How Enneagram and Embodiment Practices Can Revolutionize Your Money Habits
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation, and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.
I wish financial literacy was taught in schools earlier on in life. I've had so many conversations with others about the deep shame and personal judgment that can arise when feeling unclear on how to navigate your money life. And how does this connect with food? Well, often the way we interact with one area of our life is the way we respond to all other areas. Have you ever noticed that when you want to eat everything you're also desiring to spend your money on things you potentially don't need? Have you ever noticed that when you're restricting your food intake you're worrying about not having enough money? Both food and money are a reflection of what's going on inside your body. Just as I talk about here that eating is a somatic practice, you can approach your relationship with money in a similar somatic way. After receiving such amazing feedback from you all on how much you enjoyed the episode on this food and money crossover I knew I needed to invite Bari Tessler onto the podcast.
Bari is a Financial Therapist, author of The Art of Money and has her M.A. in Somatic Psychology. Her work has been featured on Oprah.com, Inc.com, The Cut, Reuters Money, Nerd Wallet, The Wall Street Journal, Redbook, and MindBodyGreen. She has also been featured on the cover of Experience Life Magazine and Mindful Magazine. She has a year-long money school called The Art of Money, that is in its 11th year, and has served over 5000 people from 33 countries. We chat about body check-ins when making financial decisions, money dates, emotional awareness in managing money, the connection between Enneagram types and money habits, and practical steps to start your journey toward a healthier relationship with money. I'd love to hear your insights from this episode so email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime!
Now, welcome Bari! I am thrilled to have you here today. I feel like I have been following your work for years and years and years because I find there is such an overlap in our relationship with food and our relationship with money. And, you know, I've had a few other people come on the podcast to start talking about our relationship with money and I have found listeners really appreciating just discovering more of these crossovers. So I'm excited to hear more of your wisdom today on relationship with money and first, I'd love to hear a little bit more around your background because I know so much about your current day work, but I don't think I know much about how you got into the work that you do now.
Bari Tessler 03:22
So thank you for having me, good to be with you. My work started in my 20s. So I went to graduate school at Naropa University, which we share. I did the somatic psychology program. Back then somatic psychology and dance movement therapy were pretty much they were dual tracks, but we did all the same classes together so I say somatic psychology for simplicity. And I really thought my topics were going to be intimacy, relationships, sexuality, body, food, grief, and death. And it's not that they are not those topics and themes that we cover, but my main doorway is our relationship to money. And what happened was my student loan came due. So I did graduate school was in the mental health field for a while. Did overnight hospice care, did bereavement work, I lost four of the closest men in my life between the ages of 20 to 25. So I was doing a lot of bereavement for myself, and then supporting other folks in bereavement groups. And then it wasn't until my student loan came due in my late 20s and I realized, now how could this be? How could I complete graduate school training to be a therapist, and we never had a class on our relationship to money, let alone conversations, topics, nothing. So I didn't even understand what were my own set of money emotions, what were my own money stories? How can I help other people with their money emotions, money stories? How do I help couples not fight about money if on the surface that is a supposed reason that folks get divorce. And how do you start a private practice just and do your own bookkeeping? It just became this gaping, missing piece in my education. And I really thought I was the only one at first until I started looking around. And then I realized that most we did not receive a full financial education growing up, right, we did not learn financial literacy, we did not also learn emotional literacy growing up. That's why I went to graduate school in somatic psychology. And I really thought I was the only one who had some level of money shame, and all these other money emotions until I started looking around and realized we're never alone. And it was everyone, no matter what economic background we came from, what ethnicity, if there was religion in our lives or spirituality, I could go on and on. But most of us did not receive a complete financial literacy or emotional literacy education. And so it became my mission to merge those two. And I wound up starting a bookkeeping practice first, because I needed to learn how to do bookkeeping, because I used to throw away my bank statements in graduate school. And that was revolutionary for me, is to know, you know, know that I could do bookkeeping, because I wasn't great at math. Growing up, I had I had equated if I'm not good at math, that I can't do money or bookkeeping systems. And that's not true at all. You just need a really good teacher and hand holder and someone to sit you down and show you how to use a bookkeeping system over six months to a year unless you're someone like my husband, who could just teach himself, you know, Quicken in one evening, right? Because he's very tech savvy, right. But I needed the crying breaks