What if the biggest thing standing between you and financial security isn’t your income, but how you see yourself?
In today’s conversation, I’m joined once again by Mimi Bouchard––trailblazing entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and author––to break down how to shift your money mindset in 2026 by changing your identity, your beliefs, and the way you relate to yourself long before the numbers change. We talk about the psychology of money, why not all of your thoughts are true, how to stop bracing for financial disaster, and how small, daily mindset shifts can completely transform your financial behavior. Tune in to learn how to rewire your brain to see opportunity, rebuild trust, and start showing up like your future wealthy self so you can create lasting financial security and freedom this year.
Key takeaways:
Shifting your money mindset starts with shifting your identity, not your budget.
Mimi explains that when you begin to see yourself as someone who is capable, worthy, and financially responsible, your thoughts, decisions, and actions naturally change to match that identity. Instead of forcing perfect financial behavior, you become the type of person who makes aligned money choices because it feels normal. This identity shift is the foundation of real, lasting change in 2026.
Your brain filters opportunity based on what you believe is possible for you.
Through the concept of the reticular activating system (RAS), Mimi shows how your subconscious decides what information to bring to your attention. When you believe you are capable of wealth and success, you literally start noticing opportunities, ideas, and connections that were always there but previously invisible. A new money mindset trains your brain to look for expansion instead of limitation.
Not all of your thoughts are true — and you don’t have to obey them.
Many people assume every negative thought about money or self-worth reflects reality, when in fact thoughts are often conditioned patterns. Learning to pause, question, and replace limiting thoughts allows you to slowly build new neural pathways. Over time, empowering beliefs become easier to access than old self-sabotaging ones.
Your bounce back rate matters more than being perfect.
Progress with money isn’t about never overspending or never messing up — it’s about how quickly you return to aligned behavior after you do. Focusing on recovering fast instead of being flawless removes shame and keeps you moving forward. This mindset is crucial for staying consistent in 2026.
Low-grade money anxiety often comes from constantly “bracing for impact.”
Even when finances are stable on paper, many people live in a state of waiting for disaster. Mimi encourages acknowledging this pattern and intentionally cultivating safety, self-trust, and reassurance. Calming your nervous system around money is a key part of shifting your mindset.
Small daily habits compound into massive mindset shifts.
Tiny practices like journaling, listening to mindset audio, reviewing your goals, or checking your bank account without avoidance slowly reshape how you relate to money. Transformation doesn’t happen in one big moment, it happens through consistent micro-choices that build confidence and clarity.
Notable quotes
“Transformation is not this big thing that happens one day. It’s something that you do every single day in a small way that will actually compound into huge changes in your life.”
“We can acknowledge the injustice that happens in the world, but we can also have that while empowering ourselves to create the life that we deep down desire, and both can be true.”
“So many of us think that to create a better life for ourselves, we need to be perfect. We need to do it perfectly. That’s actually completely false because not one human being on planet earth has ever even had one perfect day.”
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro
01:40 How your brain filters opportunity
03:50 Why mindset matters more than being good at math
06:10 How beliefs drive behavior before numbers ever do
08:30 Not all of your thoughts are true
11:50 The “why not me?” mindset shift
17:30 Women and the fear of wanting more
20:50 Identifying limiting beliefs in everyday moments
28:20 Bracing for impact – the low-grade money anxiety trap
35:10 The bounce back rate vs. perfectionism
42:50 Building trust with yourself around money
47:30 Adding positive habits instead of restricting
50:30 Getting comfortable with having more money
Mimi’s Links:
Website: activations.com/financialfeminist
Visit herfirst100k.com/ffpod to stay up to date and find any resources mentioned on our show!
RESOURCES:
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Meet Mimi
Meet Mimi Bouchard: entrepreneur, motivational speaker, published author of the book “Activate Your Future Self”, and founder of Activations– the unique audio app offering a modern alternative to meditation. After years of struggling to connect with traditional mindfulness practices, Mimi created a more versatile, time-efficient option to feel grounded and motivated. With over 100,000 users (including fans like Miranda Kerr!), Activations are unique guided audios designed to be played while you live your life– no sitting in silence required. Her signature approach blends science and soul; rooted in neuroscience, habit formation, and practical strategies while radiating warmth and relatability. Mimi has helped thousands of women feel more inspired, abundant, and motivated, and is creating “personal development” method that’s both practical and magnetic.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
The truth is, your mindset is sabotaging your money goals. Here’s how to fix it. Because so many of us are doing the right things on paper, but still feel stuck, anxious, or like something isn’t clicking when it comes to money. My guest today is Mimi Bouchard, and she’s here to break down what actually happens when your identity around money starts to shift, from how your brain filters opportunity, to why not all of your thoughts are true, to how small mindset changes can completely change your financial behavior.
In this conversation, we talk about the psychology of money, why women are taught to fear wanting more, how to rebuild trust with yourself after messing up, and why real financial growth often starts long before the numbers actually start to change. Today’s episode will literally help you rewire your brain, stop your negative thoughts around money, and give you an incredible practice for getting back on track that I am immediately adopting into my everyday life. Mimi is the founder of an incredible app called Activations, and this is her second time on the show. We loved having her the first time.
Activations is this incredible new kind of audio. It’s not a podcast, it’s not a meditation. It’s something more than that. It’s like getting a personalized pep talk for wherever you’re at in your life. And at activations.com/financialfeminist, you can hear the ones that are my favorite. I’ve used activations for a couple of years. I love listening to them while I’m on a walk or doing chores around the house, and that offer is only available through their website.
So if you go to activations.com/financialfeminist, you can see a list of my personal favorites to jumpstart your 2026, but also get a 14-day free trial and the biggest discount. We appreciate Mimi offering that to our listeners. Let’s get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. Okay, Mimi, so what’s the first thing that happens when someone’s identity around money starts to change?
