'I hid my $185k debt from my partner. When I confessed, his reaction shocked me.'

The following is an edited extract from On the Way to Wonderland by Alice Crawley, available here.

Martin didn’t know the full extent of my credit card debt when I came out of rehab. That was a whole new crucial conversation that we needed to have. I didn’t have the courage to tell him about it just yet. 

I’d been in full-blown denial about how bad things really were with my money and I was terrified of losing Martin. He had stood by me through my journey in rehab, but being acutely aware that financial security was in his top tier of values, I was sure he would freak out if he knew that I was facing down the barrel of $185,000 in credit card debt.

I’d dealt with the immediate life-threatening conditions and now I had to deal with the creditors breathing down my neck. I knew I had to face the money and the music with Marty, but I needed to speak within someone else first, a dry run, to work up the courage to tell Mr Actuary the full story. The secret of my money shambles and shame was eating away at me from the inside. First, I needed to have tea with my neuroses.

Watch: MM Confessions: My partner doesn't know. Story continues below.

About a month into early recovery, we had dinner with Martin’s friend, Rhianna, and she and I both got up to go to the bathroom at the same time. I don’t know what happened, but when we were washing our hands, I just blurted it out – I could not handle the internal pressure cooker of the anxiety any longer. I confided in her because she’d known Martin a long time and she would understand why I was so scared to tell him.

She suggested we meet for a ‘cuppa’ the next day, to talk through what was happening. She assured me that we’d find a solution, she could help, to hang tight and we’d talk it over at a café in the Queen Victoria Building (QVB).

I was sitting and waiting with my cup of green tea, my gut tight with anxiety. My hands were shaking and I was feeling incredibly self-conscious. I knew I had taken the right step by reaching out to her to start the conversation about my epic financial clusterfuck but the chasm between where I wanted to be and where I was then was so overwhelmingly large, it was hard to believe that having a cup of tea with a friend was going to make any difference.

I was consumed with anxiety every day about money, dodging Interpol calls, being chased by creditors and, worst of all, not being honest with anyone, particularly the people closest to me, about how hellacious things had become. Seriously, how the hell is a cup of tea going to even put a dent in this situation, is what my head was screaming at me.

Rhianna showed up with so much presence, power and purpose it completely shifted my frequency. She transmitted this energy to me from the moment she sat down and ordered her tea – a calming clarity and confidence that whatever was going on, we were going to sort it out, no matter what. I instantly felt reassured that if she was confident, we would find a solution, there must be hope. I sat upright.

She had my attention and I immediately knew that I wanted that level of confidence for myself. It was more than confidence, it was conviction. It was as if she was channelling a conviction and it was an energy boost like I’d never experienced. I felt a little magical vortex had been created around our table while we were having our cups of tea and whatever I spilled out into this safe little space would be transformed into something miraculous. That’s exactly what happened.

She got straight to it before her tea even arrived, asking me to share what was happening, where I was at and what had me consumed with anxiety. I downloaded like crazy about the full extent of my credit card debt, what I had accumulated in Canada and what had happened when I got to Australia. I shared the shame of my spiralling spending sprees, the extravagant five-star holidays I’d taken on credit to escape my anxiety and self-doubt, and how I was now at a point where I felt there was no way out. I explained I was earning less than $50,000 a year and there was no way I would be able to pay off the debt on that salary, and I had no idea where to even start.

She listened patiently and with intent. When I had emptied out about the self- doubt and despair, she looked at me and I knew from the way that she looked at me that she could see much more than I could. She peeled past the layers of addictions and debt, past the shame and beyond my pain, to the core of who I really was. She could see the real me behind what felt like crippling circumstances and reminded me that I was a powerful, worthy and magnificent human being, capable of being, doing and having anything that I wanted. She said, “Alice, I see you. You are more than this. You have to choose to be more. You have to believe you are more. Then you will call it in.”

She connected with me in that moment with such focus, flow and high frequency I could feel myself shifting onto a life trajectory right there at that little table in the QVB. She connected with me at a heart level, a quantum level, from her unlimited power and connected me to my own unlimited power.

“Alice, what do you really want?” Her conviction helped me to tap into mine and I heard myself saying, “I want to be earning a lot more money!” It was coming from a reserve of clarity that I did not realise was even within me. “Well,” she responded, “if you believe you’re worth $50,000 a year, that’s what you’ll be earning.”

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It was suddenly crystal clear to me that if I wanted to earn more, I had to not only believe that I was worth more, I had to be certain that I was worth more. She asked me what I wanted to earn. It almost sounded too ridiculous to say it out loud but some force within me was on loudspeaker. “I want to be earning $100,000 a year!” I blurted out. She gave me a big, wide, Cheshire Cat grin and said, “Great, write that number down.”

We went on to discuss what beliefs I had that had kept me in this under- earning cycle and focused on how I could dismantle those beliefs and replace them with new ones about how I was worthy of being a high-income earner. “How do I create those new beliefs?” I asked, now fully caught up in the excitement of this magical flow which was swirling around us. “You write those new beliefs down, you find evidence for them, you reiterate them and embed them until you believe them without a doubt.”

