Podcast Transcription: Falling for Money: How to Have a Lifetime Love Affair with your Finances with Krisstina Wise

Ted Ryce: Krisstina Wise, thank you so much for being on the show today. This is going to be one of my favorite interviews for a while. I watched you speak on stage at ChampDev LIVE, an event that I recently attended, and you just shook the room with your information, with your mindset, with what you were teaching us. So, I talked a little bit about you at the beginning of this episode, but can you just briefly talk about who you are, and what it is that you do?

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, I guess to keep it short and simple, it's like, when you say you're a high-performance coach, when it comes to health and wellness, I'm a high-performance coach when it comes to money finance and wealth creation. And I really teach high income earners how to turn their income into long-term lasting, passive income and net worth well.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and we're going to dive into that, and what it means, and why someone who's making a lot of money might need help from anyone with their money, right? About what to do with their money. And at the room full of people that I was with, some very successful people, I know you just really rock the house with your information. What I want to start off with first is, you've got a really crazy story.

The reason you transitioned into what you do now is, you nearly lost your life back in 2013, and you spent almost half a million dollars to get it back. Can you talk about…? What was that? That's not even something that you—I think you alluded to on stage, but you really didn't go into depth, I would love to hear that story, on how you got started with all this, what you do now.

Krisstina Wise: Well, it's funny, I really call that entire journey, it's like the biggest fat lie, that almost all of us are in this subconscious achievement belief of that, money will solve all my problems, and I need to make more money, and I never know how much money is enough, so more is always a better option, and we get stuck in this trap.

And then we're keeping up with the Joneses, we think we're the exception, but we're not. We're keeping up with the Joneses, and then we're on the hamster wheel, and it feels like we're never getting ahead, and then we're working harder, and it just really becomes the trap.

And the trap for those that are high performers especially, they were kind of taught that it's high-performing at all costs. And success is all in how well we perform in business or with our job. And as long as we can figure out that business/money/jobs/high-income piece, we're good to go.

And the truth is, more money causes more problems. And when we don't understand it, it just creates more chaos. So, for me, I caught myself back then, I was the poster child for peak performance, top producers, achievement, success. I did everything that all the books told me to do, all the podcasters told me to do, all that my mentors told me to do, all my coaches taught me to do. And I was really great at it, and I hit all of my business/financial goals.

But since that was the only message I was getting all the time, and it wasn't an integrated holistic message of how to live a good life in an integrated whole way, versus just being killing it in one key area. My health was deteriorating, I was just super stressed all the time, and I was running marathons, and triathlons, and just constant peak performance, and pushing myself constantly.

And I thought that was the picture-perfect example of health, I was running marathons for goodness sakes, at Boston timing level. So, then all of that seemed to work until one day, I broke, and I couldn't get out of bed, and I didn't know what was wrong. And it was a whole story of a perfect storm and many things that took me to my knees, and then some.

But ultimately, what I realized is that, life isn't about achievement, life is not about success in one category, life isn't about the money, life is about what is a good life? And it's a philosophical question. And that philosophical question is that, what is a good life holistically?

You know, you're in the wellness space, I used my body…Just again, another example of, I used my health to get my wealth, and I had to use all my wealth to get my health back. We've heard that before, and I thought I was immune to it, I thought all the things, but again, like I said, it just broke me down. And what happened in that experience, it was, you know, talk about the dark hero's journey that so many of us have been through, that was mine for sure.

But the biggest, darkest piece of all of that, there were so many scary pieces: fighting for my life, not knowing if I was going to make it, seeing myself deteriorate, seeing what was happening to my family, the whole 9 yards. And it just went from bad to worse, to worse, to worse.

The darkest out of all of that, was this amount of grief and regret that I felt, that I was having to sit with and lay with, that I’m dying and I haven't even lived yet. Because I always thought, when I get there, then I'll enjoy my life. When I get there, then I'll spend my money, when I get there, then I'll have more time to take vacations, and do all the things. When I get there…

Without realizing I was future tripping all the time. My life was one big future, that I was really good at creating a future, but I was never in the present, and I sacrificed almost everything to create a future that when I got there, I wasn't even able to appreciate it.

And again, I think my life journey in that example can really represent the pattern that many of us are in without realizing it. It's just, “when I get there, then...” And we've heard it a million times, but that just inspired me to do what I do now, of like, oh no, life is more than just peak performance in one category.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, the, “I'll be happy when…” And what was it that had you on your death bed? Was it an illness? Did you contract some like flu or pneumonia or something? What was it that had you there?

Krisstina Wise: You know, mine's an interesting story that it took us 9 months to actually get a diagnosis. Because you know, I don't know where you sit in the medicine world, or the medical world. But I probably went to 20 doctors, and I was just buying my way to try to get a diagnosis. And everyone said, we can't find anything, and in the meantime, I'm deteriorating, my hair's falling out, I can't get out of bed, I literally cannot sleep.

Then all my trauma from my childhood started, since I wasn't so strong, and physically strong to keep it down there, all that went haywire. So, it was just this full thing, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, psychological, everything like blew up at once. I mean, it's like I stuck my body into a wet socket or something, it’s like zzz.

