Her Money Mindset Show

3 Lessons From My Embarrassing Money Meltdown

Stephanie Wankel Episode 37

Discover how a shocking tax bill transformed into a powerful lesson about money mindset, abundance, and gratitude. In this raw and honest video, I share my personal journey from complete financial meltdown to profound money breakthrough. Learn the three game-changing lessons about wealth consciousness that emerged from my resistance to spending money. Perfect for entrepreneurs, spiritual seekers, and anyone struggling with money blocks or bill anxiety.


You'll discover:

• Why the size of your bills reveals the size of your blessings

• How resistance to spending actually blocks new money from flowing in

• The surprising cost of fighting against your financial reality

• Practical gratitude exercises for transforming your relationship with money

• Simple mindset shifts for creating more financial abundance


Whether you're facing tax season stress, dealing with unexpected bills, or simply ready to transform your money story, this video offers real solutions without toxic positivity. Join me for an authentic conversation about money, mindset, and the magic of gratitude.



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 So today I am gonna get super vulnerable with you because there is a huge struggle that I recently had that I want to come clean with, and. This shook me to the core as someone who practices gratitude regularly, and I truly, truly believe it. If you remember back in November, I did a whole video series on the magic of gratitude, and you can go listen to it, and I do it.

I believe it, I practice it. And I still struggled big time.

So picture this, I'm sitting at my desk. I get an email, bing, whatever the email sound is, and the email's from my tax preparer, my CPA and enclosed in the email is my tax return I click and I open it up I knew it was gonna be a big tax bill, but what I saw. It was double what I expected and my stomach dropped. I literally, literally felt sick. And here's the embarrassing part. I spent weeks, days upon days upon days, yes, weeks spiraling about this big number.

Me, the gratitude person completely lost and consumed in stress and anxiety. Ironic, right? I couldn't sleep, I couldn't focus. I kept running that worst case scenario in my head. And while I was busy freaking out, I was completely missing the bigger picture.

Massive tax bill, it meant I had had some level of success at something to have to pay. Such a large tax bill meant I had income and it was because of successful property sales of some rental properties. That huge amount actually meant I had reaped significant profits. And I had the means to pay it.

All of this was pure abundance. But you know what really cost me? All of those days and all of those weeks, it wasn't this tax bill. It was my resistance to it, my fighting that stress, that negative heavy energy, that constant fight against what was reality. It was blocking everything good that was trying to flow into my life.

I had to come face to face with my hypocrisy, and I mean it hypocrisy. I'm embarrassed to say this. Here I am preaching the magic of gratitude all over the place all the time, but refusing to practice it. Myself in this current situation. That's when I decided that I needed to shift all of this thinking that was going on in my brain.

So three massive lessons that I remembered and relearned during this tax situation are, one, the size of your bills equals the size of your blessing.

Two. Resistance is more expensive than any bill could ever be.

And three, I needed to be reminded that money needs to flow, money flows in and money flows out. It goes both ways. It's like a river.

So if we think about the size of our bills is the size of our blessing. I mean, if you think about it, it's crazy. When I was staring at this massive tax bill, feeling like I might throw up, I was completely blind to what it really meant. I was focused on the money going out that I missed. The bigger story.

It was actually telling that tax bill that had me losing sleep. It was just a bill. It was actually a receipt for my success. Think about it. I sold some rental properties successfully for profit, for a lot of profit, big profit. The only reason I owed so much tax was because I had made money. And this principle applies to every bill in our life, if you think about it.

So if we play a little game, let's say so big mortgage payment, that means you have been trusted with a home, you have a roof over your head, your you are building equity. Hefty utility bills. You have electricity running through your house, clean water at your fingertips, heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer.

So many people don't have this luxury. What a blessing, big grocery bill means. You can feed yourself and your family. You have choices about what to eat. You are not wondering where your next meal comes. Do you know there are so many people in this world that are hungry again, we are so blessed. And here's a tough, another tough one for me.

High insurance premiums. This means you have valuable things to protect. You have a safety net. You're taking care of your future.