Mimi Bouchard:
You start to see opportunities that always existed, but your RAS is now programmed to notice them. So the RAS is the reticular activating system in our brain, and that’s essentially a filtration system that we all have in our brains. And when our identity changes, our thoughts and beliefs change, and that actually reprograms the RAS in all of our brains to start seeing opportunity that was already there, but you just didn’t notice it. So that’s the craziest thing.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. So you’re telling me I can literally reprogram my brain by doing these things.
Mimi Bouchard:
I absolutely am telling you that you can reprogram your brain. And when you do, you literally start to notice things that were always there that you weren’t seeing. So the very basic example is the red car example. When you’re thinking about buying a red car, you start seeing it everywhere, it’s not because it’s getting manufactured more. No. It’s because your RAS is filtering it as important information to serve to your conscious mind. If we didn’t have our RAS, our brains would literally explode. There is so much information around us at all times. And it is being filtered by importance.
Our subconscious mind will take in all this information and only present the important things to our conscious mind. So if we start telling ourselves that we are wealthy, okay? We are going to be wealthy. We are going to be successful. We are good in business. We deserve that raise. We’ve been working so hard. We are financially secure and stable and working towards this better future for ourselves. And we’re going to start seeing reasons why that’s true and seeing opportunities.
Maybe you’ll be at a party and you meet someone that you might want to collaborate with that has this cool business. Maybe you are more confident when you’re at that meeting with your boss asking for a raise and they literally will give you more money because of this self-assured identity of, “I deserve this.”
Tori Dunlap:
I’m so excited to have you back on the show. We got such good feedback on the first episode. And one of the things we talk about in Financial Feminists all the time, is that everyone associates being good with money, with being good at math. They think, “Oh, I have to be good with numbers,” or, “I have to look at spreadsheets all the time in order to be good at this.” When in actuality, this is a lot more about mindset. So talk to me about how important your mindset is and understanding your emotions around money before you even start to look at your numbers.
Mimi Bouchard:
It’s everything. It’s absolutely everything. It’s our identity. It’s how we see ourselves. It’s how we see the world. It’s how we see our potential in life because if we deep down don’t believe that we are ever going to find financial freedom, how are we going to become the version of ourselves that has financial freedom? The math isn’t mathing. And I can tell you from personal experience, I’ve never been a numbers girl, a math girl. I’m a little bit more of a creative type of person, and I’ve absolutely been able to create wealth for myself, to invest my money, to be logical when it comes to finances.
So I think just debunking that. If that’s someone’s belief, that limiting belief of, “Oh, I’m not that good at numbers. I could never create this portfolio for myself or this financial stability for myself.” It’s just not true. You can really work on your strengths when it comes to earning money, saving money, investing money.
Tori Dunlap:
The joke I always make is, I majored in theater and I’m a multimillionaire. Those things on paper don’t make a lot of sense. But I think it’s when you look at your day-to-day decision making around money, even just spending money at the store, how many of those decisions are made because you are in an emotionally heightened state? You had a bad day at work, you were ravenous, and so you go to the grocery store and you buy everything in sight.
It’s the same thing with those bigger decisions. You’re more likely, if you’re in scarcity mode, to make a decision that doesn’t serve you about where you live, how and where you work, whether you are going to start that business or not, because if you haven’t done that mindset work, everything convinces you that it won’t work out, or that you’re not good enough, or that it’s just not in the cards for you, or that you’re not worthy of money. And so, all of it links back to mindset.
Mimi Bouchard:
And how can you expect yourself to take the action necessary to get to where you want to be if you don’t believe it’s even possible for you? The most empowering thought is, “I can actually have some sort of influence on my future.” Having that self-empowerment really inside of you and leaning into that. We all have that little voice inside of us that says, “Hey, you could do more. You could live a bit of a better life here and be happier and feel more confident and self-assured and abundant, and in love with life.” We all have that little voice if we stay in this quiet state enough to hear it. We all are meant for a bigger life, I believe.
And it’s just listening to that voice, leaning into it and starting to see that potential. And listen, that potential doesn’t need to be making a million dollars a year. That potential can be truly feeling in love with life and working a job that feels extremely fulfilling and having relationships that feel good with people that treat you well. It doesn’t have to be this crazy extreme goal. It could just be feeling like you are spending your one shot at life feeling happy, feeling alive, in tune with yourself, in tune with the best version of you, being authentically yourself.
And that’s what the work is about really. But making money is great because it gives you freedom. It gives you an ability to design your life and give to the people and the causes that you feel passionate about. And that’s the most important thing about money, I think, is being able to have that ability.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally agree. And I hate to bring out my feminist soapbox this early, but it’s one of the things we’re told as women at a systemic level is, yeah, just stay in your place, don’t ask for too much, don’t want too much. And that’s what the system is built on is, women staying controlled and having the bare minimum. And I want the maximum for everyone listening. I want you to have a beautiful, full, healthy, stable life, and money gives you the options to get that. Absolutely.
Mimi Bouchard:
How defiant are we being women, trying to be the most abundant financially wealthy versions of ourselves? I think it’s so powerful. I love what you just said and I’m totally on the same page.
Tori Dunlap:
I love defiant. How defiant are you? I’m like, I’m very defiant. Watch me. No, so you talk about beliefs and how they drive behavior before those numbers ever do. So for someone listening who says, “I don’t think I have money beliefs, but also nothing is changing,” how can they actually identify what belief might be running the show?
Mimi Bouchard:
It’s such a great question, and it happens in those little moments. I always say that transformation is not this big thing that happens one day on your calendar five months from now. It happens in those everyday little moments, these thoughts that we repeatedly have, the actions that we repeatedly take. It’s those little, little things. So the same thing goes when it comes to recognizing those thoughts and limiting beliefs that have held us back. These limiting ideas of ourselves, of our identity, of how our life is going to turn out, these limiting thoughts that keep us small, and we all have them. I think especially women, because we’ve been told our entire lives, maybe this isn’t possible for you. You don’t look like the typical tech founder.