But ultimately, from the physical illness piece, of all things, it was heavy metal poisoning. And it's a long story, but I got my amalgams taken out, my mercury, and it just went straight to my brain, straight to my organs, and started just really wreaking havoc.

And I was already in my body, I didn't know it at the time, it was already pretty toxic, so it was like a toxic overload. But just toxic in all key areas of life, which was pretty interesting. As you know, I don't really carry a lot of shame for it now, but there were things that I just realized like, oh my God, I had created so much toxicity around me, even though I thought I was… I never would have known that at the time.

But it was that combined with like stage three/four adrenal fatigue, so my hormones were messed up, stress and adrenals are off the charts, because always in adrenals, like I lived a high adrenaline lifestyle. And didn't realize there was a cost to that, and then all sorts of number of things cascaded off those two things physically.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, I hear you on that, and I think it's one of those things where the word that comes up with it is stress, the word that comes to mind is stress, right? Especially with the burnout, or that's what you're describing, the adrenal fatigue.

And it's something that it's fascinating, because if you… I’ve read quite a bit about over-training with athletes. And one of the things that I ended up reading was how there's this similarity between professional burnout and over-training with athletes, and certainly, you know, most people who are concerned with over-training, they're lifting weights like four times a week, it's not really a thing.

But for endurance athletes, people are running marathons, or triathlons, or some of the extreme endurance sports, that's where that starts to pop up. And so, I could see how you're pushing yourself with your body, you're pushing yourself in your business. You've got this toxicity thing going on as well, and just the perfect storm of factors that had you feeling like you were about to die.

And one of the things I try to talk about is like, you're an office athlete, you're an entrepreneur athlete. The source of all your energy, the source of all your ability comes from this vehicle. And your sport isn't putting a ball in a net down a field, it's to score in a different type of way, a financial type of way. And so I really resonate with that a lot, and I also made that mistake too.

And so, talk about like, where did…? So you're on death's door there, you had this adrenal fatigue, and everything that you had mentioned, what was the journey? And you also said something really important, the regret. Because if there's one thing, if you like, whatever it is, you party with rock stars and you overdose, and you're like, “Oh, but it was what I really wanted to do,” or you drop dead from a heart attack running a marathon, but it's like, “This is what I was supposed to die doing.”

Or those guys who do the wingsuit thing, and they fly into a mountain, and they're just like, “You know, if I die doing this, I'm cool with that.” But if you're not cool with it, that's a problem. So, can you walk us through the steps on how your mindset shifted, and what were the steps to getting to where you are today?

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, so much came out of that experience, that I really do need to—and it is on my list of things to do—write a book about this, because there are just so many life lessons that came out of this two-year journey. And at first it was this journey to get back to my old self. I mean, probably the first six months of suffering was, I just want to get better so I can go back to my life, and get back to what I was doing. And I think the universe had a bigger plan, like I almost had to stay sick, until I finally had the breakthrough of like, I'm not supposed to go back to that old life.

And so, we had to really extend this thing out so I can just keep breaking, breaking, breaking, until I finally could completely let go of so much of the ego, and the accomplishment, the stuff that was the trap, but that's all I can resonate with. And because, you know, someone that grew up the way I did, and maybe you did, and what I found a lot of top performers do is, many of us come from a very troubled background.

And so, part of that story that's running is, I need to prove myself to be lovable, because as a child, my parents were absent, and so I was a super star at everything all my life. And I remember at a young age, like looking in the stands, all the other parents were there, and I was looking for my parents in the stands, because I'd get the winning goal, or whatever the case was, and the whole, you know, ran in a small town girl sports, it's not like we had a stadium full of people. But that was it, we were there, the parents that were there would be like jumping up and down, and I was always star performance, and straight A's, and everything.

And granted a lot of it was just for me, but a big portion of it, every time, I wanted my parents to be the ones in the audience saying, you go girl, congratulations, we're proud of you. So, I think that constant, that pattern, that story was constantly run in my entire life, is so much of my achievement was, I never was able to sit with myself just to see, am I worthy? Am I lovable? Am I good enough as I am without all the success?

And what I found on, well, I just call it my birth [inaudible 12:51] when they’re alone in my head day after day, that was what I really had to figure out, is, why I wanted to get back to the old self, is because my worthiness and value as a human being, I could only connect to that based on big audiences applauding me, or telling me I'm all this amazing stuff, because I didn't feel it without that constant external validation, if you will.

So again, it just kept that cycle, along with, we live in this more mentality, that if I ask somebody how much money is enough? They're like, “I don't know, but more than I have now,” as though no matter where we are, it's never good enough, there's always the next more to get to. So what that does, it creates constant dissatisfaction and a lot of gratitude and comparison. Because we're comparing ourselves with something out there, this next level, what others are doing, and what we think we're doing. Again, it’s this need to fit in, and to prove ourselves and be important.

So, a lot of that inward journey then, it's just going to: am I lovable on my own? And are there any parts of myself that I want to clean up or fix, just so I can feel really happy with who I am, and why I'm here? So, that piece, which is very philosophical, and we had to get out of the rat race to even spend time with ourselves to start coming up and thinking about these things.

