070: Linda Case - Psychology, Money & Curating a Healthy Financial Mindset

Jonathan DeYoe: Hey there, and welcome back. On this episode of the Mindful Money podcast, I’m chatting with Linda case. Linda is a financial therapist and a financial coach with over 30 years combined experience in financial services, professional counseling and coaching coaches her clients to manage their money and mindset so they can get firmly on a path to financial freedom and a comfortable retirement. One of the things that, uh, wrote on her website is the following. You can make the best possible financial plan that will set your client up for the rest of their lives. But then life happens. Priorities change. People don’t execute. I have found this to be so true, and I am looking forward to this conversation with you today. Linda, welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Linda Case: Thank you. Good to be here.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So, where do you call home, and where are you connecting from today?

Linda Case: I call home Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’ve been here actually about ten years, so, uh, this feels very much like home now.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Where did you grow up?

Linda Case: Not all that far away. I haven’t left Pennsylvania, so it was more the state capital, but very different. I wanted to challenge myself, talking about making transitions and moving things around in life. I left a very secure spot and where I had a financial services agency and decided to challenge myself and move to the city and, uh, see what city life was like and also go full time with counseling.

Jonathan DeYoe: So, where was you grew up?

Linda Case: Central Pennsylvania. So Harrisburg is the state capital? Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay. Harrisburg.

Linda Case: Harrisburg.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes, Harrisburg. Oh, I’m going to. This is terrible. My wife went to college in Pennsylvania, and it’s either Harris Bucknell. Is that where Bucknell is?

Linda Case: Bucknell. And it’s like areasburg. All good.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s one of those. All I knew is one of those bergs.

Linda Case: I understand. It’s a very good school. Yes.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it’s a great school. So I’m curious. I start most of these conversations out this way, and I kind of want to get to. What did you learn about money and maybe small business growing up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?

Linda Case: Oh, my goodness. Well, I didn’t learn much at all, to be honest, because my father was a lutheran minister. When I turned seven, he had left, uh, being a teacher. He was a mass teacher, and he felt called to the ministry. So he was not financially driven, let’s just say. And my mother was also a school teacher, so we lived in a parsonage, so our housing was taken care of. So I didn’t really get inundated with business knowledge, like somebody who may have had a business owner. As a parent, I learned about things very differently. But definitely what left an impression for me was my mother ran the household and she paid the. You know, when we talk about money beliefs and when I work with clients, it’s like, what did you hear growing up? And I often remember her paying the bills and saying, well, I have to rob Peter to pay Paul. And it was funny because my father’s name was Paul. It was just, know we have to live on credit in a way. And definitely, no, we can’t go to this store to buy school clothes. We have to go to Sears. And I kind of dug my heels in on that, and I didn’t understand how they manage money. And even with my dad’s spiritual bent on everything, when I got into the insurance industry, we had already built our house and had a couple of kids, and I just had this desire placed in my heart for something bigger, move on, give the kids more. Each of their own bedroom and things like that. And I remember standing at the mailbox, and my father was like, it’s kind of like, when are you going to get filled up? Question, which I understand in a spiritual way, but also, it was like a shameful thing to want more. So, yeah, I’ve always had that, uh, push pull of, like, I see you can do better, but should I want that, is that really the right thing to do? So I understand why clients struggle in this area, depending on what their beliefs that were stored into their subconscious mind were we act from.

Jonathan DeYoe: Do you think that the lesson you learned from your father is from that old parable, the rich person, the eye of the needle heaven? Do you think that’s where that comes from?

Linda Case: Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: You think so?

Linda Case: Yeah. And what, money is the root of all evil, but it’s actually the love of money.

Jonathan DeYoe: Love of money. I didn’t know this about your background, and I know we’ve talked before, but I didn’t catch that. But my grandfather was a lutheran minister, and when he died, I remember distinctly the whole family coming together. And after he died and talking about he had invested well, so he didn’t have that same kind of belief structure that your dad had. And I remember the thing that I wanted that he left behind was his sermon notes. I have, like, a whole box of his old sermon notes, like, 50 years of sermon notes, which is kind of neat, very cool.

Linda Case: But my dad also grew up very poor. Even though their family owned a jewelry business, they did not do well in, uh, New York state. Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: Can you point to any specific childhood experiences with money or conversations about money that might become a part of your money story later in life?

