What Most People Get Totally Wrong About Money (And It’s Costing Them Freedom), with Matt Morizio | #560

Are you unknowingly trapped in a fear-based relationship with money?

Many of us carry money beliefs passed down from childhood - beliefs rooted in scarcity, control, and unspoken fear. In this episode, Matt Morizio, founder of Reconstructing Wealth, reveals how transforming your mindset around money isn’t just about budgeting. It’s about confronting the stories you've been telling yourself and stepping into a life of clarity, purpose, and financial freedom.

• Discover how to identify and rewrite your personal money stories to build a healthier financial future.
• Learn the subtle but powerful shift from seeing money in terms of price to seeing it as a tool for impact and investment.
• Understand why surrendering the illusion of control might be the most liberating financial decision you ever make.

Press play now to uncover the mindset shift that could finally set you free from money stress and lead you toward a more abundant, purpose-driven life.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - Introduction & Episode Setup

01:30 - Guest Introduction: Matt Maurizio

03:24 - Childhood Money Stories & Early Mindset

07:12 - Fear of the Unknown and Money

10:02 - Learning the “Rules of the Game”

14:57 - Identifying and Rewriting Money Beliefs

19:30 - Scarcity vs Value/Investment Mindset

29:30 - Price vs Worth: A Deep Dive

34:24 - The Illusion of Control

41:02 - Resources, Giving, and Rewiring Money Identity

44:20 - Final Message

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Give up control and trust the journey, because life turns out far more beautifully when you’re not trying to drive it all yourself."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

Matt's website: https://reconstructingwealth.com

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Coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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🎙️ Want to be a guest on the podcast?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development interviews exploring key principles of personal development, self improvement, self mastery, personal growth, self-discipline, and personal improvement — all supporting a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas
If it feels like money is running your life and you keep falling into the same patterns, this episode is for you. Welcome to Personal Development Mastery, the podcast helping midlife professionals in transition turn uncertainty and pressure into clear direction and confident next steps. I am your host, Agi Keramidas.
Join us every Monday for an expert conversation with a guest and every Thursday for a shorter solo episode where I reflect and share insights and tools. This is episode 560 and today you will discover how to identify and rewrite your personal money stories and you will also understand why surrendering the illusion of control might be the most liberating financial decision you ever make. Before we dive in, if you are a midlife professional going through a transition, whether you're pivoting or stepping away from a long-term career, I offer one-to-one coaching to help you gain clarity, find direction and move forward with confidence.
To explore this, visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor or just tap the link in the show notes. Now let's begin. My guest today is Matt Maurizio.
Matt, you are the founder of Reconstructing Wealth, helping people transform their relationship with money, shifting from scarcity and stress to clarity and freedom. Through your journey and your work, you show that true wealth isn't about numbers, but about mindset, purpose and courage in the messy middle of life. Matt, welcome to the show.
It's a pleasure to speak with you today.

Matt Morizio
(2:01) Gosh, thank you for having me and I love how you say my name. It's beautiful. I feel like I'm in the mother country back in Italy when you say it like that.
Thank you for that.

Agi Keramidas
I'm Greek and I know, but I have learned a bit of Italian in the past, but it comes quite naturally for me to say it like that. I'm glad you appreciate it.

Matt Morizio
It sounded natural.

Agi Keramidas
Matt Maurizio. I'm looking forward to discussing with you today, Matt. The main thing is something that I believe involves many, I'm not going to say everyone, but I will say the majority of people listening, and that is our relationship with money.
And I mean that in more of the mindset or emotional way rather than the practicalities or the strategies or whether we save or not. Also, in the brief introduction of you, I talked about the messy middle, and that's something also that I intend to get your wisdom on. Let's start what I would like to start, and it will be related to our relationship with money or the money mindset as we can call it.
I saw that you describe yourself in your genius case study number one. Take us back. What was the sign that made you realize that your relationship with money was wrong and it was shaping your life, even your presence in the way that you didn't want to?