The other thing is combined with just really getting to know ourselves and like ourselves, and love ourselves, piece one. Piece two is, then what is a good life? My definition of a good life is like a definition of your good life. And so, again, it's like lifestyle design, but it's sitting and thinking, and I realized again when I was on my deathbed, I'd created a life I hated.

I mean, it served me, and that I got all this external validation constantly, but it was like a heroin Ivy or something, like I had to go get the next dose, and the next hit, and the next hit, and the next hit, right? Because once the hit wore off, I'm stuck with myself, and now I'd go get it again.

So, I just see that that can be an easy trap when we're not conscious and aware of it. But I realized, man, I've created this whole life on a success money level, I've nailed it, right? Top 1% across the board. On a, do I love my life level? No, my business owned me, I mean, I had employees all over the place, there was always breakdowns. If I went on vacation, my kids are like, mommy, mommy, let's go surfing, I'm like, “Well, let me finish this call first type thing.” You know?

And that was a lot of regret, is the time I missed with my kids when they were younger, for example, just thinking, “I just need to… I'm doing all this for them, I'm doing all this for them.” It's like, no, they just wanted my time, they really didn't care. I was bullshitting myself to say it was all about them. It was all about me.

So, those were parts of the regrets too, but ultimately, I realized like, that's not my definition of a good life, that's the vision of a good life that others have painted for me. I've not sat down and thought of my own, so when I finally let go of my old life, and realized, I think I'm going to live and I can bring again my life from scratch, what do I want it to look like?

I started really thinking about it, like things that were important to me. I wasn't location independent before, and big bricks and mortar, I had 50 people that work for me, I have lots of stress. I could never leave, and so when I went to reinvent this, it's like, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next, but this next version of my life, for my business side of my life, I want location independence. So, I want lots of time freedom, I want to be able to say yes to any experience that presents itself, and then just really be able to live more in the moment.

I want to structure my time that I don't work more than like 30 hours a week in these timeframes, so that I can focus on these other areas of my life, which, oh, by the way, that's what the money's for, the money's time to write the cost of living a good life. But if you don't know what a good life is, how do you know how much money is enough to underwrite?

And that's the final piece of this equation, is one, to be able sit with ourselves in the quiet space, and enjoy that time, or that person, know what we bring to the table, what we contribute, who we are? What our purpose is here. And really embody and hold that, and be happy with that.

Two, like I said, definition of what is a good life? And then the third piece is, how much does it cost to live that good life now, and in the future? And that's quantifiable, so, the first parts are philosophical, spiritual, and the other parts, the practical quantifiable piece.

And then when we can start thinking about that money terms, versus just thinking, if I work hard to make a lot of money, all my money problems will be solved. Which is the biggest lie of all time. It's no, how much does it cost to live a good life? And what is my financial plan, my money piece of this?

And what is my relationship with money? And how much do I enjoy spending time with it? Because I want to spend time with it, because it's directly connected to this dream, and this vision, and this intention that I've set up to create, and then enjoy the process, and the journey while we're in it, versus making a destination focused.

So, so much of just this what I call the big reveal for me, was this contrast of doing everything, poster girl perfect over here, and building something, one, that nearly killed me, and two, if I sat to say, is this my definition of goodlife? It'd be absolutely not, even from the financial outside, it looked like I just nailed it, right?

And having this opportunity over here to reinvent of like, okay, I've seen all these lessons, now I get to design my life, and live it moment to moment. Because, at the end of the day, we don't know how much time we have here.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, very powerfully put. And I would even go back… I love it that you went there, because nobody really wants to hear that message, that, hey, listen, maybe this is this need for more, and you get more, but it's not enough, so you got to move the goalpost, and strive for more, and then move the goalpost again, where ever it is.

And you referred to it as an addiction, and I really do believe that's exactly what it is, workaholism, right? And I love how you said it really is about, it's not, I'm doing it all for the kids. Part of us, we know that's not true, right? That's how my parents were, and it's like, no, I just wanted you to show up to my karate competition.

Just like you wanted your parents to show up to your sporting events too, to see that goal, and so many people say that. And I've heard people, clients tell me that in the past, and it's such a hard message to receive, I think, right? But thanks for sharing that.

I wanted even ask you, because it almost is like so many people who are high performers, it does come from this feeling like they weren't enough as a kid, right? I believe it all comes from childhood, all of it, right? All of it, all of it, all of it. Maybe part of it's genetic, with our personality, but certainly how it shows up culturally, or in our routines. It's like, it comes from what we went through as kids, right?

And I feel like there, maybe some people who are listening, who are struggling financially, and then you say, oh, it's not all about money. And they’re like, oh, that's easy for you to say, I'm trying to pay my bills. And it's like, well, that's almost another—that’s something that came up for me while you were talking, that's still reflection of the, it's not enough, you can't be happy with what you have, right?

And then once someone does solve that, or maybe they were born into money. They had a certain level of what's considered having money in our society. And then it's like going for more, going for more. Or the question is this, I've never really thought about it in terms of numbers, but with your experience, how many high performers, or what rough percentage, and obviously we're not talking about hard data here, but that desire to succeed, does it come from a place of not feeling worthy enough? Is that all high performers? Is it 20% or 80%? What do you think? What's your experience?