I was told that so much. People are surprised when they see the business I’ve built because I don’t look like the typical tech bro. And I think it’s very important that we create this ability to self-reflect because it’s in the small moments, those thoughts that come into our brain, if we can just be aware of them and think, wait a minute, is that thought truth? Because a lot of the time, it’s not, our thoughts are not true. If we create meaning towards something that is completely a lie and we believe it, it affects us. For example, if we don’t get that raise, we think, “Oh, it’s because I’m not good enough. It’s because that person doesn’t see potential in me because I don’t have potential, because I’m a failure.”
If that’s the reason, maybe it’s because that business is not doing as well as you think it is, or that person doesn’t think you’re confident enough to actually ask for what you’re worth. It could be so many different things, but we put this meaning towards what happens to us as a reflection of our identity. And it’s the same in dating. If somebody turns you down, you think, “Oh, it’s good.” But maybe it’s something about them. So we need to have the most empowered view of ourselves because that will help us so much in life and it will also make going through life more enjoyable, and it will make it more likely for you to actually find that success, is just believing in yourself more than anyone else and having the strong sense of self.
Tori Dunlap:
What you just said, I heard for the first time a couple years ago, which is not all of your thoughts are true. And I know somebody out there just had their mind blown because I remember the first time I heard that and it felt like, I don’t know, just this radical gift to me. Because I used to even have ugly thoughts that I was like, “Oh, what’s wrong with me that this just flashes through my head?” And it’s like, no, it’s the same way I’m driving sometimes and my brain goes, “What if you just turn the wheel and hit that pole?” And I’m like, “I have no interest in doing that. I have no interest in getting in a self-imposed car accident today.”
And when I think about that, I’m like, “Yeah, of course not all my thoughts are true.” I’m not interested in that, but still my brain goes, “What if you just turn the wheel a little bit?” So there are constant thoughts that we have around money or around our own self-worth, because that’s really what we’re talking about here. So much about being financially wealthy, financially whole. And I don’t mean a certain amount in your bank account, I just mean stable enough you get to make your own choices, is about your own self-worth, is about realizing, yes, I am worthy of money or yes, I am worthy of a situation that respects me and that respects me and compensates me fairly with that respect.
And I think that of course, not all of our thoughts are true because that’s just not possible.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yes, it’s not possible at all. And what if we could all realize that we are very responsible for our thoughts? We are very responsible for our self-image. And what if we could understand that our self-image, our identity, it can change, we can mold it? Our brains are malleable. You can fire and wire new neural pathways in your brain that make thinking a new thought easier. So think about it this way. Think about it like these old limiting thoughts have been going through your brain so many times over the years that they’re essentially like a big paved road in your mind. It’s easy to take this road because it’s nice and smooth and paved, and there is a big road here that you can take.
And then when you start to decide to think a new thought, think about it like it’s a bunny trail. Off the side of this paved road, there is a dense forest and there’s this tiny bunny trail. It’s hard to walk down this trail because you have to keep moving branches aside, there’s cobwebs. But every time you take this bunny trail, this new thought begins to implant itself into your brain and it actually becomes easier to think over time than this paved road thought. So the first few times you think this new thought, and it will feel uncomfortable, it will feel icky sometimes. It will feel embarrassing sometimes, especially if you’re listening to visualization audio that, like an activation that tells you like, “I am destined for big things. I am deserving of being wealthy.”
Sometimes that can be like, “Oh, me, really?” It can feel weird, right? But that’s because that is a bunny trail still. And the more you think it and the more you embed it into your brain as a new belief, this bunny trail becomes its own paved road. And then soon enough, that old paved road has cobwebs and branches and trees growing on there. It’s not fun to take anymore. So you can rewire your brain and start taking that bunny trail. And every time you take it, it gets easier and easier. And it will change your life, you will start to think differently. And when you think differently and you have a new self image, you’re going to start acting differently.
You’re going to start showing up like your future self, the version of you that you can just tune into that is the most confident, abundant, happy, opportunity-seeking version of you that has your best interest at heart, that can create the life that you desire.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, as we’re talking this whole time about the emotions of money and the psychology, you already know money is emotional. So let’s harness that. Let’s actually take the thing that we know is so prevalent where you feel, hopefully, this feeling of abundance and joy, and ease around money where you might be feeling right now, shame and judgment and guilt and fear.
So we’re taking the thing you already know to be true, which is emotions and the emotions around money and saying, “Okay, what if we flip those?” So when we think about your work and when we think about the common money beliefs people are coming up against, what are the most common ones that are sabotaging people, even if somebody’s doing everything right on paper?
Mimi Bouchard:
A lot of us have this deep down belief that it could never happen to me, that these other people are special and it couldn’t happen to me. And this is a very sad belief. Listen, I had this belief in a huge way before I went through my transformation journey and committed to this work. And I think that belief in itself was probably the one that held me back the most. It’s like, it can’t happen to me. It can happen to you, but not me. And then I started telling myself reasons why it couldn’t happen to me. And it was this self-fulfilling prophecy because I believed it couldn’t happen to me. So I wasn’t doing anything that could actually help me get there.
And then when I decided to radically change my life and radically change my belief system and I committed to these new thoughts of, you know what? I’m responsible for my life. I can create something really amazing and maybe I look different to the typical tech founder. Maybe some people won’t take me seriously, I’m too young, whatever it is. Those beliefs I decided just to shove to the side and I’m not going to give them any attention, I chose in this moment. This was about eight years ago. And I thought to myself, why not me? I started doing the opposite. If that person can do it, why not me?