and the the tissue breaks and the chocolate breaks, to learn a bookkeeping system, and then I wound up running a bookkeeping practice for other therapists and coaches and artists and contractors when I was 28 to 32. I wasn't ready to hold up my shingle as a therapist, and I didn't want to work in the mental health field anymore. And so I ran this bookkeeping business and I always say I learn more about people's relationship to money by doing their bookkeeping than I could have possibly as a therapist at that time and sitting in a room with them. I learned so much about people's habits around earning and cash flow and spending patterns, and their values and family dynamics, and on and on and on. And that was my doorway. And then eventually, I decided it was time to merge all of my previous psychotherapy and somatic training with all of these money management tools and systems I was falling in love with and created my first financial therapy methodology in 2001. And started leading that method, which is money healing, money practices, and money maps. Those are the three phases of my financial therapy method. And I started teaching it in tiny groups of 10 people in my living room over and over and over and over until it grew to 20, right, and 50 and 500, and so on, right. And so almost 25 years, but 23, 24 years now, I've been a financial therapist, and a somatic based financial therapist, and I lead most of my stuff all online, and a year long program and a mentor program and private financial therapy, and I'm the author of two books. And I'm a mom and I'm an older mom, and I was rushing. I usually don't like to rush to get to an interview, but I decided to make shrimp risotto, and I've never made risotto. And so I decided to make risotto for the first time. I thought it would be much quicker. It was like two hours and my son was coming back from soccer tryouts and I wanted to get him a good meal and he was so hungry, and he was really excited and waited for it. I kept saying here are some muffins eat something else. And he was like, no, I'm gonna wait. And usually he's a lot of critique about my cooking. Not critique but like he tells me this could be better, needs salt, needs this. This one was perfect. There was no notes. So I just came from kind of a rush but a really satisfying shrimp risotto with my teenager.
Stephanie Mara 09:11
Yeah, talk about nourishing experiences.
Bari Tessler 09:13
Yes! I'm working on a third book and, and on the Enneagram and money. So maybe we'll talk about that. I don't know if you know, the Enneagram.
Stephanie Mara 09:23
Yeah. Awesome. I'm sure there's tons of overlap with that. You know, I always get curious about how like the Enneagram or sometimes our astrology also affects our relationship with food.
How because of our blueprint, you know, how our relationship with food is affected differently. And I really hear just in your journey, how much you saw that our habits or patterns, our upbringing, and I see that with relationship with food, it all shapes our relationship with money. And so when you were talking about financial literacy, I'm curious like one, what does that mean for those who maybe aren't sure. And two, what did you find when you were practicing as a bookkeeper? Because you said, oh my gosh, I really got to start seeing what affected people's relationship with money. Or really, got to start seeing how the way we spend or the way we save started maybe informing you of something. I'm curious what little pieces of wisdom you collected during that time?
Bari Tessler 10:26
I'll make it personal for a second, and then maybe I'll get larger because my Enneagram type is a four so I do like to tell personal stories, and teachings out of that. And so for me one of the first things as I started doing my own bookkeeping practice, I had mentioned that but even just sitting down daily for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, what I now call money dates, I didn't call them money dates at the time, I just was sitting down to have a mindfulness practice with bookkeeping, because I wanted to understand my patterns and habits and, and so just sitting down every day for five minutes and entering what money came in, and where I was spending money into my QuickBooks allowed me to slow down allowed me to start to see my spending habits, you know, what was in alignment with my values? What was not, what was frivolous or unconscious spending? What was just spontaneous spending that I didn't want to change? Or where did I need to be a little more rigid or a little more, my husband calls it maximum lockdown, when we're going through a cash flow dip, you know, do we need to pull back the reins for a while? It doesn't mean forever. It doesn't mean I'll have to remove dairy forever. It's just for a period of time when you're working on an issue. Or you need to, you know, pull back the reins. So by paying attention, I was doing what I did with all my other big relationships in life. I brought awareness to it and mindfulness to this area of life first, which leads to understanding, which leads to change, right? It's so simple, but it's not so simple, right? So for me, the entrance way was the bookkeeping practice, which are the money date practice. And that's my second phase. So I don't necessarily suggest doing that first. But I learned so much, my God, I learned how I was bringing in income, I started creating what people call budgets, but I like to call them money map, I like to rename everything. If budget is a fine word for you, then use it. But for me, it does sound like a tight rigid diet, which I don't want to do. So I want a little more room, right? To play with it, to dance with it. And again, some phases, you might have to pull back the reins be more on your version of a cleanse, right? And then maybe you're bringing in more, but we need to start to see how much income does