My chest tightened. My hand hesitated over the button.
Two train tickets. An adventure I genuinely wanted. Nothing extravagant. Nothing irresponsible. Just movement, curiosity, life. And my body was treating it like a threat.
What shocked me wasn’t the price. It was the physical reaction—the same constriction I’d feel making a reckless decision, except this wasn’t reckless. This was alive.
And then I remembered: Just one year ago, I was spending the exact same amount on a gym membership I barely used. The money left my account every month without friction, without awareness, without feeling.
Same money. Same number. Completely different experience.
That’s when it hit me. This wasn’t about money at all.
This was about relationship.
Money Doesn’t Live in Spreadsheets—It Lives in Your Body
We’re taught to think about money as math. Budgets. Numbers. Percentages. Responsibility.
But your nervous system doesn’t react to numbers. It reacts to stories.
And the story of “train tickets to somewhere new” threatened the narrative of who I’d always been safe being. The unused gym membership? That matched an old identity—familiar, safe, socially acceptable. It was spending on who I’d always been.
The train tickets were spending on who I was becoming.
Your body knows the difference.
The expenses that feel easy usually match who you believe you’re allowed to be. The expenses that feel heavy usually point to who you’re being called to become.
And becoming always asks a deeper question: “Are you willing to let money resource your transformation, not just your survival?”
The Pattern Hiding in Plain Sight
Here’s what I’ve noticed, both in myself and in almost everyone I know:
We’re comfortable bleeding money slowly on things that keep us numb. Subscriptions we don’t use. Convenience that costs us presence. Comfort that costs us growth.
But we freeze when money is asked to support joy, beauty, adventure, rest, or aliveness.
I have a friend who easily spends $200 a month on takeout she barely tastes—eating while scrolling, barely present. But she agonized for weeks over a $200 pottery class she desperately wanted to take. Same money. One kept her numb. One asked her to become.
Another friend is comfortable with a $600 car payment on a vehicle that projects success. But investing $500 in therapy to actually feel successful? That felt “irresponsible.”
This isn’t financial intelligence. This is conditioning.
We think we’re being responsible when we spend on things that keep us small. But the real fiscal irresponsibility is bleeding money on a life we’re not actually living.
Money flows easily to what matches your current identity. It resists what requires you to grow beyond it.
This is why budgeting alone never creates wealth. Because wealth doesn’t start with control. It starts with permission.
The Moment Everything Shifted
Standing there with those train tickets in my cart, I realized something fundamental had changed.
I wasn’t earning differently. I wasn’t even spending differently.
I was relating to money differently.
Money was no longer just here to keep me safe. I was inviting it to support my life. My actual, breathing, curious, expanding life.
And with that realization came a new truth that rewired something deep:
“I allow money to support my aliveness, not just my survival.”
That single sentence changed the entire conversation.
What Happens When the Relationship Changes
When you shift from controlling money to relating with money, something remarkable happens.
You stop shaming yourself for desire. You stop numbing your wants to feel responsible. You stop treating every financial decision like a moral referendum on your worth.
You start listening instead of forcing.
Money stops being a judge. Money stops being a source of fear or a symbol of your inadequacy.
Money becomes a conversation. A collaboration. A mirror showing you exactly where you’re ready to expand and where you’re still playing small.
And slowly, quietly, it begins to respond differently. Not because the numbers changed, but because the relationship did.
A Practice That Changed Everything
Now, before any purchase that feels heavy, I pause and ask myself one question:
“Is this resistance protecting me from something reckless… or is this my future self knocking?”
That question alone has shifted everything. Because sometimes the resistance is wisdom—a genuine “not this.” But more often than it should be, the resistance is just fear of becoming someone I haven’t given myself permission to be yet.
Someone who takes train trips for no reason except joy. Someone who invests in beauty. Someone who lets money support the full, textured, unreasonable aliveness of being human.
An Invitation, Not Advice
I want to offer you a gentle reflection, not as something you have to do, but as something worth sitting with:
Which expenses feel invisible in your life? The ones that disappear from your account without thought or feeling?
Which expenses feel heavy? The ones that make your chest tighten, even when they’re not actually reckless?
What do those reactions say about who you believe you’re allowed to be?
And then, maybe, sit with this:
When I changed how I related to money, money changed how it related to me.
This isn’t about spending more. It’s about living more. It’s about letting money move from being a wall between you and your life to being a bridge toward it.
Money was never meant to only keep you alive.
It was meant to help you feel alive.
Money doesn’t respond to control. Money responds to relationship. And the moment you relate to money differently, it will begin to meet you differently too.
Not the numbers. The relationship.
And that changes everything.
With fierce love,
Salima
