Be your own benefactor

In this episode, you'll learn why women often wish for things like a grant, a scholarship, an advance, or even a severance payout... and how to be your own benefactor, instead.

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Transcript

This is episode number 23. And today we're going to talk about how you can become your own benefactor. I will share some examples of conversations I've had over the past year with women, where they're wishing for a stipend, an advance, a sabbatical, a severance payout, a grant. And what's interesting is what that money often represents to these women. So I'm going to take you through a few conversations that I've had with women about this, where we really started to unpack... 

what does that mean to you? And how might you, rather than wait around for someone else to become your benefactor, how might you be your own benefactor?

But first I want to share what's bringing me joy right now. I have a trip coming up that I've booked to Spain, headed to Madrid and Barcelona and a few other interesting sites along the way. And I've really been struck by something I read a long time ago. Which is that part of why travel tends to make people happy and vacations tend to make people happy is because you have multiple moments that the vacation brings you joy. 

So there is a huge amount of joy in the anticipation and the planning. You're imagining what it's going to be like. You're figuring out what you're going to do and where you're going to go. And then you go on the trip and of course that's fun. Although people's happiness actually peaks before the trip and spikes again, after the trip, when they're remembering. And they're looking at their photographs and they're reminiscing over the good times they had. 

In fact, often the experience of travel itself is slightly less enjoyable than the anticipation and the memories. We have a way of selectively, remembering and selectively planning, how it's going to go. The nitty gritty day-to-day, you are trying to catch the metro and you miss it, or your flight's delayed, or they hand you some terrible food on the flight. 

But when you are thinking about it in advance and afterward, you're thinking about the sunshine, the culture, the beaches, the food, and that is very much what I am thinking about. One thing I've identified over the past year is that I get a lot of enjoyment from brushing up on, or really introducing myself to the local language. Even though most places that you travel to these days, if you're an English speaker, it's relatively easy to find people who can speak English sometimes more fluently than you can even as a native speaker, but still that process of really learning the basics of a language or refreshing my memory of it, it makes the trip more enjoyable to me. 

And I also tend to have a lot better interactions with people when I'm there. They're so delighted that you attempt to speak their language. In many cases -- there's a few exceptions -- but in general, people are excited to hear you, take a stab at their language. So I have been using Duolingo, I subscribed actually to Rosetta stone because I thought this will help with my goal to become fluent in Spanish again. And that's been really enjoyable. I've been bouncing back and forth between Latin American Spanish, of the many varieties, and Spain Spanish, which is quite distinct in many ways. And then when we get a little bit closer, I'm also going to brush up on my Catalan which is another language that they use in parts of Spain. It's a cool, I don't know, sort of hybrid between Spanish and French and various other languages? So I'm really excited to dig into that a bit too.

One of the goals we have is to scout and find my partner a flamenco style guitar, because he fell in love with Spanish style guitar when we traveled there two years ago. So really looking forward to it. Of course, right now, my budget is very tight because I have booked all of my travel for the year. 

And I did all of that in the month of January. So I've probably spent 75 to 80% of what I'm going to spend on travel, I spent in the first month of the year, but I'm telling myself that's actually a good thing because it's forcing me to really prioritize, travel, which I value a lot. And so if I need to tighten my belt the rest of the year, so be it, we've already set the ball in motion and we've got these trips planned. 

I will share more about the trip when I get back. But that is definitely what is bringing me joy right now.

All right. So before we dive into the topic of becoming your own benefactor, I want to put a caution on this episode. If you were recently laid off, if you are struggling to find work, if you're working, but you are just struggling month after month to make ends meet financially... this is probably not the episode for you. Go ahead and just hit pause and come back to it at a better time. Now is probably not that time. It's probably not going to cultivate great feelings for you. 