Matt Morizio
(3:47) Yeah, that's a really powerful spot to start because I could really begin at my childhood, but really pinpointing that moment in my life, in my journey, that I realized, dang, I had no idea. Honestly, for me, I had no idea there were other ways to think about money. It sounds silly because I'm in this world of finance where I help tens of millions of people, excuse me, tens of millions of dollars for people, help them manage their life saving.
It was not until going on maybe a decade ago at this point, but I'm 42, almost 42, so I'm in my 30s at this point. I have lived a life. I had five children when I started this business, started this industry, and my entire life, my mindset around money, which I didn't know I had.
I mean, we all have one. Most of us don't know that we have one because we don't think about it. So, I don't want this conversation to sound like foo-foo and pie in the sky type thinking.
Do you know what I mean? Because people can easily dismiss a conversation about money mindsets and relationships with money when they hear it because they're going to think like, oh, this guy's going to tell me to sit in gratitude and journal in the mornings and visualize my dreams. Sure, those are good things, but I actually think there is real value to calling out whatever your relationship with money is because we all have one.
I didn't know I had what mine was until I was early 30s and I jumped into this industry. So, to answer your question, when was it? I was early 30s, five children, married, had a house, two kids, and I finally, or I am suddenly, is a better way to say it, tasked for a career, I am tasked with helping people figure out their finances.
The nuts and bolts of financial planning, like come up with a plan, set goals, let's work backwards and figure out how to appropriately invest and leverage that money so that you can get to where you're trying to get to. All the things that financial planners do. Now that's my job and I describe it like this.
It's like I learned Greek by being plotted, just like plotted down in Greece and said, okay, go live. And I had to, if I wanted to function, I needed to learn Greek. I did that with the language of money.
I was inserted in this role of being a financial planner, never really giving the appropriate amount of time or attention to money mindset and how that stuff works and what causes us to make the decisions we make. But yet here I am speaking the language of money and at the same time learning through immersion. And as I learned through immersion, we'll say like, cause that's, if I was to learn Greek by being plopped in Greece, that's immersion based learning.
I learned it through money, the language of money through immersion. And as I started to understand more about the rules of the game, we'll call it, I realized that there were these like fears that I had that were unlocked, that I really didn't know existed. What they felt like prior to 30 years of my life were just these soft, dull weights, or sometimes these heavy burdens that just persisted in my mind and sort of weighed on my shoulders.
I'd always been the sole provider. So the necessity to eat and have a house and all of the things that has always fallen on me, I think that pressure that is a privilege for me in my house. I have seven children now.
I have my eighth on the way. So there's been a growing need to provide, but I never knew until my early thirties till I started to learn the language of money that dang, I actually had a very unhealthy outlook on dollars and cents and money and how it works. And as I've learned, I actually have, I am way less fearful than I ever was.
I learned that most of my fear and in turn, most of my mindset and relationship around money, most of that was fear of the unknown. And that's actually true with like 95% of the conversations I have with people. We all walk around with fear of the unknown more than anything else.

Agi Keramidas
That's great. And actually I will carry on with that because you said, in the beginning, you talked about the ways that we can think or one can think about money. And what I wanted to ask you, because you mentioned the fear in the end and with your experience and your clients and the people you speak with, what do you, can you define a bit more that particular, you said the fear of the unknown.
Can you clarify that? How, I will put a question like this. What are the two different ways of looking at money through that lens of fear of the unknown, either having it or not having it?
So perhaps we can make a direct contrast on that.

