The Art of Listening and The Power of Empathy in Financial Coaching with Saundra Davis

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth in Yourself. Welcome to The Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today, we're joined by Sandra Davis. Sandra holds a master degree in financial planning, is an accredited personal financial coach, an international coaching federation master certified coach, a financial behavioral specialist, a certified mindfulness teacher, and a certified executive coach. Her specialties include financial coaching, financial coach training, financial planning policies, financial education and literacy, teaching, coaching, mindfulness, and mentoring. Sandra has had a monumental impact on my own life and career, so I'm excited she is here sharing her wisdom with you today. Josh St. Laurent: Sandra, welcome. Glad you're here. Saundra Davis: I am so glad to be with you, Josh. It's always a pleasure. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, I've been really, really looking forward to this. So many different directions we could go. So maybe if we just start leaving this open ended, right? The people just heard in your bio. There's so many areas that you have specialized in and learned about over your career. What are people not talking about that maybe we should start with? Saundra Davis: The thing that has my attention the most right now is just how we think about personal finance and financial topics at large, right? You know, as you know, I'm the program director at Golden Gate for the financial planning programs. And we have this chasm that I think runs along financial lines like net worth, the idea that people who have less need, less planning and people who have more need more planning. And I just think it number one, I think it's the opposite. I think the less you have, the more important planning is because you just don't have a lot of room for error. And then when people are hearing about, you know, loud budgeting and financial trauma and all of these terms, while I'm glad that people are talking about financial stuff more, I'm glad people are paying attention to the psychology of money. What causes us to do the things that we do or not? Well, I'm glad that that's happening. It just gives me a little pause because I feel like people can then think your whole life becomes a snapshot, right? I'm not good with money or I had a financial trauma that I can't recover from. And I just think that without understanding that things happen, sometimes we cause those things to happen. Wherever we are at any given point in time, we can learn a new way and we can try a new path. And if that new path doesn't work, guess what? We get to try yet another new path. And that's really what my hope is for people that we don't become so entrenched in the newest buzzwords in personal finance. I'm seeing a lot of the articles now about fire, the financially independent retire early folks. And I don't begrudge them doing their thing at all. But I'm seeing more and more of the shining stars of that movement returning to work. Some of them are returning to work because money isn't doing what they thought it was going to do. They have more responsibilities and they thought they were going to have. Some of them are returning to work. They've got enough money but the quality of life being retired at 35 or retired at 40 is just not satisfied. So those are the things that are on my mind. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, there's so many different directions we could go there. And I completely agree with you. A lot of the people listening follow the fire movement or want to start a business. How do they sift through all of this noise out there and all of these buzzwords? Because there are bad actors who will pray upon that. But in the same breath, there are really, really great planners out there who are helping these folks. So how do they decipher what's real and what's not? Saundra Davis: I am a firm believer that the folks who are focusing on the fire perspective will be in better shape than folks who don't. And the reason that I think that that's true is because it gives you some freedoms that you can then choose. What I notice is that when they're following someone who's really not a financial professional, I believe there's a lot of thinking about the pain point now. I want to be able to retire early. I want to not have to work. I want to be able to travel. So they're either thinking about their pain point or an opportunity, which is fine. I mean, that's what we want people to think about. The other side of that is it's very hard to know who you're going to be 10 years from now. And so I think that's the rub. I don't think that people who are not financial professionals who are writing about it and, you know, doing the blogs or doing the masterclass or whatever have the capacity to help people prepare for the financial implications that someone who's an experienced financial planner like yourself will know how to do. Does that make sense? It's like, you know what you want to feel like today. You don't know what to expect for that point in time in your life. And I see it a lot, not only with the fire movement, I see it all the time. I'll have financial planners who've worked with clients for decades. And the client will get to the age where they have done everything that they wanted to do. They've achieved all their financial goals and now they won't spend the money. And so the planners are asking me, how do I get my client to spend the money on the things that they saved it for? You know, they did all of this for a thing and they're not doing the thing. And so I say to them, well, have you asked them if it changed, you know, maybe the having the money was really the thing. And they just didn't know that it was the thing. They thought it was the retirement home. They thought it was the trip around the world. But then when they got there, the reality was, wow, the money gives me a greater sense of security. And so maybe it was that. But I think when there isn't someone there, and this is why I became a coach, when there isn't someone there to help them deeply explore and come to their own level of self-awareness about what is it really about? What is it really about? Not just what it looks like on the surface. I don't want to work. I want to travel. Whatever those surface things are, what's under that? And so that's what I would say, look out for, whether you're pursuing fire, whether you're already, you know, at an advanced age like myself, I was talking to a woman who's 80 years old and doesn't have enough. So she has to do the same thing. What does my life look like five, 10 years from now? You know, even at 80, she's still having to have that conversation with herself. