Podcast Episode - What Does Self Worth and Twitter Have In Common?

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Suze Orman here. Now before I start the podcast today, I just want to tell you, you can be part of it you know. If you have a question, all you have to do is send in your question to asksuzepodcast@gmail.com. And if chosen, I will answer it. You can also call in so I can hear your voice to 877-545-7893. 7893 spells Suze. And also I'm going to be asking all of you this for a while. Could you do me a favor? And could you go to Apple podcast and review this show, give it a star rating because that's how other women start to find it. And I want every single woman to find it because I think this podcast, as well as truthfully my Women & Money book, wonderful way for you to become the powerful women you are meant to be. And one more thing on March 16th, come on everybody. If you are around the New York area, you've got to come down to the Apollo at five p.m. I am doing again a one woman show, Women & Money. It will be $20 a ticket. Come on. I would love to see you all there. All right, let's get to this week's podcast. The other day, I happened to be watching a morning show. And on the morning show that I usually love, they have a financial pundit on. And the financial pundit is discussing money. It's all about money. This whole show is about money for this segment, and the financial pundit is discussing with two of the hosts, this thing about how net worth does not determine your self-worth. Now, that is true. Money will never determine if you’re great. Money will never make the world see you as being something other than what you are, really. But they were kind of inferring that self-worth and net worth really have nothing to do with one another. Now who would they have gotten that from? Me. Because for years I've had a saying, and the saying is self-worth will determine your net worth. Self-worth is equal to net worth. And they were making a play off of that. They probably had no idea that I was watching. And as I'm watching this, I'm getting angrier and angrier. I almost even picked up the phone to call the producer of that show, and Blah Blah Blah Blah. And I went, no, that's all right, let them do whatever they want to do, because I don't care what other people think. All that matters to me is that I know what is true, and I know what is true from working in this area for over 35 years now. And my age, my age of almost being 68 brings with it wisdom that all the money in the world can never buy. Because I've seen it, I've been through it, markets that go up, markets that go down, people who make money, people who lose money. Every possible financial scenario in the world, I have seen. So I just want to make sure you, you who listens to the Women & Money podcast, that you get this one thing right, and you never, ever, ever listen to anybody who tells you anything other than this. Your self-worth, how you feel about who you are, is what determines whether you have money, or whether you don't. Because when you feel less than, you spend more than. And if you don't have self-worth, you will have a tendency to feel less than. You will want everybody around you to define who you are, you will want everything that you buy to define who you are. And the truth is, when you know who you are, when you have self-worth, you define everything around you. You don't need to buy fancy clothes, because the clothes don't define you, you define your clothes. The other day I had on this jacket, and maybe I've already told you this story, but I'm gonna tell it to you again. I had on this jacket that was $5 that I got at the HSN employee store, and I wear this jacket a lot. Why? Because I like it. And I like how I look in it. And every single time I wear it somebody says to me oh, how much did you spend on that? As if it was an expensive jacket. Now, why did they think that? Because I project that. Again. I define my clothes, my clothes do not define me. It's a shame that I didn't learn that earlier on in my career when I wasted all of this money on those stupid leather jackets that I spent a fortune on, when all I had to do was buy a little leather jacket at some store for $50, $75. I know for some of you that's a lot, but it's a little in comparison to what I was spending. And I could have saved all of that money. And then maybe you're thinking well Suze Orman, why do you need to save more money? Doesn't matter how much money I have. Just because I have, it doesn't mean I should spend it. Think about what I just said to you. Just because I have, it doesn't mean that I should spend it. It is really important that when you have money, no matter how much money you have, that you really respect the money you have, and you never waste one penny of it no matter what, even if you have the luxury of being able to do so. So it is essential that you understand that for you to have a net worth a network that you can keep and watch, grow and make sure that it's there in the long run to take care of you. The only way in my opinion that you're gonna be able to do that is if you know who you are, you know, your own thoughts, you have self-worth, so that you don't waste money. So that's what I wanted to tell you and talk to you about for this week's podcast. Now obviously, I just related self-worth to net worth. But it's not just about money. No, self-worth is far more priceless than all the money you would ever have in your entire lifetime. Self-worth is a treasure. It's a treasure that cannot be bought or sold at any price. And it's no secret that self-worth, or lack of self-worth, really shows itself when you are in a relationship with somebody else who doesn't value you. You let them speak to you in a way that they shouldn't ever speak to anybody, but you accept it. Sign of lack of self-worth. They control you in ways that nobody should be able to control you. Lack of self-worth. They even possibly physically, sexually, emotionally, financially abuse you, and you let it happen. Lack of self-worth. But this podcast also is about telling stories that you can relate to. You know, I tell you these stories, and you may sit here that I think about, oh well Suze, what do you know about being in an abusive relationship? And then the question becomes, what do you know about Suze Orman? There have been many, many times that I've been in a relationship with somebody who abused me in so many ways, never ever physically, but verbally, how they acted towards me, how they treated me, and I let that happen. And I let that happen because I myself did not have self-worth. You know, it took me a long time. It took me a long time to value myself. And during those years, even though I was making money, the truth is I didn't make as much as I could have. I lost a lot that I made, and money came in and money came out. Why? Because of my lack of self-worth. But more than the money coming in and going out, I was never happy. I would go to psychics, and I would go to astrologers, and I would go to all these people, I would go, what do I have to do to make myself happy? And I finally started to realize, I had to know my own thoughts. I had to stop being in relationships with people that I did not like. That I did not respect. Because they didn't honor or respect me. And for some reason, for some reason, I thought I needed to settle. So don't tell me that I don't