S2 E32:🌱 Your Attention (and Money) Are Sacred w/ Amelia Hruby
EPISODE SUMMARY
What if the real problem isn't your spending habits, but where your attention goes? In this episode of the Money Healing Club Podcast, Rachel chats with Amelia Hruby, author of "Your Attention Is Sacred (Except on Social Media)," to unpack the hidden connections between social media addiction and impulse spending. They explore why the "attention economy" is built on a false premise, how algorithms are literally designed to extract money from us, and why leaving social media might be the most powerful money hack you've never tried. Plus: what tomatoes and radishes can teach us about cultivating attention.
"Nobody will value your work more than you do. The fastest money hack I have to offer is get off of social media because you will see less stuff, so you will want less stuff, and you will buy less stuff."
Key Takeaways:
The attention economy treats your attention as scarce when it's actually infinite and expansive
Social media is designed to convince you of problems you didn't know you had - that purchases can solve
Hyper-personalized advertising knows exactly when you're vulnerable and exactly what to sell you
Leaving social media can dramatically reduce impulse spending without willpower
Start small with pleasure-based practices rather than restricting your "worst" habits
About Amelia Hruby: Amelia Hruby is a feminist writer, podcaster, and producer with a PhD in philosophy. She's the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio and host of Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media. Her new book "Your Attention Is Sacred (Except on Social Media)" comes out in October 2025.
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
04:00 | What's Wrong With The Attention Economy? Breaking down how attention became a commodity and why that's fundamentally flawed
12:00 | The Etymology of Attention Why "stretching toward" reveals attention as infinite, not scarce
26:00 | The Toxic Relationship Revelation Amelia's breakthrough moment that led her to quit social media
35:00 | The Direct Link Between Social Media and Spending Real examples of purchases we didn't need until algorithms told us we did
47:00 | Five Principles for Gardening Your Attention From exploring what's present to lingering with what's regenerative
Resources Mentioned
"Your Attention Is Sacred (Except on Social Media)" by Amelia Hruby
Off The Grid podcast - Amelia's show about leaving social media
Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now"
Softer Sounds Studio - Amelia's podcast studio
Join the Conversation
What's your relationship with social media right now? What is it giving you, and what is it taking away? Have you tried leaving social media, and what surprised you about the experience? The Money Healing Club Podcast wants to hear your story - click the big orange button: https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/podcast
Your next listen:
Check out our last episode with Sarah Mac on raising your rates to explore more about making intentional choices with your business and money.
Use code PODCAST for 50% off your first month and start your money healing process! https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/club
Full transcript: https://www.moneyhealingclub.com/podcast
-
[00:00:00]
Rachel Duncan: Hey, Money Healers. This is Rachel Duncan, certified financial therapist and art therapist, and you're listening to the Money Healing Club Podcast. So there's a topic that comes up with almost every client and club member I work with, especially around changing their impulse spending habits, and that is their relationship with social media. How social media is costing time, very real dollars and many other costs that are sometimes hard to describe.
And I found that healing our relationship with money is about rediscovering ourselves. And so sometimes we need to look at how social media is taking us away from ourselves. I felt this for a long time, but in this episode we get to really unpack it with the expert critic out there on social media, Amelia Hruby
Amelia Hruby is a feminist, writer, podcaster, and producer with a PhD in philosophy. She's the [00:01:00] founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio and the host of Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media. Her new book is called, your Attention Is Sacred except on Social Media, and it's coming out October, 2025.
You must go over to yourattentionissacred.com to snag your copy. Believe me, it's well worth it.
Amelia was even on Glennon Doyle's podcast We Can Do Hard Things last year to support Glennon in her decision to leave social media. So Amelia has given it so much research and so much thought. In this episode, Amelia and I talk about the real meaning of the word attention. When we talk about attention economy, we talk about the push and pull of social media, feeling both so good and so bad, and what Amelia is harvesting from her garden, from radishes to potatoes to so much more, and I promise it all relates, you'll just have to listen.
The Money Healing Club podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. For help with [00:02:00] your particular situation, please seek help from a licensed professional in mental health, tax, finance, and law. Now, let's talk about what we don't usually say when we talk about social media with Amelia Hruby
Rachel Duncan: Amelia, Welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
Amelia Hruby: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Rachel. We have podcasted together and taught together and done so many things in other capacities that it just feels like common home to hang out on your show.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah. Yeah. As, as I said, when you came in the room, like, welcome to my sandbox. It's so great. I am, I'm so excited to talk about this book, uh, to my community. So, okay. We're just gonna start with the biggest question. This is about Amelia's book, by the way. You guys, Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media. So what is wrong with the attention economy? Paying attention to those two words, attention and economy, which you really pull apart.
So
Amelia Hruby: [00:03:00] Yes,
Rachel Duncan: Kick
us off.
Amelia Hruby: I'm so excited to talk about this and I love talking about money, so I can't wait to get into the like dollars and cents of it all. So what is wrong with the attention economy? I like to think about this on a few levels. One is like, what is the attention economy, right? Maybe some people use that term, but they don't actually really know what it means, and so I would define
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: it this concept that understands our attention as an economic resource.
So it's like our attention is limited in nature and it is something that we can use. To exchange to get what we want, right? So this really has this concept. This framework has really risen alongside social media and the internet where we go online and we get cool, free stuff, but we're actually paying for it with our attention.
And so your attention becomes its own currency. [00:04:00] It becomes a commodity. It's something
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: use to trade on the social media marketplace. And from that, you might get entertainment, you might get social capital. If you grow a following, you might get power. Like we have watched
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: social media
influencers become incredibly powerful politicians, right?
So the attention economy describes this world that we all live in, where attention is a currency that we're using online every day. That's the like sort of rosy neutral way of describing it. Now, if you know anything about economics and currency and you know anything about our current world, we also live under a capitalist economic system.
And so when we think about that in the context of the attention economy, attention is being exploited and extracted on these apps. Much like our labor is often exploited and extracted
when we work
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: for a wage. And so if you're [00:05:00] on social media and you're giving an app your attention, well maybe you're getting entertained, you're probably not making any money. And the owners of the app, they are making money. And so that's what I mean by extraction. There is like someone else is making money when you are on a social media app. so the attention economy to me like just describes all of that. And what is wrong with that is extraction, exploitation. Is the increased surveillance that has happened as social media companies need more and more and more data to keep making money off of our use of their platforms, right?
