Hello Nervous Math
Photo by Milles Studio via Unsplash.
Nervous math.
One of my clients coined that term, and I fell in love with it immediately.
Over the years, I've practiced this habit more times than I can count.
Nervous math—or anxious math, as I tend to call it—is when you run your numbers to try to soothe an internal swirl of fear and feelings of “not-okayness.”
You feel unsettled.
You start tallying what's in your bank account.
You calculate how long it will last.
You try to predict which clients will re-enroll.
You brainstorm workshops or groups that could bring in more income.
All fueled by the misunderstanding that:
“If I have this much by this date, then I'll be okay.”
It looks responsible. But often, this behavior is a coping strategy—your mind trying to soothe anxiety through control.
There's nothing wrong with reviewing your numbers. What matters is the energy behind it.
Are you grounded in financial stewardship?
Or outsourcing your peace to your bank account?
Because when nervous math becomes a go-to coping strategy, it does the opposite of what you want.
It reinforces the illusion that your safety lives in the numbers.
That somehow, those numbers will protect you from pain.
But the truth is: you're already in pain.
That's what anxiety is. It's a form of suffering.
And that suffering is only prolonged by playing the game of nervous math.
Do you see it?
This kind of math time-travels you out of your actual life and into a fantasy.
A month from now. Three months. A year.
And in that dream, you're behind. Failing. Not enough.
From that place, your nervous system ramps up.
Worry takes the wheel.
You begin plotting and planning how to prevent the imagined disaster.
But what if that future your mind predicts… doesn't even happen?
A friend of mine, a former actor, once spiraled for weeks about the possibility of losing his health insurance. In that industry, coverage depends on weeks worked. He was just shy of qualifying, with only three months left to get more weeks.
So, he spent hours running scenarios.
What would he do if he lost it?
How long would it take to get it back?
What would people think?
The suffering didn't come from losing the insurance—it hadn't happened. It came from the story his mind created—and the protective strategies he acted out in response.
And then about two months later…
Out of the blue, he got invited to join a project he'd worked on years prior.
Just like that, insurance secured.
All that worry? For a future that never came.
And this happens all the time. To most of us.
We give away the present—our actual lives, the only place where true safety exists—to imagined futures that may never arrive.
Our mind thinks we can't handle the projected pain, so it distracts us preemptively.
But the distraction is pain. The disconnection is suffering.
As Byron Katie says, “Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it.”
Reality is what's actually here:
Sensations. Breath. Light coming through the window.
Clients we care about. Food in the fridge. A roof overhead.
This moment.
Let me ask:
Are you worried about what you'll eat for dinner on September 28, 2025?
Probably not.
You trust that when you're hungry, you'll know—and you'll respond accordingly.
And yet, with money, we don't often extend ourselves that same trust.
We look at what's in our account and assume: This is all there will ever be.
If the mind can't see a clear path forward? Panic.
Cue nervous math…where the cycle repeats.
For the past year or so, I've been experimenting with letting go of this habit.
No indulging the urge to predict the future. No outsourcing my peace to my projections.
I think I only gave in once—and even then, I could see it.
I was asking my numbers to give me something they couldn't.
So I stopped.
Instead, I turned toward the sensations in my body.
I let the energy move.
I waited until I was regulated before making decisions.
Only then did I check in:
Do I actually need to bring in money right now?
(Am I “hungry” in a real way?)
Or is this just my old pattern—trying to soothe my discomfort through control?
If the answer was yes, I listened—and let inspiration show me the next step.
That's how my Exhale program was born.
That's how I offered a special rate for my private retreat to my email community.
Those ideas came through from ease, not urgency.
What I've learned from this experiment so far:
The more I meet what is, the more I remember my okayness.
The less I follow worry, the less power it has.
The more I act from a grounded place, the more I'm amazed at how Life provides.
We are always being taken care of.
(It doesn't necessarily look that way or feel that way to our separate sense of self—and, some of Life's greatest care has come through my most painful moments.)
So the next time you feel the pull of future-tripping and nervous math, come back to now.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Your breath, breathing you.
Meet yourself, just as you are.
Only then will you see—there is nothing to fear. No monsters under the bed.
What's going to happen is going to happen.
And, if your fear does happen, you'll meet it—because you're capable.
Or it wouldn't be happening.
So why not let the future be and enjoy your precious life today?
Because this—right here—is all we ever really have.
With loving,
Amber
