What if I told you that the most powerful thing you could do for your financial life has nothing to do with working harder, hustling more, or grinding until something breaks? What if the real shift is an inside job? Today, we’re going to talk about the science and, yes, the spirit behind creating more money with less effort. And I promise you, by the end, whether you’re a hard-nosed data person or someone who keeps crystals on your desk, there’s going to be something today to make you think differently about how to create more wealth in your life.
12-minute read
Introduction
We’re going to work through three sections today: The science, the spirit, and the practice. The science is going to outline the research about what’s actually blocking your income (and it has nothing to do with effort). In the second section, the spirit, we’re going to tackle the spiritual side of things, covered in concepts like the Law of Attraction (you’re going to see that the woo and the science are saying the exact same thing in different languages). Finally, in the last section, we’re going to get practical. Three tools, a different starting point, and a completely different relationship with how you create money. Let’s get into it.
Section One: The Science
Understand What’s Actually Blocking You
Most people think their money problems are strategic. They think: I need a better plan, a better system, a better side hustle. But what the research consistently shows is that the biggest block to financial growth isn’t a lack of strategy. It’s the emotional and cognitive state you’re in when you’re trying to create that strategy.
Here’s what I mean. When you’re anxious about money, when you’re operating from scarcity, something very real happens in your brain. Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan and Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir spent years studying what they call the scarcity mindset, and what they found is striking: when people feel they don’t have enough, their cognitive bandwidth narrows dramatically. In their research, people preoccupied with financial worry showed drops in cognitive performance equivalent to going without sleep for 24 hours!
Let me say that again. Worrying about money doesn’t just feel bad. It literally makes you less capable of solving the money problem you’re worried about. It tunnels your thinking so you can’t see the bigger picture. You miss opportunities. You make shorter-term decisions. The scarcity mindset perpetuates itself.
So, before we talk strategy, we need to talk about the state you’re in when you’re doing the work.
The Difference Between Approach and Avoidance Motivation
Psychologists have spent decades studying what drives human behavior, and one of the most reliable findings in all of motivation research comes down to a simple distinction: are you moving toward something you want, or are you running away from something you fear?
Approach motivation is when your actions are driven by the desire to gain something positive. A goal, an outcome, a version of your life you genuinely want. Avoidance motivation is when your actions are driven by the need to escape something negative. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment. Fear of losing what you have.
Here’s why this matters so much for money: most people who are hustling are actually avoidance-motivated. They’re not working from desire. They’re working from fear. Fear that they’ll lose the house, fear that they’ll be seen as a failure, fear that there will never be enough. And that fear-based hustle, no matter how hard you push, produces worse outcomes than working from a place of genuine desire and possibility.
Multiple studies have confirmed that avoidance motivation consistently undermines creativity, narrows cognitive flexibility, and depletes mental resources faster than approach motivation. In fact, researchers found that when people are avoidance-motivated, creative tasks feel more difficult, require more effort, and leave them more mentally depleted afterward.
Think about what that means in practice. When you’re hustling from fear, you’re burning through your cognitive and emotional fuel at an accelerated rate. Your creative problem-solving suffers. The very thing you need most to build something new, which is the ability to think flexibly and see what’s possible, gets shut down by the stress state you’re operating from.
Approach motivation, by contrast, is associated with what researchers call an expansive cognitive style. You’re more likely to see connections between things. You generate more ideas. You’re more intrinsically motivated, which means you persist longer and with more genuine investment. One study found that even simple physical gestures associated with approach motivation (pulling something toward you versus pushing it away) were enough to measurably enhance creative performance.
So if you want to create more money without the hustle, the first shift is moving from avoidance to approach. Not just in your actions, but in the emotional state underneath those actions. Ask yourself right now: Am I pursuing this goal because I genuinely want it? Or am I running from something I’m scared of? There’s no judgment in that question. Most of us are doing both at different moments. But getting honest about which driver is in the seat right now is the beginning of everything.
Section Two: The Spiritual
Okay, I want to get personal with you here, and maybe a little woo. I say maybe, because as I think you know by now, I’ve spent my career watching science catch up to things that used to sound completely out there.