our personal financial household need? And then that can direct how much we need to bring in our businesses. So how many groups do we need to lead that year? Or how many clients do we need to have? So then personal finance and business finances can start talking to each other. I just started learning so much about my own relationship to money, my habits, my spending, where I went unconscious, where I wanted to stick my head in the sand, you know, I had to learn opposite than some other people, I had to learn how to save in my 30s. Right, other people are really good savers. And that's more of their nature. So I always like to tell the story of one of the questions I ask. My second book is all journaling questions, 200 pages of journaling questions. When I'm helping people bring more mindfulness awareness to their relationship to money, we start with family of origin, just like you do with every other big area of life and when you're going to therapy. So one of the questions I love to ask is if you had siblings, what was your role? What was your financial identity that you took on? Or that you felt was given to you or that you were rebelling against your siblings? So what role did you take on as a kid and me as the oldest I took on the I want, I have a lot of desires. I'm a spender. That's the financial identity I was given. My siblings were savers. My younger siblings, one had a bank. Same house, even same parents. And again, because of how we come in, and then also how we respond to, react to our environment, we do take on a financial identity early on. It doesn't mean we can't change. It doesn't mean we can't rewrite our stories. Of course we can. I wouldn't be doing this work if we couldn't rewrite our stories. But it wasn't for me until I started really earning well, finished graduate school, really started making money in my 30s that I was like, oh, it's time for me to learn the muscle of savings and learn how to do that. And now in my family, with my husband and my teenager, I'm known as the squirrel. I'm the one who squirrels away money. My mom probably still thinks of me as a spender or just having a lot of desires, but you can be both. We can remove the judgment and there's not one that's good or bad. They're just different parts of our nature, styles, habits, right? So I'm kind of going all over the place. But I will come back usually when I go off on a tangent, I can come back. Yeah, so coming back was first just learning my own money practice and having money days, which is just sitting down and saying, hey money, what is one next step that I can take right now on my to do list and our money to do lists, we might have them in our head, we might have them on sticky notes, I suggest writing them down, having a money journal where you can write them down. It's an ongoing list. It's a never ending until we die. But you can mark things off. That's what you want to do. So money dates can simply be five minutes of, hey money, what is one next step that I need to take right now. And then you do it. And sometimes they're easy, sometimes they're hard. Sometimes you need to put on some music and go dance around your room. You know, to get through a step. Sometimes, I mean, not sometimes I always light candles, and get out my chocolate, and have my essential oils, I like to create more of a ritual around my money dates, that is just something from my 20s from Naropa, that I realized early on, if I'm going to have a relationship to money, it needs to be steeped in all of these rituals that I love, love, love to do. So I'm always adding in the candles and the chocolate and all that. To come back, you asked me how do you define financial literacy. What a financial education is, were we taught about how to have a healthier savvy, those are some of my adjectives, mindful relationship to money early on, you know, in small increments from childhood on. Like did our parents sit us down, show us how to use a tracking or bookkeeping system? Back in the day was a manual checkbook register, or going to the bank, I mean, there's hundreds of little little steps, how to use a debit card, how to look at credit scores, how to pay your bills, to set up invoices, there's hundreds of little little steps, but we might have gotten parts or pieces from our parents or family. My son in high school as a freshman got a great personal finance course, he came home talking about compound interest and learning about investments and, you know, and some of the basics too. So that's great that things are changing. And there's now a personal finance class, there wasn't when I was growing up, there was an accounting, an accounting class. So our parents need to be teaching us some of these things. But a lot of the times they didn't learn from their parents, they're learning as adults for the very first time. So my three phase methodology is my version of financial literacy merged with emotional literacy, which is, we're going to take a holistic approach to our relationship to money, we're gonna get it on a practical level, emotional level, psychological and spiritual level. And we start with money healing first, and then we move to money practices, and then we move to money maps. And so while I have colleagues that do teach people a bookkeeping system, or get to the numbers right away, I started out with well, giving you tools, and how to work with your money emotions, first and foremost. And then we can go back to family of origin stories, to uncover our strengths, our challenges, how our money habits were formed, which ones are working, and which ones need to be changed. So for me, when people say, what is step one, I always say the body check in. That's step one. And that comes from our somatic training. And did you do the somatic program too?
Stephanie Mara 18:48
Yeah, I also got my master's degree at Naropa in somatic psychology, so yes, same thing.