I actually took a screenshot of this quote the other day. I was on TikTok, it says, “How unrealistic can it be if other people have it?” It’s like, tell yourself the opposite. What harm does that do? It just gives you this motivation and this intrinsic belief that, you know what? Maybe I can. Because when you have that belief, you’re going to start doing more, taking more action, putting yourself out there. You won’t have the confidence to ask for that raise to put yourself out there and pitch to a new client, to start posting on social media, whatever it is.
You’re not going to have that confidence, if deep down your identity does not align with someone who can actually succeed.
Tori Dunlap:
And everybody has their own privilege and their own story, of course. I also do think we’re in this age where it is so… And again, everybody listening, you know my work. You know that there is so many systemic barriers that prevent us from building a life and building wealth, period, end of story. New paragraph, end, a new paragraph. And also I think as women, we are constantly told, “You’re not good enough. You’re not special enough. Somebody else has something you don’t.” And I’m sure you would agree with me, we don’t have anything that somebody listening doesn’t.
But yes, we all have our own privilege, we all have our own story, but like I don’t have something in my DNA that makes me predisposed to be able to run a business better than somebody listening or to, again, be better with money. These are all learnable, teachable skills. These are things that you can say, “I’m going to try and see what happens.” That’s why her first 100K ended up being a success. That’s truly it, is I said, “You know what? I want this and I’m going to figure out how to do it, even though I know nothing about how to run a business. Nobody in my family’s a business owner. No one knew how to do this.”
And there are parts of my story absolutely that gave me financial foundation that somebody else might not have. And at the same time, I think it’s easy to just write off a goal or a dream because you’re like, “Oh, somebody else has already done it,” or, “somebody else has something I don’t.” No, no. It’s waiting for you.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yes. We can acknowledge the injustice that happens in the world, but we can also have that while empowering ourselves to create the life that we deep down desire, and both can be true. We all start on a different playing field. That’s just life. We can’t change that. Some people are way luckier than others. Some people are so much more privileged, and we can’t change that. But what we do have control over is how we act and our habits and how we feel about ourselves, and what we decide to create in our lives. I like to say this thing called E plus R equals O. The event plus the response equals the outcome. The event, the situation, we often cannot control at all. We have no control over that, but 50% of the equation is our response.
What are we going to do with that? Are we going to let it empower us and give us even more grit and excitement? Tori, the fact that my parents struggled a huge amount with finances when I was growing up and how there were bankruptcies in the family, remortgaging the house every five minutes. We couldn’t afford a lot. My parents are artists and I grew up in a very financially insecure household. That fact, I actually think has helped me become the person I am today with the business I have today because it gave me a taste to what I didn’t want in my life and it gave me even extra motivation. So it’s all about how we decide to frame the situation we’re in.
And if we need extra proof, there’s always going to be a story of someone who started in a worse place than us that created the life that we wanted. So looking at those people. And it was hard for those people, you know what I mean? And even just you having your platform, it’s such an inspiration to every single woman listening out there because it gives everyone this taste of like, “Oh, my gosh, if she can do it, I can do it.” And it gives this momentum in society, women creating wealth for themselves. And that I think is so cool.
So it’s like we have to do our best because we can inspire people, the next generations. It’s up to us.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And while we work to change the system that exists, the thing we can control is how we build wealth, how we take care of ourselves and our families and our communities. Absolutely. So a lot of our audience feels this kind of low-grade anxiety about money. It’s not crisis level, but it’s never fully calm either.
I see this a lot when I talk to women when I speak or when they write into the show and they say, “I’m always afraid the shoe’s going to drop. I’m always afraid even if I feel stable now, something’s going to happen. Shit’s going to hit the fan.” So what do you think keeps people stuck in that middle ground for so long, maybe even after they’re secure on paper?
Mimi Bouchard:
We have this addiction to feeling like we’re bracing for impact. I think a lot of us women feel this way. Listen, including myself, I’ve had to work on this so much within myself, even having the business I have and employing the people I employ. I’m constantly actually feeling this feeling of bracing for impact, waiting for that thing to go wrong. And this is something I’m actively trying to work on a huge amount in my own personal life because I saw it as a big limitation.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s hard. It’s so hard.
Mimi Bouchard:
It is really not easy. And it’s not good for our nervous systems either and our general joy level day to day. So the first part is acknowledging it. I think with everything in life, with anything that you want to improve within yourself, from your personal development, it’s really understanding what it is and acknowledging it as number one. And number two, in the step number two after that is realizing that there can be a different way to live. So this is something I’m genuinely working on. I’m journaling about this pretty much every day at the moment. So it’s funny you bring it up.
But it’s like, why do I need to feel like I’m bracing for impact all the time? How can I release that anxiety and just feel that genuine, deep, positive belief of, I’m going to be okay. I’ve done everything I can. Sometimes you just need to understand that you’ve done everything you can. Give yourself a little pep talk. We have to parent ourselves sometime. We have to give the little young version of ourselves a hug and a kiss on the forehead and tell her, “You’re going to be fine. You’re doing great.” We have to do that sometimes. It’s a huge important part of self-development, of falling in love with ourselves and giving ourselves that love and that safety that we need.
I think anyone listening to this podcast has a level of responsibility towards their own finances. If they’re listening to a finance podcast, that means that they have an interest to improve and maintain their finances. I think that alone shows that you’re the type of person that is actually going to be okay. You know what I mean? You’re not ignoring problems. You are actually trying to improve yourself. So just give yourself some slack. Cut yourself some slack and realize that we don’t have to be so hard on ourselves all the time anymore. We do that as women, we’re hard on ourselves. And we can just acknowledge that yes, maybe we’re not exactly where we want to be yet, but we can improve. In those little tiny moments in our day, we can start to do these consistent things.