Linda Case: Oh, definitely. I remember, and it was more as a late teenager going shopping with my mother. And my mother loved to shop, and she loved clothing. And so we were walking through, I believe it was John wanna maker. And I said, oh, those shoes are so pretty. And she said, well, why don’t you buy them? And I said, but I can’t afford them. I can’t pay for. And she said, well, just put it on credit. And I was like, I didn’t even understand what she was talking about. And I was like, what? And she goes, yeah, you just open up a credit card and you buy it. And I had no perception of what that whole world meant. It was just. But later on, I started to do that, and it really did affect me and the decisions I made, because they were based on. Well, I guess mom says it’s okay. I guess that’s in life. But I had no real education on how to manage money and how to write check.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, that’s a little scary. I mean, the idea that. Because you already said the phrase was have to borrow from Peter to pay Paul.

Linda Case: Right.

Jonathan DeYoe: So your mom’s already using credit to buy stuff, and she’s just sort of indoctrinating you a little bit into the shopping culture. And, hey, you can’t afford it. Don’t worry about it. Just put it on, know. Open up a store credit.

Linda Case: Oh, yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s kind of scary. So how long did it take for that experience to translate into a, uh, belief? And then what is the belief that it translated into?

Linda Case: Well, the belief, I guess, became, it’s easy to do this, and you can deal with it later. Just buy now, pay later. I mean, these things, like a firm that we have today, all those situations, and I have a client right now, and he’s pretty high up in marketing at one of the travel firms and said, oh, yeah, that’s like one of their best sellers because they’re just encouraging people to go travel and this and like, oh, it’s only so much a month, but it ends up taking them years to pay these trips off.

Jonathan DeYoe: How long did it take you to unlearn that lesson? I’m assuming you’ve unlearned that lesson, but how long did that take?

Linda Case: I have. Oh, it took me many years of trial and error, and it was, like, unconsciously, too. I knew this is not a way to live, and yet somehow it was just our culture in a way that, um, you just kept hearing it and it was all the advertising, and then you walk into the store and you see these encouragement to do this. So I had to really get very aware of what I was doing, and it was like, I can’t keep living like this. And I didn’t have the tools back then that I do now that I use energy psychology to change beliefs rapidly. I watched my clients do it, too. It’s like, you go into debt, you get out of debt. You go back into debt, you get out of debt. Okay, when is this going to stop? Because it’s like the subconscious mind is 95% of what, uh, we’re operating from the limbic system and shows in the brain scans when people are making a decision where it’s coming from, it’s pain and pleasure is what we’re either going towards something or we’re, like, avoiding the pain of it. So the pleasure would be, want to enjoy this now? Oh, I can buy a new sofa. I don’t have to pay for this for at least 90 days. But the problem is, a lot of those cards is they’re what banking on you not being able to pay it off in that stated amount of time. And so they’re going to collect whatever double digit interest rate they can get.

Jonathan DeYoe: Did you develop sort of a natural understanding, hey, this isn’t going to work, or was it a traumatic event that kind of unlocked that knowledge?

Linda Case: Well, it was pretty much a natural. I just noticed, like, we couldn’t get ahead no matter what. And I was like, what are we doing here? I did seek out, before I got into this field more. I did seek out coaches, and they couldn’t seem to really address that. It’s like they were more interested in, did you have a large amount of money to invest because they didn’t want to deal with. I would actually go and it’s like, would you please work with me on my spending plan or something like that? And they’re like, I went to financial planners and, uh, this is before I got in the field, what are you doing here? So I always had this interest in it, and yet I couldn’t fully grasp what was going on because I didn’t have that knowledge of limiting beliefs. And all I had was the upbringing that I had. And just like everybody else has, you come in with these core set of beliefs, and until they come to awareness and looking at your life and you’re saying, whoa, this is a problem, and do I want to address this or do I want to push it back down and wait till it springs up again? Or no, maybe I just take a quick dive into it and it’s like, oh, that’s better now. And then it’s like the alcoholic who says, after, uh, a year or so of being sober, it’s like, you think I can have a drink? And next thing they’re off to the races. And I have seen that my clients. Yeah.

e before the great recession,: 2008

ce agency and I’d say early: 2000

Jonathan DeYoe: Uh, did any of your beliefs about, I mean, it sounds like it was less because of your own actions relative to the great recession than it was your company’s actions relative to the great recession. But did that change any of your beliefs about money or even small business?