Krisstina Wise: You know, I don't know, I'd have to really think about the answer. Regardless is that it's just the awareness of what is really driving me? And if one were to look at me from the outside, let’s say, Christina version one, V1 and Christina V2. On the outside, am I still successful? Yes. Am I still energized to build great business? Make impact, change lives, grow a really amazing business? Yes.

But the drive is different. Before, it was out of that “not enough, more is always better, get the next t-shirt, get the next award, be told again how amazing I am.” So, that was the energy, it was fuel out of fear and anxiety, and lack, and not enough-ness. And so, that was the fuel.

And I think that that can work for a certain period of time, but it doesn't work forever without a cost, because that's just serving the one thing. So, it automatically creates or wreaks havoc in other areas of life, like relationships, like maybe real love in contribution in a different way, it can come at a great cost to our health, and yet, because there’s just that constant drive, because that's something that can never be fed enough. It has to constantly be fed, and that’s kind of that addiction piece.

So now, let's say, just nature of how I'm wired, I do love success, I do love creation, I do love growing the business. But I'm not fueled out of lack anymore, it's really field out of this love of, you know, it's not connected to my need for success. If it's successful, great, if not, I'm just as happy, because it's serving this mission of knowing my purpose, and the work that I'm doing, the help that I'm giving. And I get to work with my daughter, and I get to have conversations like this, and I get to talk about this subject called money, that people are scared of.

And success is the by-product of just loving the work, and being in it, as opposed to it being, the success is the destination, it's the love of the creation, that's kind of the juice. So, even on the outside, business successful? Yeah. But it's totally, like I said, the source of that energy is really love, faith, passion, excitement, not being attached to the outcome, letting it organically grow into what it's going to grow into, with still putting the work and stuff into it, as opposed to not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough.

So, we can be a high-performance with either side. Now, regardless of which one we're in, getting to the place where, ‘where you are is good enough for today,’ while I'm still reinventing and creating my tomorrow. And knowing how much money is enough, and knowing money and meaning, and knowing that when we're not trying to buy our happiness, we're trying to just be happy. That it causes us to be, and when we're in the wealth game, and not the income game, because we know how important wealth is to living a good life.

So, when you're designing a good life, wealth is a piece of it, wealth is radically different than income. Most people living the income game, a few of us are living in the wealth game. And if you don't know which one you're in, you're probably in income and expense game, you're not in the wealth game.

So when you start to change yourself, and you start realizing that my happiness isn't the comparison or the achievement, or the, ‘one day when I get there.’ And it's in this different space, and we're connected to wealth, and we know money and meaning, and we're not trying to buy that comparison to make ourselves feel better, we naturally actually end up spending less. Because we realize we're not out to just get that dopamine hit of that next purchase to try to validate our success, our achievement, our money, in some outward expression of that.

Because what that does, learn the not enough model, we're constantly, the money pieces, spending all this money to continually fit in and to impress and compare and that type of thing, the next thing we know, we're at the mercy of the money, and then we have constant… Then that's where that grind is, it's like shit, I have to go grind it out again today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, so that I can pay for this really expensive lifestyle I've created myself, that's really oriented around what everybody else is doing around me.

And again, it's just one big trap that most of us are in until we step outside of it, and can see this one big rigged game system that people are playing, it's like the matrix without knowing you're hooked up to that machine. But once you get outside of it, then you just have more money in general, because you realized like, I'm so satisfied with life in a way without a lot of stuff.

And then the stuff that I choose is very meaningful to this real quality of life that allows me. What we begin to realize for pretty much everyone I've worked with, it's less about stuff, and it's truly more about time. And that's what wealth is, is a lot of people they're out teaching money, it's with the yachts, and the Lambos, and the Gulf streams and thing. This stuff, that's the measure of success and happiness.

And when you’re in this game, you realize that that's just more stuff to maintain and take care of, or have expenses, and all the things. And again, it's about, I just want my time, I want to be able to say yes to, you know, if Ted says, hey, we're going under this rad, you know? With friends, we're going to this rad trip to XYZ, you want to go? It's all planned, you just write the check. I'm like, I'm in, I'm game, I've got the time, I can reschedule things, because I've designed my business life to organize around my personal life.

And now I can say yes to an experience and hanging with people that I love, and these relationships I want to go deep with. Because that's where the juice is, it's always about relationship, yet, we're sacrificing the most important thing, which is relating, which is feeling connection, which is actually feeling love for others, and receiving love back, that's the fuel.

But we're living this life out here that's robbing us of the most important human need that we all have, is to love and feel loved. You know, this, “I'm doing it for you, I'm working to make money for you,” it's like, again, that's called, that's just the bullshit meter going off.

And I think so many of us have experienced that with our parents, and I know sadly, my kids can say that about me too. But they don't say that anymore, you know? Now it's different. But yeah, so it just becomes, everything gets rewired once we start really connecting to the money piece of this life puzzle.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, what I hear you saying is developing awareness, developing awareness of why you're doing things, developing awareness of, are you just going for more? But when you get more, it doesn't feel good, but yet you have this pattern where you just keep going, and you've never stopped to really think about it?

And what I would ask you is, how do you help people develop that awareness, where they’re in the cheap dopamine hit, or sometimes expensive dopamine hit, depending on your tastes of course. How do you help people get awareness about that?