So just with that disclaimer, in mind... the other thing I want to point out is that it's quite difficult with a global audience and people who are at many different countries and different places in their careers to give examples that include numbers. Because what's a relatable number to one person for a salary or for an expense or for a grant is a completely out of reach or a completely low ball number for somebody at a different place in their lives and at a different place in the world. So I'm going to give you a range of examples today and stories that will span what I think of as kind of the upper middle class to upper class American family numbers with maybe a little bit that goes further down into middle-class or working class. These may or may not be relatable numbers for you. 

So try to anchor in your own mind if the numbers just don't make sense for you. Just replace those in your own mind with numbers that are relatively relatable to where you are in the world and where you are in your life. All right. Let's talk about this idea of becoming your own benefactor. First of all, what is a benefactor? A benefactor is someone who gives money or other help to a person or a cause.

I found it interesting how often I have conversations with women where it becomes clear to me that what they are really wishing for, to get started on a dream or to carry it to the next level, is for someone to become their benefactor. 

I'm going to share a couple of examples with you of real-world conversations and what some of the takeaways are from those. 

I was talking to a friend who is self-employed and in an industry where most people are self-employed. And she was talking about how she'd just gone to a conference and she just got so much out of the experience and just what a wonderful time she had. And then she said, a lot of my friends who are employed by someone else, they keep talking about how the budget for going to conferences is just been cut and they really miss going to conferences. And she said in my line of work, most people pay to go to conferences on their own. You're self-employed, there's no one to pay the bill except for you. Or if you are employed, it's for a very small company and they just don't fund for you to go to a conference. And she said: I suggested, well, you could just save up the money and pay for your own way to a conference. It's not that expensive. You gotta pay for the conference admission and you certainly can cut costs on the food and travel. But, if you get so much out of it, then why not invest in that for yourself? 

And she said it was really a non-starter. People were just very taken aback, like: well, I'm not going to spend my money on that. And many of these individuals would easily spend a comparable amount of money on any number of other things. Maybe a vacation, maybe a course that they wanted to take for personal development. Maybe clothes or, you know, doing something new for their car. So they weren't out of reach numbers, but people just had a very different perspective on what it meant to spend that for an investment in their career.

If this is something that you really get a lot of value out of, and it's something that your employer has decided, this is not a good use of company money to send you to this anymore, we need to allocate money to other things. Well, what if you just considered it an investment in yourself? It's an opportunity to spend a little bit of money and time and really learn a lot more about your craft or your side of the business. And also it might open the door to meeting a contact or two who can help you get into a better employment situation. Get your foot in the door of a company where they are currently funding. That sort of thing. 

But it's interesting how we often will allow an employer or some outside force to serve as our benefactor. And then when those funds disappear, we're quite resistant to the idea of making that same investment in ourselves.

Here's another conversation I had not too long ago. It was with a friend who is also a writer as I am, and who's been working on a novel, and it's a great novel. She's got a really good first draft going. And she said to me, ah, I just wish that I could go ahead and submit it to publishers and agents. And if I could just get an advance, Then, I would be able to finish this thing and I know it would just be great and I could move on to the next one. And I said, an advance is probably going to be $10,000, maybe $20-$25,000. How long could you take off of work with. 10 or $25,000? And she was like, oh I would just cut my expenses to the bone. I would go all in on it. I would, go rent a mountain cabin and finish it up. I bet I could stretch that money out and make it last for months. And if I just really buckled down, I could finish this book and get it out there and I know it's going to be great. 

And I said, you know, that in advance is payment received in advance of the book making money. So like it's generally, what they think the book is going to make in its first year after it's published. So you'd have that money in hand now, and you could focus on finishing it. But then what would you do after that? I mean, you need to do a book tour still and you'd have to work that back around your day job... and how would you write the next book? But it was really interesting to hear her perspective on it all because she had a pretty good professional job, and surely saving up $10,000 or 20 or $25,000 on the type of work that she's been doing, it's not an unattainable feat. So why would it be different to go live like a starving artist with an advance, versus just living like a starving artist off of your own money? 