Linda Case: Absolutely. Yeah. That would be like a financial trauma for sure. And when you’re in that kind of trauma, you cannot use your conscious reasoning mind too well. And so everything became survival based. And, um, I made one bad decision after another, and looking back, I was like, wow. Even though occasionally I went to advisors like attorneys and things, accountants for help, I don’t even know that I got great advice then. So I did not get myself set up very well during that time. So it became more. The thought of, this could be very risky, where, when I entered that business, when I actually got into that agency, I was in the business since 89, but I went with nationwide insurance in 96, so I was there about 13 years. But I remember when I jumped into that, I had no fear. I was just like, I could do this, and I had no clue. They didn’t even tell me how much income I would have to run this agency. They were like, go rent the space. This is about where it has to be. You have to have this many employees. I had to buy furniture. I did all of that with no financials.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow.

Linda Case: Yeah, it was crazy, I know. Would I do that today?

Jonathan DeYoe: Lessons learned.

Linda Case: And it was so funny. I uncovered an old contract, the one I initially signed with them, and apparently none of us had really read it because it actually said they were going to pay my employees expenses and salaries and certain other expenses too. And I didn’t even find it till maybe ten years ago. And I was like, oh, my goodness, look at this. That whole thing was just the whirlwind of activity designed to get me up and running. But somehow it worked out. It was a belief, a strong belief. Like, I can make this happen because of going through a trauma. It’s like, uhoh, this is very scary now.

Jonathan DeYoe: And you never returned to the insurance business. Right now it’s coaching and therapy and one on one. Okay.

Linda Case: Yeah, definitely.

Jonathan DeYoe: So just before we look at the work you’re doing at f three cubed. So how did you develop this work, and how long did it take you to develop this coming out of the loss of the agency?

o percolate back in the early: 2000

Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m curious about, and I really should know the answer to this question, but do you remember when the first Nobel prize was awarded for behavioral psychology in Nobel Prize in economics was rewarded to Daniel Kahneman and Tversky had already passed, but that was right about this time. So you are combining these things at, uh, roughly the same time that the, uh, prospect theory is being written about by Daniel Kahneman and Eamonn Tversky, which they win the Nobel Prize for a little bit later. And I didn’t put that together in our previous conversation. But you are combining the psychology of money and financial planning at roughly the same time and looking for places where that’s being talked about. Right. And then since there’s been like two or three Nobel prizes that are behavioral psychology related.

Linda Case: Wow, is that shocking to you? But I have read that what happens in the quantum field that we are all accessed in the great web of, right. That different scientists, or whoever they are, can be working on a project at the same time and they all can pull it in and it’s like, okay, what’s the answer to this? And it becomes the race of who’s going to put it out there first. Apparently it’s not me.

Jonathan DeYoe: They were studying it and you were more practicing it, and that’s a little bit different. Paper publishing.

Linda Case: Yeah. I see myself as a researcher as much.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So people ask me all the time about my transition from sort of religious studies to being a financial advisor. And you did this transition from being a financial advisor to being a psychologist. So what was the stimulant at the time to, hey, I’m going to get my phd in psychology. I’m an advisor, I’m an insurance person, I have my own agency. Why go get a phd in psychology? What was that thinking?

,: 2000

Jonathan DeYoe: Um, I’m just curious, and this is a bit of an aside, but does it bother you at all that the insurance company is teaching psychological selling techniques? I mean, that used to really perturb me when I went to sales training. I didn’t like being. I felt it was a little bit manipulative. Like, how do I get under your skin? Identify. It’s not just identify a need and fulfill need, which is also another selling technique, but it’s how do I identify the thing that makes you afraid so that I can sell to that fear and that I really didn’t like.

Linda Case: Uh, okay. I looked at it a little bit differently. So I remember the system we used drivers, amiables, analytical and expressives, or the personality types. And so that was designed to help you understand how somebody else operates so that you can connect with them, which to me today would be empathy. I just had fun with it, in a weird way, I didn’t see it as manipulating people, but it’s like, how can I get on their level to be able to talk to them?

Jonathan DeYoe: It may not have been, you may not have learned how to manipulate people. I was being taught how to manipulate people, different processes. Right? How do I.