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, so that's the right word, is awareness. And I have the money school, and people go through a semester, really to learn money from the inside out. And people that join the school and go through it, they have a money problem, which almost everybody does, unless you've studied money, and clean your stuff up, and done the work, like anything else.

It's just like anything. We can have relationship after relationship, after relationship, and they just keep falling apart, and we point the finger at somebody else, and we realize like, well, I'm the common denominator in this, maybe I need to clean myself up to have a healthy relationship.

Or like, with what you do in the, you know, it’s like the Yo-yo diet, just go back to the Yo-yo diet, just like the low-calorie diet is going to solve me and make me lose weight magically, it's going to stay off the rest of my life, like, it's Yo-yo for a reason.

So, money is the same way. It's no exception, it's knowledge based, it's a domain of knowledge, it's knowledge based. And if we don't know and understand money, then we're probably going to have money problems one way or another regardless of…

Ted Ryce: Or if we understand it the wrong way, with believing what we're told.

Krisstina Wise: Culturally, it's rigged, what our parents and our culture tells us about money that we hold and behave with on a subconscious level day to day, if I told you is the biggest, fattest lie of all time, and it's going to keep you in the rat race and on the hamster wheel your entire life and until you radically step off and realize that you have to relook at everything from the inside out to switch the trajectory and change it, then maybe that it causes like, alright, I don't want to be in this system anymore. But we're in the system.

So, when it comes to money, there's these different categories. And the first thing is our relationship with money. Like I said, a lot of that has to do with our relationship with ourselves. But if our relationship with money is out of fear, out of lack, out of confusion, out of lack of confidence, out of whatever stories, nerves we have believed, or beliefs we have about it that we all carried over from childhood to your point, if we've not looked at those, we're running the same patterns as our parents, and the same patterns as our friends.

And unless we have parents and friends that have actually done it differently than what it appears everybody else is doing, we're going to wind up in the same place. But that's our relationship. And so the relationship of money come from a spiritual relational place is that's the first place to clean up, some people call it mindset and that's an overused word.

But I really like to say it's really a relationship and a relationship is a much narrative mindset is it is behavior. So, I can say I love you. And I can use the words and the language all the time, but you will tell me whether you feel loved or not. And how would you feel love? One, it wouldn't be out of my words, but I can I can say the words, and you can feel very unloved at the same time, because my behavior is not backing my words, it's out of integrity.

So, you're the person that gets to tell me if you feel loved or not. And I'd be like, “Well, I tell you, I love you all the time. What are you talking about? What's your problem?” So, the relational piece is through attention, it’s through time, it's through connection, it's through presence, it's around, let me listen and let me be with you.

And let me behave in a way that causes you to feel loved according to the way you say, what makes you feel loved. But that's a whole different orientation and relationship than it is, well, I told you I love to, like get over it. So, that's again, the behavior piece.

So, when it comes to money, the mood around money, and the relationship about money is one out of gratitude that yeah, maybe far from where I'd like to be financially, but the same time is still with, I have a roof over my head, my utilities are paid, I have food on the table, I get to sit at dinner every night with my kids or my family, I have my health, we've got these different things.

And to be able to say that, man, no matter what the bills are, it seems like every month I'm able to cover them. I wonder why that is. But again, when we start to be appreciative for what we have, and just be grateful for how lucky we really are, that's this first step of—it's more about being grateful for what we have, as opposed to focus on what we don't have, which is a big piece of this change.

Then the relationship piece is, if I say I love you, but I'm never home and I don't talk to you, I don't spend time with you, I always have excuses for why I'm not keeping my promises and I'm behaving in certain ways that make you feel unloved, at some point you're going to be like, “There's not a relationship here, not a healthy one.”

So, our money is the same thing is that when we're grateful for these different things, we want to spend more time with it. And that's the behavior of money. So, what we can do to see what we truly believe about money is we can start looking at how we behave it and how you do that practically, is take like 90 days and look at every dollar that you've spent and where it goes and where it's gone. And that will show you that money is a mirror.

If I say hey, I'm way into health and I'm all about this health thing, but my money is showing me I drove by McDonald's three days, every single week, my money is calling me to say bullshit, you say you care about your health, but you actually care more about convenience than health, because convenience as you go into McDonald's, and health means convenience is more important to you than health right now. But our money can become a mirror. And we can see what we're spending in places just to hit the loneliness button, or to hit the, “I can afford it” button, or “I deserve it” button to these things by looking at the Amazon purchases.

And these things we can see, like, wow, these types of purchases are actually organized around not about my good life, not about hitting my numbers, not about being very conscious and aware and where my money is in true alignment with what I say I care about and the life I want to create for myself and others around me.

So, that's a really good exercise to do that. And so that's part of what we do is we start to look at our behavior as a truth teller. It’s like in your world again, I call it stepping on the scale of money that, in my head, I can be like, “Yeah, maybe I'm a few pounds overweight, here and there and yeah, I had maybe Mexican and had some desserts and ate a lot of bad food and didn't really exercise that much, maybe one or two pounds, I'm off.”