Do you see what's happening here? Every single bill is actually telling a story about your abundance and about your success, about your blessings. About what we have in our life that many people just dream of. And that tax bill of mine that triggered this whole revelation, it's literally a receipt showing up that shows that I crushed it in Rhonda Bryan's book The Magic,

she says, every time you pay a bill, say thank you,

and it isn't about toxic positivity. , It isn't about pretending. It's about really, feeling , you don't wanna pretend that you love seeing money, leave your bank account. But when you look at the whole picture, then you're happy to pay those bills because you are happy to have what those bills can afford you.

And you know that not everyone has that.

What you could do is take out that big bill, the one that makes you cringe, think of the three things it represents in your life that you're grateful for. What does this bill make possible? What does it protect? Remember, the size of your bills isn't just showing you what you owe.

It's showing what you have, and that's something to be so grateful for. Okay. Number two, resistance is more expensive than any Bill. And I say this because I was in such resistance about this tax bill, I just didn't want it to be true. I honestly thought if I talked to someone, they would tell me it wasn't true.

If I clicked more, like the number would change. I truly, truly did not want it to be reality. I just resisted it with every fiber of my being.

And what this caused, it caused physical toll on me and it caused mental toll physically, it caused me issues because I wasn't sleeping. I was having like stress headaches. I had a constant knot in my stomach, and I had zero energy because I was wasting all this time resisting and being worried. Then of course there was my mental drain.

I couldn't focus on new opportunities. I couldn't let it go. I procrastinated. I honestly did not pay this tax bill until April 14th the day. And believe me, it was a shit show because I didn't have the money in the right account. I couldn't decide. I couldn't decide if I was gonna mail a check. 'cause I read that.

Hackers could get the mail in the post office and whitewash the check and write it to themselves. So I thought that wasn't safe. I was nervous to wire it. I actually couldn't wire it for some reason. So I was needing to do like an electronic payment and then I thought for sure that was gonna have fraud.

And so I was running around like a crazy person on April 14th because the penalty of not paying on that day was a lot. Because I think it's like 0.5% and 0.5% of a lot is a lot. And so anyway, my pro, my resistance caused massive procrastination and a lot of stress, a lot of mental angst. I wasn't fully showing up for everything in my life 'cause I had this tape running, this stress.

If we do the real math, this tax bill was real money, right? It's a fixed amount. It wasn't getting bigger and it definitely wasn't getting smaller while I stressed about it. But all those hours of lost sleep, missed opportunity, not showing up, not having energy that cost something infinite amounts.

When I started to really process this, and to be honest, it wasn't till after I paid it. After I paid it on April 15th, then I became more open to being grateful. I think I was practicing gratitude before them, I think it was my son who was like, give me a break. You are paying this tax bill because you made, money.

Those properties more than doubled in the time you held onto them. And he had to remind me and I was starting to practice it. But to be honest, true gratitude didn't come until I let the money flow as we're gonna talk about in the next step until I paid it, my resistance did not lessen. I was creating this whole new level of expense, energy, expense, physical expense, all of that was costing me a lot more than the actual dollar amount that I owed. My challenge to you is next time you feel resistance rising, and I feel it right here about a bill or expense, ask yourself, what's the real cost of my resistance here? What opportunities might I miss if I'm feeling all stressed about this? Is my resistance making this actual bill or expense smaller?

No, it doesn't. The truth is you can spend weeks like I did stressing about it, or you can spend the same amount of energy creating more. You can't do both. You can't stress and create more. You stress or create more. That brings us to the third idea that money flows. Money. It's meant to flow, it flows in and it flows out.

It's kind of like a river in that respect. What happens when you dam up a river and when you try to hold it back, it either finds another path or it creates pressure and eventually bursts money works the exact same way. Here's what I realized during this tax meltdown,

I was gripping my money so tight, so scared to let it flow out that I was actually blocking any new money flowing in. Any ideas, any energy. Think about it. When you clinch your fist super tight, what happens? Nothing can leave, but nothing can come in either.