Linda Case: And as an introvert, I was like, oh, yay, a tool. Because I’m not like the talk or talk. It’s just like, you can’t just put me in a room and expect me to network. That’s not going to happen. Uh, I, uh, remember just like a few times, and I was like, wow, this is really true. So I had this attorney, I went to his office and he was like, boom, m right to business. And there’s your driver. Oh, my gosh. And one time I went out and I delivered a death claim to this man, and it was his wife who had died of cancer. And then, I don’t know, I was my amiable self there, and I, uh, didn’t know who he really was, and he didn’t say a whole lot. But finally he said to me, well, when are you going to sell me this? And I think he was talking about a disability policy at the time. And I was like, taken aback. I’m like, whoa. Okay, here’s a driver. And the analyticals. Oh, my goodness. The funny stories. Like, I had one guy, we would sit at the kitchen table, him and his wife, and he wouldn’t say a word. And I put out all the numbers and they have to think about it. So he was so almost like an avoidant personality that he slid the paperwork under my office door. He couldn’t just talk to me. Wow, some analyticals are very, yeah, they’re just very standard engineers. Engineers, right. I know.

Jonathan DeYoe: I know that today you work with female women business owners. Right. Can you paint the picture of, I know the statistics are kind of staggering about successful businesses, and you actually talk a lot about micro businesses, people being unable to escape the label micro. Like, it’s always small. It never quite grows to build wealth for the family. Can you talk just a minute about the statistics around successful female entrepreneurship? Yeah.

Linda Case: I mean, it’s a small percent that breaks out of that micro business mold. I just have to attribute that to a lot of belief that we have been brought up with that we don’t speak up for ourselves and, uh, don’t go after, and always busy taking care of other people, whether it’s family. And I even got caught in that trap. I remember saying to myself when I owned my insurance business. I have to take care of Jill. Jill was my office. That just, it was, like, ingrained in me. It’s like, you take care of the people who work for you. I felt responsible for her life, like, in a weird way. And so I think as women in business, we still are under that cloud of, like, this is what we do, we take care of people. It isn’t all about us. We aren’t as competitive. We’re more likely to back down on negotiations and things like that. It’s difficult for people to women to talk about those things. It’s a real struggle is like, well, who does that make me then? Is that more ego driven thing or. I don’t want to be seen as whatever negative connotations they might have of, uh, what that looks like to be in business, whether it’s greedy or not caring about of other people.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. And I always bristle a little bit. I know that you’re saying true things. I came from. So my dad was a business person, not a greatly successful business person, but he also backed on the negotiations. He also was sort of taken advantage of by employees. He had a micro business that never built any real wealth or even income for our family for probably 13 years of my growing up. Right. I know that there are examples, the Venn diagram. The circles are overlapping. There are men who are a little bit more softer in their touch when business, and there are women who are a little bit harder in their touch.

Linda Case: Yeah, that’s a good point. You bring up. And when I’m thinking of, um, well, as we talk about feminine versus masculine energy. That’s true. That would play a big role in that. How are we wired to show up?

Jonathan DeYoe: Right. And it’s not always gender. There’s energies. Right. Do you know if any of that, as I was preparing for this, I was asking you questions about men versus women in business, and I was like, do any of the statistics actually take into account non binary? Do you know? I don’t think.

Linda Case: Wow, that’s fascinating. No, I don’t know that they do. To tap into. To research.

Jonathan DeYoe: I, uh, imagine that’s coming. I think the statistics are men start business, women start business, men are the successful percentage of men, percentage of women. I don’t think there’s any research or statistics on non binary businesses or pick your category, retirement. I don’t think there’s much research on that at this point.

Linda Case: Interesting. You know what popped in my mind as we were talking here, too? Uh, at one point in lutheran brotherhood, I had become very successful, like the top of their salespeople. And so they sent me out to Minneapolis for a two day interview, uh, to talk about going into the associate general know role. And then I guess the next thing would be general agent. And the feedback came back and everybody thought I had the job. I mean, the BPS, like me, everything. But then the final say was the industrial psychologist. And he came back and he said, you care too much about people.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes. When they trained you how to sell, they meant what I learned. But you took it a different way, like, oh, I can connect with people because I get it.

Linda Case: Yeah, you talk about male, female, but I love that you brought that up because I’m going to definitely look into that.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s worth a peek, for sure. Can you speak a little bit to the conditioning of limited beliefs? You just touched on it a second ago, and I want to make sure that we bring it to the fore. I know you work with a lot of women, and those conditioned limited beliefs just talk about how women are conditioned and what are some of those beliefs?