But you don't step on the scale because you know deep down, you don't want to see what's on the scale, so you just walk around it. And then one day, when you get serious, you're like, you know what, I'm tired of feeling lack of energy, I'm tired of not feeling good in my clothes, I'm tired of being tired, I'm tired of all these things. I don't care what the scale says, I'm going to step on the damn thing deal with the truth of what it says. And then I'm going to go to work. And I'm actually truly going to get healthy for the first time. It's not about losing weight; it's about getting healthy. But knowing that losing some pounds is probably going to be a part of that.

Then you step on the scale, give your holy shit moment, it's not five or 10 pounds, it's 15 or 20. But it's like, alright, now I can have a strategy and I can work with someone like Ted or whoever is going to help me really now change the mindset, my relationship with myself and my behaviors in a way that's going to allow me now to create this healthy life that started by stepping on the scale.

So, money is the same thing, if we're advocating it, if we're not spending time with it, if we're not looking at it, if we're free to look at the bills, if we're just walking around, that's a real indicator because when you're in the wealth game, and money is an important part of living life well, you want to look at your money, you want to see how it's doing, you want to see it growing you want to have a checks and balances system that's a reminder that says hey, I got a little carried away this month, because we're not perfect. And you know going back to that.

And then really the final piece to that practically, what I love about money as opposed to other categories of life well so you can in the health is that if you're feeling really off, one of the first things we do is we get our blood tested, because our blood shows us some things we can't diagnose or ascertain, but with the blood, you can see it.

So, now we get this bloodwork, so we step on the scale, we get our weight, we measure body fat content, we get our bloodwork. Bloodwork says, oh, no wonder you feel like shit, your hormones are completely whacked or your thyroid is completely whacked, or you've got heavy metal poisoning. Whatever the blood is telling us.

But our money is our blood system of our life. So, we can go in and we're looking at money as labs through a profit and loss and balance sheet, which is the lab and the lab and then there's narrative or results in our financial statements, there's just looking at the bloodwork, when you know how to read those, you can diagnose it, and you are always balancing. Every time I get my bloodwork, I do it three times a year, and then everything looks great, except this one area, it's like something's off a little bit.

So, now I go and I work and I do some supplements or do whatever I'm going to do in that area. And I'm thinking oh my god, I've got it now, I just had the one thing, my health is perfect. And I get my next bloodwork done, that's good. But now something else is a little out of alignment.

So I can say money is balancing and that's why we're doing this as a lifestyle. We age, things change, who knows what's changing in our environments. So, we're doing our blood work from here on out, just knowing there's probably is going to be the next little something to work on. But if you know your baselines and you're keeping an eye on everything, you're in a journey with your body and health.

And again, money is the same thing, money is no exception to kind of these fundamental universal laws that are work that says, you have to be in this relationship and you have to do these labs and you need to constantly be adjusting and then it's less destination focus that I want to lose 20 pounds and then life is perfect. I never really have to worry about this again. As opposed to, no, I just know for the rest of my life, I'm going to be checking these things and hopefully just preventing or noticing something before it's too bad. And it's as normal as taking a vacation every year.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, so many things there. And I smiled halfway through your answer, because something popped up and I want to even talk to you about this afterward. But sometimes I tell people, “Listen, what you need is not me, you shouldn't even be listening to this podcast. Why? Because you're stressed out about money.

And if we hop on a call together, I don't want to hear your money problems. I don't know how to solve those. I'm good with solving health issues, getting you in shape, losing fat, building muscle, making it a sustainable process for you so you keep it for life. And if you're too worried about your bills, and all that, you won't even have the bandwidth to transform your body.”

And so if you're listening right now, and you've even hopped on a conversation, and gave me some money spiel, Krisstina is who you need. And if you've been thinking about working with me, or anyone really, or if you're living in scarcity, and you know its financial, but even coming to my podcast, it's a distraction from the real issue in your life, which is this, let’s, dysfunctional relationship with money, you don't need to be listening to my show, you need someone else's show, and maybe not Dave Ramsey, who tells you to save $5 on coffee to become a millionaire or whatever. I don't know what he says. But I don't really resonate with the things that he has said.

Krisstina Wise: I don't either.

Ted Ryce: Yeah. But it's interesting to hear you say that as well. But you need someone like Krisstina. And I really feel strongly about that, Krisstina, because I believe it comes back to what you said about awareness. Some people think they have a weight issue. They're just stress eating, because financially, they're a mess, I can't solve that issue without solving the root cause.

And the same thing goes with people who are in a very bad relationship, a toxic relationship with another person, it's not going to work, I can help them lose some weight, and I'll show them strategies better than anything that they've ever done before. But they'll still end up putting the weight back on because the stress from their relationship, food is how they're medicating themselves, dealing with anxiety, because a lot of people aren't going to become alcoholics or crystal meth heads.

But in our society, food is, I mean, like, 70% of the population in the US, that's how I feel about it. You mentioned something about medicine, I'm very appreciative that I can go get… I've had surgery on my eyes to improve my eyesight, or if I break a bone, I have people looking after that, how to set it. But when it comes to those other things, when it comes to getting healthy, it's a different ballgame.

And doctors are quite unhealthy, usually. So, anyway, kind of going off on a tangent there. But such a powerful conversation today. And I want to ask you if you're listening, does that resonate with you, anything that Krisstina said, or that I just said, right now, maybe the awareness is, you’ve got to start dealing with this money relationship issue, before you deal with anything else. And learning about health is just a distraction.