I was writing in my notebook like a maniac as I realised that I could, in fact, step back and look at these beliefs without fear, blame or judgement and simply focus on what I wanted to believe and step away from beliefs from the past. I needed to change the way I spoke to myself and others about money; I needed to build new, beneficial beliefs about money and journal about them daily.

After that life-changing encounter, I started to do all this and more. Then and there, in the QVB having a cup of tea with my neuroses, I decided to write a new money story for myself. From there, I turned my money ship around, one degree at a time.

Taking a Quantum Leap.

That conversation with Rhianna gave me the courage to come clean with Marty about the full scope of my financial fuck up. On one level, I had hoped he’d help bail me out or help me accelerate the process with some financial assistance. He made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he would not bail me out; this was my money mess to sort out. He said he’d hold space for me emotionally and support me as he had through rehab, but he wasn’t going to rescue me. He did the most loving, supportive and powerful thing a partner could do; he insisted that I rescue myself. That’s exactly what I did.

I cut up all my credit cards. I overhauled my spending. I created a compelling ‘why’. My why was easy: I needed to be financially free to get my life back. I was consumed by financial anxieties; I knew I could not be who I wanted to be or show up in the world in the way I wanted while I was under-earning and over-spending. All that had to change. I set the intention to pay down my debt in five years or less and that’s exactly what I did. It took work, study, rejections, tears, fears and behavioural change to get there, but I think back to that conversation over a cup of tea and realise that a life can be saved and changed in a moment.

Often, what you need more than anything is someone to guide you towards a glimpse of what’s possible, whether that be a friend, a moment of super- consciousness in meditation, or a mesmerising sunrise that shifts your perspective. Once you have had that glimpse of something greater out there for you and understand you are worth more and so much more is possible, there’s no going back. I felt it.

When you tap into an experience like that, you walk away a changed person. That’s what I call The Power of Quantum Connection™. The powerful change activated in me through that simple conversation shifted me onto a new timeline. I now know, having studied quantum mechanics, transformation and healing, that this is what is known as a ‘quantum leap’ – a fancy way of describing a significant shift in beliefs that transports you into another dimension or reality.

That’s what happened to me at the QVB that day. It was so transformative after falling down that deep, dark rabbit hole that I knew my life’s work would be related to transformation: learning, training and studying quantum principles more deeply to help others connect with their quantum power to achieve extraordinary change. What I learned is that it is your certainty that brings your intentions into physical reality. You have to believe it before you see it. Once you have that nailed, the sky’s the limit.

Having tea with your neuroses is something I first heard about from Ram Dass. I always appreciated how he explained that, despite being a Harvard psychotherapist for many years, a deeply wise yoga and spiritual teacher and one of the pioneers of bringing Eastern practices to the West, not even one of his neuroses had ever left him. The only difference he noticed over the years was that his neuroses, while still part of his personality, had become these little shmoos, little monsters, that he could invite in for a cup of tea rather than trying to banish, suppress or repress them.

It feels like a much kinder, more light-hearted way to deal with the behaviours that prevent us from being who we want to be. I have found the more accepting I am of the aspects of my personality that like to pop up from time to time when triggered, the more at peace I am with them and with myself.

The older I get, the clearer it is to me that all that I need is already within, in the deep recesses of the collective conscious and unconscious wisdom that we all hold in our hearts and spirits.

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Rebuilding My Self-Worth.

One of the most common questions I get asked by people is, “How did you do it? How did you rebuild your self-worth?” Or, when I’m being interviewed, journalists or hosts will ask, “How did you pay down all that debt?” The answer is the same. I had to learn to love, accept and appreciate who I am. No. Matter. What.

I had to bring my detrimental beliefs into the light and build new, empowering ones. How did I do this? It was about paying attention to my self-talk, shifting my inner dialogue about myself and starting to talk to myself like a very dear, precious and beloved friend.

I started to study everything I could about women and money, and the unconscious and conscious biases that often prevent women from asking for more. I learned that women still do most of the unpaid work on this planet. I read study after study about the perceptions of women who are powerful and earn a lot of money. I interviewed and spoke with women who were high- income earners and asked them a lot of questions about how they got to where they were, what they had to believe about themselves and what obstacles they had to overcome.

I realised there was a balancing act with creating a new reality. It was not about living in violent denial, it was about believing it before I could see it, while still accepting the consequences of where I was at on any given day. I had to stay focused on the progress, on what I was paying off, how much I had improved my self-dialogue, the quantum leaps I was making, the new opportunities I was creating.

I also had to find healthy, functional ways to channel my emotions. In early recovery that’s a big ask. Of course, I wanted a ‘hit’ of something and that something had not only been drugs for me in the past, it was also spending, so I needed to find new ways to self-soothe and express myself. I knew I could not suppress or repress my emotions, so I did a lot of journaling, walking, dancing, talking with friends, talking with therapists, 12-step meetings, listening to music, punching pillows, exercising, more dancing, crying, watching comedy, yoga, more yoga, more walking. I had to keep finding healthy channels to express how I felt.