I’ve been following the teachings of Abraham since 1986. Let me tell you a little about who, or what, Abraham is, because without that context, none of this lands properly.
Esther Hicks is a woman who began receiving what she describes as blocks of thought from a non-physical group consciousness she calls Abraham. And she’s very specific about the language here: she doesn’t call herself a channeler. She calls it translation. Abraham themselves have weighed in on this directly, suggesting you could simply call it inspiration. As they put it, you don’t call a brilliant musician a channeler, but in a sense they are. They’re pulling from something larger than their ordinary thinking mind and bringing it through into the world. That’s what Esther does.
Abraham has described themselves as ‘a group consciousness from the non-physical dimension,‘ and has said, ‘We are that which you are. You are the leading edge of that which we are.’ Louise Hay called them some of the best teachers on the planet. Wayne Dyer called them the great masters of the Universe. And you may know their work without realizing it, because Rhonda Byrne’s book and movie, The Secret was built directly on the Law of Attraction teachings that came through Esther.
I came to Abraham during one of the hardest periods of my life, when I was getting clean from heroin. Something in those teachings reached me when nothing else had. But even then, even as I was watching real shifts happen in my life, there was always a small part of me that wondered: is this actually true, or do I just want it to be? Being the cynical New Yorker, show-me-the-science kind of gal, I was having a hard time completely buying in.
Then I began my doctoral training in psychology. And I kept noticing something: the research kept arriving at the same conclusions Abraham had been teaching for decades, just in different language. I think of it like The Tao of Physics, the book by physicist Fritjof Capra, where he drew the parallels between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism and showed that they were describing the same reality from different starting points. That’s how I now experience the Abraham teachings. The woo and the science are speaking the same language. And once I truly saw that, the last bit of doubt I carried dissolved and I’ve watched my life explode with abundance and “good luck” ever since.
Here’s the Teaching That Changes Everything
“You have to be satisfied with what-is while you’re reaching for more.” This is Abraham’s core teaching on money and desire. You can’t get to a new financial reality from a place of desperate, anxious wanting. The wanting itself, when it’s loaded with fear and lack, keeps you exactly where you are.
This isn’t about pretending things are fine when they’re not. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s about finding genuine appreciation for where you are right now, even as you actively reach for something different. Real satisfaction as your starting point, not as your reward for arriving somewhere.
And here’s where the science closes the loop completely. What Abraham calls the frequency of fear and scarcity, researchers call avoidance motivation paired with a scarcity mindset. What Abraham calls alignment and inspired action, researchers call approach motivation from a regulated nervous system. Different vocabularies, same prescription.
Author Hal Elrod articulates this beautifully in one of my favorite books, The Miracle Equation. He talks about two decisions that determine whether a goal moves from possible to probable to inevitable: unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. The unwavering faith idea is the Abraham piece: believe it’s coming, feel it as real, refuse to let your emotional state be contingent on the result. The extraordinary effort piece is the action component. Together, they describe doing the work from a regulated, grounded, approach-motivated state, rather than the desperate, depleting energy of hustle-from-fear.
So, whether you want to call it vibration, or approach motivation, or a regulated nervous system in alignment with your goals, the answer is the same. The emotional state you’re in while you pursue money matters as much as any strategy or tactic you’ll ever try. You cannot hustle your way into abundance from a place of fear. You have to feel your way there first.
And if the deeper science behind all of this interests you, I did a whole episode on exactly how the Law of Attraction works at the quantum physics level.
Section Three: The Practice
Before I jump into the practical tools for shifting your state, I’ve got a great free download for today that will help: What’s Really Driving Your Relationship with Money? I’ll talk more about it at the end, as well as the Therapy-to-Go Bundle for today’s episode. If all of this is resonating and you want to do the deeper work, hang out at the end, and I’ll tell you about everything.
Practical Tools for Shifting Your State
So what does this actually look like in practice? Here are the tools I come back to again and again.
I. The Stillness Practice
Before you do any money-related work, business strategy, client outreach, budget review, spend five minutes in stillness. Not scrolling. Not planning. Just breathing and settling your nervous system. You’re literally moving yourself from avoidance-motivated threat state into the more open, creative, approach-motivated state where your best thinking happens. If guilt or anxiety shows up during stillness, which it often does, that’s information. Notice it, name it, and remind yourself: this is exactly why I’m doing this. I’m interrupting the pattern.
