Cultural Poverty Codes Disguised As Community

So many women find themselves shy of their desired income level, and think it’s because they have some money block or a new strategy they need to use.

What these women often don’t realize is that they were born into a culture that carries subtle signals and information under the surface (aka: many women are carrying unconscious limiting agreements that cap their income due to a lack of awareness).

Cultural signals influence many women well into their careers without them knowing: these cultural imprints may cap their capacity to believe in receiving beyond a certain ‘reasonable’ level, not allow them to be supported without overworking, or move them into a state of unconscious people pleasing in their company. 

These cultural codes are often hidden and unconscious.

Examples of cultural programming: 

For so many of us, if I say to you, ‘You’re cheap like that dad in Everybody Hates Chris, ’ you know exactly who I’m talking about. Not only do you know who I am talking about, but you also know somebody in your family or around you who is just like the dad in that show.

For context: The dad in Everybody Hates Chris was a bit of a cheapskate. He is known for unplugging lights and saying ‘You just used 10 cents of electricity’.

This dad character is really a cultural character: the one who praises the act of not sharing, of not believing more is coming, of holding on for dear life to money.

Unconsciously, this creates cultural programs that say, “I can’t be wasteful with money”

As if money is not an infinite resource. 

You cannot waste an unlimited energy. No need to carry guilt about your Chanel bag, but for many, this is how cultural agreements sneakily keep you from expanding financially in the name of being a good person; by creating guilt and moral superiority. 

Another program: 

“My grandma used to put plastic on the couch; she took care of her furniture” 

For many, this just sounds like a statement, but at its core, it is really loaded cultural programming. With this thinking, now if you believe in just buying new furniture instead of holding on for dear life to an old piece,  this ‘statement’ implies that you somehow ‘don’t take care of things’.

This is how culture creates guilt and popularizes scarcity programs. 

You think you are being morally correct when you have just given away your seat of authority to society and scarcity. 

For black culture, the black dad is almost something that is joked about amongst the community. While this is not everybody in our community, depending on your social class and societal upbringing (which is why we cannot ignore the conversation of class, society, and trauma in our discourse about money, because for some people it is not only about environment and class, it’s about cultural scarcity imprints), you may definitely have unconsciously absorbed some of these biases.

So many of us think that we have no desire to fit in anymore, only because we cannot decipher our unconscious/evolutionary-based motivations.   

We don’t realize that we are still subtly led by our cultural conditioning. Cultural conditioning feels less like a choice and more like, ‘thats just how it is’.

Cultural conditioning is about what’s expected of you; it’s about what is seen as rare versus was seen as normal; it’s about what is demonized, etc. So much of this becomes unconscious; so many women are not aware that they are unconsciously trying to fit into societal ‘norms’ established by the culture they are in.

For example, some people are a lot less apt to share, so culturally this stinginess has spread as the phrase ‘Don’t be an enabler’.

Now you wear yourself out in the name of not looking like a bum to avoid demonization by your community. (This, btw, will lead to burnout.)  

The ‘enabler’ cultural thinking also goes against what many of the rich do, which is Nepotism/supporting each other. If we want our culture to grow, it is time for us to question the ideas passed down.