Archive for the ‘Money Feelings’ Category

In my book Build Your Money Muscles, I identify the five main feelings that people act out through their finances. One of those is a sense of being trapped. When I wrote the book, I didn’t understand the depths of this feeling and it’s nuances. Lately, that understanding is coming into focus. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Children often are discouraged from truely expressing themselves because their parents, and others, just don’t get who they are. I can remember my mother’s reaction when, as a three-year old dressed in my favorite yellow sunsuit, I proudly presented myself as a black bear, having covered myself with mud. I learned then, and in many instances afterwards, that it isn’t always safe to let people now who I am.

Perhaps you can remember moments when you realized that speaking or acting freely could lead to punishment or stimulate negative reactions from those around you. As a result, you developed coping mechanisms that allowed you to fit it or be acceptable.

The result: being trapped in a persona that works in the world, but leaves you feeling disconnected and, perhaps empty. This is often accompanied by less-than feelings, shame, and lots of negative self-talk.

Not the best foundation for drawing in a free-flow of love and support — financial and otherwise.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many years ago, a teacher of mine kept repeating, “Love is the healer.” That phrase was always in the back of my mind as I moved forward with my own healing.

It’s clear to me that love is the glue that holds everything together, and that peace is not possible until we reach a tipping point where love is the predominent emotion.

In order for love to prevail, our hearts need to be open to:

• Ourselves
• Other people
• Other beings
• New ideas
• Opportunities
• Receiving

Unfortunately, because of family-of-origin issues, many hearts close to love, making it difficult to receive that which is needed to thrive and prosper. When love is withheld from ourselves or others, we block the free flow of energy through our lives.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s an incredible disconnect between the movement of the stock market and the economic reality for much of the US population.

As I’m writing this, the headline on CNBC.com, just above the market chart, is “Stocks Gain 4% for Week Amid Earnings Optimism.” No doubt about it, the market has been going up, enabling those who are supposedly in the know to assure us that we are on the way to recovery.

At the same time, stories are dribbling out about the economic pressures faced by many people:

• There are over 1 million healthcare-related bankruptcies per year
• Over 47,000 people die each year in the US because they can’t afford health care
• 6.3 people are looking for every available job
• High level jobs are going unfilled because workers lack the necessary skills
• Foreclosure rates continue to rise in many areas
• Unregulated financial products are still in the pipeline
• States are cutting back on funding for education, safety, and other necessary services.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my book Build Your Money Muscles, I identify the five main feelings that are expressed most often through money. They include abandonment/aloneness, shame, deprivation, a sense of being trapped, and anger, which we will look at today.

Anger is a very valid emotion. Yet in many cultures people are discouraged from expressing anger in a healthy way. As a result, anger is often repressed and turned inward. Your negative self-talk can be anger directed inwards.

Anger expressed through finances shows up in a number of ways. Borrowing money without paying it back, nonpayment of taxes, late bill paying, and compulsive spending can all be expressions of anger. (Think, “I’ll show you!”) Underearning and debting are two of the most common ways that anger finds itself in finances. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the good news: there are lots of remarkably effective techniques for clearing out uncomfortable emotions that may be keeping you stuck.

The glitch is that you have to be willing to use them. Sometimes the need to protect your identity will allow you to find  reasons to not use simple clearning techniques such as Be Set Free Fast (BSFF), the Power Word Technique, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and others.

Also, people often want long-standing habitual emotions to disappear in an instant. That happens on occasion, but intense emotions frequently dissipate over a period of time.

For example, if you have lots of unexpressed shame circulating through your system and you “treat” the shame with one of the techniques, in the moment it will diminish. The next time a situation presents itself that usually produces shame, such as paying bills or hearing someone criticize you, you are more apt to notice the shame and the intensity will likey be less than before. You would them treated the shame again.

As your awareness grows of the many ways that shame plays out in your life, you will deal it differently and begin to establish new feeling habits to replace the old emotional responses. So, for example, when someone criticizes you, you might take a deep breath and say to yourself, “I’m ok.” You don’t have to take what the person says personally. In time, the response will be automatic. 

With the help of an energy healer who works with emotions, the process can go even faster. That’s why I partnered with Asara Lovejoy to create the upcoming teleclass “Unleash Your Inner Power & Watch Your Income Soar!” on June 18 and 19.

