259. Discovering Holistic Wealth & Overcoming Financial Trauma - Keisha Blair

00:00:14 Hello and welcome to The Meditation Conversation, the podcast to support your spiritual revolution. I'm Kara Goodwin, and to day I'm joined by Keisha Blair. Keesha is the best selling author of Holistic Wealth 36 Life Lessons to Help. You Recover from Disruption, find your life purpose, and achieve financial Freedom. Keesha is regarded as the mother of.

00:00:43 Holistic wealth and is the founder of. The Institute on Holistic Wealth. She's a Harvard trained policy expert and economist and was part of the Prime Minister's supporting delegation to the World Economic. Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the East. Asia Summit in Singapore.

00:01:01 Keisha has been profiled in the New York Times, Real Simple Magazine, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and many other publications. I really love talking with Keesha for this episode. Her perspective on wealth is one you really must hear, and she arrived at it through the unexpected death of her husband when she was caring for her newborn child, as well as her firstborn, who was only three at the time. Her life was turned upside down when she became a widow unexpectedly, and she talks about the soul searching sabbatical that led her to discovering what really is important. Keisha has so much wise advice in this episode on both sides of the wealth spectrum.

00:01:49 You're going to get valuable insights if you overvalue money, and likewise if you push money away because you think it's evil, for instance, then there are things that you're going to want to hear in this episode. Be sure to check out Keesha's book. Holistic wealth 36 Life Lessons to Help you Recover from Disruption, find your Life purpose and achieve Financial freedom. And before we dive in here, please check out the Karagoodwin.com website. Get your free guided meditation to increase your calm and amplify your light.

00:02:26 I'd love for you to join the Healing Hearth community. I get together with this amazing group of souls each week for meditation and wisdom discussion. You can find out more on Karagoodwin.com. And now enjoy this episode. It's such a joy to have you here.

00:02:44 Keisha, welcome. It's a joy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Kara so I want to just start. By talking about Holistic wealth.

00:02:55 And what does this mean? What do you mean when you talk about holistic wealth? Yeah, I know it's such a great question. And when I wrote the book, so the first edition came out in 2019, and I defined it as this framework, we definitely think about wealth when it comes on to our net worth and money, but it's so much more than that. It's our physical health.

00:03:20 It's our mental health or emotional health, or spiritual health, and, of course, a life purpose and meaning. And what I realized through my own experience was that all of these things are intertwined and they actually combine to give us more resilience, more wholeness in lines. We're better able to weather the setbacks and the storms of life when we have all these critical pillars in place. So it really ends a framework for the art of recovery from disruption, which I talk about more in the expanded and updated book. And I think for the times we're living in, it so crucial.

00:04:02 Well, let's talk about your experience and how you came to this focus of a more holistic view of what wealth is, because I agree completely. I mean, it's such a much more complete and accurate measurement of wealth, definition of wealth. But how did your experience come about to give you that sort of lens where you see things in that way? Yeah, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, Carolyn, I'm a trained economist, a trained policy expert, and in my professional life, I had been dealing with files that were around female economic empowerment and gender equality, things like that, women in business.

00:04:49 And it really came out in my work as well in terms of equality, social justice, women's rights and freedoms. And once I became widowed and so for many people who don't know my story, I lost my husband tragically at a very young age. I was 31 when it happened. And when it happened and I became widowed, this was eight weeks after I gave birth to my second child, everything became clearer, not immediately, because I had to, but I'm sure we'll talk about that later. I had to go on this soul searching.

00:05:26 But it became very evident to me that the way we define wealth and the way we define it so narrowly, even as an economist, it became clear to me that this was very dangerous, especially for certain groups of people. So this more holistic definition of wealth enables us to be more whole, to be more resilient and to weather these storms and setbacks. And it really does give us a framework from which to bounce back when we have these life altering setbacks, when we think about our wealth, not just in terms of money and finances, but in terms of our spiritual lives, in terms of our mental and emotional health and our physical health and the way that we live our lives. And so it became evident to me as an economist, and we'll see it in the book about how our relationships, having a life purpose or spiritual lives really enrich us in a way that money simply can't muddy, simply can't buy those things. So I think even as an economist and I'm glad that I can have this lens from which to speak from because it's clear to me that is and even how we measure our GDPs as countries like it from a state level and a country level not taken into consideration our overall level of happiness or work life balance, things like that.

