Hello, my love
I’m going to start with a confession:
I have been hungry for success my entire life.
Multiple degrees. A master’s. A private practice before I even graduated. A business… then another… then another. For years, “shamelessly ambitious” meant relentless pursuit at any cost.
And underneath all of that drive?
A very familiar belief:
If I just had more money, everything would finally feel easier.
Right now, a lot of my clients are in that same place. They say they want more success—but underneath, what they really want is relief. Peace. Breathing room. A life that doesn’t feel like it’s quietly unraveling in the background.
If that’s you, you’re not broken.
You’re just stuck in a very loud, very sneaky money myth.
Let’s talk about it.
The quiet belief running the show: “More money will fix this”
One of my clients came to me and said it out loud:
“I keep thinking that if I just had more money, every hard thing I’m experiencing would resolve.”
She had binged this podcast, recognized her own story in the season I shared about burnout and overdrive, and realized:
She wasn’t actually chasing money.
She was chasing nervous system relief.
Here’s the truth I had to learn the hard way (and the truth I reflected back to her):
More money doesn’t fix what’s unregulated. It amplifies it.
If your life feels:
- frantic
- leaky
- constantly on the brink
- held together by your over-functioning
…more money doesn’t magically change that.
It just turns up the volume.
Money is a mirror, not a medic
We’re sold this idea that once we have “more” we’ll finally feel:
- safe
- calm
- stable
- secure
- present
But here’s what’s actually true:
- Money doesn’t create safety. It magnifies where your safety already comes from.
- Money doesn’t heal chaos. It highlights the places you refuse to look at.
- Money doesn’t regulate your nervous system. It mirrors the one you already have.
Money is a mirror for:
- your nervous system
- your patterns
- your unmet needs
- your unspoken resentments
- your unresolved pressure
That’s not a reason to be afraid of making more.
It’s an invitation to stop outsourcing your peace to your income goals.
What are you really asking money to give you?
With that client, we started here:
“What do you think money will deliver?”
She said what most of us say first:
- freedom
- stability
- options
So I kept going:
- What does freedom actually feel like in your body?
- What would stability change in your daily life?
- What are you assuming you’d finally be allowed to do, be, or feel?
And then the real answers started to emerge:
- “I want to feel less rushed.”
- “I want to be present with my kids without thinking about work.”
- “I want to stop being scared it’s all going to fall apart.”
Those are nervous system experiences, not money experiences.
Once we got to the root, we flipped the question:
How can I start feeling pieces of this now, before the income changes?
Because if you can’t feel any version of what you’re chasing right now,
you won’t feel it when the number changes either.
You’ll just raise the bar and keep running.
You already have more of what you want than you think
Most of what you truly want exists in your life in seed form:
- Moments of calm you dismiss as “not enough yet”
- Sweetness in your marriage you overlook because it’s “not fixed”
- Evidence of abundance you ignore because it’s “not the big result”
You can’t feel it because your internal standard is so high that nothing counts until it’s Instagrammable, dramatic, or undeniable.
So your brain says:
“I don’t have it yet.”
And your nervous system responds with:
“We’re not safe yet. Hustle harder.”
This is how we end up in a lifetime rat race—
not because the desire is wrong, but because we never let anything be “enough” to actually land in our bodies.
Scarcity isn’t just “not enough money”—it’s “not enough now”
I want you to know this isn’t coming from someone who’s only ever spoken about money from the mountaintop.
There was a season when:
- I was pregnant with my second son
- we were in the middle of a brutal lawsuit
- we were counting coins to eat
- dinner was rice and beans, not as an aesthetic—but as survival
I know what it’s like to feel like there is no way out.
And I can tell you with absolute certainty:
My way out was not “just making more money.”
My way out was becoming:
- resourced instead of panicked
- empowered instead of terrified
- intentional instead of avoidant
I became a student of my money—not from a hoarding, white-knuckled place, but from an I get to be in relationship with this place.
More money came later.
The relationship came first.
Earning from anxiety vs. receiving from regulation
Here’s the difference:
Earning from anxiety feels like:
- gripping
- forcing
- proving
- over-functioning
- “I can’t rest until…”
- constant nervous system static in the background
Yes, you can make a lot of money from here.
I have. Many of my clients have.
But the cost is always your body.
Receiving from regulation feels like:
- grounded action
- clear “yes” and honest “no”
- decisions that honor your real capacity
- money that flows through a life you actually like
- success that doesn’t require self-abandonment
Same revenue.
Completely different reality.
The work isn’t “stop wanting more.”
The work is stop sacrificing your wholeness to get it.
Ambition isn’t the problem—unregulated ambition is
At the beginning of the episode I said:
I have always been hungry for success.
Past tense and present tense.
The desire is still here.
The difference now is this:
- I’m no longer willing to trade my nervous system to hit a number.
- I care more about sustainability than sensation.
- I will not build offers that ask me to abandon my body.
The woman I am now is still relentless—but inwardly.
Relentless in:
- believing life is happening for me
- returning to my values when fear gets loud
- choosing models of success that make sense for my actual nervous system
That’s what I want for you too.
If this is landing, you’re who the Surrender Immersion is for
This is exactly the heart of The Surrender Retreat—which, let’s be honest, is less “cute getaway” and more full-body recalibration.
It’s an immersion in:
- redefining success
- re-patterning safety
- rebuilding self-trust
Not for the woman who just wants to crank up her income at any cost.
For the woman who:
- still wants more
- but refuses to keep bulldozing herself to get it
- is done hustling for safety
- wants to work from a regulated, resourced place
We’re not here to make you “less ambitious.”
We’re here to help your ambition stop eating you alive.
You can read all the details in the show notes and feel into whether it’s a true nervous system yes.
Let this episode be your invitation to ask:
“What am I asking money to fix…
that only I can heal?”
You’re allowed to want more.
You’re also allowed to stop bleeding out for it.
xx, Ash
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