Like they make money by selling our attention and our data to advertisers. So they just need more and more data and more and more attention, and it's left us in this place where it's like we all feel like we have no focus. We're totally distracted, our attention is fractured, and we can't even care [00:06:00] about the things we care about anymore.
Rachel Duncan: And I, I add to this, I was thinking about this as I was reading your book also like the echo chamber of the algorithm that like, oh, I am not exposed to some things or I'm not being shown some things that really I ought to know about the world. Or some, some, some maybe perspectives that do go against my own.
Generally not being fed that. And I am also wondering, that must be adding to the segmentation and the conflicts that we're feeling because I think when we're in these platforms, it's all likelike. It's oh that, gosh, there's so many people that think like me. And that's lovely to meet people and see things that jive with you.
Totally. Um, but we're very explicitly not being fed anything that causes discomfort. And so that now we also have. You know, swaths of, of, of society and culture that can't sit with the discomfort of disagreeing with somebody because we all have to be with like, like, like do do you think that's in there too?
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that is maybe one of the [00:07:00] like downstream effects of the attention economy is that like
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, so you're already pulling in algorithms, right? So on social media apps, each of them has their own proprietary algorithm that is designed to keep us on the app, to keep our attention there so they can keep making money, right?
Keep selling ads, keep getting us to buy stuff. They make money off of that. And so these algorithms have figured out, as we've learned from documentaries, like The Social Dilemma, or books like Jaron Lanier's arguments for deleting your social media account right now. You know, people who have been inside these companies building the algorithms have come outside of them and said they are designed to keep you on the app.
And what the algorithms have learned through their own learning models is that there are different ways to keep us on apps and so for many people it is that sort of like sameness that cultivates a sense of belonging and safety and you want more of it and they keep giving you those dopamine hits and that feels really good. I think there's also the flip side of that where we see like [00:08:00] rage bait and we see some
Rachel Duncan: Yeah, true.
Amelia Hruby: served up really inflammatory content and that's what engages them. I often like to say like if you're conflict avoidant, you might have like a really cute little nice version of the internet.
Rachel Duncan: I think that's what I'm saying. I have such mine's like comedians and cats. That's like my whole feed because I do not
Amelia Hruby: Yes,
Rachel Duncan: like conflict.
Amelia Hruby: 100%. I mean, mine used to be the same way when I was on social
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: so I definitely think thats a part of
of like the economic side of the attention economy is how these algorithms function and how they continue to pull on and make money from our attention.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: The thing I really try to say in the book, like I try to explain all of that and I try to point out like there are so many impacts that the attention economy has on our lives.
Like you're saying, increased echo chambers, a decreased ability to handle disagreement and conflict together, while we're also seeing an increase [00:09:00] in national and global conflicts around the world, some of which can be directly tied to social media in those countries. So, you know, in our lifetimes we've seen the Cambridge Analytica scandal that helped get a president elected.
We've seen what happened with the genocide Myanmar, that was very much fueled by ads being run on Facebook that were
Rachel Duncan: Mm,
Amelia Hruby: theoretically against the terms of service, but really stoked racial tensions in the country and led to these horrible events. And so they're very real consequences,
Rachel Duncan: very real.
Amelia Hruby: very real reasons
the attention economy as it functions on social media is bad. But the philosopher in me when I wrote this book, I was like, okay, a lot of people have made that argument, but I wanna actually point to this, like what I see as like a core flaw in the whole premise of the attention economy. that is that I don't think attention is an [00:10:00] economic resource. I don't think
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: attention is a limited resource. So when people talk about the attention economy, as I mentioned before, like they're trying to explain how we have a scarce amount of attention and economics is how we figure out scarcity and distribute scarce resources. So like, we gotta figure this out with the attention economy, but I don't think attention is scarce. And so I think there's a sort of fundamental breakdown at the very like, heart of this concept that really bugs me. So I had to write a book
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: about it because let, let me let you interject
Rachel Duncan: No. Can I share? I, I underlined when you started it out, I, I always started a paper with this. Let's get into the etymology. I'm like, I always start a paper with etymology. That's like my go-to crutch. So, let's break down. Could you break down for us? 'cause I think this is so beautiful, the etymology of the word attention.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, let me read it from the book
Rachel Duncan: Let's read it.
Amelia Hruby: Because I'll get it wrong
Rachel Duncan: [00:11:00] Would you Yes. Reference yourself.
Amelia Hruby: okay.
Rachel Duncan: It's, it's page seven
Amelia Hruby: it is
Rachel Duncan: Page seven. Open your books to page seven. Professor Hruby is going to be reading. Okay.
Amelia Hruby: yes, my former
life as a professor. Um, so the word attention comes from the French word at dare, which means to stretch toward, so within the word attention. I think like from the etymology of this word, it's about how we stretch toward the world, and to me that is not a scarce gesture. That's like an infinite gesture
Rachel Duncan: Hm.
Amelia Hruby: and part of the way I make that claim in the book is like, yes, our lives are limited by time, right? Like I, we are mortal beings, but we can't count how many times we're gonna stretch toward the world in one lifetime, right? It's like an uncountable number, which is one way
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: of saying it's infinite. It's not finite, it's not scarce
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: It's so much, I can't count it. Like my attention is so vast. Everyone [00:12:00] listening to this, like your attention is so vast. It's literally how you stretch toward the world, how you experience it, and how you notice the things that you notice or don't notice, the things that you don't notice. And so I really wanted to start there in the book so I could set up this sort of premise.
I'm trying to describe here of how, like if we don't accept that our attention is scarce, if we believe it is infinite and expansive, the same way that you know, relationships are infinite and expansive, or love is infinite and
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: that, then we don't have to buy in to the idea that attention is a scarce economic resource.
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: and if we
don't buy into that, then we don't have to buy into the whole concept of the attention economy. We can start to relate to our attention differently. We can start to notice and really feel when it's being extracted or manipulated, we can really reshape our [00:13:00] relationship to the world. I think so, our opening question, what's wrong with the attention economy?
Well, you know, I think it's a good way of describing how attention is commodified on social media. But it's come to be this thing everyone takes as a fact, and I just don't think it is like the world doesn't have to function
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: this way and it's actually
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: incorrect to think of attention this way.
Rachel Duncan: And I think you're right, and I think the efforts to, to put numbers to it, a number of followers, hours of watching da da, da, like also are pretty meaningless, right? Like, and what does, what do you know, attention versus audience. Those are different things.
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: I'm also thinking, like, made me think of like the different ways we experience time.
