Healthy Money Messages, Mindset and Beliefs with Richard Friesen

In this episode of 'A Magical Life,' host Magic Barclay sits down with Richard Friesen, a professional who helps business leaders and professionals increase their personal effectiveness using a neuroscience-based mind muscles model. Richard shares his experiences as a futures broker, floor trader, and software creator, and discusses how stress related to money impacts health. He introduces the concepts from his book 'A Private Conversation with Money' and offers valuable tips for creating wealth beyond just financial gains. They also delve into the deep-seated beliefs about money and how to shift perspectives to align better with personal values and goals. Tune in to learn more about initiating a positive transformation in your financial mindset and overall well-being.

Conversations With Money
Imagine how good it will feel to let go of your fears, guilt and anxiety about money.

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Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:42

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. And today, Richard Friesen joins us. Richard works with professionals and business leaders who want to increase their personal effectiveness with joy and grace. His neuroscience based mind muscles model gives his clients the opportunity to reach their goals with online training, simulations, interactive exercises, group support, and real time decision processes. Richard has been a futures broker for Merrill Lynch, a floor trader on the CME and CBOT, and options floor of the Pacific Exchange, Where he built and sold a successful options trading firm, where he served on the exchanges board of directors. He also founded and built a financial software company and is the inventor of 10 significant trading interface patents, this combined with his master's degree in clinical psychology, neuro linguistics programming, master's certification. And neuroscience focus brings a unique framework to business, investing and career success. Richard is building a money positive community with his book, a private conversation with money and his online course. This book observes the main character, Joe, who deals with all the conflicts, self sabotage and belief systems around money and wealth. Welcome Richard.

Richard Friesen: 2:20

Well, thank you so much. It's good to be here. And it's going to be a delightful conversation. I'm anticipating that and I look forward to a lot of energy and a lot of good thoughts around money and wealth and helping people reframe their thinking so that they can be more successful.

Magic Barclay: 2:41

And ditto, I couldn't say it any better myself. Now, listen, I ask all of my guests the same three questions. Everyone gives me different answers, and I'm going to tailor those a little bit for you today. And the first one is what can your expertise do to accelerate health? Not just physical health, but also emotional and spiritual health, given that so many people have really Crazy belief systems around money, whether it's theirs, their parents societies, whatever. It seems to really impact on their health.

Richard Friesen: 3:18

Yes, well, stress, as you know, produces a lot of hormonal and neurochemicals that in the long term really impact our health. And money is one of the most stressful, Uh, things when they do surveys, you know, people are worried about money and their financial future. So what if we woke up tomorrow morning and we were in rapport with our money, our finances, our wealth, and our meaning, so that internally we were fully aligned with, with, you know, the people who come to me and the people who read the book are people with really good hearts. They want the best for themselves, their families, and their community. And what happens is it's just a bunch of belief systems. And internal messages and voices and conflicts that keep them from expressing what their heart's desire is and finding rapport and letting go of the long term stress.

Magic Barclay: 4:20

And our next standard question is right up your alley. And that is, what are your top three tips to creating wealth? And people think it's just the financial. And I know for you, you talk about that, but it can also be personal and emotional wealth. And I'm just going to throw in here that so many people tie their personal or emotional wealth to the financial wealth. Like if I don't have money, then I am not as great a person or whatever. So what are your top three tips to boosting any kind of wealth?

Richard Friesen: 4:53

Well, thinking in terms of tips is thinking in terms of symptoms. And if we think in terms of symptoms, sometimes we can hit. Uh, a symptom right correctly, we can reframe it and the client is off and running and doing well. But if we think of the deeper issues, you know, if we start with our identity, you know, like what you just brought up, you know, our worthiness, uh, I have my own personal story about my lack of worthiness and how it impacted me significantly, uh, In my own financial world, uh, so if we have the deepest issues around our worthiness, and then we look at our belief systems, do we believe that, uh, that the world economy is like a, a pie? It's a single pie. And if somebody has more. We have less. Is that the belief system? And how does that work then if you want to be successful? And then we have look at behaviors. If we're going up from the depths of our identity, our beliefs and up to our behaviors, what kind of behaviors do we do? What kind of skills do we have above that? And what kind of knowledge that we need? So it really depends. The tips depend on what level. We're working at with a client or whoever reads the book. And once we look at the level, then we can determine how better to go forward. For example, if we look at my own issues around the deepest level of identity, then that takes a Some coaching, and we have ways to deal with that so that we can reframe identity or all the way up the ladder.