Bari Tessler 18:53
So body check in for me is really step one, like when people say what is the first step on understanding my money story, my money habits, you know, or getting healthy or savvy or with my relationship to money, I always say body check in. And it's this simple tool that we all learned and practiced in graduate school. And it's simply to pause whatever you're doing, and stop. And if you want to close your eyes, you can, you don't have to. And it's asking yourself to be curious and check in with what's going on inside your body. Could be on a physical level, shoulders up, shoulders down, could be on a sensation level, heat, cold, butterflies, tightness, could be on an emotional level, which I can talk about in a moment. I always like to ask where our breath is in our body, how deep, how shallow we are. And then I always end the body check in with resourcing. It wasn't called that back in the day though, but now it is. What is one little adjustment that you can make to help you feel more presence or okayness in your body. So whether that's loosening your jaw, moving it around, lowering your shoulders and doing a little shoulder shimmy. Seeing if you can get your breath deeper in your body. Now, people might think probably not on your podcast, but like, what's the connection here to our relationship with money. For me, I invite people to do a body check in before money conversations with your spouse, before you're going to make a money decision. Small, medium or large. Before you're going to do some online shopping before before before, and then during, during, during, during in the heat of the moment. You're in the middle of the car dealership, do a body check in, you're negotiating the car price, you're working it out, do a body check in. In the middle of a conversation with your spouse, do about a check in, while you're telling your clients your fees, do a body check in. And then at the end of that discussion, or that money decision or money moment, another body check in as a way to debrief. What am I feeling now? What am I noticing now? What does this remind me of? What's the memory here? What would I do different? You know, next time I go to buy a car, it's gonna be a lot easier. Or next time I have this conversation with my spouse. Hopefully, we just had a little breakthrough, right?
Stephanie Mara 21:11
I see so many overlaps with food in there, of like, before you start eating check in, while you're eating check in, after you're done eating check in. It's all about that slowing down and checking in with yourself because your body's always giving you this feedback. Even in relationship when you're thinking about spending money, receiving money, anything with money, your body's giving you feedback around how it feels about that.
Bari Tessler 21:38
Yes. I mean, I always do share that when I was younger, I had a tendency to overeat and give myself a stomachache. And so I use the same practice to help me unravel that to help me catch it as I was going in. To help me catch it right as I was, you know, choosing what I was eating or right as I was, you know, eating too much for whatever my body was doing at that time. I use this practice to unravel that unhealthy pattern not to not enjoy food, I love enjoying food, and I love right. But if you're eating so much, you're giving yourself a stomachache. It's either what you're eating or the quantity. And so yeah, I really had to bring this practice to my relationship to food years ago. And now I support people to do that around spending and money conversations.
Stephanie Mara 22:33
What do you find that someone needs to like track when they are, like you're saying, okay, check in notice, like, hey, before you start spending, while you're spending, like, what is someone, if you could go into more details tracking when they're about to do something with money?
Bari Tessler 22:51
Again, I'm going to tell a personal story. But everyone's different. This is where it's so individual. I've never been someone to say, if our shoulders are up, it means this for everyone.
Stephanie Mara 23:02
Absolutely.
Bari Tessler 23:03
Right?
Stephanie Mara 23:03
Yep.
Bari Tessler 23:04
Never gonna hear that from me. I'm gonna say, what are you noticing in your shoulders right now. You tell me, you know, I might point it out. But I will never make an assumption or judgment, there might be one that comes up in my head. But I'm waiting to hear how the person is putting meaning to their own experience into their own story. So here's a version of what happened with me in the car dealership years ago, one of my stories. So this was before we bought a home. And the home happened in 36 hours. And I led the way with the home, right But with a car, I was still hesitant to make really fast money decisions. I didn't like them. And so you know, it was a Saturday, my son was three years old or something. And we were going to a cafe, where they had goats that you could pet and it was a new location. And right next to it was this electric car. My husband had wanted an electric car since he was a kid. So this is now 11 or 12 years ago, right? I could see the whole thing unfolding. He's like, I'm gonna go do a test drive of the car, you want to come? And and I was happy with one car but he wasn't happy because he was the one who was riding his bike in the winter and so he was ready for us to get a second car. And you know, next thing you know, we're taking a test drive, we're in the car dealership office or with a sales guy. And all of a sudden, I just noticed I was starting my breaths just started moving up my body, you know, into my throat into my head off the top of my head. And so I just knew that I needed to get to the bathroom to do a body check in because it's a great place to do a body check in. And so I said excuse me one moment I went to the bathroom and I just watched myself. I just checked in with my body, what's going on? Oh, I'm feeling a lot of nervousness and energy and my breath is moving up and I'm having a hard time catching my breath. You know, some kind of hyperventilating a bit and oh, what is this reminding me of? Oh, it's just reminding me of that I don't like to make fast money decisions. Oh, it's reminding me of that bad money memory with my parents, something that they went through. That just came up in that moment. And so I just sat and had a little chat with myself, I named the money emotion, I sat with it. And our money emotions are the same emotions