationship with this person and makes it maybe possible for you to have a little more breathing space around how confrontational you want to be or not.
Because if at some point you decide you do want to say, Hey, that’s not cool. And I’m just walking away from this conversation. Which is different from excuse me I want to attend to myself, which is like you’re not calling anything out you’re just leaving for your own safety. You can also say, that’s not cool, or that remark is problematic, or I don’t want to engage in this conversation further because of the harm that it’s causing, which is much more calling out it’s easier to do that if you have a sense that this is not the only donor in the world.
RHEA 21:15
Yeah, actually, I just want to underline that and double click and highlight for everybody, because I like to say, not all money is good money, right? And I think we get into this sort of survival mode when we believe that we have no choice. So the truth of the matter is, especially for those of us living in the U.S., we are living in the richest time in human history. There is enough money out there and there are other donors out there. So if you’re meeting with a donor who really is not aligned with you, who is not a partner who makes you feel bad, you can bless the release. There’s no world in which you have to, that you are obligated to experience and put up and tolerate harm and pain.
SHULAMIT 21:56
I agree. There is no world in which you have to experience pain and harm.
RHEA 22:01
Shula, this is so deep. I’m loving this so much. So let’s talk a little bit about money, because I, know we went down a couple of rabbit holes, but I want to talk about money specifically. How might you recommend that folks start to unpack some of the shame around money and then what to do about it?
Because I think sometimes, at least for me, and I’ve been doing this for years and years, I didn’t even realize how much value I had about money. I didn’t even realize how much I had about money until I started. unPacking and be like, Whoa, this is a lot here. It’s almost like a box that you pack full of stuff and then you start to unpack.
You’re like, I didn’t know I could put all this stuff in here. So two part question, how do we start to unpack it? And then what do we do?
SHULAMIT 22:41
Sure. sHame is one of the most difficult emotions to work with. And it’s one of the ones that comes up most around money, I would say, because of the context that we referred to earlier.
And so the first, the very first step I would say is to develop some capacity around self companionship. So like I demonstrated earlier, this sense of noticing that something in me is having a shame experience right now, and I can be in relationship with that, what will often happen is that and you could even experiment with this now, when you say to yourself, I’m ashamed.
And notice what happens in your mind and body. When you say I’m ashamed and I can feel like a kind of a squidgy kind of slimy feeling when I say that to myself in that way. And then when I’m saying I’m noticing something in me is feeling ashamed. And right away, even as I said, I mean, I’ve been practicing this since 2009 both supporting people in this work and using this work as a lay practice.
To support myself, just saying it now, I feel like tingly around my lips and a little moist around my eyes because I’m feeling some tenderness toward myself now toward this part of me that is feeling shame. And so that capacity that skill to accompany yourself can then. Be the foundation on which you begin to build this unpacking process and the single most powerful thing that I have experienced and that I would recommend for folks in my own money journey is to have again about a bestie, a money bestie. for me, I went through trauma of money a number of years ago. There was a fellow therapist in the program. She’s local to me. In the same province and we got on Voxer right away and literally every single day talk to one another about money and we bring our most difficult, most shameful, most squidgy, most whatever you want to call them moments to one another.
There are times when I’ve brought this to this person with my heart pounding and my mouth dry. But because we were committed to shedding light, like a compassionate, warm, to bathe in light, our money experiences, like sharing it with her and having her say to me yeah, and you can be trusted with money.
Which is a line from the trauma of money, right? And we just repeat back and forth to one another. You can be trusted with money. Yeah. I get how that could be difficult. You can be trusted with money. I get how that could be difficult. The system is fucked and it’s not your fault and you can be trusted with money.
To me, shining light on it that way with a compassionate listener, whether it’s a trained professional or a peer you trust is the single most powerful tool we have for beginning to unpack our money shame.
RHEA 25:32
I love that so much, it’s funny as you’re talking I do a lot around money mindset because obviously part of fundraising is you have to talk about money and a lot of times I’ll have folks that I’m training will say things like I just need to get over it.