Whether it’s waking up 20 minutes earlier to just have some time without your phone, maybe sitting outside and having your coffee with silence or journaling a little bit, or listening to an activation or listening to a motivational podcast. Maybe it’s whenever you are making your coffee in the morning, you add a little scoop of collagen to balance your blood sugar a bit more. It could be the most tiny details that could just help you improve your life, whatever that looks like for you. And when we start to lean into these tiny little things that actually make a huge difference in our lives, we’re going to start to notice the compound effect take place, just like how the compound effect takes place in our investments and our finances.
The same thing goes with our personal habits, whether that is stopping a thought in its tracks when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and you’re like, “Oh, I have to change this about myself.” No, stop. That little moment of you telling yourself, “No, Mimi and Tori, I’m not going to do this. We’re not going down that road.” It’s just these tiny moments that you can reteach yourself. And that’s the biggest emphasis that I would like to make in this podcast, is transformation is not this big thing that happens one day. It’s something that you do every single day in a small way that will actually compound into huge changes in your life.
And you will not even recognize yourself after a year or two of really just committing to small things. You’re going to be happier and more fulfilled and feel more like yourself because that’s what this is all about, is coming back to the truest self.
Tori Dunlap:
There are many, many times, especially a couple of years ago where I was pretty burnt out in our business. I had just launched my book and I was just tired. And there were so many thought patterns that were not helping me and were frankly just mean, were not kind to myself. And you run that road to your beautiful metaphor enough and you just realize I’m really tired of this. And so, rather than every time running that road, I’d realize, okay, I’m halfway down it. And I’d just stop and I’d go, “Okay, we’re not going to do this today.” And then I would just turn and take a different road. And that was a constant practice.
But then over time, that road didn’t exist anymore because I knew that going down that road didn’t serve me. It was not helpful. It was not kind to myself. And one of the things that you teach is I think so helpful, is what you call the bounce back rate, which is how fast you recover from mistakes. Can you talk about how someone can apply that to, “Oh, I went and spent money I didn’t have.” Let’s give that as the example. “I went and overspent from my budget and now I feel like shit.”
How do we use that bounce back rate, and also how can we employ those mindset tools to not beat ourselves up?
Mimi Bouchard:
100%. I love this bounce back rate concept that I kind of coined a few years ago. I write about it in depth in my book. So essentially it is the anti-perfectionism belief, which is perfect because I definitely have struggled in my past with perfectionism and thinking this all-or-nothing mentality. If I fall off the bandwagon starting all my goals on Monday-
Tori Dunlap:
Fuck it. Doesn’t matter.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yeah. [inaudible 00:28:02].
Tori Dunlap:
All of it’s over. Yeah.
Mimi Bouchard:
Exactly. So the bounce back rate is really quite brilliant when you think about it because it does not put perfection on the pedestal whatsoever. So many of us think that to create a better life for ourselves, we need to be perfect. We need to do it perfectly. That’s actually completely false because not one human being on planet earth has ever even had one perfect day.
Tori Dunlap:
Your perfectionism is fear. It’s just fear.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s holding you back. This is the ultimate thing to tell a perfectionist. “Your perfectionism is making you not successful because it actually is holding you back.”
Tori Dunlap:
No, but it’s true. It’s quite literally true. And again, we live in a society that has told women you must be perfect. So we’ve already set a standard that is actually completely unrealistic. And I know there’s people out there that are going, “Oh, yeah, well, that’s unrealistic for other people, but it should be realistic for me.” No, perfectionism is just fear. Your fear is the thing that’s holding you back. And that fear of failing, that fear of screwing up, that fear of maybe you’re not good enough, that’s what your perfectionism is doing and it’s not serving you at all.
Mimi Bouchard:
Totally. Totally. And the bounce back rate is a new measure to measure how successful you are being. And it trumps the perfectionistic view because when you start to focus on just how quickly you bounce back to getting back on track after you fell off the bandwagon, just that bounce back rate, the rate at which you can bounce back to feeling like your best self and doing the things that you feel good doing. If you just focus on how long it takes to get back on track as opposed to how perfect you were, this will expedite your results like crazy. Because you’re not going to get into this mentality of, “Oh, you know what? I messed up. I might as well spend the rest of my bonus because I spent it on this silly thing. So I’m just going to spend the rest, and then we’ll start next month.”
“Obviously, I can’t change. So here we are getting back into this old pattern of overspending,” if we want to use money as an example. If we want to use our health goals as an example, if you tell yourself that you want to go on a walk every single day to get fresh air and sunlight, and then you miss a day, why would you then stay home all day, binge watching TV and not go outside and get your fresh air and your walk just because you miss that morning walk? It’s that same mentality of all or nothing. Eating one cookie and then eating the entire box.
No, just be okay with eating a treat or be okay with missing a morning of your morning walk. That’s okay. You’re normal, you’re human. That doesn’t mean you have to go down this other extreme, and that’s what perfectionism causes. It causes extremes and extremes will hold us back. If you can just be more consistent and focus on how quickly you can bounce back and just be casual about whatever that, quote, slip up was, then you’re going to get there so much faster. Not one person on planet Earth is perfect. And there have been the most successful people out there that you look up to that have never had one perfect day. So that’s obviously not the solution, is perfectionism. It’s not.
What those people do differently is they have a quick bounce back rate. Maybe they do something that doesn’t make them feel good or they broke a goal that they had. Instead of dwelling on it, they just get back up and go back to what they know that they want to be doing. And when you identify yourself as the type of person that you want to be, if you start to show up as her and you feel like your future self, I call it, the person you want to be, the identity that you want to embody, if you can continuously do that, you’ll notice that your bounce back is actually a lot faster and easier because it’s just aligned with your identity.