Magic Barclay: 6:43

And our final standard question is around weight loss. Have you ever battled your weight? If so, how did you win that war? What can you offer the listeners who might be dealing with this, given that stress is such a major factor in weight issues?

Richard Friesen: 7:01

Oh, yeah. Food has such deep survival mechanisms attached to it. It has satisfaction on the deepest level. it can divert us from things that we don't want to deal with it. And it gives us just that immediate good feeling. So, what I have discovered in working with people with money, although I don't work with people around food issues and weight issues, is that it depends on the context that we are in. So, for example, if I have the mental image of my person as a healthy, strong, vibrant, physically alive person, and I'm in that context, I look at a piece of pizza. And it just doesn't fit. I mean, it's just, I, it's not even part of my thinking. But let's go on the other side of it. And let's assume that I am emotionally hungry. I'm feeling stressed. I have had an argument with my wife that morning. Whatever it is where I am not in that context, then what happens is that pizza becomes a salvation for me. And in that context, do I have enough willpower to stop eating the whole box of pizzas? Well, the answer is, and I'm saying this personally, and true for me, the answer is no. So the question then becomes, how do we step into a context context? Where the pizza doesn't exist for us.

Magic Barclay: 8:37

Wow, that's deep. I really love that. Okay, so we've already covered a lot, but I know there's so much more we can explore. Tell us about your book and why you wrote it and what it can do for people.

Richard Friesen: 8:55

Yeah, well, my own story is that I was working for a large hedge fund, which had hundreds of millions of dollars and working for them. And then I went on my own. And long story short, was a voice woke me up in the middle of the night and said, Rich, Rich. You're only worth 200, 000 a year. Well, a backstory was I had made, that was my limit of how much I made. But once I realized that I was done with that limit, I went on to make many times that and started a firm and hired traders to trade my methodology. About a third of them would just take that methodology and take off and do well. And a third of them would do well, they'd do okay. But a third couldn't seem to take what was the same for everyone else in my firm and make money. They'd make a little and lose a little. I brought in a hypnotherapist. And what we discovered, each one of them had a conflict around money, a conflict around their identity, and a conflict around where they belonged in a social order. So all of those things then, uh, the safe way to handle that anxiety and not to have to deal by, with it by stepping into a new context was simply not to make money.

Magic Barclay: 10:17

Wow, that It's pretty groundbreaking. And I think of my own relationship with money coming from, you know, a family with early divorce and struggling with money and, you know, parents not being able to provide everything because the other parent wasn't there. I know stepping into adulthood, my relationship with money and my money beliefs were really whacked out. Like they were crazy and doing a lot of work on myself. And my beliefs really turned that around. So how do you suggest people, first of all, identify their money beliefs and second of all, change the way they're feeling and thinking about it?

Richard Friesen: 11:01

Well, what you're pointing out is how you identify them. You just put your finger on the first step of what we call. The golden keys and the three golden keys. The first is and what you just said awareness. How can we be aware of our all the internal voices and conflicts. The second is once we start to discover those voices in those conflicts. is to accept them. In other words, if I beat myself up and I judge myself for what I discover, you know, that's not going to work very well. So first is awareness. Second is acceptance of what I discover. And the third is agency. In other words, my awareness in real time of what's going on inside of me, my physiology, my emotions, my thoughts. If I practice that enough, eventually that becomes more than awareness. That becomes the level at which I start to make choices and I, what I can do say, okay, I'm aware of what's going on. I accept it. But now what would I prefer? And what would I like instead? So, to help with the awareness of of what's going on, we have an online course and I'll give you a. So people can find the course and I'll, I'll give it to you. In fact, I'll give it to your audience for free. So I'll, I'll make a coupon. And if they go to conversations. moneyslash magic, they can find the coupon there. And there we have some, uh, assessments. We have some exercises. That will really focus and bring to the surface and bring to your consciousness, the internal voices and conflicts that may be holding you back.

Magic Barclay: 12:49

Very generous indeed. Thank you. Okay, Richard, what's something we haven't discussed that you feel the listeners need to hear?

