Ep481: Catherine Morgan – Always Be Curious About Yourself

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it, go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community of guests and fellow listeners. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Catherine Morgan. Catherine, are you ready to rock?

Catherine Morgan 00:34
I'm ready to rock country.

Andrew Stotz 00:36
I feel it, I can feel it. I want to introduce you to the audience. Catherine Morgan, is a multi award winning qualified financial planner and award winning financial coach on a mission to reduce financial anxiety and increase financial empowerment and resilience for 1 million women around the world. featured as one of the top 32 female entrepreneurs to look out for in Business Insider, and a top 1% global podcast hosts of her show in her financial shoes. Catherine take a minute and fill in further tidbits about your life.

Catherine Morgan 01:19
Thank you, Andrew. It is so incredible to hear when someone reads out your mission statement. I've actually just yesterday changed my mission statement from 1 million women to 1 billion women. And oh, I know it was like it actually came for a podcast episode on my own show where I was interviewing a lady called Susie Ashworth. And Andrew just mentioned this episode to me as we started recording this. And she said to me, why a million? Like why are you limiting yourself with just 1 million women? And I was like, actually, I don't know. Why am I limiting myself?

Andrew Stotz 02:00
So I thought it was kind of a stretch just doing a million. Oh, man.

Catherine Morgan 02:04
There's a world out there. A billion a billion women. So yeah, that's what I'm all about. I'm very much a believer in helping women to step into their power to be consciously creating wealth for themselves to be independent, not codependent around money. That's what we're that's what I'm here to do.

Andrew Stotz 02:25
And why is this such an important thing? You know that a billion women out there need to hear what you have to say.

Catherine Morgan 02:32
Yeah, it's a really great question. And so I've been a financial advisor since I was 18. So I'm 40 this year. So a pretty long time. I know that look. Thanks. Absolutely. But for a long, long time, and I knew everything there was to know about managing money, investing money, growing money, but I wasn't doing it for myself. And I lived most of my 20s in debt, reoccurring debt cycles, and fueled by reoccurring shame and guilt, and all the emotions that sit behind how we make decisions around money. And when I started sharing my story in my communities, I was hearing other people, other financial professionals, other people saying, Yeah, me too. It's not just the financial education that they were missing. It was the fact that they were just self sabotaging. And it led me on to this whole journey around learning about the trauma of money, neuroscience, money, mindset, behaviors, beliefs, Neuro Linguistic Programming, all these fascinating behavioral biases that we have just been pre designed to act on. And learning all of that for myself completely transformed my relationship with money. And I decided that that was the day I was going to go use that knowledge that I've learned through my own transformation to go and help to heal others and for them to heal themselves.

Andrew Stotz 03:54
And it's amazing the things that we tell ourselves. And I have a saying that I've said for a long time, and that is when I say that I'm wealthy. And I try to describe what does that mean? What it means to me is, money flows to me. Doesn't matter how much. It doesn't matter if I spend it or give it away. But the abundance that money flows to me and to me, that's, you know, my ultimate wealth, I set in many different goals over the years. But the second thing that he made me think about, I have a friend, and he's a brilliant, he's a genius, very, very smart guy. And he does a lot of different business stuff. And he has the potential to be a multi millionaire, taking his skills that are very apparent the minute that you meet him. And I'm not going to describe those skills because I don't want to call them out here but no matter what he did over 20 years, and I knew he never, ever made any money. And one day I said Look, why don't we sit down talk about this. And so we just started talking, I started asking questions. Two hours later, we came to this point, when he was a kid with his mother and pointing at the TV saying, rich people are bad. Money is the root of all evil. Don't take your genius skills and use them for money. And it's like that was the source in his case of a recurring message he was telling himself, and it really, it's blocked him all of his life. And so when you talk about that, I really saw it like firsthand. How have you seen that type of situation? And maybe there's lots of people listening men and women, that maybe in that spot, you know, maybe you can speak to them for just a moment.