Right. And I think the Greek had, the, the Greeks, the ancient Greeks really knew that we had two experiences of time. We had Kronos and Kairos, right. And it's like Kronos sure. The, yeah, the number of days in a year. And there are quantifiable things, but like, [00:14:00] wow, that is actually not our lived experience.
If you weren't counting the days, depending on your level of attention or what you were doing, we experienced time really differently. It's very, it is very fluid and expansive and dynamic and like one minute doing something versus another minute doing something else. Don't feel like a minute, a minute doesn't speak to it, you know?
And so I was thinking a lot of that, like, yeah, this is a very much more like a, like a three dimensional experience of attention. And I was, I was also thinking of my work as a trained therapist, right? Like I sell attention, I sell very high quality, intense intention where. You know, my hour with a client is not an hour with a client like it is on the calendar.
But that is not my experience. I don't believe it's my client's experience. It's, it's entering through this different threshold of, of connection that, like you said, it is expansive and infinite. It's not an hour. We can't think of it that way. Um, so I [00:15:00] was like really relating to like how we connect, right?
Which has so much to do. That's actually, I think, what we mean with attention. And it could mean connecting to each other or connecting to, as you say, at the end of your book, which I do wanna talk about, you know, some of these practices we can do to, to cultivate our attention. And it's a much more three-dimensional thing, isn't it?
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm still sitting with what you said about like how therapists are selling, like offering a specific type of like concentrated attention that's given to the client. That's so interesting to me and I hadn't thought of it that way, and it feels so true.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: So much of we need, want, desire, and get out of therapy is having, you know, this trained person's full attention for our time
Rachel Duncan: Thats it.
Amelia Hruby: together.
Rachel Duncan: That's all it is. You know, I thought when I went to grad school that I was, oh, I'm gonna learn how to give people advice and Oh, I was wrong. It is stripping away everything so that you can [00:16:00] be the, uh, a fully attendant mirror
Amelia Hruby: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: and yeah, just how, how transformational that is. And it's not easy.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: And I think that the other thing coming up for me while you were sharing was like thinking about clock time and work time. And
Rachel Duncan: And so,
Amelia Hruby: something I try
to get at briefly in the book is just the way that, you know, I think we really saw the seeds of our relationship to attention begin to shift when you know Charles Taylor put time on the factory clock.
So we have this like taylorist approach to industrialism where every single moment is minutely tracked for its productivity. think that that similar or like analogous move to what I'm seeing happen with attention on social media, right? Where it's like on these apps, they are tracking our attention with these like minute, you know, clicks, likes.
How long did your. [00:17:00] You linger on this post on your phone. Like they're measuring everything. They're tracking everything and they're sort of forcing attention onto these app metrics. And I think that is how time was forced onto the clock in the factory
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: And so it's a horrible process. I guess I just like, I'm struck in this moment by how deeply that has harmed so many of us and how
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: alienated us from that like gorgeously human experience of losing track of time or being out of time or being together in time. I think that social media then has also like taken us away from this idea that our attention is a way of stretching toward each other, being with each other, tending to each other, you know, the like jargony philosopher in me wants to call it like ontological violence.
[00:18:00] Like, it's like that's really reshaped our experience of ourselves and our communities. And it's a really deep hurt and harm that I think
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: is happening to us. And for me, like another reason I wrote this book is that I think that social media is something that many, if not most or all of us could opt out of.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: I wouldn't make that claim for something like work or industrial labor that's required for so many people to have money to feed themselves
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: clothe themselves, house themselves, right? So I wouldn't say it in that context, but I think with social media, I have yet to really find a use case where I'm like, oh yeah, you could never leave. You may have to change your
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: life to leave, but I think all of us or, but I think most of us could really quit using these
Rachel Duncan: yeah.
Amelia Hruby: take our attention back from them [00:19:00] if we wanted
Rachel Duncan: Oh. I wanna share a little, my, my personal story is, you know, we met about a year and a half ago and when I was on your podcast and right around that time I was like, okay, I'm doing content creation. I had like joined a class. I was trying to get more comfortable on camera and I was having fun with it. It was a creative thing and I felt right about the time I was getting comfortable with it.
I left it and I, and I took it off my phone. Um, I do still have an account and I check it on the web, but it's really just an extension of my work email. 'cause I do still get, I get client requests, I get wonderful collaboration. So I haven't left it completely and I do little snippets of podcasts on, on it, but Wow.
It really changed. It was interesting just at the point I got comfortable with it because what was happening was that, oh, for me to get comfortable with it, I have to be really, really in it. I have to be consuming it. I have to know what people are doing. I have to know trends and it was taking. It was just taking my life away.
It, I, I think I maybe have also, like, I, I maybe an [00:20:00] addictive, addictive personality, but it was just taking so much more than it was giving, even though I was enjoying the creative part. And when I took it off my phone, don't, you know, I don't redownload it, it, it was kind of this detoxifying experience and I had that little fear about will people find me and people totally keep finding me.
And, um, and then what it gave me now, I, I read. Yeah, I, it literally repla, I read probably at least two books a month. And, I look forward to bedtime. I look forward to winding down. I never have my phone plugged in, in my bedroom. And, um, it really gave my attention back to the things that matter.
And I think you speak about this so well, you know, more in your Off the Grid podcast about being a business owner and like being afraid of, of leaving social media and that, but it actually helps you get back to the root of why we're doing this. And there are actually so many ways to connect that are more, even more effective.
Like [00:21:00] my referrals, me being on other podcasts is such a more effective way to spread my work than spending hours editing a reel. Um, so I just wanted to share kind of like my process with this, and I'd love to know a little more about could you share, you know, there was a time where you were heavily in it and, and you left about four years ago.
Is that right? And what was that? There was a, a scale tipping time for you, and I'm just wondering if you could tell us more about that time.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. for listeners who are new to me, many years ago I was a micro influencer the full period I was so on instagram
I shared different content pieces. I did a lot of work around selfies for radical self-love. I shared feminist affirmations. I did brand deals with companies like Parade and Bando, and you know, I was really. [00:22:00] Trying to make a go of it on Instagram. And I think I never got more than like 3000 followers, but I was able to crowdfund a podcast. I got a book deal. Like there was this way that I was growing a whole audience and platform on Instagram. I was all in. I spent so much time, so much money, so much energy on this app, trying to get people's attention and share my creative work with them. And after years of doing that, sort of the culmination point became when my book came out. So I had self-published a book based on my Instagram series, actually it was called Feminist Mantra
Rachel Duncan: Hmm.
Amelia Hruby: where I wrote these different affirmations every Monday and shared them. And it was kind of combining the more like spiritual practice I was learning with my like PhD studies and feminist theory.