Linda Case: Sure. Well, we all are conditioned, male, female. And it starts at a very early age, like under age five or really seven. Seven is when start to develop the conscious reasoning part, the logical part of our brain, more the neocortex. But before that, we’re pretty much walking around in almost a hypnotic state. So it’s like the alpha theta brainwave state that when I take somebody into hypnosis or even do it to myself, you can get there quickly. And so kids are walking around and they’re like little sponges, and they hear something on television. They hear mom and dad talking. They hear. Maybe they’re school teachers. They hear people at the church talking. So it’s all going in there and they have no way of filtering it. And so that’s how those beliefs start to develop. So they’ll just take it in, and then we start to operate from that. So even though you might not be making financial decisions at that time, although if it’s children, I guess still you could be mom, um, or somebody gives you money for your birthday or the tooth fairy or whoever. What are you being taught? Howdy. I mean, it’s all of that is that programming? And so it often shows up years later, and you have no idea why you are driven to do these things. Why do I want the big house or the fancy car? And now we have social media to thank for so much more of our programming. Because as I was growing up, that wasn’t a thing at all. I mean, granted, we were still absorbing so much in there. Definitely sitting in the living room listening to my mother pay the bills. But it’s like, huh? Okay.

Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, there were catalogs of stuff that we wanted when we were kids.

Linda Case: That was the catalog circle, what you’d like. Oh, yeah, I remember whole thing. Oh, my gosh. This is so funny that we’re having this conversation now. I still do love catalogs.

Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, God, I hate them. I hate them. I hate catalogs.

Linda Case: But they become. Whatever happened. Um, if, uh, you associate something good with whatever you did as a child, why would that go away? Like, if you remember the smell of freshly baked cookies that’s going to light up your brain. Dopamine is going to be m kicking. So this is what’s happening. It’s like the dopamine receptor is like, this makes us happy. We don’t have any real control over it because it’s the subconscious mind where the conscious is the will, and that just goes so far. And we can make changes doing it that way, but it’s a lot harder. And, uh, you often revert back to the old way because that’s so powerful.

Jonathan DeYoe: Can you talk about some of the. I know that everyone’s conditioned, but some of the ways that women specifically are conditioned, it needs to be their success in business.

Linda Case: Okay. Uh, so women are taught to play, like, the lesser role and don’t for too much stuff. I remember specifically if I started to rise up in the insurance business. Now, there were not too pleasant words used about me, and then I became a target. So then you’re like, you want people to like you oftentimes as women. And so then, oh, I’m going to make myself smaller or whatever, to be part of the group. So it’s that, uh, wanting to belong, those kind of things that women are more drawn to generally than maybe men. So, uh, it’s not a feminine thing to know. You’re seen as aggressive. You can’t tell other people what to. I ran into that one at three Mile island. So I was in chemistry. I don’t know if we discussed this, but I did eight years in nuclear chemistry.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you’re a genius, is what you’re saying.

Linda Case: My island. I was part of the cleanup operation for the reactor.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow.

Linda Case: So, yeah, dad got his way. I did go to chemistry for a while, and that’s when I believed I could do just about anything. And then the trauma hits, and then that all went away. It was like, wait a minute. This world is not as safe as what I thought it was. Yeah, it’s like you got to protect yourself.

Jonathan DeYoe: How do some of those, when you’re working with a client, on their own ability to build wealth for their family and their money beliefs. How do those limited beliefs show up?