This is one of those times when I’m going to tell you, yet again, to create a 15-minute per day meditation practice. It will change your life! You can buy my easy program, How to Meditate for 15 Minutes in 15 Days, follow a program on an app like Insight Timer, or even start with my free Meditation Starter Kit. I don’t care what you do, but start something tomorrow if you’re serious about changing your attitude and approach to your finances (and your life).
II. The Appreciation Anchor
Each morning, before you look at revenue numbers, your inbox, or your to-do list, write down three things that are already working in your business or financial life. Not as a gratitude exercise for its own sake, but as a deliberate neurological reset. You’re priming your brain for approach motivation before you begin your day. Research on what Abraham calls the frequency of appreciation and what neuroscience calls positive affect priming both point to the same outcome: people who start from a baseline of appreciation make more creative, forward-oriented decisions.
III. The Alignment Map
This is a tool I created specifically for this work. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side, write every action in your business or financial life that feels heavy, draining, or like something you ‘should’ do. On the right side, write every action that feels energizing, that you find yourself doing without effort.
The goal isn’t to eliminate everything on the left immediately. The goal is awareness. Because when you’re in avoidance motivation, you often can’t feel the difference. This map helps you start seeing it. Over time, you’ll work toward building a way of looking at money/work that lives increasingly on the right side of that line. That is where sustainable, non-hustle income lives.
Wrap Up: A Note on Real-World Constraints
I want to be clear about something before we close. This episode isn’t about bypassing real financial hardship through positive thinking. Scarcity is real. Bills are real. The psychological research on scarcity was conducted precisely to understand and alleviate genuine poverty, not to suggest that people struggling financially just need a better mindset.
What the science tells us, and what Abraham teaches, is that where we have agency over our emotional state, exercising that agency changes our outcomes. It doesn’t change every circumstance, but it consistently changes our ability to see, create, and respond to opportunities.
So this is for the people who have the room to make a shift but are burning themselves out in avoidance mode. It’s for the people who are working extremely hard and wondering why it doesn’t feel like enough. It’s for anyone who suspects there might be a different way to pursue the life they want. You don’t have to choose between the science and the spirit. They’re saying the same thing.
Whether you call it alignment or a regulated nervous system, whether you call it vibration or approach motivation, the prescription is the same. Feel your way there first.
Free Download: What’s Really Driving Your Relationship with Money?
If you want to know exactly which pattern is running your financial life right now, I created a free assessment for this episode that will give you the answer in about ten minutes. It’s called What’s Really Driving Your Relationship with Money, and by the end of it, you’ll know whether you’re operating from inspiration or fear, and more importantly, what to do about it.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
- What’s Really Driving Your Relationship with Money
- The Alignment Map
- The Time Audit
- Journaling Prompts: Your Relationship with Money and Effort
- Guided Visualization
Resources for How to Make More Money Without Working More: What the Neuroscience Actually Says
Learn to Meditate for 15 Minutes in Just 15 Days
References
- Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science, 341(6149), 976-980. See also: Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Times Books.
- Friedman, R. S., & Forster, J. (2005). Effects of motivational cues on perceptual asymmetry: Implications for creativity and analytical problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 263-275
- Elliot, A. J., et al. (2009). The effect of red on avoidance behavior in achievement contexts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 365-375.
- Roskes, Marieke & Elliot, Andrew & De Dreu, Carsten. (2014). Why Is Avoidance Motivation Problematic, and What Can Be Done About It? Current Directions in Psychological Science. 23. 133-138. 10.1177/0963721414524224.
- Elliot, A. J., & Harackiewicz, J. M. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: A mediational analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 461–475. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.461
- Friedman, R. S., & Forster, J. (2000). The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(4), 477-492.
- Capra, F. (1975). The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism. Shambhala Publications.
- About Abraham Hicks
- Hicks, E. & Hicks, J. (2008). Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness. Hay House. See also: abraham-hicks.com
- Elrod, H. (2019). The Miracle Equation: The Two Decisions That Move Your Biggest Goals from Possible, to Probable, to Inevitable. Harmony Books.