00:06:55 I think we need to really make it more holistic. I love that it's so wise. And it is really interesting to hear an economist taking these non material things and placing that same, placing it alongside money, because we do tend to have boundaries of like, okay, this is my money. Track my finances, that's that part of my life. And then over here is where I have my relationships and they have nothing to do with each other.

00:07:29 And my happiness is I have different happiness from different things, but they don't go together. So I really feel that you are on the bleeding edge of where we all need to get to in order to really be able to have much more well rounded and holistic experience across the board, where our money is a reflection of us and it's not like this separate thing. Absolutely. Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about the loss of your husband and the part that played in how this has all come about?

00:08:11 Sure. So, after he died so he died from a very rare illness. So as you can imagine, this was eight weeks after I gave birth to my second child. My first child was still only a baby. He was three years old.

00:08:25 And the doctors had no idea what caused this death. He was young, healthy. He just came home from work, and within 3 hours in the emergency room, he was gone. So they had what happened? It took them one whole year to conduct the autopsy and really bring together yeah, they had to bring together a team from the United States and Canada, forensic experts, all the experts they could gather, because this disease is so rare that only one in 1 million people get it each year.

00:08:56 Most doctors have never seen a living case of it in their life, and they probably won't. They can only read about it in textbooks. So as you can imagine, this was a huge turned up to be a huge medical mystery investigation. And so after one year, I got the report and it mentioned theocrucytoma, which was the illness, very rare. And he didn't have any symptoms prior.

00:09:23 He didn't have many symptoms. Okay. He had headaches. Known again, of course, that's generalized, right? What doctors call generalized symptoms.

00:09:30 So it didn't really lead anywhere, but nothing else. He was healthy, strong, ran marathons at well, and lived an active lifestyle. So as you can imagine, we were a complete shock. And it led me to do a lot of soul searching. As I said in the book, I went on a one year sabbatical, so I took one year leave of absence from work.

00:09:58 I packed up everything and went on a one year sabbatical. Rented my house, gave up everything. I sold what I could and what I could take with me, I took with me and shipped a container, went to Jamaica. So I gave up everything. And that shedding of all of those material possessions gave me the freedom to become vulnerable with myself, gave me the freedom to explore deeply within me and in my soul where I needed to go and what I needed to do, which is what I talk about in the book.

00:10:34 So as you can see, as you can imagine on Sabbatical, like I hiked in the mountains and meditated every morning for 3 hours, prayed and at farm to table this very organic lifestyle. And that's what really drove home to me, Kara, what it really means to really seek a life of purpose and to really shed what you need to shed to do that. And I'm not saying everybody needs to do this, but when you think about Holistic wealth, it became clear to me while I was on Sabbatical that the things that were enriching me, the things that were allowing me to overcome this grief, were not material. There were some things though, that we had in place, like a life insurance policy, like I was mortgage free at the time when I took the one year Sabbatical. So that financial independence really gave me the opportunity to do this.

00:11:37 And this is why the framework of Holistic wealth is as it is, because I think we all realize that money does play a role, it really has to. And that's why we can have the freedom to perceive certain things, but it's not everything. There were a lot of things outside of money that were filling me up and giving me the strength to carry on and to really chart my way forward. So that's why this whole framework of Holistic wealth is such an important message because it really gives us that meaning and purpose to life and it's that framework from which we can lean on to recover from these setbacks. So from my personal experience, that's what came home to me on Sabbatical with the meditation and tuning into my intuition.

00:12:30 There's a whole chapter in the book about intuition and it became clear to me with my intuition that it just suddenly went in overdrive on Sabbatical. And in the book I talk about the difference between active and dormant intuition. And with active intuition we have to get into this mode where we're seeking, we're listening, we're tuning in. And I remember saying, wow, when I was at work and busy and stressed, my intuition lay dormant. Know that I'm on Sabbatical and I'm opening up my soul and my heart and my mind and my spirit to all these possibilities.