Matt Morizio
(9:05) Yeah. So I think the best way to articulate that answer is maybe with an image. Maybe I can tell a little bit of a story or just sort of paint an image of how people live their life.
So I would encourage anybody listening to this to think about your summer of eighth grade going into your freshman year of high school. When you reach the end of that summer, let's say like the last week of summer, and you're about to become a freshman for the first time ever, you're about to be in high school. You start to have these butterflies and these nerves and this anxiety around what it's going to be like to be a freshman in high school, because it's probably a new building.
There's probably students from multiple schools, all congregating to one. You don't know the layout or the teachers or who your classmates are going to be. Are you going to be picked on by the upperclassmen?
All these things that are running through your head that you don't know the answers to. But once you go to that school and you spend five or ten days, maybe let's call it a first week and a half of being a freshman, 80% of those fears and worries are now gone. All the stuff that you had the butterflies and nerves and the fast heartbeat on about becoming a freshman, they don't exist anymore because you know where your homeroom is, you know what your class schedule is, you know where those classes are and the teachers and your classmates are.
You're starting to get the rhythm of life as a freshman and you're no longer fearful of it. Well, I will compare it to us, and I say us because here I am at 32 or whatever it was, I was that person. And that's why I say I'm case study number one, because what I articulate to people are my truths.
So we all learn something about money and we usually learn it from our parents. And we usually don't learn it through communication because it's taboo in society to talk about money. So instead, as a parent, I learned firsthand that more is caught than taught with my kids.
So what we do as kids is we sort of catch whatever our parents feel and say and think about their money. Most of the time, it's unhealthy, it's fearful, it's scarcity driven, it's fear based. But we don't know the difference because we can't talk about it.
So we just sort of inherit that relationship. And then we bring that into adulthood. That's like being an incoming freshman and never entering freshman year.
We all walk around day to day lives, doesn't matter the age, 30, 40, 50, 60. We walk around like we're incoming freshmen because we've never crossed over that wall of the known. So to answer your question, there's the unknown and the known is really the two different lifestyles you can live.
The good news is there isn't a day in time that has more information than today. The accessibility to information to figure this stuff out has never been more abundant. So we all can cross that wall from the unknown to the known if we choose to.
A great place to start if you want to use AI, if you use chat GPT or any others, you could quite literally say, hey, I don't understand anything about personal finances, but I want to become an expert. Where do I start? That could be your first prompt on some AI tool.
And that will give you a pretty great starting point, probably. And then you could ask it to answer those questions if you want. Or you could ask it to give you more information.
Or you could expand upon stuff. But that's a great starting point. Quite literally, it's not the only change, but a major change in my life about finances.
It sounds overly simplified. But as a major reason for my relationship with money to change, quite literally has just become being exposed and understanding the rules of the game better because I never took the time to learn them.

Agi Keramidas
Tell me about, you know, you mentioned the rules of the game and I will go back for a moment because the beliefs, you said beliefs from the parents, would I be right to assume that one step to take would be to identify these beliefs?
Is that right? So, let's say one has identified a belief that they think about, you know, their childhood. I remember, oh, my dad used to say always that, you know, we don't have enough money for this or, you know, money doesn't grow on trees or whatever a common belief there might be.
My question is, what kind of steps or actions, actually, one can take to change that? Because, you know, understanding a belief that we carry, it's not necessarily easy, but, you know, we can do the work and then we have an aha moment and say, oh, my God, this is what has been happening all along.
But then changing that, it's not necessarily the same process. So, I would like to hear your thoughts on, you know, you mentioned the analogy of crossing over and getting into Freshman eventually.
So, how does one actually do that in that way? What is the step, the actual step they need to take in terms of the money mindset to cross over that border and go to the other side?