that come up in every other area of life with food, but you know, shame, anger, anxiety, sadness, jealousy, regret, guilt, hope, joy. Right? The whole spectrum, right? And so just naming what the emotion is not trying to change it just sitting with it, noticing where was my body, what my body was doing? Just trying to be with myself. I always like to ask, what's the memory here? Is this reminding me of something? Am I remembering something? That's helpful for me personally? And then the question was, after I sat with it a bit, and I tried to get my breath down my body a little bit. I said, well, what do I need next? Oh, I need to do a money date in the car dealership. So I came out and I said, honey, we're gonna have a money date. And we just proceeded to have a 20, 25 minute money date. And I always like to say, bring questions. And you can make them up, you know, when I'm going into Target, I try to have a list. Because I can be like, oh, oh, shiny things, right. And so if you can leave just buying the list, then, you know, success, right? Or there may be one thing that you add, sometimes I do go into a store with a list, but in this moment, we kind of just made up the questions on the spot, like, do we have the cash flow for this expense? Yes, because we track our numbers. So that's phase two is the money practices is not just doing money dates, but also setting up a tracking system, tracking your numbers, looking at cash flow, where you're spending. And so yeah, we knew our numbers, we knew we had a cash flow, you know, for this for us to buy a car. Is this purchase in alignment with our values? Yes, it was our first electric car. And we haven't been to the gas station in 12 years, with didn't different cars, but different electric cars. And last question was, will this purchase hinder your larger goal of buying a home? And we said no. And so we went through a series of questions, and had a money day in the car dealership, and the guy the sales guy laughed, he was really cool. And like, I'll be back. And we made a decision. And you know, we wound up driving the electric leaf off the lot, and celebrating and then afterwards was a debriefing. So was that a good money decision? Are we getting the value out of this purchase? Are we enjoying it? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Would we have done that negotiation different? I don't think so. And so we just a series of questions like that. And then the next time I went to go buy an electric Fiat because that car, there was an accident, everyone was fine. It was so much easier. I was like, I got this, I'm rocking this, you know, and I went in and bought a car easily. And also, when we bought a home years later, I had that under my belt, it was like we bought this car, I know what it's like it's a bigger purchase right now, a house is the biggest, one of the biggest things you can purchase. And so but it is just slowing down in the moment, even in buying a home over 36 hours, you know, one minute, we're looking at the house, the next minute, we're in the mortgage brokers office, okay, if you're an entrepreneur, you have to provide two years of all your taxes, right, you've done a certain amount of savings, right? You need to show all of this. And then you need to make a decision really quickly. And I was able to, but I think every time you bring the body check in and mindfulness practice before, during and after, then you're building trust with yourself. And each time it gets easier, better. But guess what, we're still gonna make money mistakes, most of us will, right. And I like to say so called money mistakes, even in quotes, because we're always learning from them. So someone may have signed a contract when they were getting married years ago, that they read, but they didn't really know how to stand up for themselves at the time. And now years later, they're getting divorced and they reread that prenuptial agreement and they're pretty shocked that they signed it. They didn't ask more questions. They didn't negotiate better. But here's the thing, they're a completely different person now. And now they would stand up for themselves and they know their value. We have mistakes. We have money mistakes that are from our way past. And it's important to go back to our younger selves and be kind and bring compassion and say hello and who was I at that time and I did the best I could and I'm really different now and now I would have read that contract and hired an attorney for myself to represent me and I would have negotiated it really differently. So I think the best that we can do is be kind as we're learning and growing. And, you know, I could have gotten down on myself like, what's the big deal I've been doing this money work forever, and I'm still hyperventilating in a car dealership even, what, 12 years ago? Yes. It doesn't mean one day our emotions are going to go away, we're going to catch them quicker, we can decrease them, we can be with them and in different ways. Right? The next time I bought a car, I wasn't hyperventilating in the car dealership, you know?
Stephanie Mara 30:33
Yeah, I love those questions. I think those are really powerful questions that you're offering, in how to just slow down in your relationship with money, our reactions in our nervous system can come in so quickly when it comes to our relationship with food or money or whatever it might be. And so just to slow it down to say, hey, I'm having a reaction right now. Like I love that story you just told to, to acknowledge the reaction make the reaction, okay, that you're having it come into connection with the reaction to bring in curiosity around it. And something that I heard you say earlier, and even in that situation, of what does this remind me of is how much even our attachment style sometimes plays out in our relationship with money of like, you were talking before, of like, what role was I put into with this? And also, in attachment, there's that term earned secure attachment. And so it makes me think of like, you can create earned secure attachment with money as an adult, it's not this fixed thing of just because I had a difficult relationship with money at one point in my life, doesn't mean that's going to be my relationship with money my entire life.
Bari Tessler 31:49
No. And, you know, I found that most of my folks feel that they've really developed and matured themselves in all areas of life. Not all right, right. We're still working on everything.