If the plan here is you're going to quit your job well, okay. What difference does the advance make? And if the plan is that you're going to, I don't know, it takes some kind of leave from your job and then come back to it again, what difference does it make if it's an advance versus your own money? Now, some of you are listening to this thinking , this just sounds like a daydream, right? 

And to some extent it is, but I truly believe she was genuine in her belief that if she had an advance, she would go be a starving artist and finish this book and get it done. And I really wondered. What's the difference between a publisher paying this to you? And you paying it to yourself. I have a theory. But I'm going to share a few more stories before you will come along for that theory. 

My theory is it's more about what the money represents than the money itself.

Okay, another example. .

So a few weeks ago, I talked with a woman who was really unhappy in her job.

It's just been layoff after layoff with all of the work and change, getting heaped upon the folks who remained behind. And at the same time,

she is actually quite skilled at making money on the side. She's had a number of successful businesses. And when I talked to her about her work situation currently, she said something that just made me sort of chuckle and it was, oh, I would love to get a severance. So I asked her. What does that represent to you to get a severance? And she said, well, it's like, it would force me to have to go put more time and effort into the businesses that I have running. And it would take away some of my fear, like it would kind of make me have to get out there and do it instead of having to make that choice to leave. 

And I said, you know, a severance is not very much money. Let's say you get a pretty good one. We're talking maybe three months pay . Let's just sort of do the math here. If you are earning about a hundred thousand dollars a year. Three months pay before taxes. You're talking maybe 25,000 dollars , best case scenario. Let's round that up and say, you get paid out for a little bit of time off that you've got accrued , let's say that maybe you had a few other odds and ends. 

Okay. So now we're talking before taxes. Well, let's be generous. $27,000.

You're probably going to lose a good quarter of that minimum to taxes. So that leaves you with about $20,000. $20,000. 

Is that really a lot of money? I mean, surely you could just save up $20,000 and give yourself a severance. And she said well, but there would also be, you know, health insurance. I would probably get subsidized health insurance for Cobra for three months. And I said, okay, well you could actually look up and see exactly how much that is worth. 

In most cases, maybe two, $3,000 a month, extra? So, okay. Let's say that's another $3,000 times three that puts us at nine grand rounded up to 10. We're still talking about an amount of money that's maybe $30,000. I mean, if you're making a hundred K a year, how long would it take you to go hard-core and stash $30,000 in the bank and give yourself a severance? And by the way, that a hundred K is coming from your day job. You've got all these side hustles that are bringing in money, right? Are you spending every dollar that comes in there? And she was like, well, no, actually I make quite a bit from all my side hustles! 

And when all my friends started upgrading their houses, I just stayed in mine. So actually my mortgage is really low. Like my expenses are not that big. And I just haven't really focused on my side hustles. But I know if I just had more time, I could really build them up. That's what's so exciting to me about the the severance idea is that it would sort of free me up to sink or swim in three months. And I thought interesting. What this represents to you, and the way that you are framing this up. Because from my perspective, all right, let's stockpile, $30,000. Quit your job, you have three plus months to sink or swim and if it doesn't work out okay, great. 

You can always get another job. I mean, I know the job market ebbs and flows, but at the end of the day, it's just money. You can always make more of it one way or another. But it was really less about the money. And more about someone else making the decision for her. And she really sat with that for a little while, understanding, in my mind, I've been making it about I'm really unhappy in my job, but I can't just walk away from a good job. But I sure would love if they'd let me go. Well, when you're in that state you know, it's not really about the job anymore. It's about you and it's about your fears. And how they are controlling, what you believe is possible for yourself. 

All right. One last example.

Recently, I was talking to a woman in her late forties who runs her own business. 

She's quite successful at that, generates probably $250K a year in gross revenue and takes most of that home. So she does very well for herself, very good professional business. And she said, I applied for this grant, this business grant for women. And man, if I get this grant, oh, it's just going to be so amazing. 