Matt Morizio
(14:57) Yeah, the first step that you mentioned is exactly right. I call them your money stories as a child. Like, one of my favorite questions to ask is, tell me a story from your childhood that really exemplifies the way you think about your money today.
And that's the work, man. Agi, you got it. That's the hard work.
That's that deep introspective journey that you're going to need to go on because you need to pull up the roots of this problem. We don't need to just mow the grass here and leave the weeds so that they look like grass. You have to actually dig out the weeds and pull them from the root.
So, you have to find where is this coming from? And I'm sure you can probably, everybody can probably think of something from their childhood, young adulthood that really can be an example story of, yeah, that's basically how I think about money. That right there, that thing, that story, that time, those words, those are my words.
Those are my mindsets. That's how I purchase things. That's how I make buying decisions.
And if you can get that, you can change that. So, I think that's the first step is to get there. And that's a lot of introspective hard work, but it's the work you need to do.
But once you're there, you're right. You can't stop there. You need to start to grow.
You need to continue your freshman year. You can't just stay an incoming freshman and then spend day one. You can learn about it.
Like I already shared that, so I won't repeat that part of searching AI or getting educated. Really, getting educated is a helpful thing. A big piece of people's fear, fear of the unknown, is not having a clue about what it costs to be them.
Most people don't understand what their current expenses are, their budget. You know, we call it budget as like a messy word, kind of like diet is a messy word. We all have a diet.
Our diet is the foods we eat. We may not be on a diet or dieting, meaning like we're not restricting calories or something, but we all have a diet. We all have a budget.
The budget is the money that comes in and goes out. We may not be paying any attention to our budget, but we all have it. And I always say, well, I heard it said Tony Robbins first, but your energy flows where your attention goes.
So if you start to pay attention to that money, what you're spending money on, where it's going out, and you track it for a month, two months, don't track it for the rest of your life. Calorie counting is a very difficult diet to be on for your whole life, but it does really work for a short period of time to give you a, to really shine light on what you're eating. Same way, like track your dollars that you're spending for a month or two months.
So you really understand, dang, okay, that's where that's going. Because as you're learning about the game of money, the rules of the game, you're going to learn that maybe an emergency account is something you need and investing for your future is important. You're concepts and will mean nothing to you until you know the foundational rule is what does it cost to be me and what's coming in?
Because then you can figure out, hey, there should be a big difference in my bank account every month, but I don't have, I don't have that. So money's leaking. There's holes in the pot.
Let me figure that out. Or you may figure out, dang, I am, I am.

Agi Keramidas
I will say, I want to interrupt here because I want to go back to the, rather than going into more tactical things, which of course the budget and I want to go back to the actual mindset or the way of thinking about money, which of course then will dictate actions. Maybe it would help if you tell us one of your, or perhaps your main belief that you actually changed the other way around when you stepped out of the fear of the unknown.
So how, what was the exact belief that you had before and after? So I'm sure that many can relate to that because there are some quite, you know, common ones. So in other, another way I could ask the same thing would be that fear of the unknown in terms of money and finances, how does it express itself in one's everyday life, shall we say?