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. Yeah, it never ends. And I think the way I'm interpreting this anyways, I'm hearing a lot of financial therapy kind of topics come up as you're talking. And so this is, I think the direction I want to go or the question I want to ask is around the different types of financial professionals. Because a financial therapist might be able to help you in ways that a financial coach cannot, who can help you in ways that a financial planner cannot. And so for the, you know, new business owner listening, how do you determine, you know, who is this best person if there is such a thing or is it building a team of professionals or how should someone sort of examine all the different options they have when it comes to someone who could help them with their money? Saundra Davis: Yeah. So about 2007, I first kind of had the idea of this continuum of financial well-being. And that starts with education, right, that transfer of knowledge. So a financial educator going to get the information that you need. Now, you may or may not be able to do anything with the information, right? So, but you have the information, you know what you need to know to make good financial decisions. And then there's financial counseling and that can look a lot of ways. It can look like credit counseling, debt counseling, housing counseling or even comprehensive counseling across your financial life cycle, wherever you are. And then financial coaching is really this exploration of self-awareness, right? This understanding of goals, behaviors, how do we think, how do we behave in this cycle of how do I make sure that the choices that I make and the goals that I set are in alignment with what really matters most to me? And the financial planning, as you know, and probably all of your listeners know, that you'll focus on the comprehensive aspects of every aspect of your financial life. Also related to goals, I mean, many financial planners now, you know, like yourself are paying attention to not just the dollars in the sense, but also the emotional aspects of money, the psychology of money, what is satisfying and gratifying for you. And then financial therapy, whereas I view financial therapy as when someone actually has the skills of a marriage and family therapist, a social worker and also financial experts. So there are financial planners who use therapeutic approaches, right? And there are therapists who are comfortable talking about money and talking about mindset and talking about limiting beliefs and those kinds of things. When you're working with someone who's a therapist, actually licensed to diagnose things like hoarding, overspending, things that are real diagnosable things, right? That's a different breed. And so I think that the lovely aspect of where we are, at least in the US and some other countries as well, whatever is a consumer needs, whatever it is that they feel like they need and they may not know, right? But with a feel like they need, there are professionals all along that continuum. And so a professional can decide, oh, I really want to focus on just the dollars in the sense. I want to get their information. I want to crank out a plan and I want to deliver it. And then there's professionals like what you have done in this really expanding this idea of what's important, what are your current beliefs and behaviors? Where do they come from and what do you want to align for the future, right? So I know that a lot of my financial beliefs, my beliefs about money came from my mom. There are some of them that I would call a legacy burden, right? There are things that get in the way of my health and wellbeing. And then there are my legacy blessings. My mother was just a dynamic. People think that my personality is welcoming and warm and all that. I've got nothing on Gladys Davis. I guess her personality was just bigger than life, you know, and nothing was sufficient to get in the way of her living her life. And so in addition to the stuff that I got that didn't serve me well, I also got a lot of stuff that did. And so what a therapist can do is really help you navigate those past things that get in the way of the future. Coaches in general are going to focus on where you are now and where you're going forward. They're generally not going to go too far into the background of how you got where you are, right? That's one of the big distinguishing. It doesn't mean that we don't understand, like I take the time to understand. So, you know, when you think about this financial behavior you have, where do you think it comes from? So I'm going to ask those kinds of questions. But what I'm looking for is can you take what you learn about yourself and then move forward? If you can't, then I'm going to refer you to someone who can support you in there. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah. I love that. It's so powerful. They're each so powerful in their own right yet so different and so important. And a lot of times you can't do well without the other. I'm curious to dig a little bit deeper. I know the Financial Planning Association is working towards title protection, you know, and in coaching, it seems like, you know, every other person I see online nowadays is a coach. So, can you talk about if someone's listening and they're saying, wow, I could really work with a financial therapist or a financial coach. How important is an accreditation or education or experience? How does someone narrow in on this person is or is not qualified? Saundra Davis: I don't think credentials are always necessary. But what I do think credentials can do is help the person who is providing the service, measure their competency. It can make sure that we know what we think we know. There are a lot of people who think, oh, to be a good coach, all I have to do is listen and then mentor them. So, the first thing is that if a coach thinks that they're mentoring is they're part of their job, they're clearly not a coach, right? If I'm giving you advice and I've got an agenda that I'm asking you to follow or suggesting that you follow, that by definition, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to definition is more directive and not in line with coaching. That said, you know, people can call themselves anything. So, the client really has to find the type of person that's going to work best for them. So, let me give you an example. I am not a directive coach. My job is to help the person develop sufficient self-awareness that they can then decide what their next action should be. Now, because I'm also a financial expert as they're designing their next action, they may need information from me. They may need to know what makes up a credit score. They may need to know how do I go about preparing to buy a home. They may need to know information, but a coach trusts that you are the expert in your own life and that you have the capacity to do that, which you say you want to do. What I think people should be looking for when they're trying to make this decision is, how do I work best? Am I okay with working with someone that will not give me an answer that is going to really evoke the answer from you? You know, and there's no wrong answer. That's the wonderful thing. Some people want to go to somebody and say, listen, tell me what to do. And if that's the case, a financial counselor, a financial planner is really going to be the ones that are most likely to do that. If you want somebody that's going to help you on this journey of self-exploration and have some financial expertise, but their primary goal with you is, do you really know what you want? Do you really know where you are? Do you really know where you're going? And then co-creating the plan of how to get there. And again, there's no wrong answer. Everybody needs something that suits them. You might need a combination. You might want a financial planner to give you the plan and then a coach to help support you in implementing the plan. Josh St. Laurent: This concept that I learned from you about the client is the expert of their own world. And they have the answers within them. It was hard to wrap my head around it first. And I've seen it play out now in coaching engagements where we almost always get to where I wanted to get to in the beginning. Why is that part of coaching? And why does it work like that? Saundra Davis: So again, coaching, actually, the very first coaching school was founded by a financial professional, a financial planner. And what this financial planner learned was that his clients who were mentally capable of doing the plan needed something more than a written document that said, do this, do this, do this, and do this. And that's how he started coaching. So the reason that I think that it works is that it honors the inherent wisdom of the person who is trying to change their situation, whether they're recovering from a setback or they've got the promise of a goal that they're trying to achieve. Saundra Davis: Coaching recognizes that it doesn't matter how much advice I give you if you're not ready willing and able to take the action. And so there are times that people come to us because they think they're ready. They're like, okay, I'm ready to do the thing. I'm ready to budget. I'm ready to do all the things. And then when they experience the emotions attached to it, it's like, not nearly as ready as I thought. Right. Coaching makes room for that. Coaching also allows the space for the person to in a nonjudgmental way, excavate the parts of themselves that get in the way of what they say they want. So it's one thing to define the vision. Say, okay, this is where I want to end up. It's another to say, okay, these are the things that I believe. These are the things that I do that get in the way of me going where I say I want to go. Saundra Davis: Am I willing to tackle that? Right. Because that's really where the gap is. Am I willing to do the change? The professional doesn't know that about me. Professional sees me walk in able to pay for their fee, able to sit there and hold a conversation and articulate my goals and rattle off all the stuff that I know. And the professional might look at me and say, oh, okay, well, once this woman has a plan, she's going to be good. But the professional doesn't know that I might have a wound from my past that keeps me from living in my present. The professional doesn't know that I might have shame around financial choices that I made that have me really insecure about making choices again. The person might not know that one of the ways that I got love in my family was by doing for others. Saundra Davis: So now I'm using my money in ways that are great for other people, but not great for me. Right. So the professional doesn't know that. I know that. I might not make the connection, but I know what happened to me. I know what I believe. The professional, whether it's a coach or a therapist or even a planner who uses therapeutic practices or a counselor uses therapeutic practices. I think about it. I'm a baseball fan. You know, the Davis family, we're baseball fans to the point where there's a standing joke in our family that if a