00:13:07 My intuition gets an overdrive. And that's a part of Holistic wealth as well. And that's why all of that is a part of the framework. It's because in life we make the best decisions when we're in that mode. Not necessarily when we're in a stressed mode, but when we're in the mode where we can meditate and we can seek and go inward.

00:13:31 So all of that became clear to me and all of that was put into this framework because I just detailed the steps that I went through to get to this point. That's fascinating. And then how did that work when you came off of sabbatical and you reentered your life again? How this framework? So are there things that you can share in terms of what you were able to do to kind of take that sabbatical with you and infuse your life in a holistic way while you were making a living and raising your boys or your children?

00:14:10 Sorry, I'm not sure if they were boys. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I did take that framework with me. And that framework now is the book. And it's the Holistic Love framework where, yes, I went back to work afterwards, but there were aspects of it that I could do in my day to day life.

00:14:29 I wasn't able to meditate for 3 hours in the morning, but I could meditate for half an hour. If I got up earlier and scheduled my time, I could like I say in chapter one of Holistic Wealth, I thought about what a life well lived would mean for me and I crafted my life around that. So I came back with a renewed focus and with a renewed mission. And in chapter three, I think I talk about having a personal mission and really aligning your values to that mission. So when I came back, work life balance was critical for me and also putting my kids and my family first.

00:15:07 And if we tell people sometimes, make that pyramid, that values pyramid, and see what your top five values are and really align your goals and your lifestyle towards that. Because Holistic Wealth is about living intentionally by design. And so I intentionally designed my life around this. The other thing I did, which is a crucial part of the Holistic Wealth framework, is the idea of making decisions with the Holistic Wealth method that I outlined in the book. So basically, we all make 50,000 decisions each and every day, and most of them we're doing non strategically, from thinking about what we're eating for breakfast to driving to work, those are all decisions we're making and we can become more intentional about our decision making.

00:15:54 And so I came up with this idea of the Holistic Wealth bank account, where you think of your decisions with the idea of a Holistic Wealth bank account. So how do I add to my Holistic Wealth bank account rather than deplete it? So I don't want to feel bankrupt at the end of the day or at the end of the week because I'm so tired, exhausted, stressed. It makes me feel bankrupt. What can I do on a daily basis to fill that Holistic Wealth bank account with deposits that will act like compound interest in that Holistic Wealth bank account?

00:16:28 And some of the things that I spoke about earlier are additions to that holistic wealth bank account, like meditation, eating healthy, exercising, prayer, sometimes reading a book, listening to a podcast, things like that, that really energize our lives and enrich us our additions. And of course, I'm sure many of us can think of the depletions like stress and not eating right and toxic relationships, things like that, that really draw on our energy. Not setting boundaries, having clear boundaries. Because you can imagine, once that happened to me, I had to set clear boundaries. I had to be intentional about everything I did.

00:17:11 Everything had to have its place in my life and for reason. So that's part of the Holistic Wealth framework. And so that's outlined, and that's what I carried back with me. And then that's when I realized I have to impart this to everyone. I didn't want to be known as just the grief person or someone who was widowed.

00:17:34 I wanted to carry my personal and my professional experience to help other women, to help everyone with a framework that they could easily apply in their lives. And as an economist, I think about things very systematically. So everything has to be within a certain framework. And that's what I came up with as my help and what I could bring forth for people who were going through any set, whether it's a chronic illness, a divorce, loss of a job, alienation from family members, whatever it is that you are dealing with, this framework is helpful in so many ways. Well, thank you for that.

00:18:15 I keep coming back to as you're speaking, that I think that we have a tendency, especially in the west, to delay depositing into our Holistic bank account until retirement. It's kind of like this. I'm just going to keep going. I dedicate all of myself to making money, and then there will be time for the other stuff to develop relationships, to smile, to watch a movie, to watch my kids grow up after I've retired. And so it's this beautiful way of bringing that.