Matt Morizio
(19:30) Really good. I appreciate you bringing me back there. That's a really good, good way to take this conversation.
I had a major fear of money and the fear, I didn't really realize that was fearful, but it was, it showed up in a very scarcity approach toward finances. So I did not buy things, things, even investments in my personal health or something that will bring joy to my children or anything. Like I did not think of them in terms of worth.
I thought of them in terms of price. So how much does that cost me? No, we can't do it.
How much does that thing cost? Yeah, okay, we could do that. Instead of saying, what's that, like, what's that worth to my family?
What's the investment? Where is that? I look at things as investments now and investment in my health and investment in my childhood's experiences and investment in my family's future.
And that really reshapes the decision making around how I'm using money, right? Like I used to just, if I had it, I would, I would use, I would spend it. Now I think of it as having it and using it because money should be a tool, not this God that you idolize.
So I think that's a really important distinction. I was very fearful of it. And here's what I will tell you I've learned.
And I'm, you know, in later innings of this ballgame from then a lot of people who are maybe listening to this and say, like, I don't even know what my mindset is. I'm not even there yet. It's taken time.
So this has been work. But I've understood now that not just me, but I will speak to you. My truth is that I have this, I had still sometimes half because those roots can be deep and it's hard to pull all the weeds.
This illusion of control around finances. I have this illusion of control that if I can just earn this much and just save this much and just spend this much, then at some point on that journey, I'm going to feel good. And I'm, and it's going to work out.
And I am living proof that a 10 year plan should just be torn up and thrown out the window. I had one child, maybe two children, actually at 10 years ago, I lived in a different state. I worked in a different industry.
None of what I'm doing today was on my radar 10 years ago, not a single thing besides wanting to stay married, you know, like that was on my radar. So thank you, God, I'm still married. But the rest of it, I thought maybe two kids was where it's going to stop.
I thought Boston, where I was born and raised was where it's going to end. You know, like, I had this illusion of control on my future that I actually had to release. And for me, it's in the form of faith.
And some people, you know, this is not a, this is not me saying anybody needs to believe any particular thing. But I do think foundationally, we all need to recognize that this life, this world, what we're doing here is bigger than us. It's not just about us.
And as soon as I released control of every single part of my finances, what I learned was that opened me up to really receive the life that I'm called to live. So part of that was actually deciding and this was not a strategic move, necessarily. I wasn't trying to strategically shift my relationship with money.
This was in this deep introspective journey. I'm like, dang, money has control on me. It's got its grips on me.
I don't like this. Part of that was like, I wanted to give. I wanted to give every month, every year.
I felt like that was a calling on my heart to do so. But I always kind of dipped my toes in it. Some months I would give, some months I would hold back because the money was tight and I had to pay the bills.
And then some months I would. And if you look at my life, my body of work, we didn't talk about this, but in my former life, I played baseball professionally with the Kansas City Royals. I played in their minor league system.
You really can't make it to that level of sport just dipping your toes in the water. You've got to go all in. And here I am at 40 with seven children as an entrepreneur, like we homeschool our kids.
No part of that journey has been this toe dipping journey. I'm a head first dive kind of guy, except giving was this toe dipping, fence riding area of my life that was incongruent with who I am and how I'm created. So I said, all right, I'm going to do this.
But in order for this to work for me, I got to set a separate account aside. I call it a blessing account. You call it whatever you want, a giving account, other people account, whatever you want to name it.
But it's a separate bank. It's not my bank because I knew if I looked at it in my own bank account, I would say that's my money and I'm going to use it how I want to. I had this illusion of control.
But as I gave up that control, I put it to a different bank designated for other people. That account is earmarked not for me, but it's for however God wants me to use it. I said, okay, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it every month.
Every time I get paid, I'm giving, I give 10% to it. And what that has done for me unintentionally now for my relationship with my finances, because I have given up control of it, right? I have released that, hey, that money is no longer for me.
That's for other people. And in turn, subconsciously, my entire mindset around money has been rewired without me trying, because I actually asked some PhD friends of mine in psychology that, because I was feeling that change, that shift internally, but I didn't have words for it. I didn't understand why.
And they told me that in psychology, there's one school of thought that says there's two root emotions, fear and love. And love is always the stronger, but the rest of the emotional tree stems from those two roots. I said, okay.
They said, you were living in this fear-based money state your whole life. Your parents gave it to you. That's how you thought around money.
But when you decided, you made that decision to freely give some of that thing that had its hold on you, subconsciously, your brain is rewiring itself to say, hey guys, we don't actually have to live in fear of this thing. We can live in a love state with this thing. It doesn't have its grips on me.
We're actually giving some away. So don't worry. We don't have to be fearful of it anymore.
Again, I didn't, that was not a strategic shift. That was a decision that I wanted to, that I felt put on my heart that I needed to do. But I will say that the act of disciplined giving has, more than anything else, totally reshaped my relationship with money.
It makes me realize money is a tool for other people. It's a tool for good. It's something that I can use to further and better other people's lives.
And the more I have of it, the more good I can do with it.