Linda Case: Okay, well, the way they show up is they may commit to saving. They may commit to. I have a guy right now. I’ve been working for him, with him, oh, my gosh, at least six months or more. Okay. He came in, and he had spent well, lost over $100,000 by using betting apps. Wow. To this day, I have encouraged and gave him all the tools, like, you really need to work on creating a spending plan. Just had him in this week again. And, okay, you’re coming up on a year’s anniversary of having tackled this problem, but are you guys ready? And he’ll give me a million excuses. And my concern is, until you get back or get to a good habit of how you handle your money, that possibility still looms there. Because when you are vulnerable, just as I experienced in my own life many times, it’s like it all goes out the window if you don’t have that strong foundation of great habits, whether it’s saving, tracking your expenses. And to me, it doesn’t have to be down to the penny. I mean, I’m not that rigid. But you need to have awareness, and that’s very key. Awareness. And, uh, if you don’t have that, it all goes out the window. Everything becomes unconscious. Like, had a client, a woman who was a, uh, professor, and she finally brought in all of her unopened mail because they were bills or checks. She even had a fear of cashing a check and depositing it because she thought maybe they’d ask for the money back. And this was a very firm belief she had. And then this is a PhD educated woman who’s out there teaching communications, more or less. I, uh, know it is astounding when you sit with people one on one, and you find out what’s really going on in their heads. And it’s not that you’re going to shame them or tell them they’re wrong or anything. I was like, okay, this is where we’re starting from, and it’s in your awareness now, and you want some support on this. I’m here for you.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right. I know this is a bit of an aside, and I want to loop back to, uh, the energy work that helps people speed through this. But just before we go there, I had a client once tell me everything’s fine. They’re great friends of mine. We’re social together. They’re lovely people. I love them. And then, like, a couple of years goes by and they don’t tell me, they don’t tell me, they don’t tell me that they’re building this credit card debt. They’re living on their credit cards, and I see their finances and I see, oh, yeah, everything’s great. Everything’s great. But I don’t see all their spending. I don’t see the spending. If I can’t see it, I can’t help with it. And so there’s an amount of shame m around money. They’re close friends. I’ve worked with them for 20 years, and they hid their use of credit cards for two years. And then they finally said, you know what? They couldn’t deal with it anymore. They said, jonathan, help us. This is our thing. This is what we’re going through. Help us deal with it. So how often do you see shame as sort of an overriding problem?

Linda Case: Huge. Yes. Even if I have clients coming in and it’s not specifically money related, uh, we end up having those discussions, and I think I have helped them, um, feel safe having that conversation with me. Thank goodness. But unfortunately, so many people out there don’t have a safe place to go and where they’re not going to be judged. And, yeah, it’s like, how could you do that? Even one of my own daughters got herself back into trouble again with credit cards. And I said, why didn’t you come to me? And she knows what I do. But again, it’s that shame of, like, I thought I had taken care of this, and now I’m in trouble again.

�ve gone through something in: 2008

Linda Case: That’s interesting. Yeah. Many years ago, and I was at the beginning stages of wanting to do this work, and I talked to this much older woman, and she said, oh, you can’t tell people you’ve had a problem. I was like, wow. And that stuck with me for a night, and that put the shame back on me again. And I was like, but it feels so freeing for people, and how can you get beyond it? And make good decisions until you have freed yourself of that shame. So it’s like, can you forgive yourself? So forgiveness is a big part of the work. And, uh, whether you use. I like to use this hawaiian forgiveness prayer, co oponopono, it’s like, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. So you can forgive yourself. You can forgive others. I could forgive the company who kind of did me wrong, because everything is energy, and so when we feel that shame, all these negative emotions, it’s keeping us stuck, and it doesn’t allow us to really shine our light out into the world and become all that we can be and help others, too. So it isn’t just about creating your own financial wealth or freedom plan. It’s like, how can I be, uh, a role model to others and say, it’s okay to do these things, but you can get back on track, or you can find your way if you’ve never been there before?

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, I think by being honest and saying, hey, I screwed up here. By being a professional in the industry and being honest about it and admitting your mistakes and admitting where you’ve sought help yourself, I think you can then sort of be the light that enables other people to say, oh, yeah, did that, too, or, oh, I don’t have to feel bad about that, because obviously this happens to lots of different people, right? So we give each other permission to make mistakes and learn and get better and recover from them.

Linda Case: I remember years ago, one of our general agents saying to me, a lot of the agents get themselves into trouble because they don’t set money aside for taxes. That can come up to some pretty huge tax bills.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes, I’ve run in a few of those, not just with agents. Every small business owner I know who doesn’t set it aside, they’re like, oh, my God, I forgot about this whole FICA tax. Right. They forget that. To both sides. Right? Both sides, right. Hey, we’re running short of time, and I want to make sure that we leave time to talk about the energy process.

Linda Case: Okay? Sure.

Jonathan DeYoe: You know how I’m a little bit skeptical of anything of energy? But I will admit that hypnosis actually did change my life when I was a kid. Absolutely improved my life. So I do believe in hypnosis. It actually had a huge effect on my life. So I’m hugely positive. And it doesn’t sound like there’s that much difference in what you’re talking about. So please explain the energy tools you use, and you’re opening something up in the brain that allows it to shift.

a year. So this is: 1989

Jonathan DeYoe: You’Re not buying it?