Catherine Morgan 05:48
Yeah, I'm so glad that you shared that example. Because they're really the first step to understanding how we behave around money. And before we even go to take the action and set the goals and do the things that need to happen around wealth creation, is actually identifying our core beliefs. And most of the core beliefs that we carry around money have come from what we call the imprinting period, that age between zero and six, which is when our brain is in a completely hypnotic state is in like a theta, brainwave state, where we just we learn through everything, like a sponge, our brains are like sponges at that age, everything we see everything we observe, everything we hear, every experience that we have forms are core beliefs. And we normally have two or three big ones, two or three really big core beliefs that go on to drive every single decision that we make. Because actually, the decisions that we make, not just around money, but in life come from 90% of our unconscious beliefs, things that we're not even aware of. And that's the power of bringing awareness to things that we heard or observed growing up around money to then think about, how is this belief actually supporting me? And how is it sabotaging me, most people will automatically go to the sabotaging behavior, because that's the brains job is to keep you safe. And so it'll remind you all the time about all the challenges or the things that we struggle with. But rarely do we take time to actually think about how does this serve us? So when we hear those beliefs, like money doesn't grow on trees, rich people are greedy, you have to work hard to make money, very common money, beliefs, right? If you take a minute, so think about where does that belief actually come from? It's very likely a generational belief that's come through parents, caregivers, their parents and caregivers generationally, either. That's it literally inherited. And so it's really powerful to think about what beliefs have you inherited, and whose guilt shame, lack of responsibility fear, are we actually feeling because it probably doesn't even belong to you.

Andrew Stotz 08:02
You can leave that a century ago, you can give it back to Great, great, great, great grandpa, who is in a very different

Catherine Morgan 08:08
world with love, right? Because everything that we receive, is there for a reason, it's there to protect, it's there to support us. So often, these beliefs, you know, part of this whole process is awareness and self forgiveness, but also forgiveness of others, you know, and handing back that belief that, you know, thanks, Dad for showing me that I have to work hard for money. But actually, in today's day and age, that's not actually true, I can make semi passive income revenue streams in my business easily with the online digital space, I believe it is no longer serving me. So I'm going to keep all the bits that are great about it. But I'm going to hand back with love all the aspects of that core belief that are not supporting me.

Andrew Stotz 08:52
Interesting point, because I often say that, you know, when you start to get resentful about way people have treated you. One way of doing that is to handle that is to just go back and look at that person and say they did the best that they could with what they had at that time.

Catherine Morgan 09:12
Yeah, absolutely. And particularly with money. If you think about parents, grandparents, generations that came from a very much of a lack of environment. I mean, I'll give you an example here. My mom's dad's he was in the Second World War Shengli prisoner of war camp. And he survived. He came out weighing like five and a half stone, there was always a story that my grandmother tells of how his favorite pudding was rice pudding before the war. And so when he came out of the prisoner of war camp, she made him this homemade rice pudding, and he wouldn't touch it, because of course, he lived on rice for years in the camps. And his relationship with his body was particularly you know, kind of thought it was negative because of that consequence. And that belief and pattern of behavior carried through to my mum, my mum had a terrible relationship with her body. And so did I. I grew up with a years of eating disorders in my teenage years. And so even that core belief that's carried all the way through has been something that's just been intergenerational.

Andrew Stotz 10:19
And it's so hard to change. And I want to get into the question in this podcast, but there's a lot that I, you know, you made me think about, and I, I, I, I was, at 17 years old, I went into drug rehab. And it was a very difficult time in myself in my family's life. And basically, but I went into a few of them. And the final one was a seven month one, and I got a chance to reboot. Like, I literally got had counselors and good people around me that were saying, Okay, there's your core belief, that's where, okay, here's where it's got you, you know, now, what are you gonna do about it. And I'm really grateful for that time, because some of the critical core beliefs at that time, I was able to address, bring them out in the open, acknowledge them. And then I also had to go through amends with my mom and dad, and with the people that I heard, and that really released me from baggage. And the result of that was set, when I got out of that treatment center, I was just about to turn 18. And then my life has skyrocketed. I've been out of you know, I've been sober for almost 40 years. And I've lived a happy, great life. And so I just want to, you know, I want to testify, I want to testify that if you identify your core belief, and you find the ones that aren't working, and you work with someone with like Katherine as an example, to address those, find those, root them out, bring them out in the open, they're never going to completely go away. But boy, you can minimize their impact significantly. And so I just wanted to share that my personal story in that case,