Richard Friesen: 13:00

Well, one of the things that and the reframes that I bring up is that. Many years ago, maybe two decades ago, I was listening to the radio and there was a economist in the US and he reframed money as a certificate of appreciation. And I went, Oh, wow, that's interesting. So in the book, and in the exercises. We treat money like a certificate of appreciation. So if, for example, you were to do a service for me, what I do in return is give you my certificates of appreciation. I say, thank you. Thank you for this service that is more valuable to me than these certificates that I'm giving to you. And then you say, wow, I just delivered value to rich. And he gave me some certificates of appreciation. Whoa. So that reframe alone has changed the lives of people because they grew up that money is the root of all evil. Wealthy people are jerks. Uh, if I become wealthy, I'm going to be a jerk. You know, just all these internal voices, especially in our current cultural divide around, we both worship the wealthy and the glitzy and the movie stars. And at the same time, We look at wealthy as making money off the backs of the poor. So by thinking of money as a certificate of appreciation for value delivered. Wow. Now, this is going to blow, blow your head apart. Are you ready for this?

Magic Barclay: 14:44

Ready? Let's have it.

Richard Friesen: 14:46

Let's have it. Okay. The more certificates of appreciation that you collect for delivering value to others. The more value you have delivered to your community and the world, you can look at your bank account, if honestly delivered, as one measure of the value you are delivering. So rather than seeing wealth as evil, it's a measurement of value. Now, we know that mothers and fathers deliver value to their families. We know that there are people who have changed the world for the better, like Martin Luther King in the United States. We have people who deliver value that has nothing to do with money or certificates of appreciation. But if we're in the commercial world, We can look at our bank account and say, yes. Look what value I have delivered to others. And what this reframe does is it immediately clears up conflicts we have about money and wealth and success.

Magic Barclay: 15:58

Boom. That's all I can say.

Richard Friesen: 16:03

Excellent.

Magic Barclay: 16:04

I personally don't look up to people. With money or with status or with celebrity as great people. I look to people who can, you know, teach me how to feed my family from my own backyard as great people. I look at people who try to save nature and save animals and keep the bees alive as great people. How do we change? who we put on a pedestal because I know as a child, I would look at celebrities and I would look at, you know, business people as those to, to put on that financial or wealth pedestal. Now finance means nothing to me, but feeding my family, healthy food. Being healthy, obviously, is the wealth that I crave and crave for my loved ones. How does that shift happen? Like, how do we say to people who might be listening, you know what, it's not necessarily the dollars in your bank account that make you a good person. It's what you do with them.

Richard Friesen: 17:18

Yeah, what you're bringing up is really important, that we deliver value to others on all sorts of different levels. I know my wife right now is with three boy grandkids, and the value she is delivering as grandma is huge to those three boys. I know that People who have sacrificed coming out of the depression in the United States, sacrificed everything they had, worked multiple jobs in order to give their kids a better life. There are people who are working with natural foods and ways for people to grow gardens. There's all sorts of ways we can deliver value that don't necessarily produce status or money or glitz. But, we can also allow that people who deliver value for, commercial value, for things that really matter to us and make our lives better. We can also, without diminishing the former, really honor the latter. Great

Magic Barclay: 18:28

information. Okay, before we wrap it up, Richard, tell us again where people can find your freebie. Thank you.

Richard Friesen: 18:37

Yeah, conversations dot money slash magic, and we'll put up a special page there, and on that page, they can find out how to get the book, a private conversation with money, how to get a coupon for the free course, which is online that they can. Take it their leisure, and also they can then we'll, we'll let them know when we have online groups or other support services for people who are stressed about money, people who feel guilty about their wealth, or people who would just like to have more rapport with the deepest values they have, the meaning they want in life. And money and success.

Magic Barclay: 19:21

I love all of that so much. Yes. Listeners. It really is time to have a really good look at your relationship with money, your beliefs about money and what you feel wealth is. Actually is. And, you know, part of what I bring to the table is the wealth of knowledge. So please like, review, share and subscribe to this podcast. You know, it really does help other people learn and grow their wealth of knowledge. Richard, thank you so much for your time.

Richard Friesen: 19:59

Oh, this was my pleasure. You asked all the right questions, the hard questions, but I think there you asked the right questions and we got right down to it.

Magic Barclay: 20:09

We did. And listeners, thank you for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.