If you identify yourself as someone who is quite responsible with her finances, that likes to have a certain amount in her bank account, doesn’t like to go below that, feels very positive about the investment she’s making, the savings she has, how she’s spending her money. If you identify as that version of you, it’s going to be harder for you to overspend and make these, quote, bad money decisions because you won’t want to. It’ll feel weird doing it. It’ll feel uncomfortable.
And that’s the goal, is to first shift our identity to align with who we want to be with the life we want to live because then it makes doing those things and taking that action quite a lot easier.
Tori Dunlap:
I want everybody listening to go back about five minutes and listen to that again because I love thinking about tracking success. Not, “I’ve done this 15 days in a row.” But rather, “Okay, on the 15th day, I wasn’t able to.” And rather than just saying, “Okay, I’m going to wait until the first of the month. Again, screw it.” Or, “I’ve already messed up my New Year’s resolution, so I’m just going to put the whole thing in the garbage.” It’s like, “No, rather than tracking how many days I’ve been on, let’s track how many days it took me to get back on. Cool. I did this in a couple hours or I did this, it only took me two days. My bounce back rate was two days.”
And that is very similar to what I see people talk about of trying to get rejections. I’m sure you’ve seen this.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yes. Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
There was actually a woman literally going viral on TikTok as we’re recording this who was like, “My goal this year is to get 100 rejections and I’ve already gotten Dutch citizenship. I’ve gotten this speaking engagement and I’ve gotten like a $10,000 client. And also, I’ve heard no 20 times.” So it’s like, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here, is rather than tracking how many yeses you’ve gotten, it’s like, “No, I’m going to go for it and it’s not going to be perfect, but I am going to track. Okay, we’re going to get back in the bandwagon. How much time does it take me to do that?”
Mimi Bouchard:
Yeah. Just focusing on that because there’s one very simple solution, just getting back on track the moment that you realize you fell off. If your brain immediately goes to, okay, bounce back rate as my success tool, as a measure of success, then you’re just immediately going to want to just bounce back. If your measure of success is perfectionism, then once you realize you fell off track, you’re just going to feel shame, guilt, self-hatred. What the heck is the point of that? What? That doesn’t benefit you at all.
That’s a waste of your precious life, is feeling that way about yourself. And sometimes we’ve all had to feel that way a lot for a long time to realize that we’re just tired of feeling that way and that our life is too short and too precious to feel that way. We have to come back to our why when it comes to this work a lot of the time. And I don’t know about you, but my why is life is short. We have one shot at this thing. I want to feel the happiest I’ve ever felt. I want to feel the most fulfilled and the most abundant, and I want to tune into my potential. I want to be the best Mimi that I could possibly be.
Tori Dunlap:
When you think about someone building trust with themselves around money again, what is the smallest behavior change that actually restores that trust?
Mimi Bouchard:
Not feeling fear when you look at your bank account. I think that’s a big one. We often try to avoid looking at things that make us sad or uncomfortable, or realize we need to change. So stop avoiding. That’s a really big one. And start to actively take control of your finances. We actually just launched in Activations the seven-day money mindset challenge that people have been obsessed with because it’s more of a pragmatic kind of logical challenge. We have, I was mentioning to you off air, we have a new script writer for the activations and she writes some of the most compelling content that we’ve ever had on the app. It’s very pragmatic, very practical.
I’ll tell you some of the activation titles, just so you can get a feel of like what this is. So it’s the seven-day money mindset challenge. The first activation is feel motivated to improve your finances. So starting off with this rush of motivation and like your why. The next activation is, release money anxiety and feel hopeful about your financial future. Seeing a new future for yourself. The next one is, own your money story and rewrite what comes next. And then we have one called stop mindless shopping and spend in alignment.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s going to be a good one.
Mimi Bouchard:
Yeah. Well, I knew that one. Take radical accountability for your finances, shift out of lack and feel abundant. Starting to condition yourself to think and act and feel like the abundant version of yourself, the version of you who has the financial future you desire. And then the final activation in this seven-day challenge is, take aligned action towards your financial future. So really ending it off on an action-oriented frame where you can actually just start to take action out anything, whatever feels sticky to you, something actionable, something doable. And that’s what activations do.
So many people write in saying, “Oh, my gosh, since listening, I’ve increased my income by X amount.” And it’s not the activations that magically make money poof into your account. We know this, that’s not what it is. What it is, is who you become when you listen to this type of visualization content that helps you reprogram your mind. So activations is just a tool in your toolbox that you can use. If you don’t want to do activations, you can also journal. You can also have a friend that you work on with these new beliefs and you can check in every day and have some sort of accountability with them.
I think journaling is a very important one as well, that I like to lean on.
Tori Dunlap:
Me too.
Mimi Bouchard:
And there’s so many different personal belt and practices that you can lean on. Activations is kind of just like a shortcut audio tool for people that like to listen to things on the go, but you can do this whichever way that feels most aligned to you. The intention is to create new thoughts and to tell yourself that these old limiting thoughts are actually not the truth. And it really helps you to step into this new identity, this new way of being, of living.
Tori Dunlap:
Mimi, is there a way that we could actually hear an activation? I want people to experience it and be able to continue on their learning right now.
Mimi Bouchard:
Sure. If you want, we can send you like a two-minute sample activation you can plug into the podcast.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. That’s so cool. Okay. Cue money activation right here.
Audio:
Picture that number, a specific dollar amount. See it clearly. Maybe it’s a monthly income or a yearly salary. Whatever it is, get specific and get ready to call it in. Feel the security, the freedom, the confidence that that number brings. See the number in your account. It doesn’t matter that it hasn’t arrived yet. You can take actions toward that number now. You can embody the energy of the future you that has that amount now. Ask yourself, why do I want this number? How could this amount of money change my life? What action today aligns me with that number? Breathe it in.