And even like that phrasing. Hurts me because it’s like continuation of the violence against self like yes, oh my emotions don’t matter this trauma I’ve experienced as a matter. I just need to suck it up and get on with it And so I love this approach of self compassion and in really feeling what’s in your body I think the other thing that I’d love to talk about as well is Practice of feeling in your body because for a long time.
I just thought my body was a fancy insane my brain I was like, it’s all about my brain And I didn’t realize until I started doing somatic coaching with a friend of mine that like my body actually is telling me a lot of things. I got very good at just ignoring it, especially those intuitive gut feelings.
I think we all have that thing of Oh, I just knew it in my gut. But we’re, we tend to be very good at overriding our gut because we’re like, it’s all about the brain. So I’m wondering if you could walk us through one of the practices that you. Sure. For folks listening who might want to practice this on their own.
SHULAMIT 26:48
Yeah. So I’ll say first like you, I was all in my head. My childhood was a situation where I had to use my head. The tool I had at my disposal was my head my brain and so I used it to figure out how to navigate very difficult circumstances. And so I was always the one in the room who when people would talk about body I’d be like body what body obviously when I have a toothache I feel that obviously when something but beyond that my like people would talk about relating to and sensing into and I’m like.
What even are you talking about? Okay. So if that’s your situation, I totally see you. And I want to say, first of all, that so much of this is easier said than done. It’s an experiential process and it helps to have a coach, whether it’s a therapist, a trained somatic therapist, or a somatic coach or a somatic body worker who can
help you cultivate the relationship with the data that’s there in your body. what I would invite as a first skill is the practice of noticing and you’ll remember that I mentioned about I’m noticing something in me is feeling shame or is having a shame experience that noticing practice.
Which is like taking an inventory, it’s without the discursive or evaluating process on top of it. For example, a person might say, I feel anxious, that’s discursive and evaluating. What we’re looking for is, I’m noticing something in my stomach is feeling, actually I don’t, right now I’m just going with what I’m having in my own body as a way of, Demonstrating because there was, I wasn’t noticing anything in my belly, but I sure noticed a fluttery feeling in my chest as I started to get concerned about doing this fast enough for the purpose of what we’re doing here today.
when I first was noticing sensory data in my body, there wasn’t anything coming and I started to get worked up about, oh my goodness, I have to do this fast enough here. And then. Came the fluttery sensation in my chest. And that’s a description. So I’m using descriptive words to support me in coming into contact with what’s happening here.
And when you come into contact in a descriptive and noticing kind of way that can support what’s there in unfolding and providing you with what it knows about your experience with the granularity like anxious, especially if you’re an anxious person. It’s just, there’s no granularity to that it’s just I’m anxious all the time I’m asleep anxious I’m awake anxious it’s anxious, and we can get really.
Intimate with the nuances of our sensory experience that give us detailed information. But again, it’s a practice. And it’s exceptionally hard to do when you’re on your own because isolation is a, it registers can register as a threat in your physical body. And so just having a companion, a friend who can sit with you, doesn’t even have to guide you, but just a friendly presence while you practice, Oh, I’m just noticing what’s happening in my body right now.
I’m sitting in a harder chair and I had hip replacement surgery last year and I’m noticing a little bit of sensation there in my right hip. and the discursive might be something’s wrong, right? And there is a part of me that is concerned that maybe something’s wrong, but again, I’m noticing the territory.
So this noticing is a version of self compassion.
RHEA 30:05
And then, sorry to interrupt you, but Nope, go ahead. When we did this practice, the thing that I also noticed is that in closing it, you thanked your boss. Yes. And I thought that was so powerful because so often we don’t express gratitude for our bodies.
We only notice our bodies when something goes wrong, but we often don’t acknowledge when things are going right or when we give it, or if it’s giving me information, I’m like, shut up body. Yes, that’s right. I don’t want to hear that. Yeah. So how might we end this practice
SHULAMIT 30:35
Sure. So again, to be straight up, not every time are you going to feel any kind of gratitude to what comes, it might be difficult to hear what comes.