Catherine Morgan 12:07
yeah, well, thank you. I'm not sure if you shared that before on your podcast, Andrew, but that's really, really open and vulnerable for you to do that. And, and this is the thing, right? Is that what you've just demonstrated there is a trauma, something that's happened, it's created this behavior of addiction, and whether that's drugs or over eating or overspending, it you know, this is how the brain responds, the brain responds, responds to trauma, by keeping us safe, and keeping us stuck in these self sabotaging behaviors, which logically don't make sense. But it's that dopamine hit, you know, his overspending, for example, is a dopamine hit to the brain, where we continue in that same cycle, because we're seeking that gratification by actually not really wanting to address some of the core issues. And that's why we have to look at money, we have to look at investing through a trauma informed lens. Because when we talk about things like risk, well, that word risk straightaway, we will get a physical reaction to that word risk, some of you will feel it in your stomach, in your throat in your chest. You know, it's a very visceral connection. So we also have to think about it from a, you know, how can we help to keep the nervous system feeling really safe and protected so that we can then go on to make better financial decisions and recognize those pattern as patterns of recognitions? Those, those, those old pains, which can actually, you know, payments of trauma. And, and ongoing pain becomes old pain. And we have a lot of cognitive distortions that, that you know, they should in statements, they you should be investing 15% of your monthly paycheck into investments, you should be doing what Warren Buffett teaches us about investing, you should be doing this. And all that really does is it shoulds on us, it tells us you should be doing this, well, no one should be doing anything. That's just consumerism, right? It's about what is right for you, what's the right decision for you, and not holding on to decisions that we've made in the past that we feel bad about? You know, it's about stepping into a place of gratitude and opportunity and growth, so that we can move forward rather than being pulled back.

Andrew Stotz 14:23
Exciting? Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it and tell us your story.

