“Woo” Habits I Swear By for Financial Peace & Success

Today’s article about finding financial peace and success comes to us from Nashville’s Lauren Reed, co-founder of Wealth of a Woman and a founding partner at REED Public Relations.

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The week before we signed the largest client in our agency’s history, I had an energy healer sage all four thousand square feet of our office.

If you know me, that probably is not a surprise. I am, after all, married to my astrologer. If we haven’t met, you might find it strange coming from a woman who built a PR agency from her kitchen table, reads financial statements for fun, and once spent an entire Saturday color-coding a personal budget in Excel because the satisfaction was, frankly, unmatched.

But the practices that have actually moved the needle for me — the ones that have changed the way I relate to money, work, and wealth — are not in any personal finance book. They are quieter. Harder to explain at a dinner party. Some people call them woo. I have come to call them essential.

Our relationship with money is rarely just about math. It is emotional. It is inherited. It is wired into us long before we have language for any of it. Sometimes, a stuck financial situation only starts moving once you get still enough to hear what you actually believe about money, and are honest enough to start changing it.

Mindset Before Math

For most of us, money lives somewhere in the territory of anxiety, avoidance, or shame. Before any financial strategy will really stick, we have to address what is happening beneath the surface: the stories we have been telling ourselves, the fears we have been carrying, the beliefs we inherited before we were old enough to question them.

My own wake-up call came in a season when, by all appearances, I was thriving. The agency was growing. Our bank account was healthy. But I was still lying awake at night, feeling like it could all be gone by morning. The anxiety wasn’t about the numbers. It was about an old, inherited belief, wired in long before I had any personal income: that security was something you had to white-knuckle, and any breath of ease was a moment before everything fell apart.

No tax strategy, quarterly check-in, envelope system, or high-yield savings account was going to fix that. It would take something else entirely.

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Guided Meditation. Yes, Really.

Guided meditation around money is one of the practices I return to often. The reason why is this: my nervous system reacts to a bill the way other people’s react to a snake in the yard, and five minutes of guided breath is sometimes the only thing that gets me back into my body so I can make a grounded decision instead of a reactive one.

The contributors at our Wealth of a Woman YouTube channel have created meditations for almost every type of money tension I have ever encountered:

• Feeling shame, stress, or scarcity around money? Lori Knowles’s practice gently shifts you toward peace and clarity.
• Not sure what wealth even means to you? Shelly O’Neal’s meditation walks you toward your own personal definition.
• Wondering why money feels so loaded? Lisa Hromada’s grounding practice connects ancestral wisdom with the history of your own experience.
• Craving community on your financial journey? Katie Gustafson Hill’s reflection helps you call in the people who support who you truly are.
• Ready to get clear on your values and voice them with confidence? Kate Wood’s grounding practice is a powerful place to land.

Try one before your next money task, whether you are paying bills, reviewing your budget, or sitting down to talk finances with your partner, and notice how it changes the way you show up.

Journaling With Intention

A regular journaling practice (and I do not mean expense tracking) that is a deep dive into your emotional relationship with money is one of the most inexpensive and transformative financial tools I have ever used. Five honest minutes a few times a week is enough.

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A handful of prompts I use:

• What is money allowing me to do right now?
• Where am I feeling financial fear, and is it actually based in reality?
• What would financial peace look like in my actual life?

It works because it pulls my money thoughts out of a spiral and onto a page. It separates fact from fear and, over time, lets you see patterns you may never have known existed.

Visualization

Before anyone pictures a yacht-manifesting Pinterest board, that is not what I mean. What I’m talking about is getting specific and intentional about your financial future.

What does security mean to me? What number feels like enough? What am I trying to say yes to with my money, and where do I need to say no?

Visualization makes abstract goals feel real, and feeling real is what makes consistent action toward them possible. After you visualize, write down one thing you can do this week that moves you in that direction.

Community as a Practice

We were taught that money talk was impolite. Don’t share numbers. Don’t ask questions. Figure it out alone.

That silence has been expensive — for our daughters, our retirement accounts, and our sanity.

Surround yourself with women who talk openly about money. When we share our experiences, our mistakes, and our wins, we learn faster, feel less shame, and hold each other accountable in a way no app ever has. Find your people, whether that is a trusted friend, a workshop, or a small group where honesty is welcome, and let conversations about money become part of your normal life instead of a once-a-year confessional.

The Foundation Underneath

None of these practices replaces a solid savings plan or an investment strategy. They are the tools that finally make them stick.

The most important financial work I have done happened long before I sat down with a spreadsheet. It happened when I finally got quiet enough to hear what I actually believed about money. Everything else has followed from there.

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