00:18:58 You mentioned intentionality being intentional with every day that we have, and not meaning that we have to retire early to be able to get the most out of our lives. But there are things that we can do every day to build out our lives and recognize that it's more than earning money to get the material things. So I really appreciate that. When I was researching you, I came across this sentence that I found really powerful. And the way that you wrote it was just so all encompassing of what it must have been like going through that sudden death with your husband.

00:19:46 But you said, when the nurses gave me my husband's personal effects that night in the hospital in a white plastic bag, it dawned on me, all of this is temporary. The only thing that counts is the positive impact we make in other people's lives. And that says so much. I wondered if there was anything else that you wanted to say in terms of the way that we affect other people. Absolutely.

00:20:14 And that moment, Carol, when I got his things in that white plastic bag, it was just this moment that defined everything for me. That the material possessions that we work all our lives to accumulate. And the point you made earlier is temporary. What counts is that legacy, that impact that we have on other people's lives. And after he died, so many people said that to me too.

00:20:41 They said he must have been like an art angel placed here because of his impact on them. And so that was also very touching, hearing that. And just yesterday on April 9, and I created Global Holistic Wealth Day so that we could celebrate one day, put aside one day out of every year to celebrate holistic wealth and to really make the impact on other people's lives that you talked about. And so yesterday we celebrated the second for the second year, a Global Holistic Wealth Day. And on that day, we put aside everything to think about our collective holistic wealth, how we're living a holistically wealthy lifestyle and to impact others.

00:21:29 And there's so many things that we can do throughout the year. It doesn't have to be on Global Holistic Wealth Day, but it's just a day to recognize. And to your question, there's so many things that we can do. On my blog on Keishablair.com, I have this article on 65 activities that you can do on Global Holistic Wealth Days. So whether it's volunteering or giving back or taking care of someone in need or looking after your own personal finances, having a muddy date night with your spouse or reading a book or listening to a podcast or just reaching out to afraid to strengthen that relationship, these are things that we can do every single day that will count.

00:22:09 And we don't have to wait until a specified time to do it. We can do it now. And I think those are some of the most prescient lessons that I got after he died, was that we don't need to wait until retirement, we don't need to wait until a specified time, we can start living holistically wealthy lifestyles right now, and we can implement them in our lives, in our communities. And that's when I also set up the Institute on Holistic Wealth so that people could gain more knowledge on how they could affect change in their communities and at their workplaces and in organizations and with people around them. Setting up Holistic Wealth Project groups is another thing that I've tried to get people to do to really keep each other accountable for the goals that they make.

00:22:57 So these are things that we can do. And you're absolutely right. We can all think to ourselves, well, what would a life well lived mean for me personally and how do I go about doing that? And I think even just starting there, which is chapter one in the book, just starting there just opens up a whole new world of like, yeah, this is what this would mean for me personally. Yeah, I love that.

00:23:20 Thank you. So you have mentioned a couple of times now meditation and prayer and the role that that plays for you and the role that it plays with Holistic wealth. So in your book, you make the point that life moves fast, pray, and meditate each day. So it's interesting to put it into that context where life is moving fast. There are a lot of people who feel like there are only so many minutes in the day and to stop and use them to, quote, unquote, do nothing like meditate, that's not the best use of their time.

00:24:05 Clearly, you're on the meditation conversation podcast. Both of us have different views than that. But is there anything that you could offer to somebody who may think that time is too precious to sacrifice to something like meditation or prayer? Absolutely. And so I talk a lot about spiritual self review, which can be a daily practice, and it doesn't take much to implement.

00:24:32 And so in that chapter in the book, I talk about the four laws of spiritual self renewal. And they're so simple. One is gratitude. So I know, as you mentioned, Kara, life moves so fast, sometimes just a gratitude practice. And whether it's just when you wake up in the morning thinking about what you're grateful for and just being honestly in the present moment, exercising that gratitude, putting that out there, and whether you want to journal it or you just want to say it in your heart.