Catherine Morgan 14:37
Yeah, thank you. So I want to take you back actually to one particular day to bring this to life. And that one particular day was the first of October 2013. So think about for a moment where you may have been in 2013. And for me on this one particular day, I had two children at that point. My youngest was five weeks old, and my eldest was two and a half GNC not a refreshing drink. We'll probably do one of those right now. But Jordan Thomas. And on that one particular morning, Thomas had woken up, we had a really disturbed night's sleep for those of you who don't have kids, introducing a newborn into an existing family was hard, like no one gives you a rulebook do they have how to parent with young children. And we'd had a particularly disturbed night's sleep Thomas was like making these weird grunting noises in his sleep, he didn't want to feed it didn't want to be picked up just really, really disturbed. And I had my friend come over that one particular day to do these baby hand casting sessions where you put their hands in clay, and it creates this like, imprint of their hands and their feet. And it was my turn to go and get Thomas out of the Moses basket in the bay window in my lounge. And as I walked over to the Moses basket, I picked him up. And I slowly unwrapped the baby grow from his hands. And he screamed at me. But it wasn't like, you've just woken me up from sleeping cry. It was put me down cry. I'm in pain, like, just don't touch me. And I remember telling to my friend and I said, something's not quite right with Thomas. Like, I think I'm going to just book a doctor's appointment just getting checked out. And just to put this into perspective, we almost lost Thomas, when he was born, we were told there was a 5050 chance he was going to survive. So my kind of overprotected mother radar was already kind of flagging at this point. And I was thinking I'm probably being really oversensitive. So I booked a doctor's appointment. By this point, I put Thomas's hand in the clay, wrapped him back up again. And I put him back in the Moses basket. And I turn around to my friend and I said, Would you just mind leaving early like I just I just really anxious about how he is. So she left, all right back over to the Moses basket. And as I walked over, Thomas was just lying completely still. He was awake, and his eyes were blinking, like every blink was painful. And at this point, I picked up my phone, and I messaged my friend who's a nurse, and I said, Look, am I being over protective? This is hitting, it's not feeding, doesn't want to be picked up. He's got cold hands. And she said, have you checked his temperature? And I said, Well, no, because I was trying to wrap him up to keep him warm. And with that, I checked his temperatures, temperatures 39.9, which for anyone who doesn't have kids is either the Calpol needs to come out at that point, or something needs to happen. And with that, I put him in the car seat. I got in the car, I rang my husband and I said, I'm going straight down to a&e and not taking any chances. And within 20 minutes of arriving in a&e, his skin starts to bottle. They put me on a wheelchair had Thomas in my arms, and they wheeled us into resuscitation. And I just remember thinking, Oh, my God, like this is quite serious for being the optimistic person that I am. I just kind of thought, right, what can I do to help him and I had about 15 Doctors surrounding us. And there was this one particular doctor that kept using this one word, sepsis. And I remember thinking, I think I know what sepsis is later frantically googling it as you do. And three days later, he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, which is the worst form of meningitis. But because we got him into hospital so quickly, he is now a very healthy and happy eight year old boy. And the consequence for me about one day, Andrew was that I went back to work a year later, I've been diagnosed with PTSD, which is post traumatic stress disorder. And I went into this huge spiral of anxiety, I was trying to control everything around me. And of course, having two children working in a corporate space, being a young mom and being on maternity leave, trying to balance you know, having young children I was just in complete heightened state of anxiety constantly. And I went back to work at the bank. And I remember sitting in my office thinking, how many people feel like this about money? How many people feel guilt, shame, bury their heads in the sand around money because they don't want to take responsibility for the emotion that it creates. Who you know who feels like they can't make good investment decisions because of they don't understand it they don't understand the jargon it feels like it should only be for rich people it should be it's for someone else not for me and particularly for women. Well, that's a man's game. Only you know, men are the investors. And I literally resigned from the bank. I left my job. I set up my first business which was as an image consultant. So I was helping women to have a better relationship with their body and essentially going on a huge learning journey about the worst investment decision for me was at that time, because I was trying to control everything. We bought an investment property bought a property, it was a residential property. And we bought it at the peak of the markets. Now bearing in mind, I was a financial advisor, my husband was a mortgage advisor. And we bought at the peak of the markets. Seven years later, we sold that property, we actually moved to the Channel Islands in Jersey worked offshore and came back. And we sold that property for exactly the same money that we bought it for seven years prior. And let me tell you, as to financial professionals, we held on to so much judgment of ourselves, oh my god, like we should have seen this coming. Why didn't we see this? What a bad decision that was to make and wrapped up all in this constant desire and need to control everything. And what was interesting for me is I told myself for so long, that I'm not good with money, I'm terrible with money. I'm an emotional spender, I'm impulsive around money, I make bad investment choices. You know, what a terrible decision that was to invest in that property, we should have known the markets were going to crash. And I held on to so much of that guilt for so long. And that was the worst investment decision of my life because and actually what was worse, more worse than that was holding on to that guilt and shame of that decision. And that past financial decision that I'd made, that actually wasn't a bad decision. And nobody could have known what was going to happen with the markets. But everything that I experienced through that experience of my nigga losing my youngest to meningitis, and going into the cyclists habitual cycle of overspending in the attempt to try and control how I felt about things that I couldn't control in my life, in the same way that we do with food and alcohol and drugs and money. I look back at that now and think that was the worst investment decision, but also the best investment decision.

Andrew Stotz 22:09
So let's talk about what you learned.

Catherine Morgan 22:13
So looking back on that decision, what did I learn about that? I learned that it wasn't about the money, it, I had to separate my sense of self from money. So when you hear yourself saying things like, I'm not good with money, I can't manage money. I'm bad at maths, you know, I am statements. Anytime we hear ourselves saying I am, what we're doing is we're connecting our sense of self with money. And that's what the biggest learning point was, for me is it was about separating who I am my sense of self away from money because the two are not intrinsically linked. But yet we give so much power away so much of our own power away to money. Because we believe that by having more money, we'll be happier.