I balanced that with focusing on who I chose to be each day. I set the intention every morning of feeling grateful for all I had, because the more I focused on gratitude and appreciation, the more I attracted things into my experience that made me feel grateful and appreciative.

After doubling my income in two months, I tripled it in a year. I then branched out into my own business and consulting practice and further increased my earnings. I remember while I was consulting that I’d reached the point of earning what my father had been earning at the pinnacle of his career. That was another turning point in confronting my money ‘scripts’. I had to re-acclimatise to the expansion of my finances. I needed to stay hypervigilant and tuned in to how I felt and keep on an even keel, because my excitement can often mask anxiety as I step up and into a new level of learning, earning and self-worth.

I began training in leading-edge coaching techniques to transform my life, my mindset and shift my beliefs. I dived deep into neuroscience, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) – which sometimes gets a bad rap, but offers some powerful tools – quantum techniques and the practices followed by the most successful, wealthiest people on the planet.

Something that I banked early on the journey was that electromagnetic signals translate our intentions into reality. That was the hook for me. I understood, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that to be successful in changing my physical and fiscal reality, I had to cultivate the conviction that I would succeed. I journaled daily to embed my new beliefs, I meditated daily to become aware of what was bubbling up and what emotions, self-doubts or limiting dialogue had to be cleared. I visualised my success daily; I focused on how I wanted to feel, how it already felt to be financially free, to already be a high- income earner, to feel confident about myself.

These practices helped me strengthen my self-worth, self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. The golden key for me was practising how it felt to know in my bones that I was already loved, worthy and free to be, do and have whatever I wanted. I had to install the belief that I was already worthy of attracting great love, success, money, freedom and personal power.

I had to change the way that I spoke to myself, which included my conscious and unconscious dialogue. The unconscious dialogue shifts were the real game-changers, because as I went deeper into my studies of hypnosis and deep trance, it became clear that it was the unconscious blueprint of beliefs and values that were the real drivers to my success. I had to change how I felt about myself at depth in order to achieve the success I wanted. This meant that I took on a daily practice of deliberately and mindfully shifting to new behaviours and being kind and patient with myself when I didn’t do it perfectly.

I created a new money story. I discovered I had the freedom to choose who I wanted to be every single day, unburdened by my past, pain or money mistakes. Every day I committed to the feeling that I already had the clarity, confidence and self-worth that I wanted. It was the ultimate mind game, but I learned to have fun with it. There were tears, meltdowns and freak-outs on a regular basis, but I committed to my intention to have the life I wanted, and be the person I wanted to be, again and again and again. I had to keep going because my ‘why’ was so compelling: I had to be financially free to get my life on track because financial hardship and addiction had robbed me of nearly everything. I hadn’t lost Martin and I couldn’t risk that there was no going back. I anchored back to my ‘why’ every day, throughout the day, without fail; it was imperative that I got my life back so I could become who I knew I was born to be.

Cultivating ‘Self-Wealth’.

My financial recovery, like drug recovery, was not a linear process. I did have periods of losing sight of needing to put money aside for taxes when I become a freelance consultant. After paying off all my credit card debt and learning about what I call ‘sober spending’, I did eventually safely and mindfully reintroduce credit cards, which I pay off in full every month. However, I always have to pay attention to the money coming in and going out. I need to know the numbers, I need to be clear about my wants versus my needs, I have to check my account every day and pay attention to my retirement funds. These were all financial self-care practices I had to learn on my journey towards financial recovery.

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The key thing for me was remembering to not feel shame or judgement about cultivating confidence in my money skills. For so long I had felt like a fraud and a failure, when the simple fact is that I was never taught money skills or raised with beneficial beliefs about money. Tumbles down the rabbit hole can be avoided with education and awareness, and it’s wonderful that financial literacy is becoming more mainstream.

It’s critical not only to our financial independence but to our personal freedom. When we are consumed with stress and anxiety about money, we cannot be who we want to be because we’re overwhelmed by worry. When we have awareness, mindfulness and healthy habits with our money – just like creating good body health habits – it empowers us to live a full and healthy life.

I don’t want to make it sound like it was a walk in the park and that I had a magical cup of tea and instantly found a path to financial freedom. Hell no, I lost my financial footing from time to time. I had setbacks, emotional meltdowns and relapses with overspending in times of stress. I financially fucked up along the way.

We make mistakes. We are human. We can learn to be more compassionate and forgiving with ourselves when we make mistakes, though, and learn to get back up again more quickly. I love the Japanese saying, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” I had to keep getting up again. I had to commit and recommit to my intention again and again and again, no matter how well I was or wasn’t tracking. Each day was a new slate, a new game board, a new opportunity to re-focus on creating the reality I wanted to attain.

The following is an edited extract from On the Way to Wonderland by Alice Crawley, available here.

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