00:25:03 Whatever your gratitude practice encapsulates, that is also a part of spiritual self renewal, prayer and meditation. And it's so funny that we think we need to set aside a lot of time to do this, but it takes sometimes just a few minutes out of your day to whisper a prayer or to just meditate on something that is more positive. And it's unbelievable what renewing your hope and motivation each day can do for you. And that's what spiritual self renewal is about, because there's so many things going on in the world that we really have to renew our hope and motivation every day. And that's what I found, is a part of holistic wealth.

00:25:46 And that's why it is a part of Holistic wealth. Because when we get stressed and anxious and depressed and we get exhausted and fearful of things around us, we're always putting out fires. Then we lose focus. We completely lose focus. We completely lose the important things in life.

00:26:05 And so this is a framework that helps with that as well. So I know that we're all so busy, there's so many things around us to do, but this takes a few minutes of your day. I did a gratitude jar with my kids just last year during COVID and we each wrote just little messages, just dropped it in the gratitude jar. And the kids really enjoyed that. And if you're listening and you have kids at home, that might be something fun that you start and anyone can just write on like a slip, just I'm grateful for having relationships that enrich me.

00:26:42 Just drop it in the jar. There's so many ways that we can do this kind of virtual practice without having to think of it as a big elaborate thing. It really is just getting in touch with our inner selves and getting in touch with gratitude, prayer, that type of thing, to renew that hope and motivation. And I find it extremely, extremely helpful as well when we do it with family, with our own children, with our loved ones. I love that.

00:27:12 That's beautiful. One thing that comes to mind as we've been talking is we've taken this talk a lot in the direction of money not being the whole thing, that there's more to life than money. There's the other side of it where there could be people listening who have a rejection of money or have a hard time accepting. Where they almost go in the totally other direction where it's like money is bad and so I have to keep it away or they feel guilty or they have that more conflicted where they are on a spiritual path and they think that that is not cohesive. Like you can't have a spiritual path and have money.

00:28:00 I don't know if you have any kind of thoughts about reconciling that from a holistic perspective. Absolutely. So I teach a money trauma course. I actually have a certification program that's called a trauma of money. And I think a lot of those negative messages that we get about money are passed down through families, through social groups, through wherever we get those messages.

00:28:26 And actually, number one, they are money blocks. So I just want to say that, number two, it could be a sign of money trauma, previous money traumas through childhood, hearing that money is bad, that you have to reject a certain type of lifestyle in order to be a certain way, that's also a part of it. And it's really having that transformed relationship with money. So I often tell my students that what we want to do is have a more positive relationship with money, not a negative one. It is important to be able to have to be financially empowered.

00:29:05 It is so important, it allows for so many things in our life. I don't think I could have really kept this message alive or went on the path that I did if I was not financially independent. And so it is important, it allows us to do this kind of work. It allows us to make the impact that we want to make on society. And it absolutely is in line with spirituality.

00:29:31 It absolutely is. I think the law of abundance is clear in terms of that living that abundant life. And I talk about reciprocity a lot, about giving and receiving. We absolutely need to feel empowered in every single way to be able to have the impact that we want to have. Can you imagine being saddled with a lot of debt in your life and trying to do that type of work or trying to get ahead?

00:29:58 It's really hard to do that with debt. And so it has to be that financial impairment is a part of the equation, like a big part of the equation. So those messages are actually negative money messages that we need to start filtering out of our lives. And we need to remember that it is crucial to be able to have that kind of the financial resources to do the work that we want to do and to leave the impact that we want to. It's very crucial.

00:30:28 So if you are listening it and you're thinking, I may have some form of money trauma or I want to explore this more, then you can always contact me to do so or take the course and also tell people, know your personal financial identity. So there's a free quiz for that. It's on the Institute on Holistic Wealth website, and it takes two minutes, and you can learn more about yourself. Become more self aware. If you're an anxious spender, you're an anxious investor, you're probably more likely to have more anxiety around money, and it's really good to know if you are.

00:31:04 My mom is an anxious spender. She took the quiz. She's been anxious about money her whole life, even when she's in periods of abundance, because it does not stop there. It really doesn't, because it's almost like it's ingrained. And so you have to be conscious and work at it.