Andrew Stotz 23:07
Oh, well, there's a lot of different things that you got me thinking about. The first thing that I just want to share a story in my family. And that was that my item I moved to Thailand in 1992. So I didn't go back home a lot. And my older sister in 1998, called me in August, and told me that her cancer had come back. And if I could come home because she was gonna live for another couple months. And I got in on the plane as fast as I could. And my sister passed away a week later. And it was a tragic loss for our family. And it was a tough time, it was already the height of the Asian crisis in 1998. So financially, I was going through a lot of challenges, having my own business and having my career, and it was all collapsing in. And then and then to go home and deal with that. And then even more powerful was my sister had three daughters. And in our family, it's all women or girls, basically for my nieces who are no longer girls or women now. But she had three daughters, I spent a couple more weeks there with the girls. And then I had to come back to my life in Thailand. But what I decided when I got older, I thought the best thing that I could do as an uncle who knows about finance, and knows about the power of compounding knows about the power of starting is that rather than let any message get into their head, I'm just going to I'm going to walk them through the steps. So when each of them turned 18 I got $3,000 in cash, I got on an airplane and I went to their high school graduation. And I gave him $3,000 But I said but we're going to set up an investment account, and we set up an investment account at Vanguard for each one of them. And I told them, you know how to do it and later, you know, so I got them started. And then I wrote a book, How to start building your wealth investing in the stock market. And then I had an online course and still do on that topic to try to help people. But the key thing to this and it comes back to is kind of the way that you feel and what holds you back is, in the end, my niece's, my oldest niece now is 30. And Catherine, I have to tell you, I failed. And I can tell you, the reason why fail was because it wasn't enough just to make that first investment just to set up that first account, to truly build wealth, you have to contribute on a monthly basis. And I told them that, but they had a lot of obstacles that they faced over the years that prevented them, you know, the stock market too high, or my friend did this, and I don't know, and they got overwhelmed. And so part of what I try to do is help people to see that, you know, just take the action. And my counselor at that drug rehab basically used to say that in those days, they call me Andy any, you can't think yourself into better action, you got to act yourself into better thinking. And from that point, I really learned a lot about taking action. So you just kind of bring me back to that story. And that challenge. And I think for the listeners out there, the message to take away is, you know, we have our blocks, we have our emotional issues. But really, if you can get some guidance, like Katherine has an example of kind of just take the next steps. Take the next steps. And so that's some of the stuff that it made me think a lot about as you were talking anything you would add to that.

Catherine Morgan 26:44
Yeah, it's Wow, thank you for sharing. Like, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think sometimes it is about the action steps. But sometimes we get more from understanding more about what we don't want as much as what we do well, because often people think about action steps being big, gigantic, massive action steps, when really it's not, you know, as you said earlier, Andrew, it's about the compounding effect of investing regularly, the stock market is the same with how we make decisions. It's the compound effect of making small decisions, which build that momentum. And sometimes making decisions around money can feel too big, because of all the emotions that sit behind it. So it's really powerful to think about, well, not just what action steps can we take around our thinking? But also how can we use our thinking to guide the action steps actually always reversing that? taking two steps back from the action, thinking about your thoughts, the narratives, the things that we're telling ourselves that inform the behaviors? But often we focus very much on the behaviors, don't we? What we should be doing? Sometimes, you know, law of attraction, a lot of people talk about manifestation law of attraction, what do we need to bring in? But actually, what do we need to get rid of neurosurgery? Right? What do we need to get rid of that's going to create

Andrew Stotz 28:06
mortality, but very helpful anymore? Yeah.

Catherine Morgan 28:10
Exactly that. So go easy on yourself like this is, this is a journey, it's a relationship, the relationship we have with money is really a mirror reflection of the relationship that we have with ourselves. So the more work we do on ourselves, the better financial decisions that will make.