But money is still really far behind. I don't know if you find that, that comes up for me all the time, where people will say, I'm still back at the adolescence phase, I got stuck there. And I might say, well, part of you might have gotten stuck there, but not all of you, right? So one of the exercises is okay, so list out three to five things that you do well around money because people come in, and I used to do this too, there's so much shame that I just suck around money, I don't do it well, everyone else learned about money except for me. So with a lot of folks that come to me, I have to say, okay, you're gonna name me three to five things that you're doing well, and everyone has them, but they're not seeing them. They're ignoring them. But to come back to that some people feel that they're at that the toddler, or infant phase around money, and they're really not. But that's how they feel with many parts. And so yes, we are learning how to adult, but we're doing it not just from the financial literacy side, you know, like learning a bookkeeping system, money dates, learning how like, what are you working on income, spending, saving investing, you might be working on all of them. But you know, which ones are you working on this year, or you might want to break that down. And then there's the whole emotional side of money as well, you know, so 85 to 95% of our money decisions are based on our emotions. So if that's real and true, and I think it is, at the beginning, when people start bringing awareness to their relationship to money, then we have to know what sort of emotions, money emotions comes up for us, what's going on, let's learn more about our money stories. A lot of people say, I already know what I'm doing, you know, I'm just tapping is overwhelming me and I pray. And so right. So how do you get someone to slow down and say, you might be watching it, but you're not slowing it down to catch yourself in it. Or to make changes or adjustments or to fine tune it. You might just be like, I'm a mess around money, or I can't figure this out. But yeah, that's where we slow it down to see again, what does it remind me of, what's coming up? What declaration as a teenager did I make? Oh, I'm never gonna get married, I'm never gonna be dependent on doesn't matter, you know, or I'm going to make my own money. Or we get in the same patterns with our parents or right? There's so many versions of what can happen, but it is, I think, developing the financial literacy and emotional literacy lines. And I have folks 25 to 75 years old coming to me so and doing this for the first time.
Stephanie Mara 34:39
Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious if you could say more around the connection that you're making with the Enneagram and money that you are exploring these days.
Bari Tessler 34:50
Yes. So I've always loved the Enneagram that was just the personality typing system that connected with and resonated with me in my 20s. I did have a therapist who told me what she thought my Enneagram type was and, you know, we're not supposed to do that, we're not I mean, it's we can observe people and we do we have a good sense. I'm doing that with all my family members. Oh, my mom's a two, my dad was an eight, my brother's a six. And my sister, I do think is a one with a two wing, but she told me she's a two. So if she you know, then she's a two with a really strong one wing, but it's helpful and even understanding family dynamics. So, family internal systems is not an expertise that I have. And families have always been challenging for me. I love working with women. I love working with couples, whether it's female couples, whether it's, you know, heterosexual couples, like I love couples, and then sometimes they'll get a sibling like, or mother daughter or two siblings. But beyond the two, I'm always like, whoa, I don't think that's my specialty. And bringing in the Enneagram. First and foremost, it's helped me understand myself on such a deeper level. You know, I'm in my 50s now so. And then more recently, well, I've been waiting for the Enneagram and money book for years. For decades. I've been waiting, you know, I was on a podcast. It's called Typology and it's an Enneagram podcast, and I got on this is probably four or five years ago. Now, I was hoping he wasn't going to ask me to riff on what I think each Enneagram type, money habits and personality styles are. But that's exactly what he had me do. And so I just rift on based on what I know, of the nine Enneagram types, and was pretty accurate. You know, I mean, just very simply. So you know, one's really like order and really like their systems and are going to be really good with their bookkeeping systems. They're probably the one who likes to have control over the money management in the house. They like to do everything because they don't think anyone else could do it as well as they can. I'm just going to totally generalize. Two's are beautiful givers and really generous. But they can be overgenerous, you know, and they can give to their own detriment. Three's, their net worth equals their self worth. And again, like, there's pros and cons, our challenges are in our gifts or gifts are within our challenges. So threes are really into status and making money and they can do it. And it's very important to them the numbers in their bank account, but they can get caught up in my net worth equals my self worth. I'm always trying to unravel that saying your self worth has nothing to do with the numbers in your bank account.
Stephanie Mara 37:29
And I'm smiling because I'm a three. I'm like, okay, yep, yep, yeah, I can see that.