Agi Keramidas
This is great. And there were some things that I highlighted from your answer, your answers actually, because there were many things you said here. I will share some, you know, from my own reflection or repeating actually what you said.
And I will start with this last thing you were saying. You didn't mention the term tithing, but that's how I would, that's how it's called. And it's great that you reinforce something that, you know, it's been said over and over again by successful or wealthy people that this giving money or tithing a percentage of the money is some, I think it was Napoleon Hill that had put it like as one of the rules for success.
So that's one thing I will go back and you said something that I really want to share back because it was exactly the same with me. You said that 10 years ago, nothing of what you're doing now was in your horizon.
And I realized when you said that, exactly with me 10 years ago, nothing of what I'm doing now, I hadn't even thought about. So that's, I think it's a powerful thought when we think about, you know, the last 10 years of our life and how different we have been or evolved or that.
And there is also, and I'm going backwards in the conversation, something you said in the beginning of your answer, that I think it is important. I will say it in my own words, as I understood it, that instead of looking at the price of something, you look at its worth or its value or what it will bring back to you or to your family or to whatever it is that that money is used for.
And I think that is at least that's how I got it myself as a practical way that one can shift the mindset. So can we talk a little bit more, tell us a little bit more about this.
You know, there are so many things you opened now, but let's talk a little bit more about this way of thinking of price versus the worth of something, of, you know, even a bill. It is easier, you know, with something that we buy because we want to.
And it gets more difficult when it is something that we feel that we have to pay, like a bill. So perhaps if you share an example or some of your thoughts on this kind of differentiation so we can go a little bit deeper.

Matt Morizio
(29:30) Yeah. Man, there's a few stories that I that I'm thinking about that I think, you know, highlight that point. And I'm trying to decide which one maybe is the most meaningful.
Well, I'll continue this theme of just myself and using myself as the case study. Number one, we'll say my truth is my truth here. I used to say now.

Matt Morizio
(30:00) Oh, I should back up. I made four figures a year playing professional baseball. That's for anybody that's doing that math, that's less than $10,000 a year in the minor leagues.
You don't get paid while there. But I still had to live and eat and do all the things that everybody else had to do, pay rent. And then during that season, those five years of my life, I didn't have a dime of debt.
I just figured it out. Partially, it was easier to just rough it alone, you know, roughing it with seven children saying, we're all going to sleep on the couch now or sleep on the floor and eat ramen noodles is harder. But I also learned that I would never look at anything in that season of life as worth or value versus price.
It was always price. If it was too much, I didn't do it. If I could afford it, I did it.
I'm not here to say you should just be reckless and overspend and put yourself into tons of debt. But to highlight that point, last year alone, we'll say I invested because I now I communicate differently. What you'll find is as you look, when you start to change your relationship with money, the language, the words you use toward it start to change.
Like I invest in certain areas now, as opposed to I spend in certain areas. So I invested in my own personal development, meaning leadership mastermind, like a year-long leadership development program, because I recognize that if I want this business to grow, I need to grow people. People will grow the business.
It's not going to be me growing the business. So I know I need to invest in leadership. And I also know I need to invest in business coaching because I don't know what I don't know.
And I also need to invest in my personal health because if I can't keep up with the energy and the stamina that needs to exist in my life to both be the husband and father I want to be and grow the business I'm trying to grow, then I need to look at my health as an investment in me. So the dollars on a gym, dollars on whatever equipment that I need to buy, that kind of stuff is an investment in my future. All of that stuff is last year alone totals over $20,000 in my own life, probably more than that if I had to go look at it.
I would have never in a zillion years thought that I should spend that much money on stuff that has no immediate value in my mind. But as I start to understand the rules of the game, meaning like I know as an entrepreneur and as an individual the investment in me will outpace any investment in the stock market or real estate or crypto or you name it. What I can do and how I can execute on things will return a greater return than any of those other investments because I know that because I did the work to learn how the game of money works.
Because I know that I now see those types of expenses as investments, not spending, not overspending. And then of course like that does turn into over time this return on investment that really outpaces anything else that I could ever have done. But it was really the mindset and that's one major example of wow, never in a million
years could you have told me even 10 years ago, even five years ago, maybe five years ago, definitely
10 years ago before I got into this that hey one day you're going to be spending tens of thousands
of dollars on you and your own development because you know if you you're improving as a leader the
world around you is improving and that's going to be worth it. I would have been like you're out of your mind I'm going to use that on maybe some food and a cool vacation.
You know that's how I would have looked at it. But your language and your thoughts around how money is used starts to really shift as you start to learn the rules of the game.
And if you start to say things differently like invest versus spend or use versus spend, again like spend is the major word, or something costs this, the investment is this, that's a different mindset.
You start to say things like that like you'll know you're shifting from the inside out, you're changing from the inside out.