Both of us have techniques that help people move forward rapidly and we are going to use our combined knowledge and power to help you move forward faster. Asara is going to walk everyone through her One Command, which I have found to be very effective. I’m going to do the Power Word Technique combined with the shamanic healing sounds that I do.

The results for you can be profound and I hope you’ll join us either during the teleclass or by downloading the recording after each session.

For more information and to register, go to www.WatchYourIncomeSoar.com

For many years, every time I did energy work with clients, two phrases came up:

•  I release all pain and memory of pain
•  I release all fear and sorrow

Fully aware that if I’m doing something with a client, it applies to me too, I was surprised that the fear and sorrow piece went on for so long. Over the years, all the physical and emotional pain I had lived with had disappeared, yet I was aware that try as I might, fear and a sense of loss persisted.

Because I believe that we create our life stories in order to express hidden emotions, as I observed the current economic downturn, it occurred to me that fear, or a feeling of vulnerability, and sorrow are the creative force behind the current situation. Certainly the daily talk of terrorism has emerged from our collective fear.

A few months ago, I did a teleclass on letting go of fear and sorrow, and followed that with a healing session that  I recorded separately. Somehow, I was deeply affected by those two events and over the last two months have noticed that the fear and sorrow are really gone. In meditation, I’m aware of his sense of equanimity, as I understand it.

What does this look like on a day-to-day basis? I no longer have feeling that there’s something I have to do. At this point, I really do have the faith that whatever I’m doing is fine and that if I don’t push, I’ll get where I’m supposed to be, whatever that is. I don’t feel compelled to do affirmations, visualizations, set five-year goals or push in any way to try to make things happen. I am much more present in the moment.

I’ll admit that I have moments when I wonder if I am risking or missing something by being so laid back. However, I really like this state of being and am willing to wait and see where it goes. Without any effort, new opportunities are opening up.

Somewhat surprising is the fact that I am now doing more website development work, something I haven’t done since 2002. I see this as a way to provide real world opportunities for growth for people who are developing a strong financial consciousness. So it fits nicely with the financial work that I’ve been doing. And I do enjoy the work.

The bottom line: life beyond fear and sorrow is peaceful — and profitable. I just have to get used to the new feelings that I’m experiencing.

I haven’t made the recording of the teleclass available because the quality of the recording was so poor, but the fear and sorrow healing session is available. I received many positive comments about it.

I am the process of updating Prosperity Place with information about the affordable website building and consulting that I’m doing. There is some information about it now on this site.

How are you feeling about your finances? A lot of people I talk to tell me that they are experiencing anything from mild anxiety to downright fear because the future is so uncertain.

And the other feeling I’ve been tapping into is sorrow, or sadness, because of what has been lost, and for oh so many other reasons. (Think polar bears.)

You may already know that I believe our feelings are the creative force behind our life stories. People often think their life stories are causing their feelings when, if fact, it’s the feelings that create the stories.

Which is the good news. Because if you don’t like the way your life is going, by releasing habitual feelings that you have been carrying for years and installing new emotional responses, you can change the outcome of your life stories.

And releasing emotions gets easier and easier as people learn new techniques such as BSFF, the Power Word technique, EFT, and many forms of energy healing that are becoming more popular by the day.

The Tipping Point
The world situation reflects the accumulation of the feelings of earth’s inhabitants. Our combined fear, sorrow, anger, shame, alientation and other feelings are all being acted out through the current economic crisis and growing political unrest.

Because of the intensity of the situation, energy runs high, providing the opportunity for a major shift. If just a small portion of the people release their fear, sorrow, anger, shame, and alienation and allow feelings of authentic inner peace to emerge, the shift can happen.

This is using the Law of Attraction on a global scale.

You can join us on April 2 (or by recording) and take a giant step towards releasing the feelings defining your financial situation — and the world crisis — that are interfering with personal and global peace and prosperity.

Read more about how you can participate at http://ProsperityPlace.com/teleclass/mfeel.html 

Feelings of disorientation often accompany change. (I call the condition “the moving stupids.”) Right now, it seems that everything we thought we could count on is either falling apart or undergoing significant alteration, and lots of people are feeling the disorientation of change.

When things fall apart, rebuilding can follow. When systems undergo change, a new order can emerge that often has more value than the original. But first, you have to deal with the feelings of disorientation.