You're stuck with what you're holding onto,

Resisting spending money can sound a lot like this. If you hear yourself saying, I don't have enough. I don't have enough money. I can't trust that I'll earn this money back. I'm not good at managing money. These are all thoughts that bring about resistance to money flowing in and out.

And when you're thinking these things, the universe, God, whatever you believe in says, okay, that's your story, then let's just keep it that way. If you feel you're not good with money, then we won't give you more money to manage.

It sounds hokey, but that's how it works. And when I got back to practicing true gratitude from my heart, I realized this flow of money just happens. It's like the universe was waiting for us to prove that we can handle this back and forth flow. If you think of it like breathing, you cannot inhale for other, like you have to let go of your breath.

You need to exhale to make room for more air. It's a constant flow, breathing in and out, and money works the same way. This isn't just woo woo. I noticed that when I let go of resistance, would I accept money coming in and money coming out. I have less anxiety about money

I have more unexpected income, like checks show up things, income that I wasn't. Expecting business decisions, money, decisions get easier. I'm sleeping better. Duh, remember, money is meant to flow. When you bless its departure as much as you bless its incoming. You create space for more to come, more to return to you.

You are not losing money when you spend it. You're participating in this in and out flow.

And you can start really small with this each morning. List one thing about one money situation that you can be grateful for. There's got to be something, even if you are on hard times right now, there has to be something you are able to eat. You have a place to live something, just one. Thing to be grateful for, and then two things to be grateful for.

And then three. And you'll see as you become more grateful, peace, will come back in. That's the key piece. When I was spiraling out of control with my thoughts, I had no peace. Peace was stolen from me by my own mind.

Another action step you can take is loosen your grip, that stronghold. Notice when you're fighting your bills, when you're resisting, take some breaths. 'cause remember, air goes in and out just like our money does. And again, ask yourself, what is the gift in this payment? Releasing the grip and replacing it with gratitude.

And then notice, because things are flowing in and out, money is flowing in and out all the time, and we just don't notice. So start to notice both the income and the outflow. Notice what's happening. Notice those unexpected things that are coming in. Visualize money flowing easily in, and trust the cycle of in and out, just like you trust your breathing, you know, standing here on the other side of that tax incident, I can see so clearly. What this journey was all about. It wasn't about the money at all. It wasn't about the hundreds of thousands of dollars I had to pay Uncle Sam. It was about coming back to what I truly believe, which is that gratitude is magical and it is magical, and I can't even believe that I was so angst up for so long about this tax bill.

The thought of it. Is just crazy to me, but it was real. I was in it.

And those three lessons, they really helped me. They changed the way that I was looking at things and understanding that bills are a blessing. Like that doesn't even sound normal until you think about it. Of course, it's a blessing and the fact that I was just resisting and my grip, my grip on that money was.

Palatable. I literally wouldn't let it go until the very day I had to. It's just crazy to me. And then of course, the third lesson, which is that money flows. Money flows in and out. It's okay that it goes out 'cause then it can come in.

And here's what I hope you take away from this story, that even when you know better, even when you practice this stuff or you learn these things, you still might get, knocked down by money fears like I did. And that's okay. What matters is getting back up, shifting our perspective, and then coming back to choosing gratitude even when it feels impossible. Like I said, start small. Think one bill. Release your grip just a little and watch money flow. Because when you transform your relationship with money, you can transform your entire money story. And I am living proof that you can go from complete tax terror to total peace again.

And if I can do it after weeks and weeks of resistance and holding on and stressing, and yes, even

while fighting myself, you can do it too. Now it's your turn. Which of these three lessons resonates most with you? Let me know in the comments below and don't forget to hit subscribe button if you're ready to transform your money with me. If you wanna put a light on your money mindset, head on over to her money coach.com back slash quiz and take the money mindset.

Assessment and figure out where you're at, where you wanna be, and a way to get from here to there. And remember, you have the power to change your financial future, and I'm here cheering you on every step of the way.