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, I love that you're saying that. What I found is that there are three life categories that are non-negotiable, in the sense of how well we take care of these three things really is directly connected to how good our life is, or how chaotic it is. But one is money.

Again, we can't opt out of money. And to your point, money affects everything. When I was listening to that, I'm like, how many times have you done this? Have I done it? And has anyone listening said, “I don't have the money to do XYZ. Yeah, I want to get my health back and do this, but I can't afford $10,000 to hire you. So, as much as I'd like to get my health back, I can't afford you and not going to do it”.

So, is one example, but how many times do we say that over and over and over again, that we're using money as the excuse for why we say we can't change our lives for the better often. So, that alone if we think about that, the next thought is, maybe I need to solve something to do with money, so that I don't keep not being able to improve or change or grow my life because money is the root cause of what I hear myself saying, and it becomes the excuse.

And then it's just, “Oh, maybe I should work harder,” you just burn out, or then you get stuck. And that's what the stuckness is. And we get stuck in all categories of life. But how much of our lives are stuck, because we have this excuse of not having enough money?

Ted Ryce: I need marriage counseling, but can't afford it.

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, right. All of it, all of it. Everything is. And so, people come to me like the last thing they work on. I'm like, no, come to me to be the first thing you work on. So, once you fix the money thing, and it's so easy to fix relative to health and relationships. It's the easiest thing.

So, it's math. It's systematic, you systematize, you get clarity, you set up a good system, you and your money have a great relationship and you love it, you know all your numbers, then money is super simple. It's a super simple problem to solve. But it does take awareness, it does take change, and it does take knowledge.

Money has rules, you have to follow period, end of story, you have to know why compounding interest is important and you want to know why you want to take advantage of this starting today. And if you don't know why or you don't really know what it is, you don't have a balance sheet, you don't know these numbers, you're just never going to have enough money, period, end of story, fact, truth. Maybe not fact, but truth.

So, get good at money. Money is super easy to get good with. And plus, I make it really fun to learn it and get good with it. But if it's not with me or Dave Ramsey is your jam, do Dave Ramsey, better than nothing. But the only reason why I'm not a fan of Dave Ramsey, he does some good things, especially if you have debt, you want to get out of debt. But it's all about scarcity and reduction. I compared Dave Ramsey like a constant low-calorie diet. It’s like, who can be in a low-calorie diet for their entire lives and think, okay, this is really living? Who wants to be on a low budget budget, and just be happy with it?

And then it's always like, oh, my God, you should feel guilt and shame if you did one thing outside of that. So, that's the restriction versus this is truly about the mindset. It's a scarcity mindset as opposed to a growth and abundance mindset. So, I teach you to spend every dollar you make, and you're so connected to every dollar that you spend and what you're spending it on, and love spending.

So, I want to create this real love of spending but it’s intentional spending, spending that's in alignment with what you say you care about. And then creating the systems that allow you to do that on the read. So, anyway, that's that life category.

The Second Life category that is non-negotiable is your health. And when we're younger, it's really easy to take advantage of it or not paying attention to it. But when it comes to money, at some point, it tends to be working until the day it doesn't work anymore. I just call it, the money calls your bluff.

Same with health, health calls my bluff. I was in my story that I was taking care and all these things and I was running marathons, I was resilient and all this stuff and then bam, got taken out the knees. And then for me, the reason why I'm here today is because I was actually good at money. I had enough money to save my life. If I had to just go normal insurance and normal stuff and didn't have the cash and assets to be able to do, I would not be here today.

So, in my case, money saved my life. My kids have a mother. Sad but true, this is hard stuff to talk about. Now is that money given to me? Was it luck or that I had Trust Fund or something? No, I work my ass off for every dollar overtime and sacrificed all this stuff to have that money that ultimately, had I done it differently, I wouldn't have been in that health crisis probably to begin with if I had to use all my money. But at the end of the day, money solve that problem. Money can solve some problems actually. Sad but it's true.

But the thing is, what I learned is that my body from a financial standpoint is my number one asset. I learned that once I was pulled out of the business game, not only was I'm using all of my money to try to find a cure and to save my life, I mean, it was just like a constant faucet, just a drain. It didn't matter to me, when I was going through that I didn't care about my lake house, I didn't care about my boat, I didn't care about my awards on my wall. I didn't care about my business.

All I wanted was my life back. All I wanted was my health back. I promise this is true, I didn't care about any of the stuff that seems so important before. Anybody that's fighting for their life, they have one thing they care about, is getting their health back. That's it, nothing else. It occupies your time 100% and that's where the energy goes and so the money affects the health to your point.

But that's the health and so when I teach money, we have a wellness bucket where you fund that bucket, to invest in yourself as money to be spent on self-care, true self care. And I compare that to, you know, especially as high-performers, we think everybody thinks this way and behaves this way and runs idols this high and goes at this velocity, but not really. It's called high performance for a reason.