Allow yourself to revel in it because this number is possible. It’s not if, it’s when. You have to truly deeply believe it, and then start showing up like someone who is worthy of it. And to let this be the moment you choose clarity, empowerment, and unlimited possibility with your financial future. The savings you want to build, the debt you’re steadily reducing, the income that feels aligned, that sense of security that you’re craving. Feel the spark of possibility. Can you feel the shift? Feel the abundance coming. Feel that motivation inside of you, igniting. You know you can do this. You are capable. You can create wealth. You are deserving. You are worth it.
Your financial future is waiting, and you are ready to meet that version of you that has it.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. Mimi, so if anybody listening is like, “I want more,” where do they go?
Mimi Bouchard:
Well, we created a special little link for you guys, if you want. It’s activations.com/financialfeminist. We are offering your listeners a 14-day free trial and a humongous discount, the biggest discount we offer. But we can only do that on the website because the app store doesn’t let you do discounts. So if you want the best deal and a 14-day free trial, you can try over 800 activations just like that one for any moment of the day, any topic that you can think of. Just go to activations.com/financialfeminist. And Tori, we can put a list of your favorites on that landing page too, if you want.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, yeah. That would be so cool. There’s so many that I love, especially the ones that… Yeah. I love feeling like the main character in a movie, and that is the theater degree in me. And it’s like, “Oh, wait. You’re going to in the center of attention. We’re going to talk about how to be in the spotlight.” Great. And I love those, especially when I’m on my morning walk. I’m like, “Oh, look at the sunshine and look, Hans Zimmer’s scoring my life. It’s so great.”
Mimi Bouchard:
I’m obsessed with him as a composer. So great. Hans Zimmer, like such a mode of music. But I love how you like the main character ones because I’m obsessed with those two. I would really highly suggest anyone listening, try that seven-day money mindset challenge. Even if you just take advantage of the 14-day free trial, do that seven-day challenge, and then cancel if you don’t like it. But trust me, that seven-day challenge is so good if you want to just reset your finances for 2026 and feel that level of inspiration and motivation while also mixing in that practical logical side of things.
Tori Dunlap:
When we think about the ability or the power of habits in our daily lives, my friend Liz Moody, who’s been on the show before, we’ve talked about habits with her. How does thinking about incorporating things in your life rather than taking things away make more consistent behavioral change?
Mimi Bouchard:
Oh, I love that question and it’s so spot on. When you add positive things instead of focusing on removing the negative things, it’s just psychology 101. It’s more enticing and more exciting to do that. Just like with healthy eating. If you want to eat healthier, add more veggies and fiber into your meals instead of trying to restrict and take everything bad out. It’s not realistic. We want to create a life for ourselves that is maintainable and it just becomes who we are. So I think really focusing on that positive, anything positive that you can add into your life without overwhelming you. You don’t need to do it all. Just do those things that really allow you to show up in your life in a way that you want to be showing up.
You don’t need to wake up at 5:00 AM and do a two-hour long morning routine to transform. I saw more change in my life by not doing that and by simply listening to a visualization audio like an activation on my daily walk. The walking activations were what changed my life. Before I ever released these to the public for years, I was creating them for myself. And that’s what changed my life, is listening on my daily walks. But for someone else, it could even just be a motivational podcast that they listen to every night when they’re getting ready for bed, or just whatever it is for you, just be consistent. That’s the message. Be consistent. Try to just do a little bit for yourself every day.
Whether you even like to meditate, that’s amazing if you can stick to that. Try doing that for 5, 10 minutes every day. Whatever you are drawn to, whatever feels realistic for you, exciting for you. Lean into that and be consistent because if you just do that, you’re going to see a change.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Looking at your money, rather than saying, “Okay, I’m going to avoid it and everything’s going to be fine.” It’s like, “No, how can I make this fun for myself?” And what Mimi’s talking about everybody is, she hasn’t used this word, but it’s like habit stacking. She’s like, “Okay, I’m listening to this thing while I’m also going on my walk.” I was doing this last night as I said, “Okay, I haven’t got my walk-in today.” I pulled out my walking pad and I had some work to do and I just sat there and I did the work I needed to get done while walking. And I felt better afterwards because of course, I did.
Now, did I want to walk? I did not. I did not. But I knew I’d feel better. And that’s the other thing we’ve talked about on the show a million times is that self-care is hard shit. Self-care is stuff that typically in the moment, you don’t want to do. You don’t want to go to therapy and have a hard conversation about your patterns. You don’t want to eat a salad. You want to eat pizza all the time. And again, we’re not victimizing pizza, but there’s certain things that we do that feel uncomfortable in the moment, but make future use life better.
Looking at your money, probably uncomfortable in the moment, but ultimately it makes future use life better. And this is what we’re talking about is, the things that actually make a difference in your life and creating time to do those things.
Mimi Bouchard:
And one of the most amazing things to do as well is getting very comfortable and familiar with the feeling of having more money. A lot of us feel limited. We want more money, but we feel uncomfortable with that amount of money. And that kind of rejects it from us. If we don’t deep down feel comfortable with that amount of money, how can we expect to really take the action necessary to get there, to take the risk necessary if it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable? We have a whole category in the app called targeted visualizations. This is money focused visualizations. It’s a little bit more on the woo side to some of the other activations we have.
So pragmatic money mindset challenge, if that’s for you. But if you are into a little bit more of that align with the energy of the level of wealth that you desire type of verbiage, our targeted visualization category is really quite amazing when it comes to that. And it helps you familiarize yourself with that level of money. For example, we have everything from manifest $1,000 all the way to millions and millions, whatever that amount is that you want to familiarize yourself with, and it helps you get into the energy of how it would feel to be earning that amount. We have an income category to be earning a certain amount in income.