I'm going to really invest in my business. Up until now, I've just taken whatever work has come my way and I've done really well, but I've never actually tried, I've never really tried to build it. This is the second income in my household and I'm not maybe making what I would have been if I had stayed on the corporate track, but I'm doing pretty well. But man, if I get this grant, if I get this grant, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to invest. I'm going to grow my business. I'm going to maybe hire some help. And I said, wow, what kind of grant are we talking about? And she said, oh, I just finished the application. And it would be for $20,000. 

And I sat back in my chair and said $20,000? 

The business you just described to me is making more than 10 times that every year. I mean $20,000? If you're bringing in, $200, $250 K a year, and that's not even the primary income in your household, there's another income. You're doing really well. Why is $20,000 going to make all of the difference in your business?

And just to be clear here, if she had told me her business was generating 50 grand a year or 80 grand, or I don't know, maybe her family had super high fixed medical costs or some other unusual factor that explains why this is an issue then I would straight up understand $20,000 is a lot of money to just be handed, to be able to invest into that business. But that was not this woman's scenario. And so I said, I have some questions. May I ask them? And she was game. And so I said, certainly you probably have $20,000 sitting in your savings somewhere. I mean, you're not up to your eyeballs in debt or anything. I'm assuming, is that right? And she was like, oh no, no, no, no, you know, we have, we have reserves we're okay. And I said, okay. 

So tell me if you all have this income coming in and you're doing well, and your business has certainly proven, that you have the potential to generate a good income from it. Why would you even hesitate to invest $20,000 from the income your businesses is generating, back into the business? Or even household income into your business? 

And, you know, right away she started to kind of choke up a little bit. She got very emotional. And she said, well, I mean, I just don't feel like... I mean, I'm not sure that my business is like.. You know, it's just like, it's not, maybe it's not important enough for that. I mean, you know, my husband earns so much more than I do, and I've done well, but this has really just been something to kind of invest my energy into, on top of taking care of the kids. And, there are just so many other things that we should do with that money. I mean, what if I screw up? What if it doesn't go well, then we're just, then it's just gone. 

And I thought, Hmm. What does this money represent to you? What's the difference between investing $20,000 of household money? Or even business income. Versus a grant. And she said, well, if I got the grant, it would be like validation. Like somebody else believes in what I'm doing and wants to invest their money in me. They believe they're going to get a good return on that investment. They believe that I could do something valuable with it. Like it would be sort of proof to me. 

And I said, What if you believed in you that much? Where would your business be if you believed in your own capabilities enough to invest in your business? 

But it's relatable, right? We've all been there, where we've struggled to make a bet on ourselves. And we've wanted somebody else to prove our worth.

That's why I wanted to record this episode. I want to get you to start thinking about those moments when you're wishing for a benefactor and to pause and ask yourself. What if I was my own benefactor? What is holding me back from spending money on myself? What's holding me back from giving myself the grant or the scholarship, or simply the permission to do what it is my heart says I want to do? What beliefs do I have about what I should be doing, versus what my heart says I want to do? What stories am I believing about risk and about my right to take risks?

So I hope that hearing some of these stories and getting inside of other people's heads has helped you really think about where you might be holding yourself back, where you might be limiting what you could do with a little investment of time and money. Pay attention to the stories that you're telling yourself. And question them, when those stories lead you to play it small. 

Well, it's time to tell you what I've been reading this week. I found this book by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv called The Way Out: a revolutionary, scientifically proven approach to healing chronic pain. I found first their podcast, which is ran for about two years and it was called, tell me about your pain. And it is a mind blowing revelation. I've talked before on the show about my own struggle with illnesses in my body that are generated by my mind. So it's legit, real pain. But it's not caused by something structural. Instead it's caused by stress, anxiety, trauma, repressed emotions. The body, as the other book says, the body does keep score. And yet it had been a very long time since I looked into this stuff. Once I made that connection and stopped getting sick and being in pain all the time, 10 years ago, I pretty much forgot about it. Now and again, I would tell somebody, if I picked up on that might be what was going on for them, I would share some things I learned. But for the most part, I just moved on and started living my life and enjoying it. And then I think you may remember if you're a regular listener to this show that one of the things on my 24 in 24 list was investigate and heal my wounded wing. Because over the past year, I started having shoulder pain for the first time and no real obvious cause. I couldn't really pinpoint exactly what was going on or why, but it wasn't going away. And so I, at the beginning of 2024, started looking into it. And I noticed that's interesting, the more attention I'm paying to my shoulder, the more painful it is becoming. 