I was trying to bring them together in a more public way since it was so academic at school. And [00:23:00] so I was doing that. I compiled all of them into a book myself that I self-published. And then I was very lucky and I got a traditional publishing deal with Andrews McMeel. And when I signed that contract, everyone was like, you gotta grow your social media following if you want this book to do well.
So
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: I hired a designer, I hired a strategist, I got brand photos, all these different things that I did and spent money and time on. And I put my all into launching the book on social media. and after I did that, I just kind of felt empty inside. Like it wasn't super successful I didn't feel celebrated and connected.
I just kind of felt tired and confused by what I was really doing
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: And the more time and energy I put into Instagram, the more. I just felt my sort of like codependent habits or anxious attachment style really flare up. Like
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: The more I [00:24:00] like paid attention to the app. The more I checked the app, the more I took
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: likes and comments to mean, you know, I, I just deeply connected it to like self worth myself image.
I didn't think I was good enough unless Instagram comments told me I was good enough, things like that
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: you know, I didn't think this picture was good enough unless I got more likes than this other picture or as many likes as somebody else's picture. And so I really got stuck in all of these loops over and over again. And at the start of 2021, I sat down and I wrote a list of my rules for Instagram that year. And these always sound familiar to people who struggle with social media, but it was things like, I will open the app on Monday morning and share these things and then delete it from my phone until Thursday. And then I'll open the app again and I'll engage with comments and I'll reply and I'll post some stories and I'll delete it again. And I only share about these things, but not these topics. And I'm turning comments off. Actually I didn't put turning comments off on the rules 'cause that didn't exist when I was leaving
Rachel Duncan: Oh [00:25:00] yeah.
Amelia Hruby: That's a revision that's happened in my
Rachel Duncan: You would've now. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: I would've now, um, it was probably something more like I won't respond to comments on posts or things like that.
Like I set all these rules and when I finished writing the list of rules, I reread it and I had this sort of breakthrough moment that the only other time in my life that I had needed that many rules around something was when I had been in a toxic relationship that I had to go
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: plenty of therapy to work through and get out of. And that therapy helped me recognize my codependent patterns, my anxious attachment
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: style, and kind of think through how can I change my behavior? And so something about making the list of rules just gave me this sudden clarity that I was doing it again
Rachel Duncan: yeah.
Amelia Hruby: And I sort of had this conversation with myself where I was like, all right, you have three options.
You can keep
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: and ignore the breakthrough you just had, which never works. You can keep doing [00:26:00] this and go to all the therapy again and try to get over it, or you can just stop doing it. You just get off of Instagram,
Rachel Duncan: Right.
Amelia Hruby: just leave social media
Rachel Duncan: you, could you have learned from the, the example that it reminded you of, you know, I mean, to put it even darkly, like it's, it's very much the addiction cycle, right? This is the story of, of, you know, someone who's maybe trying to, uh, break an addiction with a substance use on their own without support would have those kinds of rules, you know, and it is, it's a very fragmented way to try to heal.
It's actually not, you look probably looking at that list as like, this is not like the way you heal something. This is the way you restrict something. This is the way you cut it apart in a thousand pieces. It's actually not towards growth. This, I think, one of these things, and like how I talk about with, with money, it's, I think we feel really fragmented when it's like, is that how I do anything else in my life?
Like, do I do all these like, restrictive things with, you know, I don't know, like maybe exercise or, you know, another aspect of my life [00:27:00] like. Oh no, I, this is not how I do other things. Or this is not how I do things anymore. Which almost sounds like your insight, like, oh, there's an old, there's a, there's a ghosty shadow here, a part of myself that I worked hard to heal and here it's come up in this other way.
And such a, like, I think when we look at social media, we look at also money and stuff like that. We're actually looking towards how can we experience more wholeness knowing that these things can bring up this feeling of fragmentation.
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: And the fragmentation is part of the experience to keep us in it.
'cause it's doing both things. It is the paper cut and the bandaid. Paper cut. Bandaid, paper cut bandaid. And when, when do we experience that? I'm okay. I'm whole and I'm complete. You won't get it there, right? It's just paper cut bandaid, paper cut, bandaid.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah, I
Rachel Duncan: and that, that was my experience too, like. I'm not, I don't [00:28:00] feel like I'm growing from
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: this.
Um,
Amelia Hruby: Yeah,
Rachel Duncan: yeah.
Amelia Hruby: and I think that there is at least limited research on this, probably more than limited by now, but like if we think about, many of you know the whistleblowers who came out of Facebook or Meta and said that Meta
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: has data on how social media harms teen girls specifically.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: It promises them connection and beauty and it offers them image after image of thinness and self-harm. And so
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: we, it's not metaphorical what you're saying, right? Like the
Rachel Duncan: No.
Amelia Hruby: like papercut
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: bandaid is so literal
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
and
Amelia Hruby: research has been done internally and externally from these companies to show that. And I think when I look to the research, it's primarily around like younger users.
Rachel Duncan: sure.
Amelia Hruby: tell me how are all the millennials doing?
Rachel Duncan: The millennial.
Amelia Hruby: happening for our self image? But I have my own [00:29:00] experience and the experience of all of the people I've spoken to on the podcast like yourself, Rachel, to you know, point me to the fact that yes, it exactly like there's a certain promise of social media and it tends to offer us almost the opposite of that dressed up as the thing we think we want and it shapes what we think that we want.
Rachel Duncan: It does.
Amelia Hruby: So that's a big piece of it too
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: Like I, I really
you know, I hear people talk
about at this stage in social media, I'm not really meeting or finding people who feel like when they go on the apps, it's just a jolly good time and they're doing fine. And maybe five years ago I was like, I had friends who were just casual users who were like, this is chill. Like, I'm fine here
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: Like I can get on and off and I, I can be whole in this space.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: it has just twisted and tightened and warped, and the algorithms have just gotten more and more extractive as these companies try to make more and more money. [00:30:00] And you know what's happening is they are injuring our attention, which makes it harder for them to get the attention from us
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: So they just have to tighten the screws, they have to. Paper cut deeper. You know, they have to do more to get the same amount of attention. It's almost, I haven't thought about this analogy before, but we could make one to like the process of getting oil out of the earth. Right. In the beginning, there
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: huge reserves, like oil,
Rachel Duncan: It was just gushing.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
gushed from
Amelia Hruby: the ground. The same way our attention did. It was just, attention was everywhere. People were just hanging out. They were so excited to be online. They were like, give me something to look at. Right? But now the oil that's available that's being mined is so hard to get and it's lower quality. And the same thing can be said for our attention. It's so hard to get, and it's lower quality, so it costs the companies more to get it from us, but because of capitalism, they refuse to make any less money. So they are going to these extremes. And I think [00:31:00] that is why I say I don't know anyone who feels good on the apps anymore.