know, maybe I don't know to the extent that many of you do, but in my own way I allowed myself to be verbally abused. Now. With that said, just this morning, I was reading from this app that I have, Medium, I love this app because I think they have some of the most intelligent stories that I've read anywhere. And I come across a story whose title is, how Twitter helped me realize I was in an abusive marriage. And I'm thinking, oh my God, here we go again. And I read the story, and I loved it. And I want to share it with all of you right now. It was 2008. And I had just joined Twitter. Although I joined to promote my retail business, I soon realized the social media platform could also connect me to other people. At the time, I was living in a rural area in a tiny Midwest town. And had many acquaintances, but few true friends. On Twitter, fast friendships could be formed with people from all over the world. In fact, one of these twitter friendships changed the course of my life. Although it was over 10 years ago, I remember it vividly. My husband and I were in a hotel room during a weekend getaway. He was watching TV, and I was discussing weekend plans with my Twitter friends. One of my friends in California was going to a swingers event to cover it for a local online publication. She didn't plan on participating, she was just going to interview people and soak up the ambiance of this adult party. Wow, your husband will let you do that I asked? My friend replied LOL, what do you mean, let? I explained my confusion. Wasn't marriage supposed to be a partnership, and in a good partnership, wouldn’t you ask your husband before going to a party where you could potentially see people interacting sexually? Just a few months prior my husband hadn't even let me go to a bar with women from my tap dancing class. My friend Carrie explained that she always told her husband her plans, and if he had any issues, they would discuss it. But he could prohibit her from going anywhere. I could not understand that amount of freedom in a marriage. After all, my husband was my best friend. And we generally did everything together except for going to work. Even then, we called each other at least once during the day. If my husband didn't want me to go to a bar, I didn't go to a bar. I told my friend I couldn't imagine his reaction if I were to ask permission to attend a swingers party. Again, Carrie picked up the relevant word. Does your husband ask your permission to do things she asked? Of course not. I said actually, we didn't really do things separately. Over the next few months, as I became closer to my online friends, I started questioning my life. Why didn't I have my own circle of friends in real life? Why did my husband and I go almost everywhere together? Why didn't he like me to spend time with my family? Why did I ask permission to do things? I started realizing that I didn't have real life friends because my husband subtly, and not so subtly discouraged it. She's not good enough for you. He would say dismissively when I met someone I started to bond with. Sometimes, the objection was just that she smoked or drank too much, and therefore wasn't good enough. Or there was always the small town excuse. Any new friend was the in-law, cousin, second cousin, or some relation to someone he or I worked with. And we didn't want people gossiping about us. I accepted this logic just like I accepted that I wasn't allowed to park on the same block where the strip club was, in case someone saw my car and wrecked my and his reputation. Not that we would ever go to a strip club of course, but it was on the same block as our bank. Once I thought I had made the perfect real-life friend. She was the wife of a man who worked in the same profession as my husband, but held a more senior position. However, after several months of my spending time with her, I was told that my new friend was not good enough. She was white trash because she was the second wife of my husband's friend. Soon, I was again left with only my online friends. As my friendships with my online circle grew deeper, my husband started judging them as well. Their jobs were not prestigious enough, they didn't make enough money, their family situations were messy. His objections to my friend's supposed lack of prestige weren't even based in truth. My friends were mostly other professional businesswomen. Once I asked why he thought a contract manager for a large pharmaceutical company wasn't prestigious enough to warrant friendship. You know, she was texting me from Switzerland where she was leading negotiations, right? He replied that she wasn't good enough because she had been married twice. Sometimes I didn't know the professions my new friends held. Once I came home from work and he said, why didn't you tell me so-in-so was a professor at the medical school in her state? He had googled her. I explained that we mostly talked about things other than work. That friend was approved, until I let it slip that she only worked part-time. Part-time professional people were not good enough. LOL, what do you mean, let? My friends off hand twitter reply stayed with me as I began thinking about my friendships, the concept of being a separate person within a marriage, and my routine of asking another adult permission to do things. It took a couple of years before I realized that my husband's controlling behaviors were signs of abuse. I tentatively started telling my friends about other incidents in my marriage that I thought were normal. I was shocked by the answers. One friend told me she had never in her 20 years of marriage been called a C or a B. I'll let you think about what those two letters would mean. I was called those names on a weekly basis, if not daily. Seven years passed between the moment I read the magic sentence on Twitter, and the day I had the courage, the courage. To leave my marriage. My then emotional, verbal, financial, and physical abuse had joined control. As I took that step, my circle of online friends stood by me every step of the way. Now this was written by a woman by the name of Audrey Zetta. Actually that's not her name. She's writing an article like this under a pseudo name. Because when she writes about her former life, she is purposely vague about people and places to remain safe. The reason that I tell you that she writes under a pseudo name, is because this was a big thing I'm sure for her to write this. But when she writes about her past, obviously, this is my opinion, her fear of him still abuses her in a way that she can't even use her real name. Again, I read stories like this to you in the hopes that these stories will change your life. Not just your financial life, but your life. Because finances mean nothing. Finances will just show you when your life isn't going right. That's all it shows you. I always tell you, you can never fix a financial problem with money. But a financial problem can show you what's going wrong in your life. It is my prayer and my wish for you, for you, that you always know who you are. You always know your own thoughts. You never let anybody ever keep you from making friends, being close to your family, having to give you permission to do anything in your life. I want you to be a woman who owns the power to control her destiny. I want you to be a woman who is smart, safe, strong, and secure.

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