Linda Case: I just laughed. I was like, okay, but, you know, way to make this energy, psychology, all of this hypnosis work for you is to have an open mind, right? And so at that point, I had an open mind, and I’m like, why not? Okay. So I went home and I did my little thing, and I plugged in that new thought, this belief of, I make $100,000 a year. So within two years, I was making $100,000 a year, and something had to get switched in that brain of mine to allow that to happen. So whatever these beliefs that I work with people on, I could never do that, or money burns a hole in my pocket, or I can’t save, or I’m never going to be able to retire. Whatever those thoughts are coming in, whether I use hypnosis, which is, uh, definitely more in depth work, or I can use psych, which is balancing the right and left hemisphere of the brain, we put people into a balance. I literally contact their subconscious mind. I can either do through muscle testing or another method I use. And then, um, first we have them say the statement out loud. So I’m asking, does their subconscious mind actually believe this or not? And oftentimes it’s no. And then, uh, I can’t go into great detail about what the balances are, but it’s been developed over time. It’s been well tested and researched, and they do work. So we put through the balance, have them for certain ones, they repeat it in their mind over and over again, and then I test, is it complete? Bring them back out. They state it, we say, with meaning and conviction. Now, do you believe this? Does your subconscious mind believe this now and then? Oftentimes we will get a yes. Sometimes you have to put an action step into it. So, with financial work, uh, that would make sense whether it’s easy for me to create a spending plan, whatever it is they need to address in their life, it can be done with energy work and emotional freedom technique. There is a lot of. And I just went to the energy psychology conference at the end of May. More and more research coming out. The APA doesn’t know. They’re very protective of what they do, and they’ve often looked at energy psychology as sort of woo woo, which is probably what you’ve been referring to. But there is enough evidence. Uh, the veterans administration has approved it for use with PTSD for vet. Very effective. Uh, very effective for pain relief. There’s just so many uses for it. And when you just look at the body as an energy system, doesn’t it make sense that things can get stuck in there? You’re really looking at what’s going on in your life. Look outward, and if that’s not pleasing to you, okay, what would you like instead? So that’s the beginning of it all, and then crafting a statement that works.

Jonathan DeYoe: It’s so interesting to hear you talk about the state reading the thing off the card, because when I went through hypnosis, it probably was only three sessions, and I did it with my aunt. I had a problem as a child. I was probably nine years old, and my aunt sat with me three times. She’s my crazy aunt. So maybe some of my judgment about energy work comes from my family calling the aunt that helped me out with hypnosis, my crazy aunt, who, uh, I love, but I love her. But I had this problem, and she had a couple of sessions with me, and then she gave me a tape, and I lay down in my bed, and I put the tape on the headphones. Ah. And I just played the tape, and I went to bed with the tape playing, and I woke up with a tape playing, and I went to bed again the next night, tape playing for weeks and weeks, and the problem went away. It just was gone. So that messaging to your brain works, no question about it, right? Awesome.

Linda Case: Yeah. And I woke, um, up one day to it all, and I said, you know what? I never got beyond $100,000. Plug that in.

Jonathan DeYoe: So you got to say 250. You need another card that says 250. That’s what you got to have.

Linda Case: I worked with that.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, you did.

Linda Case: It’s so funny. After years, I was like, oh, my goodness. That really worked well.

Jonathan DeYoe: So I have a really close friend of mine who tells me a story about his first psychedelic experience, and this is what he said, and I want to see if you know any research or anything about this. He said that when he was coming down, it wasn’t a fun psychedelic experience. Like, people took mushrooms and they go, oh, uh, this was great. And bright colors. It was like a therapeutic psychedelic experience. And he said as he was coming down, it was as if. And you spoke about the grooves in the brain. It was as if the needles in the grooves were lifted, and he could see each needle in each groove, and he could select which needles he wanted to put back and which needles he wanted to not have anymore. That was his experiential sense of coming down off of a, uh, therapeutic, guided psychedelic trip. And I was like, because I know a little bit about psychology, a little about the grooves in the brain, a little bit about behavioral psych. And I was like, wow, that is such a cool description. Have you heard anything like that? And is there any sort of research that you’ve read that sort of backs up the use of psychedelics in this kind of a thing?

