93. The False Sense of Lack around Money and Sex – Ida Herbertsson
Money and sex may seem like an odd couple, but to Ida Herbertsson it makes perfect sense to combine the two in her coaching. Ida has a daytime job as an investor, helping small startups in southern Sweden get their feet on the ground. On the side, she coaches people – so far only women, but she is open to coaching also men – to attain a sounder relationship with money and sex. ”All of us, at least in the Western world, have a lot of conditioning around money and sex. We have a lot of fears and limiting beliefs”, she says. ”We are taught that life is a struggle. That there is a lack of everything. This also creates a feeling of safety in lack, which is hard to hear for many people. There is a comfort in complaining about your boss, your sex life, your boyfriend and the money you don’t have. On a logical level we don’t want scarcity, but subconsciously we obviously like to live in lack.” ”Money issues are never about the actual money. They are about how you relate to that money. Women often have zero self financial self confidence.” And the conditioning in society (at least in northern Europe) is that rich people must have become rich in some bad way. Ida thinks it is better to focus on making more money than on cutting costs, because the former is about expansion and the latter is about contraction. Both can ”spill over” to other parts of life. It is basically the same kind of flawed mindset that gives people money problems that also keeps people from having a healthy sex life, according to Ida. The issues around these two central parts of life are surprisingly similar. ”To me it's a lot about coming back to our bodies and being kind to ourselves. Our bodies and our minds work together. By connecting to our bodies, we connect to our sexuality. We are sexual beings.” Just as people don’t dare to believe they can live a financially abundant life, they don’t think they deserve to have a rich sex life–and those who have one are believed to have it because of some bad reason. ”You expect the sex life to fade and perhaps even disappear a few years into a relationship, so that’s also what you’re seeing. If that happens to me that means that I am ’normal’, so I’m fine and I will survive.” We talk a bit about the #metoo movement, which Ida thinks was enormously important but also led to an unfortunate dichotomy, which means that many women don’t dare to say openly that they love men. Another dilemma, Ida points out, is that today’s Western women have been taught to be so independent that they almost don’t trust anyone, which makes it difficult to fully engage in a relationship. ”We are taught to have everything figured out for a potential divorce even before we start dating.” Why it has come thus far is understandable from a historic perspective, but it is the same limiting lack mentality as with money. Ida Herbertsson started her money & sex coaching after a transformative experience some years ago (it happened during her first Saturn return, which she would realize later). It entailed leaving her boyfriend, selling their apartment, quitting a job and training to be a yoga teacher in Bali. Ida gives a big shout-out to another coach, Sandra Denise, whose work has helped Ida tremendously. ”She taught me that there is so much more to life, so much more pleasure, if we only choose to see it. And I want to pay that forward.” Ida’s website Ida on Instagram