baby is born into our family, when they get about a year old, we take them outside and we throw a baseball out of it. If they flinch, they have to find another family. Right. They either got to catch it or get it, right? We are a baseball fan. Saundra Davis: So I think of it as, you know, that umpire that keeps dusting off the plate, you know, the plate gets the sand on it, it gets cloudy. You're standing over it. You can't see the plate. The picture can't see the plate. Nobody can see the plate until the ump cleans it off. Some coaches call it peeling back the onion. Some call it, you know, using a mirror. And the main point of it is though, you know you. I know the stuff. I can help you get clearer about you so that you can address the stuff. And if you need my help with the stuff, I can help you with the stuff. But I can't help you figure out you unless you're willing to do that in a safe place with me. And in order for you to have that, I can't be judging you. If I'm judging you, you're not going to feel safe with me. Josh St. Laurent: This is reminding me of a concept you talk about where the client needs to. Sometimes you even more work than the coach, but usually at least just as much, right? And so I think that can be surprising for a lot of clients. Can you say more about the client's role in coaching for the people listening who are saying, you know, I'm sucking my business. I've been thinking about hiring a coach. It's not just showing off. Sometimes there is hard work to be done when you're in a coaching engagement. Saundra Davis: It's kind of 70 30. So the client does 70% and I do about 30. My job as the coach is to listen, coupled with my experience and my intuition and what I'm hearing from them, invite the client to self explore. Self exploration can be tough, right? Because sometimes we're unpeeling the stuff that doesn't feel good. Saundra Davis: And so the client is probably going to be journaling. If it's a financial coaching situation, they're also going to be looking at the choices that they've made. They might be doing some really concrete and tangible work of building their own budget. I don't give my clients a budget. I might be with them as they're building it, but I won't build it and say, this is what you should be doing with your money. So not only are they doing the emotional labor that comes with this work, they're also doing the concrete labor. Now if we're talking about retirement projections or something like that as the coach, I'm going to connect them with a financial planner that does that. I don't do that. I can help them understand what to think about. I can help them explore what they want retirement to look like for them and test some of the beliefs, right? Saundra Davis: Because I'm going to play golf every day and that's great for like two weeks. Then what? Okay. And so I can do those kinds of things, but the client actually has to do that work. And most of the work is emotional labor, to be honest. There's some work work, writing, gathering, those kinds of things. But for the most part, the work is self reflection. The work is being honest, sometimes being honest with ourselves is the hardest part. I've seen so many people who they've set a goal for themselves and they achieved the goal only to realize that it wasn't even close to what they really wanted. So that work on the front end of, okay, I'm about to invest a lot of my time and energy and maybe even money into getting to a place really is that it is that it. So we bump around in the discomfort for the client to figure out where they're going. Saundra Davis: So that's what I mean when I say about doing their own work because it's always work. Anytime you're taking a hard look at yourself, it's hard work. Even my own experience thinking back through the graduate program at Golden Gate or the financial therapy curriculum, the coaching courses, all of it, I'm continuously surprised at how vulnerable I have to be as the coaching client. Doing the financial therapy work is incredibly vulnerable. And a lot of times it feels like extremely hard work and maybe not a ton of progress. You almost have to go backwards in order to move forwards in an odd way. And so I'm glad that we're talking through this because I don't think a lot of people realize that going into a coaching engagement, they think they're going to show up, they're going to get some great knowledge and then everything will be fixed and they'll move forward. Josh St. Laurent: But it sounds like that is not necessarily the magic wand. Saundra Davis: Magic wand. Yeah, it is a journey. And let me show you how it shows up for me. I may have so many financial mistakes and I carried so much shame around it. So now I'm in the middle of a home renovation. I've lived in this place for 25 years, 20, about 25 years and I've done nothing. Carpets were just, oh my god, just needed so much work. And I just kept kicking it down the road, kicking it down the road. In 2021, I had a water damage and I was sitting in my home. I woke up in the morning and I hear this lovely babbling brook. I'm just hearing this love and I love sounds, right? And so I'm just listening to this and then it occurs to me. I don't live any place that I should hear a babbling brook. Saundra Davis: So it was my water heater. So my water heater burst. I completely just like pan it, right? My partnership, the water off, that's all fine. Now mind you, I have a master's degree in financial planning. I'm a homeowner who has insurance. It didn't occur to me to contact my insurance company. That's the gap between the knowing and the emotions. My emotions are, I'm not used to anybody being there for me. I always have to take care of everything myself. So I pull out the fan, I'm putting towels on, I'm trying to clean up this mess that it would not even be possible for me to truly clean up. The water was in the walls. It wasn't until one of my neighbors said, oh, did you call your insurance company? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Somebody had to tell me to call the insurance that I've been paying on for 25 years. Saundra Davis: Right? Because we just don't know when past stuff gets activated. We just don't know. And so what we can do as the human is to learn as much about that. I can learn as much about how trauma affected me financially. That's kind of why I, it's not that I don't like the people use the word financial trauma. I just think people limit the trauma to financial. We can come in all kinds of ways and they can have financial implications. They can show up, right? Financial stuff can cause the trauma or the trauma can cause financial stuff. And so I say that because this is years, this is years of me coming into a deeper awareness of how the choices I make are steeped in either a belief that I have, a choice that I made at the past, something that somebody in my family did, something that society says, you know, and so the more I work on that and learn about it and have the epiphanies, the better equipped I am to deal with new things that come up like right now with as much money as I'm spending on this remodel and buying refrigerators and all this other stuff that I haven't done. Saundra Davis: I should be absolutely panicking, right? And it is the easiest process because I understand me, I understand me now. My partner taught me how to trade stocks. That's actually how I became a financial planner. And I have an acorns account. I don't know if you're familiar with acorns, but it's an investment app. I'm so excited because I'm saving. I was not a saver. So I don't want to touch it. You know, I'm saving it. It's going great. And I have a 50% return. And my partner's like, you know, so do you want to take some of that out to pay for this? Are you kidding? I can't touch that money. I'd be sitting so, what have you been saving it for? I've been saving it to prove that I can save. So you know, and so what I did is I took the percentage of the earnings so that I can see the fruit of my labor. Saundra Davis: He had told me about it. He had asked me about it like a couple of months ago. And I said, okay, I'll do it. Nothing. Literally, while he was sitting, he was driving, I was at the passenger seat. I pressed the button and did it. And I felt so much relief. And it wasn't about the money. It was like, wow, this is a stepping stone for me. I faced a financial fear. I faced a financial judgment. What if I take the money out? Does that mean I'm a failure as a saver? You know, so those are all the places that we can go. And so the more we live with it, the more we test it for ourselves. So when we say the work, I don't believe. It is this long, grueling, oh my god, I got to do the work, banging my head thing. Saundra Davis: It's like these epiphanies come. So things can happen. And you're like, oh, wow. I'm different today than I was five years ago or ten years ago. So to me, that's the gift. It's fascinating to me that saving mentality served a previous version of Sandra. And you had to sort of adapt that as time goes on. I see it with clients who have incredibly high incomes and they keep spending more and more and more and more. And it's something in the past that is resurfacing over and over again. So I just find that fascinating about both financial therapy and coaching. We've been talking a lot about coaching and financial therapy, but a skill that I've always been impressed by that you have is this exquisite listening ability that I think is so underrated in society for business, for sales, for our relationships with everybody. So how does someone practice or exercise that listening muscle? Josh St. Laurent: The first thing is to recognize that most of us don't listen as well as we think we do. For me, I thought I was a good listener. I really did. Oh, I was awful. I just didn't know. I would interrupt people. I would me too. Someone would say something and I would want to make sure that they knew I resonated with what they said. And I just didn't realize how that can take the focus off of the speaker. And so how I think people can get better at it. Number one is to recognize it and really evaluate yourself, right? Really say when I'm in conversation with someone and you'll notice even now, when I finish speaking, you paused, you give yourself a moment to gather your thoughts before you speak. Very seldom do we do that. In a very seldom, do we have a level of comfort with the quiet in between speakers? Josh St. Laurent: We interrupt. We jump in as soon as the person finishes. While someone is talking, we're already processing what we want to say. And one of the things that we can do to get better is pace ourselves. I like to use the example of Google or Siri or one of those where you say, hey, to the thing, right? And you have to wait for it to acknowledge before you just keep on going, right? And so I use that practice, right? I say, hey, I don't want to say it now because you know it'll answer me. I don't think you know you say, hey, to the thing, right? And I find the number of times I grow frustrated because I'll say, hey, and it'll respond. And I don't wait for the beep. And now I'm talking over it. I didn't understand what you asked for, right? And so because I'm the problem, I'm speaking too quickly and not giving it a chance to give me the signal that it's time to speak. Saundra Davis: And I think if we do that with humans, we can make space in between. And there's just so much power in the pause, so much power in taking a beat to allow someone to gather their thoughts. Then the person also doesn't have to try to form their thoughts as you're speaking. So they really get to listen to you and then gather their thoughts and speak. And when I'm coaching executives, we have this conversation a lot. I coach a lot of introverts. And the introverts often feel like to be professional, to make it, they've got to be, you know, somebody has a question they've got an answer, right? And you know, there's several books now