And so you want to check first, I would invite you to check first. Do I even feel gratitude? And you may not feel gratitude. And so you may not feel like thanking. You may want to simply acknowledge what came to say, I’m acknowledging that all this stuff came. The next little step toward gratitude if you want to be grateful, but still aren’t feeling grateful is to say I appreciate.
That they were here that they came forward, they being the parts, the data, the information I’m appreciating that they took the time to come. You might not appreciate what they told you, but you can stay at the level of appreciating that they came. And you may find that after those two steps of acknowledging and appreciating that you might feel a little bit of warmth as well and then if the warmth comes you could be like oh yeah and I guess I am grateful.
For what they shared with me, because it was important information. Not that I like it necessarily, but because it was important. So you’ll find with me, if you talk to me at length, there’s always a nuance around things because it’s important not to force to be like, Oh yes, I should be grateful. If you’re not grateful, don’t be grateful.
Yeah, no problem. Just acknowledge that’s okay.
RHEA 31:56
And I will say, having done this practice with you, I found that even saying that things out loud, I’m feeling it in my body. Really? Oh, yeah. Okay. Acknowledge it and then I didn’t have to fold it like in my shoulder. Yeah. Yeah.
SHULAMIT 32:11
Yeah. Yeah.
RHEA 32:11
Yes. Okay. We have a couple of questions coming in and then we will wrap it up.
But Shula, we can talk to you forever. But Shay has a great question.
SHAY 32:20
I’m just wondering, especially because it can be such a sensitive topic. If we do start recognizing and noticing money shame in others that have a direct impact on our fundraising abilities and our, our budgeting overall for our nonprofits.
Such as board members. How do we navigate that?
SHULAMIT 32:50
I love this question Shay And I would say not to be beating the drum for the trauma of money program But I would really recommend it because if as an organization The folks there can be trained in this approach and then accept that as a community As an organization, we together are going to approach things in this way.
It can make it more acceptable to be more direct around things like shame. But let’s say that’s not the case, and let’s say that you’re in a board meeting and something comes up and you notice somebody’s having a, a shame attack, or that shame is present. We don’t have to use the word shame because sometimes that just like whoa to be seen for your shame can make you even can elicit even more feelings of shame.
But we can say something like, I’m noticing this is a tender moment, or I’m noticing there are emotions here around this. And then you can invite folks to in the trauma of money and also in trauma work. Generally, we have the concept of the window of resilience or the window of tolerance.
It’s a concept of capacity. There’s an upper and a lower limit of capacity. And that when we are outside our capacity, we Our resources are then very narrow on survival and unable to take in other information. And so when a person is having a shame attack, we can assume that they’re outside their window of resilience and don’t have much capacity to really be with whatever’s happening in the moment.
So we can invite a window of resilience practice in this moment. And you’ll see that I did a couple, one was taking a breath. Another was giving myself a gentle touch. But if you. Are the kind of person and have the kind of board or you can even maybe take the risk and say, Hey, I learned this new thing.
I think it’s going to help us. It’s a somatic practice that can support us. And then you can introduce any of a number of different kind of window of resilience practices. For example, simply putting your chin, if this is accessible to you, physically to put your chin over your right shoulder, and you can invite everybody to just do this along with you to put your chin over your right shoulder and very slowly.
Moving your head from one side to the other, not only for looking like looking around the room as you do but also there’s something about this particular movement that enables the nervous system. To calm down somewhat. And then you can come back to the discussion. You can even just invite people to shake it off.
You can just I noticed there’s a lot of emotion here. Let’s just, you can invite them to stand up in their seat and shake it off. There are a number of different ways that you can help people come back into their window of resilience and then come back to the question at hand without ever naming and doing shame work with them.
But honestly, like a a more holistic approach is as an organization. To talk about, Hey we know money is a thing. We know how money affects us living in capitalist culture. And we want as an organization to at least introduce some window of resilience practices and maybe some concepts around shame and money, shame into our organization so that we can relate to one another and to money and to our vision in a way that is.