Bari Tessler 37:38
There's gifts and challenges of each type, right. So you just need to learn how to unhook a little bit from that, but you're really good at earning and you know, you can be really good at that. Fours, we will not do anything unless it feels authentic to us and unique and special. And so even the work that we do, we have to feel deeply, deeply connected. So we might make money in unusual ways. Fives are very protective of their space, and they like to not really acknowledge their needs. And so they might like to keep a really simple house like these are the only expenses I have, you know, without acknowledging they might have more needs, or they might want to get a little bigger or right. Sixes are incredible planners, like my financial planner's a six because they're great planners. Positive. Negative is that they plan out for every foreseeable emergency. And they think about it, you know, they plan for every possible terrible scenario, but my God, do you want them as a financial planner, you want that, right, to plan a trip or... Sevens are just all about possibility, like their answers always make more money, make more money, make more money, but they don't like to look at bookkeeping and their numbers and getting nitty gritty, but they really need to. Eight, I'm just riffing and we're almost done. Eights, love to make money. Like they really love to make it, they feel very powerful. And they love it. And they're natural leaders. And, you know, the downside is that when they feel hurt, then they go for the kill, you know, and they can be very controlling, and they can be very controlling around money with the people closest to them. Right? And then Nines. Nines are still somewhat of a mystery to me around money stuff. Because you know, they're the peacemakers. They're the ones who can get really foggy and kind of zone out on Netflix all day. I mean, I can zone out and as a four myself and you know, binge watch a show. I'm still trying to figure out strengths and challenges around money around nine. So we're just writing the beginning sections of the book and the table of contents and all that so I'll have a lot more for nines as we go.
Stephanie Mara 39:52
That's awesome.
Bari Tessler 39:54
Yeah, it's incredibly helpful to understand ourselves better, or just habits in general, and then how does it connect with our relationship to money strengths and challenges. And then my god it has been incredibly helpful for me and my husband, you know, he's a five, I'm a four, to talk about our differences, how we polarize different patterns that we do different styles. Because couples, no two people have the same earning and spending, and saving and investing habits and patterns. And we're usually horrified how different we are than our partner. But we're just different. There's no better. There's no, you know, you both have things to bring to the table. And then the third one is really just understanding our family members, you know, to improve money dynamics, for example, I was working with siblings, there are three siblings, and I'm working with one. And she does have an eight sister who comes in really intense and with a proposal, but she's a great negotiator, and she can be really aggressive and it scares the person I'm working with. So I'm helping her learn how to stand up to this. And usually an eight, as I said, when they feel really hurt, they'll go in, you know, to try to have more control. And so how do you first just knowing that knowing like, this is my sister's tendency, you know, when she feels scared, she's gonna go for the jugular so how do I step back, move to the side? Let her have a moment. And then how do I come in and hold my ground and say my piece and say, well, this is my counter proposition to you back, you know, her story is not the end of the story. I think it's a wonderful tool to really even if the person doesn't know their Enneagram type, and it's not as a tool of judgment, it's a tool of awareness and understanding and deeper compassion for ourselves and those closest with us. So that's a little bit of how I'm using it.
Stephanie Mara 41:50
Yeah, love the general overview of all of that. And yeah, it's like anything, it just gives you an idea of what you're working with. And we get to take any sense of judgment out of that, that there's nothing wrong with the way that you are relating with money right now. I start that way a lot with those I work with around their relationship with food is that your food patterns have wisdom to that. Can we just first get curious and start exploring and observing and bringing in awareness and compassion and empathy around it so that you get more space to decide for yourself is this still working for me? If I was going to show up differently how might that be? And I hear the same thing with money, there is nothing wrong or bad with the way that you are relating with money currently, can you just observe it, get curious about it, like see the wisdom in it? How has it supported you? How has it protected you to relate with money in that way? And then you just have a choice. Okay, what pieces of this are working for me? What's not working for me? If I was going to show up differently, what might that be? And just continuing to connect with yourself also, over and over again, I appreciate you bringing in that this is a lifelong journey. You know, and I say that a lot of like, it's a lifelong journey with your relationship with your body. It's a lifelong journey in relationship with food like this doesn't ever end. So can we also bring more spaciousness into your journey with money that it's not like this destination of I have to get better with money, or all the kind of cliche things we hear about money. And it's like, yeah, you're gonna be on a journey with money your entire life.
Bari Tessler 43:31
Exactly. I say almost identical words over and over and over. And I repeat them, right, I repeat them. This is a lifelong journey. There's going to be ebbs and flows, there's going to be ups and downs, some years, you're earning more and saving more. Other years that might change. You might be in a transition, there might be a health crisis, you might have a new baby, right? There's so many things. So we're always readjusting, and fine tuning and things change as we go. And please keep adding in big doses of kindness and compassion and grace to yourself. As you're learning and as you're fine tuning. Yes.
Stephanie Mara 44:09
Yeah. Well, I'm curious for those that are listening, you know, if you were going to offer even a baby step, if someone is I don't even know where to start. What would be maybe just an initial baby step you would offer someone in how to get started embarking on a journey with money that maybe feels a little bit more regulating and safety producing inside of their body.