So you look at an F1 car, so F1 cars are designed to go full out to win races, and the big reward if you win the race, from a money term, can be lots of zeros. But at the end of the day, for that car to be high-performance and run and race at that level, it needs lots of care, they're changing the tires constantly, changing the oils constantly, replacing everything on a regular basis, that car is being turned over so much, the inside and different piece is the same, but it's a car that's been constantly re-everything on a very serious basis.

And so it's a lot of investment, you invest a lot more money into keeping the car racing and operable than you do on your Honda's sitting out front. So, it's another thing, it takes a lot of money for those F1 cars. So, as F1 bodies that are high-performance, oh, guess what, if we're running at this velocity in the way that we do, because we have bigger dreams and ambitions and maybe financial targets, and it does require to before maybe, at least for a certain period of time, but a certain level, then we have to put more money, just like the cars into our body. And that's not inexpensive.

So, I spend a lot more money on wellness today than I do on things by a longshot. I really don't care about the next thing to go out and buy but if I can look at the next longevity thing, or health hack, or buying a chilling pad for my bed this week, and just all the things just to be able to sleep better, for example. But again, that's the health bucket. So, we can actually be healthier, when we have the money to invest in our health.

And then the third category is relationships; can’t opt out of relationships, we need our health to live a good life. And we need lots of love and hopefully good relationships. Part of, “well, we're spending too much money, we're eating too much food” is because our relationships suck, and we feel really lonely. Even if we're in a relationship, if it's toxic, or whatever the case is, we feel really lonely. Or if we're alone, and maybe not in a partnership, we feel really lonely.

And so you can just see so many problems actually are coming out of feeling detached, not connected, not feeling loved, not being able to truly give this love, and to spend time with others in relationships, because we're feeling tired, don't have the energy to put into these things. Health wise, we don't have the money to invest in counseling, or go on a trip or do other things.

So, see how these are so interrelated, that if all three of health, wealth and relationships are instrumental to quality of life. My thing is, I want to get as good as I can at all three. And if I'm hitting a breakdown in one of those categories, I want to go find the help, that's going to help me either solve that problem or to improve my level of ability to behave and get better results in that category.

And I just complete by saying, many times people are going to work on their health, or maybe they're going to do spiritual work or relational work, personal or otherwise. And then they're leaving the money piece out without understanding that money funds everything else across the board. So, get good at the money thing. Love your money.

Ted Ryce: Love your money, fix your relationship with your money. It's interesting how you said earlier, relationships are where it's at. It's the most important piece. And I agree with that 100%. I'm not a relationship coach, but I agree that relationships are the most important thing. They're the most important thing in my life.

However, what I teach and what you just said, hard to have the energy to love someone to show up the way they need to show with your behaviors, instead of saying, “I love you. I just have a headache. My belly hurts and I feel really bad about myself. I saw myself in the mirror, but I love you though”.

Or you're so focused on what you help people with, with the money thing, you can't show up for that person because you've got the relationships in your life, or might be a lot of people in your life, your children, if you're not handling these other areas, so important.

Krisstina, I feel like this is the first of maybe several conversations we've got to have about this, I feel like we're just scratching the surface here, and I love what you brought today. And just to keep it at that level and give people some ideas to think over, let's do this. If you're listening right now, and you resonated with Krisstina and you want to learn more about her, she does this quiz that you can find at www.wisemoneymethod.com. And what does that specifically tell someone who goes there?

Krisstina Wise: Yeah, Wise Money Method is my school, so I teach money, and we get really good at it. And money just become such a happy spot in life. And that's my purpose on this planet today is to help people love their money and have a really good system for managing it, for loving it, for growing it, for building it and for creating true wealth and wellness in their life. Life is hard enough; we're going to take the money problem out completely. So, that's the school and then I have the quiz, it's www.wisemoneymethod.com/quiz.

And it's the top 10 financial questions most people can't answer but should if they ever want to create financial independence. So, I just invite you to take the quiz and see how you score. Because if we score probably 85% or 90%, hopefully, the next thought is, there's probably some stuff to money here, I need to figure out, this is going to get me off this hamster wheel and get me more into true wealth creation, financial freedom, and just overall living a life that's far less negatively impacted by money.

Ted Ryce: Perfect. And I want to challenge you, if you listen to this today, and you listen to all the way to the end, and you're like, “Wow, this is something I need to take action”, go to www.wisemoneymethod.com/quiz  and take the quiz. Take an action right now. Or again, like Krisstina said, if Dave Ramsey is your person, go do whatever Dave Ramsey is offering.

But take action after listening to this because far too often, you'll feel that motivation rise as you continue to listen to a podcast like this. And then afterward you don't do anything with it. But it feels like you did something because you learned but that's not learning, learning is when you listen, read watch, and then you go apply it, you take some type of action.

So, that is my challenge for you if you're listening to this right now. Krisstina Wise, thank you so much for coming on the show. As I said, I feel like we're scratching the surface here and I want to get you back on soon, because it's part of the bigger picture of health, financial health, relationship health, bodily health, that we all want. And we're not getting that message, we're getting the scarcity that you mentioned, or the low-calorie diets. And so, I feel like we're kindred spirits here. So, thank you so much for today.

Krisstina Wise: My pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

Ted Ryce: Yeah, and as I said, we’ve got to get you back on sooner rather than later.

Krisstina Wise: Anytime you just tell me when.