Hmm. And I went to the doctor and got some exercises and the exercises sort of initially helped. And then everything got worse. And I started to really wonder what is going on here? This does not make sense. Long story short, I went to see a provider to dig further into the shoulder stuff and try to unpack what was going on. And on the questionnaire, there was one question on the intake form that gave me pause. 

And the question was. In the past year, have you had any major stressful situations or incidents? Anything new, disruptive? You know, sort of major life stressors. 

And I thought, oh, wait a second. 2023 was actually one of the hardest years I have ever had, because I did have a major ongoing, stressful situation. And it was something that felt very much out of my control, unpredictable, and, you know, gave me a lot of anxiety. So it really kind of turned the light bulb on to say, wait a second. 

This all started right when that stuff was going on. Did this really just sneak up on me again, 10 years after I figured out that stress can very much manifest in pain and illness? It's doing it to me again. And so I did some Googling and came across this book the way out and the podcast that I mentioned. And yep, sure enough started looking into it and I, 100% believe that what is going on in my shoulder is not something happening structurally in my shoulder, but is in fact kind of the, let's say lingering effects of dealing with some really tough stuff last year.

So I've been working through some of the exercises in this book and trying to kind of process some of the more difficult emotions and it's been pretty magic to watch it unfold. 

And it's been really cool to just to discover how much the understanding of pain that's generated by our thoughts and emotions, but is real pain in our bodies. How much the understanding of that has just advanced in the last 10 years. I mean, this was an almost fringe idea, doctors sort of knew it happens, but it was kind of mysterious and they rarely talked about it. 

You were lucky if a doctor would bring it up to you. Now there's all these studies. There's lots of therapy modes, there are all kinds of things that we're just beginning to fully understand what's going on, but there's so much out there now that didn't exist 10 years ago. So if you have been struggling with pain or a chronic illness, and you've just hit a wall and you're not really getting any better, maybe have a look and see what you think of this book and some of these resources, because for me, it was super helpful. And one of the biggest aha's that I got from it that I never fully wrapped my head around before was I knew that the pain that I was experiencing was real. 

It wasn't imagined. But I still really struggled with... but how can that be? And what I realized in reading this book was I have one symptom that is it's a PTSD, so post traumatic stress disorder, symptom. And it's when I encounter a particular situation, I start to have trembling in my legs. And in fact, even talking about the situation will typically make my legs start to tremble, you know, in a way that I can't control, and then it passes. And what this book helped me recognize was, 

Oh, chronic pain and somatic illnesses. They're just like that. 

The trembling in my legs is real, but it's not my legs that are causing the trembling. It's what's going on in my mind, in the most primitive parts of my brain, that are basically hijacking my leg and using it to try to get my attention, to try to keep me safe, to try to distract me from something that my mind feels like, we're not capable of handling this. And so when you have chronic pain, it's essentially the same kind of thing, except your brain is hijacking some of your pain circuitry. And it's associating pain with specific movements or parts of the body. 

So really cool stuff. I don't want to go on and on about it, but I have found it to be quite mindblowing. And really awesome to see how much medical science has really advanced in the last 10 years. I'll put a link in the show notes to the book in case you find it. Interesting. 

Well chicas, that's all for today. For more episodes or links to the resources I might have mentioned, visit getyourselftogetherchica. com slash podcast. If you liked today's episode, please share it with your friends, post it on social media, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any episodes. I would value so much if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you listen to podcasts.

Until next time chicas.