about the power. There's something powerful about the introvert. And so I think one of the things that's so important is to make space in our own head first. And then we can allow space for the other person to speak. Saundra Davis: So when you're saying, what can people practice? We can practice counting a beat or two from your words to my words. We can practice not interrupting because I remember when I was talking to a girl, her nose in my 30s, and I kept interrupting her. And she would just keep speaking as though I hadn't said. And I apologize for interrupting. I said, I interrupt because I didn't want to lose my train of thought. And she says, yes, but when you interrupt me, I lose my train. And so that was a big lesson. I wish I could say that my learning, my listening and learning turned around back then when I was 30, that would be a lie. My listening and learning turned around a bit more in about 44 or 45 is what I got to be a better listener. But it's very deliberate. And I listen to understand rather than to reply. Saundra Davis: I feel like if I understand, the reply will come. It might take me a little time. I might have to pause to gather my thoughts. I no longer view quickness as a sign of intelligence. I know for myself a lot of times quickness was my fear. Quickness was me performing, showing that I'm smart enough good enough, all of that. So now I can go slowly and not feel like, oh, what are they thinking of me? I don't know how much of that is a function of being 60 plus. There might be some of that. But primarily learning to be comfortable with the pause in your own head and then with the people you're speaking with. I totally agree. I have seen in action the power of the pause. So I want to highlight one thing that you said about, I think of it as the writing reflex. Josh St. Laurent: I've heard of it, you know, called a couple of different ways like the, the me too. And I know that part of the accredited personal financial coach, like curriculum, was actually watching the Brane Brown video on empathy. And you know, in transparency, I think a lot of people have the best of intentions with the me too, like, oh, I can relate to what you're saying. And now that I'm aware of it and I've practiced it and I've had it done to me, I can see the stark difference of me to versus, you know, true empathy or I hear what you're saying or a really good follow up question. So why is that concept so important and not just coaching, but just in, in listening? So I think that you're right. The desire for the connection and the shared experience can cause us to jump in with, oh, I, I have that too. Saundra Davis: I feel that too. Sometimes it's just for ourselves, right? We want the connection and other times we want people to feel our empathy. I can understand. I can relate. But sometimes we even go as far to say, I know how you feel, right? Which the fact is we could have the exact same situation. You know how you feel about the situation, but you don't know how I feel unless you ask me, how do you feel? Right? And so I think what's so important about it is number one, it doesn't collapse your experience with the experience of the person you're speaking with, right? It allows them to have their own unique experience and you witness it. And when we think about what it feels like to be seen, to know that someone sees us. And that's really what I think all of this work, not just whether you're a coach or whatever your role is, but to be seen. Saundra Davis: If I can see that whatever it is that you're experiencing is either, you know, your hopes, your dreams or your fears, if I can see you, I'm not seeing you through what you're doing. I'm seeing you as a whole person. The reason I think that it's so difficult is that we want to connect and we've been taught that that's how you connect. We've been taught that mimicry is how we connect. And I think that the pain of that is what about people who don't feel that they belong. And so the idea that we can make space, one of the things that the mindfulness training said I took, that a practice called just like me and that practice was designed to increase empathy. Research actually shows that people in general feel more empathy for people who are like them and they feel less empathy for people who are not. Saundra Davis: While I understand it, if the only way I can feel empathy for you is because you're like me, what is that saying about my capacity to have empathy or compassion? And so one of the reasons I would refuse to do that exercise in the training is that I want to be able to have empathy for people for being who they are, not because they're like me, not because we have a shared experience or I can relate to what they're talking about. I want to be able to have empathy whether I can relate or not. I'll share with you something that happened with me very recently. I was in a training, I'm always in a, when am I not in a training, right? I was in a training where I was being trained. And the professor, the teacher said, can you all hear me? And I said, yes, we can, harmless, right? Saundra Davis: Except there were some people who couldn't. There were some people who couldn't hear him. But now I've spoken so the people who couldn't hear him feel uncomfortable saying anything. And literally they didn't say anything. They couldn't hear him. I was trying to help. I wanted him to feel comfortable. I was helping and I harmed people, right? That was simple words. We hear you. I heard him. We did not hear him. I heard him. So learning to speak for ourselves and not trying to blanket our experience with other people. And we see that more and more all the time. When people are in an in circle, right? People who have well people who don't. People who are homeowners and people who are not, right? When we do those things here in California, there's the battle between the landlords and the renters, right? And when we do that, we don't make space for people's unique experience of whatever