You know, even when I talk to like my 75-year-old aunt
who's on Facebook and like just trying to talk to her friends. Even she's facing all these issues where she's like, someone impersonated
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: her recently made a whole account just pretending
Rachel Duncan: Um,
Amelia Hruby: to be her. You know?
Rachel Duncan: yeah.
Amelia Hruby: I just don't know any social media users who aren't encountering some really fundamental issue with their attention or their identity or their self-worth, or their digital security on social media. It's just become such a harmful place.
Rachel Duncan: Or even as fundamental as getting enough sleep or, you know, um, you know, the doom scrolling at night. So like, I did wanna ask you about, you know, a theme that comes up with folks in the Money Healing Club is, okay, my, you know, I wake up in the morning, I've got a, you know, a pretty good plan. I've got a good buffer, I have a lot of spoons.
If anyone knows Spoon Theory, right? I got my 10 spoons, I'm good. And [00:32:00] like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna cook at home today. And then the day goes on and you use up your spoons and you have a shit day at work. And, and then you're just like, I can't wrap my head around that. And you get your DoorDash and then you, you thought you would, oh, I need to read that book, or I wanna write my novel.
But you start doom scrolling and then the products are offered to you and, you know, you're buying a new sweater set, or you know, a cruise and, you know, you wake up the next day like what the, you know, who was that last night? And so, so often. You know, the social media come comes in and the doom scrolling.
We all call maybe, geez, we call it doom scrolling casually doom.
Amelia Hruby: I know.
Rachel Duncan: Everyone like, what a word. And it has real direct financial implications. You know, when, when I work with folks with impulse spending, that is a huge one. So it's like, okay, this isn't a willpower thing when you enter into a space where your willpower is non-existent, and they found all these ways to work against it.
Um, and I think [00:33:00] relationship with money has a lot to do with relationship to social media, at least, at least for my audience. So I'm wondering how you could reflect on that. Like do you, did you notice a shift in your, in your spending or your cons? You know, how you were as a consumer after being off of social media?
Amelia Hruby: Oh, 100000%. Let me tell you, you need to budget, quote unquote, you're trying to spend less money. If you leave social media, you'll just magically spend less money. It was like the, the only money hack I have to offer is get off of social media because you will see less stuff. So you will want less stuff and you will buy less stuff like, and
Rachel Duncan: Okay. Not joking. I'm gonna make my list of a hundred, a hundred ways to get better with money. That's gonna be,
Amelia Hruby: Leave social media is
one of them. Like I and I, I say that from firsthand personal experience because you know I
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: would, when I was on social media when I was incredibly active, I would've told you, I would've said to you, social media doesn't impact what I buy. No way. Like I'm a smart consumer
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: I only [00:34:00] buy stuff I really
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: want and i, I don't think I was lying to myself, but I couldn't see it. I couldn't see
Rachel Duncan: No.
Amelia Hruby: The, like subliminal levels that I was being influenced on. And I couldn't understand how like being in the midst of all of these aspirational images made me want things that it didn't occur to me to want otherwise. So in the book, I have this sort of funny list of stuff that I bought because I saw it on social media
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: you know
Rachel Duncan: Oh, yes.
Amelia Hruby: and
it convinced me that there was a problem I had
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: that I didn't have before I saw it.
So it includes things like, you know, so many candles, so many leggings. I own so many sets of girlfriend collective leggings
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: 'cause I saw them on social media
Rachel Duncan: I did that too. I did that too.
Amelia Hruby: It also includes, let's see, like, uh, this doormat that I have at my house that I thought was cute and saw on somebody's stuff, and like, I still have it.
That's a fine purchase, I suppose,
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: but like, I didn't need to spend [00:35:00] $80 at anthropology that day. It had never occurred. I wasn't looking for a doormat
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: it just
was cute. So I bought it
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: that
like its cute So I bought it cycle came up over and over
Rachel Duncan: Yep.
Amelia Hruby: for me again. So I think kind of two things in my experience, two things would happen on social media.
I would just see things that I liked and I just buy them because it was so easy. There was no friction. It's like
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: Ariana Grande song. Like I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it, or whatever.
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: very seven rings. Um, or being on social media would convince me that I had these problems or honestly, like these flaws that I could solve with a purchase. And these
flaws were
Rachel Duncan: that's it.
Amelia Hruby: things that never would've occurred to me before, right
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: Like, you know. The fabric of, I'm trying to think of a good example. I mean, so many things to do with wrinkles on my face.
Rachel Duncan: Oh, I have an example. I have, right, right. Yeah, I have, I'm acne prone. So yeah, I'm all up in there. And also I'm perimenopausal, so I'm getting also some good education, but like, oh my [00:36:00] God, basically I'm gonna die if I don't get a weighted vest, everybody. And I'm panicking about I have to have a weighted vest.
I have to have it. And everyone's saying, and it's like pseudoscience and da da da. And there are these like quote doctors saying it. And I actually brought it up in a club call the other day and we had one of our, uh, members is a nutritionist, and she was like. Honey, I got you. And she sent me all this great information, like there's no science behind it and like, just like doing some workouts, like, you know, and oh, it was so good to get, but I was in this tunnel of, I kind of knew I was being duped, but it felt so real.
And if you take care of your health, you wear a weighted vest. And um, you know, I was like, yeah, I was comparing products. I was all the way down the line. And then I'm so glad I paused. I brought it up with someone who knows this shit and, you know, and I, I don't know, I still have my bike, but it was Oh yeah and I didn't realize, I thought I was taking care of myself by buying that and, um, yeah,
Amelia Hruby: this is why I own hypoallergenic
Rachel Duncan: that'll do it.[00:37:00]
Amelia Hruby: pillows. I'm like,
Rachel Duncan: Oh,
Amelia Hruby: I was told that was a problem when in fact, actually I just needed to wash my pillows more often.
Rachel Duncan: Just wash your pillows.
I mean, basically I was like, take more walks and lift weights is like, what's like the boring shit we already know. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: and, and this is so human, right? Like we, maybe we have a problem, whether that be perimenopause or allergies or, you know, with my doormat, like my house isn't quite cute enough, whatever the problem is.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: And we're presented with this purchase that will just solve it for us.