Agi Keramidas
This is great, thank you very much for this because it is as I said it is a practical way of you know starting to make a change or doing a change. I do have one more question that I will quickly and then I will wrap up and it relates to something you said about control or the illusion rather the illusion of control over you know in the financial situation and more importantly releasing that illusion of control.
What would you say to someone listening now that clings to that thought that I need to be in control of my money and they haven't necessarily realized what you just said?
What would you tell him or her?

Matt Morizio
(35:21) Well the first question I would ask is where are you at on your own personal faith journey? What does that mean to you? And I'm not saying what you need to believe but do you believe that there's more to it than this?
There's more to it than just where you're at and just you controlling calling all the shots and then one day you die and that's the end of it. And I say that because if you're going to give up control, if you're going to be in a position of surrender, you need to give it up and surrender to something that's bigger than you. If you don't believe there's something bigger, there's more at stake, more at play than just you then there is nothing to give up control to.
You are the only controller. So I would actually check that person and say hey where are you at on your faith journey? Do you believe that there's more to it than just you today?
If not then I get it. I understand why you don't want to give up control because there's nothing to surrender to but I would encourage that person to explore the idea that there's more to it. There are larger powers at play behind the scenes of life.

Agi Keramidas
And if they actually do and they do believe in something beyond themselves or bigger than themselves.

Matt Morizio
(36:50) Yeah then for that person I would tell them well I would probably ask more questions about where they're at but the questions would be along the lines of tell me about the last 10 years of your life. How much of it did you forecast and strategically play out versus how much has happened? And I would love to hear that answer.
I would also try to understand how important is that faith to you. Are you in full surrender? Because you cannot be, you cannot give up control of something and also maintain control of that same thing.
So you either, again like I was that fence rider. So I get it. I was riding the fence.
I said yeah yeah no no I believe you know for me I'm a Christian. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus.
Yeah yeah I give up. Yeah everything's his. I give it up.
Yeah except my actions did not and my mindsets and my emotions did not mirror that. So I would challenge that person to say how much are you really in surrender and in control because you say that. You say it with your words but are your actions reflective of the words coming out of your mouth?
There's total freedom when you're there. You know I will say it like this. This is a separate journey but probably relevant.
My wife and I, we're expecting our eighth child and that in alone is an act of surrender because holy smokes that was not my plan. That's a big life. But early on we're about maybe 25 weeks along now, 24 weeks.
Early my wife had an ultrasound done and on the ultrasound they saw what looked like they called them cysts, water like fluid filled sacs on the baby's brain. They said look that's where the cerebrospinal fluid is produced at that stage of an embryo. We see this often.
It's not normally a thing that we even bring up. It's not alarming. They tend to go away over time.
But because your wife because you didn't have this particular genetic exam done on whatever testing, chromosomal testing, we're going to have to take your blood and test your blood for this particular genetic trait that if you are a carrier, these sacs also are these soft markers for what's called trisomy 18. Basically this disease that has the third chromosome on the 18th chromosome and if the baby has that, that baby's going to die. The baby might not live when it's born.
If it is alive at birth, it's going to die within hours at most a month. But don't worry, we're just going to take the test and see how it goes, right? Like how can I not be in this like pure panic mode hearing that?
So when you're faced with life or death, the extremes of life, my wife and I had a lot of conversations around what happens. Like what are we going to do? And we both came to the same conclusion because our faith is really important to us is we cannot lean on our faith and believe in what we say we believe in when things are only good.
If we are going to fully surrender our lives and give up control across the board, then this outcome is the outcome and we can't control it and we have to be okay with it and try to figure out what we're supposed to learn in it, whether it's how we want it to be or how we don't want it to be. And that's very true with money. So we were at peace knowing if this baby has this and this baby doesn't even come out alive or this baby lives for an hour, then there's going to be something good for God's glory in this.
And we don't know what it is, but it's not on us to control or decide that. So when you are living in surrender and you are not living in control, then you can't pick and choose which parts you want to actually take back control of. Full surrender is full surrender.