Bari Tessler 44:32
Yeah, well, two little baby steps one is what we've we've already talked about both of them so the body check in, starting to invite a body check in before during or after. You may forget before so do it during and after. You may forget before and during to do it after right? But start bringing the body check in to all your money moments, conversations, when you're going to go online and do some online shopping. You know, and what I didn't say some of the questions that I do ask when I'm doing online shopping is do I already have one in my closet, do I need this? Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? So there's more questions that I ask in that moment, right. But body check in is really number one, start inviting that in as a practice, to all of these money conversations and money moments and decisions that you're going to have. Bring that to your daily life and just start to see what you're learning, what memories are coming up, what money emotions come up for you, what money stories start to be highlighted. So I would say start there. And then go to my books for more journaling questions and continued next steps and learning. But the second little step two could also be you know, a money date, for five minutes, it could be sit down, light your candles, get out your essential oil and your rocks, do a little body check in and start making a little list. Three things that I have to do, and start one at a time, do one and then go and celebrate. And come back for a second one when you're ready. So that's another great practice. The money dates to start right away and start building them in a little bit every day or a few times a week to get those grooves going. But the only way we're going to do this work right is one baby step at a time incremental steps and then that that leads to big change.
Stephanie Mara 46:17
Yeah, I really appreciate what you're also bringing in. And that is when we are about to enter into relationship with something that already feels so fearful, or like intense inside of our body, like think of it as the same way with food. Can you set the environment? Do you need to light candles? Do you need to put on music while you're eating? Like how do you make this feel like a safe experience to be in? And the same thing with money. I really love that that. Okay, if you were about to look at your bank account, if you're about to sit down with what you need to do with your money, or what you want to do with your money, can you make it the most nourishing experience, it can be of lighting candles and getting chocolate or, you know, if you need to be taking a bath while you're looking at your numbers like whatever it might be just to make that experience feel more tolerable to be in so that you start to look forward to it. Instead of it being perceived from your body as like this scary, overwhelming thing.
Bari Tessler 47:15
Yes, yes, yes. There's always more, right. But if you need to slow yourself down, or if you notice that it doesn't feel safe or you get scared. That's why I do the body check ins and that's why I end it with a resourcing. So what is one little adjustment that would help me feel more safety in my body right now? Or feel more presence or feel more okayness? Is it just slowing down? Or do I need to get up and dance around my office and then come back? Or do I need to set a timer for five minutes and that's all I'm gonna do. There's so many different little rituals or tricks or tools that you can add in. You get to craft this, there's no one way there's no right way. You really get to craft this so that it feels better for you each time that you do it. Right, whatever that is the candles, the music.
Stephanie Mara 48:02
Yeah, I appreciate that add on of yeah, it has to start with safety first so that we can enter into relationship with some of the things that activate us with a lot of presence and a lot of compassion, that it's okay that we're having whatever reaction we're having. And so I'm so excited for your new book, definitely going to have to check that out. And I would love to hear how individuals can keep in touch with you, and all the programs and things you offer in the world.
Bari Tessler 48:29
The best way is to come to my website, baritessler.com. You can sign up for my newsletter, and you get a little seven day experience of my methods. So you'll get a little taste of money healing and money practices and money maps, you'll get a taste of that. That's a great first step. I have a great blog, I have a great podcast, you could find that all on my website, you can find my books, they're called The Art of Money. The first one the art of money, a life changing guide to financial happiness. The second one is the art of money workbook. You can find them everywhere online. I do offer a year long program that takes you through four months of money healing, four months of money practices, four months of money maps, it's a very affordable way to do money work. And there's great community support. So it's not just online content. There's a weekly co-working space because people need a group money date, and they need to be held accountable or they want that right. So every Saturday morning, everyone's getting out their little money day list. Going through one at a time. I was doing a mentor program for other financial professionals and therapists but I'm on pause for a little bit because of this third book. And I do offer a one time private session too. And then you can find me on Instagram. Those are all the things. Oh I also sometimes do a money day workshop I just did one, was super fun on a Sunday and I'll do one again in a few more months. So it's just a one off two hour workshop. I teach all about money, dates, and everything that that touches.
Stephanie Mara 49:59
Awesome. Well, I will certainly leave all those links in the show notes. And I just appreciate your time and your expertise in this area and sharing all your wisdom and personal experience with how to grow our relationship with money. So thank you so much for sharing all of this today.
Bari Tessler 50:15
You're welcome so much. Thank you for having me.
Stephanie Mara 50:18
Yeah, well to everyone listening. As always, if you have any questions, I will leave our contact information in the show notes. If you have any feedback or insights or aha moments, reach out anytime at support@stephaniemara.com and I look forward to connecting with you all again soon. Bye!
Keep in touch with Bari here:
Website: https://baritessler.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baritessler/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bari-tessler/
Book: The Art of Money