Rachel Duncan: Yes,
Amelia Hruby: But so often it doesn't. I mean, maybe in the doormat example, it just solved it for me. But if you bought the weighted vest, you still have to go on all the walks. You still gotta wear it around
Rachel Duncan: yes.
Amelia Hruby: You still have to do it
Rachel Duncan: Yep,
Amelia Hruby: Like I bought the pillows
Rachel Duncan: yep,
Amelia Hruby: but they just didn't do anything that was just like actually a false promise, I think, for me at least
Rachel Duncan: yep.
Amelia Hruby: So I think that social media is, you know, something that Jaron Lanier says in his book is that if we [00:38:00] are using social media, we are consenting to hyper personalized advertising every second we are on the apps
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: And so no wonder, especially at the end of the day, that we are not quote unquote strong enough, heavy quotes there
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: to resist
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: hyper personalized advertising based on exactly the problem you've been thinking about that day, providing exactly the solution that should resolve it for exactly the price that you can pay and after pay payments for the next 10 years, right?
Like it's all right there and it feels so easeful
Rachel Duncan: yeah.
Amelia Hruby: after everything has been so hard. So
Rachel Duncan: Yes. That's it,
Amelia Hruby: Of course. We're just opting into that. It's much easier than going for the walks or
Rachel Duncan: right?
Amelia Hruby: washing the pillows, right?
Rachel Duncan: All and then
Amelia Hruby: I would rather press purchase than go put my pillows in the wash.
And I still feel that way sometimes
Rachel Duncan: absolutely. And the real harm is then, oh, if [00:39:00] you spend too much money, that's a you problem. That is the thing that absolutely enrages me. It's like, this is not a you problem. You, you're in a system that's designed to extract your money from you. This is, and they're like, oh, well it's your problem. You let us extract your money from you.
What the fuck? Like, you know, are these ads, oh, frictionless pay as if that were a problem that needed solving? No, we need frictionless saving. We need frictionless, like ethical investing. That's where I want less friction. No one asked for frictionless pay. I don't think, I dunno was it really a problem for people to like, take out their credit cards?
Apparently that was a problem that, that now we really needed to tap our phones. Like I just, I just don't see these as problems that needed solving. We, we need a little friction. We and I talk about that bringing in a little bit of natural friction because I'm sorry guys. We gotta do it ourselves because the system won't bring that friction in.
Like it's not in their best interest to do that. And why? I mean, in my world, personal finance, but I think also just [00:40:00] becoming a more whole person is an act of rebellion,
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: especially right now. It's such an act of rebellion to experience the wholeness that we all inherently have.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: And, and we get it through, you know, through genuine connection.
We get it through tending our attention garden. Um, which I would love to talk about as, as well. It's, it is, it's an act of, there's a little bit of, um, going against the grain. There's an experience of that. I think at the beginning, the little record scratch, and one question I love asking my clients is, um, tell me about a time where you rebelled against something and whatever.
That story that, that's the nugget we need to, that's the seed
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: actually to get better with money. And I think some people like, oh, I think I need to conform more. I need to be more mainstream. It's actually, oh, it's actually the opposite because the conformity in the mainstream is gonna have you spend everything.
I would love to ask you about your attention garden. Something you kind of, um, and the, and I love you actually had a, [00:41:00] a lovely little bookmark, um, five rules for gardening your attention, which I love this metaphor. I, I also wanna say I have a, uh, I've done a lesson about how to think about investing like gardening because the metaphors really, really work there too.
So
Amelia Hruby: yeah.
Rachel Duncan: tell us about your attention garden. And I also love to know about your actual garden and how it's growing.
Amelia Hruby: Yes, of course. Gladly. Yeah. So what I've found just broadly, whether we're talking about attention and social media or money or time, is that anywhere we are using an economic model, if we can shift to using an ecological model,
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: it often is exactly like the healing we need because. Within economics at this point. There's always scarcity embedded there, like economics in its original definition
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: I talk about this in the book, it wasn't about scarcity,
Rachel Duncan: No.
Amelia Hruby: But now it is often defined [00:42:00] as the study of how scarce resources are distributed. So I think economics
Rachel Duncan: All right.
Amelia Hruby: Has been co-opted by scarcity or colonized by scarcity
Rachel Duncan: All right.
Amelia Hruby: we could say.
So if you're using an economic model, you're using a scarcity frame framework or a mindset. If we move to an ecological model, we can move into an abundance framework or mindset
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: and that is healing that we all need. so that's the same move I try to make in the book is to understand like, okay, if attention is not an economic resource, what is it?
It's expansive, it's generative, as I've already said. Like how do we understand it ecologically and to do that, I talked about gardening, which is, you know, the experience I have with nature and with trying to grow things and trying to shift my relationship to plants and the planet and myself honestly, and other people.
And so in the book, I offer five principles for gardening your attention. And they're really meant to pull us out of [00:43:00] the mainstream, to invite us to notice where our attention is going, what's happening, and then to begin to shift it toward the things we actually want to tend to the things that we care
Rachel Duncan: Hmm.
Amelia Hruby: about, the things that we want more of in our life. and so I'll briefly just kind of mention the principles. The first principle of cultivating your attention garden is to explore what's already present. Because if gardening. Hmm In the ground, in the earth with plants, you begin with the soil that's there. You begin with the weather where you live, you begin with the current conditions you have to notice.
And I think every transformative practice begins with noticing. So if we're gardening, we're noticing that's our first step. And like when you think about that with your attention, it's noticing what do you pay attention to?
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
what do you not pay attention to? What do you wish you paid attention to? Where does that wish come from? How does your attention [00:44:00] feel? How's your relationship to time feel? All of these things come up when we start to notice. Once we've noticed we can begin to make changes. So principle two is start small because like for all the reasons we've talked about around, you know, my relationship to restriction, my relationship to rules.
Amelia Hruby: Like I'm not here to offer anybody a detox strategy for their attention
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: Like, that's not how I roll. So.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: I'm not interested in telling you, like, throw your phone into the sea or like get rid of the internet in your house. Right? Like, I'm not gonna say that because it, that's not how change works for me.
It's not
Rachel Duncan: No.
Amelia Hruby: in one go. It's these small shifts that you make because you want to make them. So once you've noticed what your attention is going with, start small. I invite people to like carve out a pocket of attention that feels really good
Mm-hmm.
and it may take some time to find it, like for me. And it sounds like for you, Rachel, like reading was this for me, I [00:45:00] love to read
a, yeah, it's like something I already know I love, like I have a sense, I love it. Another one that comes up a lot for clients is like hobbies they loved as a kid, that often comes up as part of their healing process. Like I love to color, I love to do collage, I love playing piano. And like it's often an old love.
Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: I'd love to bring that up. And that feels starting small because you've had some experience with it. And I wanted, this made me laugh 'cause you talk about radishes or you're start small as well. And my dad was a, was a home gardener as well and, and he'd say I always plant radishes 'cause it makes me feel like a good gardener.
Amelia Hruby: Hmm. Yes. They always grow and they grow first
Rachel Duncan: Yeah. They always grow.
Amelia Hruby: And so you're like
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: already won the garden before we even really
Rachel Duncan: Done.
Amelia Hruby: got started. So
Rachel Duncan: I have food to eat. It doesn't matter if you don't like radishes. There are radishes.
Amelia Hruby: 100% that I always start with radishes because they're so easy to grow from seed. They grow
Rachel Duncan: Yep.
Amelia Hruby: it's cold and weird and dreary outside. Yes. I,
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: always my start small
Rachel Duncan: it's always your little, your, your ego boost like you're getting [00:46:00] there. Yeah. Yep.
Amelia Hruby: And I try to emphasize this in the book too, is like some people, I think, well, I'm sure people do this with money habits, but something I see with like social media habits is instead of starting with something that feels good, we start with something that we perceive as like our biggest bad habit
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: We go right to the hurt, right to the hardest thing
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: I personally have found that just always like sets me up to abandon any attempt to change. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be really hard and I'm not gonna like it. I'm probably not gonna stick with it. That that, that's not gonna be the first
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: thing I stick with
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: And so same with attention, like go towards
Rachel Duncan: Yes,
Amelia Hruby: you enjoy and find some time for that. And I love that you're saying like people surface these hobbies from their childhood. think that happens because in when we're younger, we have a different relationship to time,
Rachel Duncan: yes.
Amelia Hruby: which means, we have a different relationship to attention.
So we can bring that back into the present, right? Because when you're a child, your time has not yet been put on the factory clock the way it has for all of us who do [00:47:00] wage labor. And so that's where we can begin to like reclaim attention by reclaiming some, some time. But like start small. Don't start with the expectation of like i'm only gonna read books for 72 hours a week.
Like start
Rachel Duncan: Right,
Amelia Hruby: I'm gonna read a book for seven minutes this week. Like thats beautiful,
Rachel Duncan: right.
Amelia Hruby: right?
Rachel Duncan: Yep.
Amelia Hruby: and then from there, there are a few other principles. Principle three is be intentional, then let go of control. You know, I'm, again, I'm sure you say this with money, but like trying to control it is often the fastest way for me to step into a perfectionist mindset, step into an all or nothing
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: way of thinking or acting. But also with gardening. Like you can't control the weather, like you can't
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: the conditions. You can't control if the bugs show up. So we can set aside the time to nurture our attention, but also things are out of our control.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: and it may not happen that day or that week or that year. So just inviting in more gentleness. [00:48:00] principle four is embrace biodiversity and seasonal rhythms. So often
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: when people leave social media, it's something that took up a lot of their time and they sometimes look to me and they're like, what do I do now, Amelia? And I'm like, literally anything
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: you want. But also, you know, maybe try doing a bunch of different things because social media, I like to refer to it as like a monocrop for our attention.
It's like
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: one place we go and we may see different stuff there, but like they all take the same format, right? So memeified
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: or all posts in the same size. So like, it's very much just like training our attention to sort of get sucked into this one mode. And if you're not looking at social media, like I, I probably wouldn't say, like, take all of that time and just go read really intense nonfiction books with it
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: like go do a bunch of different stuff
Rachel Duncan: like
Amelia Hruby: Give yourself that pleasure.
Rachel Duncan: you can watch movies. Like, it doesn't have to be altruistic. It makes me think of a professor [00:49:00] who told me in grad school we were talking about self-care and everyone's like, I wanna do yoga. I'm gonna, and she was like, hang on. Can you, how about some suggestions for self-care that don't look like self-care?
Like, you know, it doesn't have to this, it's like you could stare at a wall. You could go on a walk, you could play video games. Like there are things you could replace it that don't like look perfect.
Amelia Hruby: yeah. And just embracing multiplicity and diversity in that
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: So instead of just being like, I'm gonna swap this one thing for this one thing, swapping this one thing for a
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: bunch of things and experimenting and seeing what you like and letting yourself, you know, go in new directions.
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: And then principle five is just to, or just it, it's actually a big one.
It's to linger with what's regenerative. So in gardening, something that hopefully you're fortunate enough to learn is that there are plants that come back year after year. And in the book, I share this anecdote of planting iris bulbs with my [00:50:00] dad when I was younger. And I hated it. I was like, this is, these are ugly.
They go in the ground, nothing's happening. It's so much work. Doing yard work was like the bane of my 12-year-old existence. so I was like delighted when the bulbs became flowers. And then I was like downright shocked those flowers came back year after year and we didn't have
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: to do anything else. I think that gardening our attention can work this way as well because
Rachel Duncan: Yeah,
Amelia Hruby: you know, what we know about the brain and neural pathways is like we can build grooves that make it easier for us to pay attention to the things we want to pay attention to. It is a lot of work to get your brain out of the groove of picking up your phone and scrolling,
Rachel Duncan: totally. I mean, there's grief there, there's motor, there's like, oh, my thumb just goes there. Like, there's so much we have adjusted to with a high reward experience. So yeah, when it comes spending and spending money, impulse [00:51:00] spending, and social media, there's, I like we're talking about high reward activity here so.
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: it, this, the switch is gonna be hard. Like it's not gonna be easy. Um, but it won't always be hard. It, there's a grief, there's a transition and every no needs a yes. That's, that's my mantra. Every no needs a yes. We actually don't remove anything. If we think about human behavior, there's no negative behavior.
You're always doing something.
Amelia Hruby: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Duncan: So it's all actually about what you're saying yes to, not about what you're saying no to. And then you don't feel like the, the, I think that shifts the perspective of grief, loss, restriction. It's like, no, I'm actually saying yes to these things. And it take, it does take some time, but your thumb won't it.
It will. It's fine. You won't grab for your phone, you won't hear it ringing. When it's not ringing. It it, but it does. It takes some time. And I think that's very real. That that's hard. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: absolutely. But just like you carved out that [00:52:00] groove that like turned to your phone, like you can create other neural pathways. You can build in new modes and new, you know, sort of vessels for your attention and they can over time become as easy as easy or innate or even natural to you as picking up your phone has become, right.