Andrew Stotz 28:29
So let me ask you, based upon this story, and what you've continued to learn in your life, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Catherine Morgan 28:40
Yeah, the biggest action for me is going inwards, going inwards, and really reflecting on your own relationship with yourself. And the most powerful book that I read that started this whole process off for me was a book called The artists way, by Julia Cameron. And it's written for creatives, you kind of have to get past the first two chapters. And for me journaling in the morning, so this is called Morning pages, as Julia refers to it is so powerful because actually when we wake up, you know, when you're in that always hazy state where you're kind of rubbing your eyes and you're trying not to force you know, the snooze button on the alarm. That's when our subconscious is at its most powerful. And if you can bring some consciousness to your thinking, what your unconscious mind is saying, and how that's helping you to make decisions or keep you stuck in Indecision is really powerful. And that book just changed everything. For me. It's almost like a 12 week course in a book and it gives you some guided questions to ask to really dive into yourself. And that for me was really powerful. That would be the first step I would take is to actually Look at your relationship with money through the lens of your unconscious beliefs through the lens of potentially traumas, like big traumas and little traumas. There are a lot of people think that traumas are big things, then they're not trauma is just a disruption to the nervous system. You know, and there's a very strong link between traumas and addictions. And Dr. Gabor Ma Tei actually said he defined trauma as something that creates or defeat, he defines it when we do something over and over to temporarily decrease pain and increase pleasure. But there are negative consequences. You know, now, so I can feel like you resonate with Andrew, but you know, think about, think about your relationship with money. Think about where that came from, who does it belong to? How does it serve you? How does it sabotage you? And then, once we've taken that awareness and curiosity step, then it's about practicing self forgiveness of yourself and self forgiveness of others.

Andrew Stotz 31:02
Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months

Catherine Morgan 31:08
or so I actually don't set myself goals. I set myself intentions. And some people may find that a bit woolly like, well, the intention might not be there or might be there, but you won't actually take the action. But I am a massive action taker too much. So often, I end up saying yes to everything, and then I get overwhelmed. I'm a massive creator. So for me, I set myself really clear intentions, but I link everything back to my vision and my purpose, everything, every single decision I make, I go back to is this going to move me one step closer towards my vision, because your vision is something you'll never actually ever achieve, has to be massive, like reducing financial poverty, I'll never know, if I'm reducing financial poverty in the world. But it's a vision, it's part of my core purpose. So every decision I make is based around my alignment of my values, and my vision. So I don't have big goals, I don't I find them very masculine. They don't work for me personally. But if I create intention, and then I constantly check back in on those intentions, just to see, you know, is that in alignment for me right now, or actually, to I just want to change that intention and do something different. You know, sometimes goals are very fixed at a certain point in the future. But what happens if we change our minds, what happens is something happens, a catastrophe happens that gets in our way, then we feel very inflexible to be able to change that. So for me, my intention for the next 12 months, is to grow that mission to go from serving a million women's or a billion women. How can I do that by forging stronger relationships, collaborations, connecting with wonderful people like yourselves, to support one another, because it's the domino effect of change that for me is going to create the intention that I want to see in the world in the next 12 months.

Andrew Stotz 33:09
Fantastic. And what's the best way for the listeners out there to follow that journey to join that journey and to gain from that journey.

Catherine Morgan 33:18
So I would love to share common listen to your podcast listener clearly, because you're listening to this. So come and check us out on the in her financial shoes podcast, it isn't just for women, men listen to it, too. And I have my book coming out on the ninth of December this year, which is called it's not about the money. So depending on when you're listening to this, have you head over to is not about the money.com. And you can grab a free copy of the book. And we would love to just share that story with you.

Andrew Stotz 33:47
Exciting, and we're gonna put all the links in the show notes. And, and also when I get the link, I'm not sure if I got the link yet for the book. But when I get it, we'll put it in there. And that sounds exciting. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community of guests and fellow listeners. As we conclude, Catherine, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Catherine Morgan 34:30
Thank you so much for having me, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure. And for anyone listening today, I would just say you know be curious about yourself. Be curious about yourself. Be curious to the possibilities that exist, where we turn those lessons into opportunities for the future.

Andrew Stotz 34:50
Wow, I love the word curious. And I have for the people on watching the YouTube I have Curious George right here. Love it for the listeners. I keep Curious George around because I like to be curious. And curious. George is 56 years old? How do you know? Because mom gave me Curious George. When? How wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.