Life serving that would be I think you’d get more. I was going to use a militaristic metaphor, but I’m not now and I’m struggling for a different one. It would be richer and more fulfilling to do it that way. Shay, how is that? How does that come? How does that land at your end? That feels great.
I love the approach of removing the word shame and just saying, I see this as a touchy or Heightened topic for everyone. I really love those recommendations. Thank you. You’re welcome. All right.
RHEA 36:27
All right.
We have time for one last question coming in from Holly. And so Holly is talking about negotiating salary, and I also think for fundraisers, this gets into how much do I ask and feeling like I’m going to ask low because maybe we feel like we’re not worthy of it or we’re going to get rejected or so on.
So Holly, if you want to unmute yourself and ask this very excellent question.
HOLLY 36:50
Yes, thank you. I’m so excited to have this opportunity right now as I’m applying for jobs because seller can be all over the place and fundraising and places are not are not very transparent about what they’re offering.
And so they’re wanting me to put out a range and I’m doing all the techniques. And then also around that I have some shame around that. Sometimes I’m applying for these jobs where even though I have 25 years of experience, I do not have a degree. So to me it makes me low by myself a lot of times. And so I was wondering how you navigate around that.
SHULAMIT 37:20
So I’d like to offer something and then I’m going to throw it to Rhea because I think you will have something important to say around the dynamics of nonprofits and that, the job process. So for me, what I found around questions of value and worth when we’re told, ask what you’re worth charge what you’re worth, when we’re trauma survivors.
either directly in our personal lives or when we think about it in terms of the culture in which we live, our worth and value is always under threat. And it takes a lot of work to Reconcile and heal these attacks on our worth and so yes, of course, that’s important work and it takes a long time and isn’t helpful to somebody who has to apply for a job tomorrow.
Over the long term, you might want to think about that. And in the short term, another thing to think about that is somewhat less difficult to unpack in your mind is the question of sustainability. And so I ask for what my fee requests are around sustainability. I know what it is that I need to sustain my life and my business and sustainability is a universal human principle that is, or value, we could call it or need that exists independent of time, culture.
iT’s a universal human needs sustainability. Like really life, right? It’s about sustainability is like a a euphemism for life for living, right? Who doesn’t want to live, right? Who doesn’t want life in general as a human? We all do. Plants do. Everything does. Life matters to us.
And so when we talk in the business world, we can use the word sustainability. My sustainability matters. And your sustainability matters, and this is what I’m requesting to support my sustainability. And what’s helpful for me when I have conversations with clients and they, that is to say, prospective clients, and they say, Oh I can’t afford your fees.
I say to them, sustainability really matters to me. And I’m so celebrating that, what matters to you for sustainability and where you’re. boundaries are around sustainability. And I totally celebrate that. You’re clear about that. And let me connect you with folks whose sustainability needs might be more in line with yours.
And it’s a whole de stigmatizing conversation around money. So with salary stuff, if you can come to some place of feeling in right relationship with issues of sustainability for yourself. And that and tie that to a number that feels good for your sustainability, right? Like in integrity for you, then you can come from this place of yeah, sustainability matters.
I know it matters to me and I know it matters to this agency. And if they decline my salary request, I can it, of course, there’s the whole thing of I didn’t get the job. Which in some cases can be very real, because it means you don’t have money to pay your bills. But putting that aside and speaking only about this issue around salary expectations, we can then say to ourselves, it’s not that I asked too much, it’s that my sustained my strategy for sustainability.
Does not is not a good fit with their strategy for sustainability. And I’m going to find an organization where there’s a better match around our sustainability strategies. And that doesn’t make my sustainability strategy wrong. It just means that there’s not a good fit with this organization. And I’m going to look for a better fit.
How’s that? How’s that go over? Fantastic. Yes. I love looking at it from that approach. Yes. Thank you. And did you want to say something about nonprofits and salary transparency and all that kind of stuff. I do
RHEA 41:03
Thank you so much. So I will say here in New York City. They are required to put salary on the job description, and I hope that is a trend that other folks, other states adopt.