their experience in their lives. Saundra Davis: And so the importance of the me too is pause, hear them first. And if you want to acknowledge that you have what you interpret as a similar experience, then say, you know, I have something that I also felt that way as you just described, right? That's very different than I went through that too. Because even if we go through the same thing, it might not look the same. Like right now I told you I'm getting my house read on people ask me, well, how's it going? I have no idea. I have no idea how it's going. I didn't pick the floors. I didn't pick the paint. I didn't pick the cabinets. I chose a contractor who has some great design skills. And I said, hey, I like brown and I have no clue. Now other people look at me like, oh, that's crazy. How could you do that? Saundra Davis: You're going to use it and all this money you're going to walk into out. Yeah, you know, that's easeful for me. I would be a basket case right now if I had to choose tile. But someone else might be going through the same thing I'm going through, but have a very different perspective and feeling. They might want to, you know, I want to choose the grout color. Not only might I choose in the tile, I'm choosing the color of the grout, right? And so we're not like anyone else. There's a reason we're all unique. And being unique doesn't take away from our belongingness and how that relates in my head to the writing reflex is that that whole idea that if you're on one end of this and then I land on the other end, you're going to get entrenched more than likely. That's what the research shows, right? Saundra Davis: You'll be more committed to the perspective you're holding. And if I'm judging that perspective, you're going to become even more committed to it. And so, you know, we just have to recognize that we all get to be human in our own special and unique way, whatever that looks like. And if I'm not happy how I'm showing up or I'm not happy with the results that I'm getting, I can do something differently. And I might need you to help me see my blind spots. I might need you to say, you know, Sandra, I noticed you mentioned that buying the appliance was very difficult for you to buy these appliances for your home. What do you think that was? Something as simple as, you know, what do you, what do you think made that hard for you? Right? Rather than you try to tell me what you think was hard for me. Saundra Davis: Right? So that's the power of the question, you know? My hope is that the people listening get to experience at some point, feeling heard, whether it's through a coach or someone else, because it truly is such a rare experience in today's culture that we have. I know you've had this experience where you say very little and the client has this, you know, emotional response to it because no one's ever really heard them through to the end. They might have gotten the, oh yeah, me too. Or this is what happened to me, but to really be heard is rarer and rarer, it seems like nowadays. And I want to kind of piggyback on that, your mindfulness teaching that you do as well. How does that come into play when you're thinking about being a good listener, whether it's in business or with your spouse or whatever it may be? Josh St. Laurent: Where does mindfulness fit in and how does someone introduce that to everything else we've been talking about? So this is my favorite part because I've come to believe it is the foundation for everything else. If I understand what's happening with me in this moment without wanting it to be different than it is, if I can accept and be with whatever is happening, I can be with anything. I can be with the discomfort of a client. I can be with the strong emotions. I can listen when my partner says, you know that thing you did back there in the store. I really wish you hadn't done that without me getting defensive. I say that because it's a real example that just happened last week, right? He said that I did something that harmed him and I was able to say, you know, I apologize. It was not my intention to do that without defending, without feeling angry with him for speaking what was true for him. Saundra Davis: And so the idea of mindfulness, my favorite definition of mindfulness is to have your mind where your behind is, you know, is my head where my behind is or am I thinking about a trip or thinking about the past or thinking about what I'm going to do after our call is over. It is my mind where my behind is. And if it is, I have more capacity to deal with whatever emotions come. If someone says something that hurts my feelings or I say something that hurt their feelings, I have more capacity. It doesn't mean that I'm always right. I fell down last week and I got a person like a sailor. It didn't mean that I performed well under pressure in that moment, but I have more capacity to perform and be the way that I want to be in any situation, whether it's with my grandchildren or my partner or in my business, you know, I'm downsizing my business right now and I'm very afraid, you know, very afraid. Saundra Davis: And I know that I'm afraid. So I'm not out here acting and behaving and doing things without understanding. So before I do things, I recognize the fear and I allow myself to feel the fear. Or I take action and start doing a bunch of stuff, trying to really deal with the fear, right? That's what's important to me. Something I think is just a personal example for me. I've always thought of mindfulness as meditation and focusing on your breath and it can be that. But I've seen you lead lots of different types of meditations because people can get there in different ways, maybe tactile or auditory and people get there in different ways. And that was a learning curve for me because people, you know, maybe don't align with meditating or breathwork and maybe it's a different way to get there for a different person. So I thought that that was expansive for me to see that and see other people