Linda Case: Well, okay. I appreciate what your person went through. Sounds very fascinating. I recently went to a meditation. Now, it was a very large gathering of mostly indian people, and so it was a guru who is like, this is embarrassing, but I don’t remember his name. It’s one of those names that just didn’t stick. But he came to Philadelphia, and I was like, oh, wow, this is so cool. I will go to it. And he spoke to that, and he said, I understand this has become using the drugs and people seeking higher consciousness is what they’re doing. But what happens, and I have read this, too, in books, it literally does damage to your brain, so you can’t have one without the chemical interference. Whereas if you do it through meditation or, like, some of the things I’m doing, it’s not harmful. So that would be my caution. There are other methods of getting the exact same results without taking that risk of, um, doing long term damage to.

Jonathan DeYoe: Your brain so that it may have functioned the way, he said. But in going after that experience, he might have done long term damage, right?

Linda Case: Yeah, I personally would never touch that.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, well, I don’t want to push one way or the other. I’m curious about it, and I hear a lot more about it. I think it’s one of those things that we’re going to see a lot of research on coming up.

Linda Case: I do.

Jonathan DeYoe: Right.

Linda Case: Research pending cresting of the guru right now.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. I’m a meditator myself, so I go that path first. I’m not afraid of a little risk, but I don’t want to do long term damage to my gray matter, either. That sounds kind of Scary.

Linda Case: I did hear of, uh, somebody who said their son. Oh, I know what it was. I listened to a lot of podcasts on your death experiences and such and mediums, and this woman lost her son. He went to college and just did one time, a synthetic drug, and he died. Uh, can you ever say what’s in there and how it’s going to affect you? That’s my question.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Thank you for the caution. There’s a ton of noise out there. I ask every single guest to make it to really simplify for us. So if you met a woman business owner, and she asked you what is one thing that she should focus on that would unquestionably lead to better personal and financial success? And then what is one thing that maybe she had been focused on that she should stop worrying about?

Linda Case: Okay, well, I’d like to start at the beginning, then, and just to bring total awareness and clarity to what she’s doing with her finances and to work on relieving any stress related around there, because under stress, we don’t make good decisions whatsoever. Um, I had a friend who was a very successful businessman, and this is where this is coming from. I was always impressed by what he said. He started his business out of his garage, and it was a video tech company, and, uh, he’s probably worth at least, say, $40 million today after he sold it, and best wisely. So he said, I never, ever borrowed money, and I’ll make that how I operate my business. I don’t want to go down that path. And if you can avoid it whatsoever, find, uh, a way to. There are ways. And that’s what I talk about in my program, is your imagination. Like, when you want to create something, it’s all there. It’s all there. You don’t know how it’s going to show up, but you’re, like, open to synchronicities, open to meeting people that want to help, it may show up in ways you just have no clue as how you get there. But, yeah, just to be very conscious, if you do have to go into debt, very conscious of the plan. And don’t keep adding and adding, like your friend, too, like the card debt. Once you get in the Pattern, that’s it. It’s a pattern.

Jonathan DeYoe: And then the shame comes out. You can’t get out. It’s a huge problem.

Linda Case: Huge. Yeah.

Jonathan DeYoe: So just before you wrap up, I like to go back to the personal side of things. I want to ask you, is there anything that people don’t know about you, or maybe you’ve said it and they don’t remember about you that you really want them to know?

Linda Case: Wow. Uh, I have been through a lot of transitions in my own life. I know what it’s like to be up and be very down, to, uh, battle myself out of depression and definitely interpersonal, uh, problems between divorce and even death. So there’s always hope. You can always bounce back. And that being resilient is how I see living life.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. So, second question. If you could get the truth about any single question about your life or future, what would you ask?

Linda Case: Oh, my gosh. That’s very personal. I love it. Uh, with my life partner. Do you have my answer?

Jonathan DeYoe: I can’t answer it now. The world knows the question. Maybe the life partner will show up.

Linda Case: That is the question. I put it out there because I have a wonderful life and I just want to share it with someone.

Jonathan DeYoe: Fair enough. It’s out there now. Now it’s public. You can’t retract it. So tell us how people can connect with you and find you.

-: 7349

Jonathan DeYoe: What’s your website?

Linda Case: Threecube.com.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, great. It’ll all be in the show notes so that people can reach out and find you. Linda, thanks so much for coming on. It’s been a real pleasure. It’s been eye opening for me, and I look forward to just staying in touch.

Linda Case: Okay, you too. Thank you.