Agi Keramidas
(41:02) Matt, thank you very much. This was a very deep answer and you explained very nicely what I was asking for. So I appreciate that.
Before I start wrapping up this fascinating conversation, where do you want to direct the listener to learn more about you and your work?

Matt Morizio
(41:23) Thank you for that, Agi. First, I appreciate this so much. It's been an honor to be on the show.
You ask wonderful questions. You guide that conversation really well. For me, if this piqued anybody's interest and they want to learn more about their own personal relationships with money and how they operate, I created a video course that's free.
I'm happy to share it with anybody on your listener. If you find me on Instagram, it's just my name, at mattmarizio. Just find me online, send me a message and say, I heard you on the podcast and I'll send you the free link.
It might just cost an email. That's it. But that's like a three-part video course that dives into a lot of what we talked about.
Or my website is reconstructingwealth.com. There's a contact page that I'll see the response if you want to send me a note. I'm here for it.

Agi Keramidas
Thank you. And before we close, I have two quick questions I always ask my guests. And the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Matt Morizio
(42:19) It's the ultimate journey of seeing who you're created to be. That's for me. I think growth is at the extremities.
You know, when you're lifting weights, it's like you have to tear muscle down in order to build it back up. You want to run a marathon, you want to get good at running, run more miles. That's how you learn to run more miles.
So the growth comes at the extremes of life. And that's personal development for me, is understanding what is really in the tank and what I'm really made of.

Agi Keramidas
And if you could go back in time, hypothetically, and meet the 18-year-old Matt, what's one piece of advice you would give him?

Matt Morizio
(42:59) I would have told myself to give up control sooner. You know, that journey at 18, I was drafted by the Padres. That real dream of being a professional baseball player was very real then.
Now I realize that wasn't my life calling, that was a season of my life. If I could tell myself then, look, no matter what, you've got to just be in the passenger seat of life. You can't drive this bus.
If you do, it's going to crash and burn at some point somehow. But if you're in the passenger seat, it's going to be a beautiful ride. Just trust it.
If I could have told myself then, gosh, there would have been a whole lot less anxiety and stress along the way. Not to say it would have been none, but would have been a lot sweeter journey.

Agi Keramidas
This is a very comforting and empowering message also at the same time. Matt, I want to thank you again very much for this conversation. There was indeed wisdom that came out of it.
Thank you very much. I want to leave it to you for your parting words. In particular, I would like for you to address the listener for one last time and give them what you would like to leave them with after this conversation we had.

Matt Morizio
(44:20) Sure. I know we went deep. I don't know if that was the intent, but I'm appreciative that we did.
Anybody listening, if they heard that and they're like, man, I got some work to do, that's okay. We all have work to do, especially if you're in these life transitions, as you can hear my life. In 10 years, eight children, started a business, multiple career changes, multiple homes purchased.
There are always these life messy transitions that they will always be there. You can't wait to decide to make a change after you make whatever transition, because the next one's right around the corner. There's no better time to start than now.
Lean on people. I'm here for you. It's not a sales pitch.
I've got nothing to sell you on this. If you need help, send me a message. I'm here, at least on the financial side or anything else that piqued your interest.
I'm happy to walk along the side you with this journey, because there's always transition. We're all in this messy middle until you die. I'm here for it.

Agi Keramidas
Thank you for listening to this conversation with Matt Maurizio. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on the power of rewriting your money story and living with greater clarity, purpose, and freedom. If this resonated, follow the show and share it with one other person who would find it useful.
Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.