really connect with a little cloth or blanket or whatever it might be for them. Josh St. Laurent: So just was something that was interesting to me when it comes to mindfulness. Yeah, that has to do with becoming more trauma informed or trauma sensitive, recognizing that the breath is not a safe anchor for everyone. And primarily when you think about meditation, the reason, you know, the breath ticked on says, you know, you can only breathe in the present. You can't breathe in the past and you can't breathe in the future, right? So the breath, it can keep you present. And so focusing on the breath can keep you present. And that's really what the whole point is to be present with what is without wishing it was different than it is. That doesn't mean that if we're in pain, we don't hope that we're not in pain, but hoping that we're not in pain, doesn't make us not in pain, right? And so the more acceptance that we can bring to whatever circumstance we're facing, whether it's in our businesses or whatever, the easier it is to ride the wave because everything changes. Saundra Davis: As we know, that's the only constant is change. And so if we can just ride it, we can release it rather than fight against it and make it even harder. But that's a work in progress, I think, for everyone, even people who are experienced meditators. I've had a meditation practice since 1998 now. And sometimes it's the breath, sometimes it's rubbing my fingers together. Sometimes it's, you know, touching, touching a fabric, a cloth, sometimes it's listening. It just depends on what I need in that moment. So the, again, the more options we have, the better capacity to deal with whatever is present. Yeah, I love that. I want to transition to those three questions that I try to ask everyone towards the end of the podcast. And the first one is, what does living a wealthy life look like for you? Oh, I love this question. Josh St. Laurent: Saundra Davis: Josh St. Laurent: If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn't there yet, what would it be? Saundra Davis: Living a wealthy life to me means everything that I do I can do with ease. So I can work with ease, I can play with ease, I can be with people with ease, I can be alone with ease. And that, for me, is the definition of will. And so there's financial implications, of course, because, you know, to be at ease, I have to have a degree of financial stability and security, you know, safety, you will. But everything else is more like how am I interpreting things? Josh St. Laurent: Where you are and know what financial freedom means to you. Saundra Davis: So wherever, wherever it is, you're going, allow yourself to start where you are. I love that. Last question, maybe the hardest of the day. Josh St. Laurent: If you only had $1,000 and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do with that money? Saundra Davis: Starting over in the context of life at all. Yeah, career, education, right? You're starting fresh. There's two parts. My first instinct was to say I'd buy a book because I can usually find a Path it might not be the ultimate path, but I can usually find a path in reading the other part is I probably would save Have I would like spend half long books after the savings because the book would give me the courage to try something I never tried before and the savings would give me some wings and I would feel safe enough to try something That I've never tried before. Josh St. Laurent: Great questions. I like that answer. For people listening who want to connect with you online Where is the best place to do so? Saundra Davis: The best place is probably linked in that's where I'm kind of there more than any place else My website is sagefinancialsolutions.org that talks about the work that I do But those are probably the two main I'm not quite as active on the socials And I think I've decided that I'm not going to be at first I was trying to force myself and down like maybe not maybe Maybe I will not do the tiktoky thing. Josh St. Laurent: I think this was cool. Yes Well, we will put the links in the show notes make it easy for people to find you on LinkedIn I will share one last piece of Sandra Davis wisdom. I don't know if you'll remember this It was very early on when we first met and I was asking you about learning patients in my brand new business And you asked me if you could share a way that you learn patients and you said that you got teacups without handles on them I have been burning myself ever since trying to learn patients So we have to tell people why right if it's too hot to hold it's too hot to drink Saundra Davis: So there's no handle right have to sit with it as it becomes enough for me to drink Yes, I thought that was very wise. Josh St. Laurent: Well, thank you for being here. This has been really fun Saundra Davis: Thank you. Good to hang out with you as always Josh St. Laurent: This has been the Wealth in Yourself podcast where we help people to design their idea life And take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Sandra Davis Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time The Wealth in Yourself podcast is hosted by me Josh St. Loren An edited and produced by Ray Heycraft To learn more about how to make your money work for you Visit us at www.WealthInYourself.com And connect with us on all social media at Wealth in Yourself This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice Please do not construe anything said to be advice And the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of Wealth in Yourself This podcast and the information presented are separate from my employment at Golden Gate University Still, they are part of my mission to make no cost financial knowledge more accessible If you like the show, please take a moment to leave us a review We read all of your feedback and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed Don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message and as always thanks for listening