00:31:21 And so there are some other money types that you learn about when you take the quiz. But all of this to say is being self aware is a critical step because knowing your personal financial identity allows you to become more self aware. You can advocate for yourself. So it's self awareness, self advocacy, and self preservation. And you talk about those theory a lot, especially when it comes on to women and women's relationship with our money.

00:31:48 And that's why I'm all for having a positive relationship. There's disassociation too, which is a sign of money trauma. You mentioned at Kara where we just ignore it and we just not even look at the bank account, don't even want to hear it, I don't want to talk about it. I think there was a study that said 70% of women prefer to talk about death than money. So we have to be very intentional about not disassociating because that's also a sign of money trauma.

00:32:16 We want to be very intentional about discussing it, being open about it, and talking about it more with our friends and our spouses and our partners and our associates. So it's a very important topic. And of course, financial impairment for women is very important to me because I was widowed as well. So I know that women absolutely need this. We absolutely need.

00:32:40 This message. Yeah, thank you for that. And I love that message. And one of the things that you mentioned that really sticks out for me is that the freedom, for one thing, but that we also have the power to create. We have creative power when we are engaging with money.

00:33:03 So I think a lot of people like you say about with money trauma, they have this view that money is the root of all evil. It's going to turn me bad. And if we're on a spiritual path, that can be something that gets stuck in a cycle in our head where it's like, no, I want to be light and I want to evolve. I want my consciousness to expand. And if money is going to keep me from doing this, I don't want it.

00:33:35 But what we are missing with that is that the ability to create the life that we want, which can include donating and supporting charities, supporting missions that we want. It's our way of increasing our impact. We have purchasing power to say, my family makes fun of me because I have a lot of crystals. For example, it's hard for me to not pass a crystal shop and not go in it. And it's like, how many crystals do you need?

00:34:08 And it's like, well, in my world, I have a lot of crystals. I want crystals. Just a silly small example, but what do you want to see in the world? And if you are accepting money into your world and allowing it to be a part of who you are, then you get that creative freedom to create. You have more creative freedom to be in the world that you want to be in, instead of just having to be in the world that everybody else is creating.

00:34:41 Absolutely. And as women, we have the freedom to walk away from toxic jobs, from toxic organizations, toxic relationships. I talk a lot about financial abuse as well, where it comes on to women, and women tend not to have enough saved for retirement. So that's the other part of it, is that empowerment. And we absolutely need to be empowered, and as you said, Kara, to shape that world for the next generation of girls coming up, so they can be more empowered too.

00:35:11 And we absolutely need the financial resources to be able to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has just been a wonderful, wonderful discussion. I've enjoyed it so much. Can you please tell people how they can find out more about you and connect with you and where to find your book?

00:35:30 Absolutely. So the book is available all across the world of bookstores. It's on Amazon. It's in indigo. Most bookstores around the world carry it so you can get your copy.

00:35:42 The first edition of the book, the ebook, is actually on sale right now on Amazon, only for 399. So that's a deal that's happening right now. My website is www.keishablair.com. And I mentioned the institute, that's institute onholisticwealth.com and on social media. I'm at Keeshaoblair on Instagram and Twitter and on Facebook.

00:36:06 I am Keisha Blair, author, so feel free to reach out. My podcast is also the Holistic Love podcast with Keisha Blair, and that's available on Apple, Spotify, all the streaming platforms. And, yeah, I love hearing from readers, so hopefully I'll hear from people after the episode. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.

00:36:31 Thank you for all of the work that you're doing to empower people and to change the mindset. Really, it's a lot of mindset work that we all need to engage in to have a healthy relationship. But to understand that wealth is more than just how much money we have. It's a hugely powerful and important message. So I really am grateful for you being here today, Keisha.

00:37:01 Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Kara, it was really good being on the show today.

00:37:08 I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'd love to ask you for one quick favor, and that's to share this episode with one person who you think will benefit from it. Let them know you're thinking about them by sharing this episode with them right now. Thank you, and I look forward to the next meditation conversation.