That was a beautiful answer. My answer is a little less. I would say. Generous in the sense that a couple of things I think always be a buyer. So Holly, in your case, if you’re doing development, everyone is a development person. So you’re actually in the driver’s seat on this one, especially with 25 years of experience.
And then the other thing I would offer is I have a strategy called the what would chat do strategy. So Oftentimes, I, oh, Chad, yeah, Chad being the, mediocre white man who sails upwards. Chad. So I asked myself, what would Chad do? Because I’m in a sense, borrowing that level of confidence. And I will just say, when I was running a nonprofit, it was routinely white men who would ask.
I just thought, what would Chad do in this situation? Holly, what I might recommend for you, and this is what I used to do when I bid out proposals, is I would put the number that I, Rhea, would charge, and then I would add 30 percent on top of it as a chat text, and send it in before I could double guess, second guess myself.
What would Chad do?
SHULAMIT 42:24
I love that. Oh, to have the confidence of a mediocre white man.
yeah, can I just say that my least favorite boss who fired me over Zoom’s name was Chad. And so now I definitely am going to do what would Chad do? I just had to interject that. Sorry. I love that.
RHEA 42:40
Don’t apologize.
What would Chad do? Because the thing is And again, taking into account all of the legacy of racism and sexism and white supremacy and patriarchy and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I also think like white men get more because they ask for, they ask bigger, they think that they’re entitled to it. So we should also feel that we’re entitled to it because what I found is that women in general are overqualified and they’re underqualified.
And the reverse is true of men, which is that they’re under qualified, but they think they’re over qualified. So let’s borrow some of that media for white man competence.
SHULAMIT 43:16
Yes, we are absolutely entitled. I would say to life and sustainability. This is our entitlement. It’s our birthright. And I, when I say sustainability, I don’t mean Rice and beans sustainability.
A rich life, a rich and satisfying thriving life that, that for sustainability. And you get to define what your own sustainability is. And Chad has his idea and she put in the chat, Chad tax. I’m all about that. Yes, I will support that. They believe that they are entitled to a certain level of sustainability.
and their sustainability is. Like all the benefits and bonuses and perks and all that stuff. It, that, that sustainability as much for them as it is for us. And we, those of us who are not mediocre white men, can get fierce about our own sustainability and say, yeah, I deserve that.
And I’m going to ask for it.
RHEA 44:05
And last thing I’ll say, to your point about abundance, We have to get ourselves out of this mind trap that a dollar for me means a dollar less for you. Like just because I make money doesn’t mean that there’s less money for you, right? And I think women get into this mindset of self sacrifice.
Okay I can’t ask for that. Or that’s too much. Or who am I to ask for such a thing? There’s a lot of money in this world. And just because you’re making money doesn’t mean that there’s less money for it. Someone else. In fact, I think that there’s more. There’s more flow. There’s more.
SHULAMIT 44:39
Yes. This comes back to the Tom principle of increasing discernment.
We are led to believe that there isn’t enough for us. Those of us who don’t have access to money and power and privilege, right? The nature of the system in which we live obscures from us what is actually there. And part of increasing discernment is to say, like you say, Rhea, there’s lots there. There is plenty.
The problem is that some people are hoarding it. Not that there is not enough.
RHEA 45:07
Yeah, it’s, I would say it’s a distribution problem. It’s not a volume problem. Shula, my friend, this has been so wonderful. I really appreciate you. I’m going to make sure to put your information in the show notes for folks who want to get in contact with you.
Are you also, do you want people to connect with you on LinkedIn? What platform? If they want more Shula in their life, how can we get more Shula?
SHULAMIT 45:25
Sure. The two platforms where I’m really active are LinkedIn and MyNameIsDistinct. You can find it very easily. then on Instagram, I’m the Entrepreneurs Therapist and those links will be in the show notes as well.
RHEA 45:37
Fabulous. Thank you, my friend. This has been a lot of fun, and I’m, I think if this is resonating with you, get in touch with Shula. You probably need a therapist. Thanks so much, everyone. Take care. If you like this and have found this to be resonating for you, please take a moment on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast and leave a review.
Thanks so much.
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