Rachel Duncan: Yep.
Amelia Hruby: You can pick up a book just the same way you pick up your phone you. Let yourself shift your patterns or your habits or your desires. And again,
And again, that's why I think,
toward pleasure is what we wanna do here. It's much easier to change
Rachel Duncan: yeah,
Amelia Hruby: if you want the thing you're working toward than if you're trying
Rachel Duncan: that's it.
Amelia Hruby: discipline yourself into it this is true with money this is true with food. This is true with social media. This true with movement. This is true with all of the different threads
been weaving in here today, like identifying something else that you want. And [00:53:00] my
experience
to actually make a change.
Like picking a different
Rachel Duncan: Yes,
Amelia Hruby: Yes. Is the path toward making these shifts. So instead of centering a new No
Rachel Duncan: that's exact. Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: or going from yes
to no.
Rachel Duncan: I could not agree more. I love that, Amelia. I do. Maybe we could end with, I'd love to know what, what is literally growing in your garden? I mean, we're in harvest season right now. We're in beautiful Virgo September season. And what are you harvesting? Literally?
Amelia Hruby: Yes. Yes. Let me bring it back to the, the
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
actual
Amelia Hruby: physical material garden you asked me about earlier.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah. So I live in Nebraska and I
have some gorgeous raised beds in my backyard.
I live in Lincoln so I live in a city. I'm not like on a farm somewhere
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: I. As we record this, I'm looking out my window at this massive indeterminate cherry tomato plant that we have grown.
Rachel Duncan: Ooh.
Amelia Hruby: That is so big because I failed to prune it in August when I was traveling,
and right now it has a lot of green [00:54:00] tomatoes on it because it got cold early this year, like the weather really dipped in. Actually most parts of the US I think we got this sort of polar air coming down from Canada, and so my tomatoes did not all ripen. They grew on the vine, because the plant's
The too big and the air is too cold.
they didn't get rip. So I'm looking at dozens and dozens and dozens of tiny green tomatoes that I'm going to pick and then ripen in the dark in my basement over the course of fall,
Rachel Duncan: Smart.
Amelia Hruby: we also have green beans going, we have parsley going, I think I have just picked my final green pepper and potatoes, which are two other crops I tried out this year
Rachel Duncan: wow.
Amelia Hruby: So that's, that's the garden right now.
Rachel Duncan: Oh, home grown potatoes. You never think a potato as flavor until you eat one that's homegrown.
Amelia Hruby: It is so true, and I truly like that was an experiment for me this year. I just got a bunch of grow bags
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: and I cut apart potatoes that had grown eyes in my cabinets and I put them in and I watered them.
Rachel Duncan: Mm-hmm.
Amelia Hruby: and they did regrow. I think I can fine tune some things for more [00:55:00] success.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah.
Amelia Hruby: but it was a fun way of, you know, sort of making something from not nothing but like a discarded vegetable in my pantry
Rachel Duncan: Yes,
Amelia Hruby: turning it into many, many
Rachel Duncan: yes.
Amelia Hruby: more edible vegetables.
So also again, a lesson in
Rachel Duncan: I love that
Amelia Hruby: regeneration and abundance
Rachel Duncan: Yes. I, as you say, I look out my window and, uh, we, we planted a few sunflowers last year and I had let them go to seed. And guess what? I got a front yard full of sunflowers that I didn't plant. And they're so fun. I feel like we are solely supporting the and was population of the neighborhood.
And I, I love it. And it was, I didn't do anything, you know, I probably should have thinned them out a little bit. They, they're like trees. Um, but it's been so fun and, um, I feel a little subversive.
Amelia Hruby: I love it. I love a sunflower. They are
subversive. They're so tall
Rachel Duncan: Oh
Amelia Hruby: they're doing their thing
Rachel Duncan: yes.
Amelia Hruby: and they make like wonderful seeds. You can eat at least some varieties do. So
Rachel Duncan: You have to say these are like super tiny. I don't think you can, they're the little guys.
Amelia Hruby: yeah,
Rachel Duncan: [00:56:00] yeah. Well, and okay, so you guys. So Amelia's book is coming out this fall and you just go to, it's so easy to remember. Yourattentionissacred.com, where you can either get on the wait list or purchase it, depending on what time you hear this.
And you guys it is, look at this. It's a manifesto. It is all of what, how many pages of Amelia? A hundred pages, y'all, dude, like a couple sittings. I got this done and it's one of my best reads and I, I, I mean, get out your highlighter. I think I underlined every other line in this book, so I think I would love it even if I didn't know you, but because I know you, um, I loved it even more and I loved hearing your voice.
Read it to me. And I think there is gonna be an audio book as well, is that right?
Amelia Hruby: yes. There will be
Rachel Duncan: Yes.
Amelia Hruby: an audiobook available. You'll have to buy
Rachel Duncan: Okay,
Amelia Hruby: it from my website. You can't get it from audible
Rachel Duncan: perfect. Okay. Gotcha. All right, so everyone, this is the stocking stuffer of the year. Well, Amelia, thank you so much for being on the podcast, and, uh, I look forward to all of the, the content and guidance that you [00:57:00] give, all of us navigating, um, navigating this world.
Amelia Hruby: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: Thank you.
Amelia Hruby: Thank you so much, Rachel. I am grateful to be in conversation with you and to also receive your money healing wisdom, always. So thank you.
Rachel Duncan: Any day. Any all day. Thanks Amelia.
Rachel Duncan: Your homework is to think about what is your relationship with social media right now? What is it giving you? What is it taking away from you and. What would you like to move towards more often? Would you like to read more, garden more, walk more pet your cat more? Who knows? What do you want to do more of that social media might be getting in the way of, do you wanna try a little experiment?
You are not alone in that being both daunting and maybe exciting. I'd love to hear your story. Head on over to moneyhealingclub.com/podcast where you can leave me a voicemail . you don't have to [00:58:00] ask a question. I just wanna hear your story. Are you a person who has left social media?
I would love to hear what were the ins and outs of that? What were some surprising benefits? What were some surprising pain points and costs of it?
Regardless I really think
that Amelia's book, is a book for our ages. I strongly recommend it. It is so well written. It is such a good read. It's one that I very truly will read again and again and again.
So let me know. Are you gonna change your relationship with social media? You don't have to. This is just an invitation to give it a try if you like to. Subscribe to the podcast so you get all future episodes. I'll see you next time.