Gratitude is Great . . . and a little complicated

by Alison Romer, The Pledgettes Community Cultivator

Last month, The Pledgettes hosted the Expand Your Money Gratitude challenge with 50% of proceeds going to The Giving Forward Project. Every day in November, participants received a different journaling prompt which could be answered in the app or kept private. 

The challenge started simply with the question “How do you feel about being grateful for money?” This is a big one and we talk about it a lot.

There can be a stigma around feeling grateful for money. A stigma that we shouldn’t want money, we shouldn’t be too flashy about having it or maybe that we just shouldn’t talk about it at all.

And that’s just the very thing we are trying to shift.

Last summer, The pledgettes read Jen Sincero’s “You’re a Badass at Making Money,” a money mindset book for shifting our stories and attitudes for money. An incredibly powerful line from that book reads: “If you believe money is evil – your bank account will have tumbleweeds blowing through it”

That line sparked much discussion and reflection and – in a way – paved the road to this challenge. Believing that money is the root of all evil is a narrative woven into our cultural consciousness from childhood . . .

Don’t talk about money – it’s impolite. Don’t brag about what you have – not everybody has the same thing. It’s even a misquoted bible verse for crying out loud.

Shifting this mindset is incredibly important to attracting money into our lives, respecting that money and using it in ways that align with our values and bring us joy.

In Sincero’s book, she also talks about the idea of “raising our frequency” around money to attract more of it into our lives. Sure – this is a little woo. But can you imagine attracting something into your life while simultaneously thinking it’s evil? It just probably wouldn’t come to you. I know I wouldn’t!

This was the most powerful part for me with the Money Gratitude challenge. I believe that focusing my gratitude around money is the single most powerful way I can raise my frequency around money. I am grateful to have enough money to spend it on things that align with my values like shopping locally instead of on Amazon; traveling and tipping just a bit bigger at restaurants in other towns; giving it away to a cause that strikes me.

But this challenge pushed me to dig deeper. And to get grateful for somethings beyond what’s obvious when I pull out my credit card.

I feel grateful to let go of money narratives from my past (money is a river, not a pond!).

Grateful to reflect on ways I trusted my gut when logic was screaming at me to run the other direction (HELLOOOOOOO buying my first house.)

Grateful for money mantras – something I never thought I would use (Me every morning: Money comes easily. It flows through me constantly. I love to earn and spend money.)

And it was not without its roadblocks!

During the challenge, Jenn and I were dabbling in some Instagram Reels to raise our profile a bit and get some new faces into the challenge (👋 to everyone who found us there!) We were making some quick clips to promote the challenge and I wanted make a reels about the things I was grateful for. I easily made one from my backyard about gratitude for my house, talked about the challenge, posted and moved on with my day.

My next plan was to post about a trip I was taking to Moab and the gratitude I have for money that it permits me to travel and go on adventures. The whole weekend in Moab I was taking videos and photos of the snowy drive over Vail pass, the creepy UFO rest stop right off I-70, the first glance of the red-red rocks of Utah. Our hikes in Canyonlands and our Thai food in town. Our amazing Airbnb with a giant dining room table that we turned into a ping-pong palace. I had some GREAT content. The algorithm would have loved it.

But when I got back home – I just kept procrastinating putting it up. I knew I had good footage and I do love an excuse to dabble in iMovie . . . but something was stopping me.

Since we were already in our month of reflection – I reflected on this in my gratitude work the next week. And I realized – I couldn’t post it because it felt like bragging.

Here I was – trying to be the poster gal for raising frequency around money. Bringing the big WOO to the table in a way that would crack the world open and get us all rich and loving money. But, in trying to publicly express my gratitude – it felt like it would be bragging. 

Now – there are surely some more complicated things going on here besides just money. I generally try never to publicly support the big bad beast of capitalism and I do believe Insta-comparison is slowly skewering all our snippets of joy each time we see someone on a 5-star vacation we could never afford.

But ultimately? These were pictures of me – sweaty – hiking over giant rocks.

This is not the kind of content that destroys the world.

I still haven’t posted that story. And maybe I never will. And I still don’t know what exactly it is that’s stuck in me to makes me think expressing my ever-present gratitude for the money I earned and spent on that trip would not be a helpful addition to anyone’s feed. But there it is.

I tell this story to dig into the fact that IT’S COMPLICATED. Money is complicated. Our stories around money are complicated. Gratitude is complicated!

And that’s why I’m so grateful for this Money Gratitude challenge – the digging-in we did each day to get a little bit closer to uncovering those stories – those biases, so that we can start to dissolve them and find joy in the money we earn and the ways we spend it.

One thing I know for sure? I’m so grateful for this community and the openness each of these women brings to our money stories. Every time I hear one of you share something – it gives me confidence to share. It inspires me. It educates me.

In a month where the idea of “thankfullness” is ever present – I’m so glad we dug in and developed our gratitude narrative around money together. It feels like this sparks a practice for the whole year round.