It’s all about getting familiar with it and just trying on how it feels. Kind of like you’re a method actress and it’ll help you walk around throughout your day like you’re already embodying this version of you that has a certain level of income or amount in her savings. And it’s a very fun exercise. It feels really good to do. And it gives you the sparkly feeling of potential, of this goosebumpy, what if?
And that’s personally what I love about this work is like you feel that like sparkly aliveness feeling when you think about everything that you could become.
Tori Dunlap:
And it’s one of those things that uniquely women feel. We feel guilty if we’re not doing well enough with money, and then we feel guilty if we feel like we’re doing too well. And I think that again, is back to the mindset or back to the beliefs that have been ingrained in us by society is, feel shame about your debt, feel shame about your spending, feel shame that you don’t have enough. And then when you start doing well, you have all these new problems, which is the same shame, but in a different way that’s going, who are you to have more money? Who are you to be the person that is doing well while other people aren’t? Which is a real thing I think about all the time.
And I think one of the outcomes of that is that, when you feel shame that you’re not doing enough, and then you feel shame that you’re maybe doing too well, shame lives in shadows, so we don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to talk about it with our friends because they might judge us for being in debt or it feels very personal. And then on the flip side, I don’t want to talk about that I got to raise at work or that I’m investing and that my business is doing well because then what if they judge me for having too much money or being out of touch or being… It’s so common with women on either side.
And to me, that just tells me we can’t win. So you may as well get in a good relationship with your money because no matter what, society wants to make you feel shame, wants to make you feel shame about either not doing enough or doing too much. So you may as well do the amount that feels good to you and pursue money because again, it gives you those options and those choices.
Mimi Bouchard:
You’re so spot on. I actually have never thought about it that way, but that is so soft.
Tori Dunlap:
Ain’t that crazy? I wrote a whole book about it. But no, it’s wild. It’s wild. And that shame and that judgment, it’s cultivated. It’s on purpose. Society has built that shame and judgment, so that we don’t pursue money. And so, when you’re talking about activations and mindset, this is proven in the research. This is proven in the data where we exist in a system that tells women you shouldn’t want money. That’s ghost, that’s greedy, that’s impolite, you shouldn’t pursue it, you shouldn’t want to be rich.
And that’s one of the reasons I am so unabashedly using that terminology in our social media and on the pod, is like, “I am going to tell you, I want you to be rich. I want to be rich. I love being rich for all of the options being rich affords me.”
Mimi Bouchard:
100%. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think when we feel comfortable saying that, “I want to be rich. I want to have six figures in investments. I want to earn this amount of money.” When we tell ourselves that and we feel empowered with that thought and we feel okay sharing that with the world, that becomes part of who we are. And then we’re more likely to actually get there because we don’t feel shame around it.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s not as scary anymore. It’s not as like this thing on a pedestal somewhere that we can’t have. It’s like, no, the more I think and the more I hear somebody in my ear tell me that this is possible for me… again, just like listening to the show, I’m telling you this is possible for you. It’s no different than that. Okay. My last question for you, I could talk to you all day, but what is one thing that anybody listening could do this week that could actually change how they relate to money even before the numbers change?
Mimi Bouchard:
Get crystal clear on who your future self is, on how much she earns, on how much she has, in investments and savings on how her relationship is with herself, with money. In every area of her life, actually. In my book, I talk about the five pillars of your life, mental, physical, financial, social, spiritual. Those five pillars, if there’s one thing that you can do this week, especially harnessing that new year energy, grab a journal, grab a pen and just go through those five pillars, okay? Mental, physical, financial, spiritual, social, those five pillars. And just do an audit. Rate them.
The current life you’re living, write it out a 10, 1 to 10. How are you feeling in every single pillar of your life? And then get very clear. I spoke about this in the first episode we did Tori, on how clarity is incredibly important when it comes to creating your dream life. So get very clear. And I think putting pen to paper is a very effective way to do this. If you want something more guided, we have a ton of writing activations on the Activations app, but you don’t even need that. You can just do this yourself with a piece of paper and a pen and just brain dump on paper everything that you want to improve in your life.
Create a vision of your future self, the version of you that has the life that you desire. Start to see it in your mind. Start to feel it in your body. How does it feel to be her? Okay. And then you have that clarity, you have a roadmap. Once you have that clarity, then you can tune into being her now, in everyday moments, while you’re doing your everyday life, programming your brain in these everyday moments. Whether you’re habit stacking, whether you’re sitting down on your laptop about to work, just remind yourself from Post-It notes, from listening to an activation, from listening to a podcast, from having a check-in with a friend.
Remind yourself who you want to be. Who is she? How does it feel to be her? And how can you be her now in everyday moments? Start acting like her, thinking like her, believing the same thoughts that she believes in. And you’re going to then find yourself in a gray area, having one foot into the old life and one foot into the new life, and then that’s a really beautiful place to live. And then if you stay consistent, you’re going to become her, and it will happen.
Tori Dunlap:
Mimi, that was so helpful. I’m so happy to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for being here.
Mimi Bouchard:
Oh, Tori, it was a pleasure. I always love chatting with you and I love your audience. And yeah, thank you so much for having me on again. I hope that we can make 2026 the best year yet and everyone listening can feel that inspirational energy that we’re trying to inject into this episode.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. Thank you. All right, team. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to finally become the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest version of yourself, this is it. So whether you’re looking to improve your confidence, upgrade your money mindset, just feel better about your thoughts and emotions around money. You can join the hundreds of thousands of users, including me with Activations. And Mamie was so generous. So just for Financial Feminist listeners, there is a special limited time offer. You can get a massive discount, but it’s only available through our exclusive link on their website. So you can go to activations.com/financialfeminist to download it and get that 14-day free trial.
Also, there’s a playlist there of all of my favorite activations. So if you’re wondering what’s in my headphones, what I’m listening to, you’ll get access to that over there. Again, that’s activations.com/financialfeminist.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