People often run away from the feelings by reinstating old behaviors or ways of thinking. For example, when people start keeping track of their money, they often feel empowered and good about themselves. Since for many these are unfamiliar feelings, commonly people stop keeping track of their money and resort to old habits of financial fear and vagueness.

The best course of action lies in first recognizing that your discomfort comes from the unfamiliarity of the current situation. At some point in the future, you will adapt to the new situation–the same way you do when you move into a new house. In knowing this, perhaps you can hold on and not fall back into old habits.

Next, ride the wave of change. You are already uncomfortable because the familiar is disappearing. Embace the moment and ask, “How can I use the energy of change to push myself into something new?” This is the perfect time to follow through on ideas you have that you have put off because the time didn’t seem right.

It’s also a good time to reach out to new people and forge new relationships. Find at least one person who is gong through something similar to what you are experiencing and talk to them honestly about how you feel and share your ideas for moving forward. Try not to work through your discomfort alone.

The free book and audio I am offering, Prosper In a Down Economy, has lots of ideas and techniques you can use for dealing with the current economic situation. Also included is a healing session that will help you let go of some of your fear and tension. Click here to get yours.

For anyone who is paying attention, the crisis in the financial markets feels like a dizzying ride. Up and down (mostly down), with no clear end in site. And we keep hearing the words “Worst since the Great Depression.”

Other messages can be downright confusing. Monday, just as the stock market closed down 777 points, I heard a number of financial commentators say things like, “What we need is less regulation and cutting corporate taxes,” which is what the house Republicans want and why they blocked the bailout bill.

This tactic is part of the “trickle down” theory that states that the market will regulate itself and more freedom on the top will trickle down in the form of profits to the bottom… We see how well that has worked.

What’s the average person to do? Hopefully, if you have investments in the stock market, you also have someone who knows more than you do who you can talk to and get advice. From my point of view, things started getting a bit dicey six months ago and that seemed like a good time to get out of the market.

For those of you who function at a just-enough level, you are probably in ok shape, assuming you haven’t used a lot of credit. Just enough means you’ve had enough to cover your bills and financial obligations. You are the ones who can take a big sigh of relief–no debt, enough to pay your bills. This is not the time to take any chances.

If you function at a less-than-enough level, you’ve probably been borrowing over an extended period of time and may have paid some of your cards late or are maxed out on your cards. This will have compromised your FICO score, so you better stop using credit right now and do whatever you need to do to pay down some of your debt. The good news for you is that you may be forced to get your finances in order so you don’t have to go through this again.

If you are worried about the price of basics, losing your job, or any of the other potential fall out effects of this crisis, worrying isn’t gong to help. It never does. Take a deep breath and spend more time than usual meditating and tuning in to the part of you that sees a bigger picture and can lead you to solutions that will work for you.

Since you haven’t got any control over what going on around you, take control of your home environment. Create order out of chaos, if that’s what you have. Review your financial habits and decide what you are going to do differently.

This is a great time to analyse your past behaviors and decide what’s not serving you and what you want to change.

Here are some resources that can be helpful
Basic Meditation Instructions
Economist Paul Krugman’s column
Some levity at JibJab.com
And a bit more at The Daily Show

The truth is, there is very little in human affairs that is certain. Yet from everything I have observed, people do everything they can to bring some semblance of certainty into their lives. From daily routines, to various levels of risk aversion, creating stability has become important to many.

Thus the uncertainty in the current economic environment can be maddening. Many who thought their future was secure are watching their wealth melt away with no indication of when the problems will end.

The bailout program being proposed lives side by side with commentary explaining that no one knows what the outcome would be if this drastic plan were put into effect. Massive uncertainty.

If you watch the movement of the stock market these days, it’s a wile ride up and down, up and down, not on a daily basic, but on an hourly basis. This reflects a high degree of uncertainty.

So what’s the average human to do in the face of such overwhelming uncertainty. Here are some suggestions.

•  Accept the situation for what it is. Remember the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
•  Stay focused in the present. How are you doing today? Do you have what you need today? Are you physically comfortable today?
•  Educate yourself. The more you know about money and the financial world, the more control you will feel you have over your finances. You will also have the wherewithal to figure out solutions to problems that arise.
•  Limit your risks for now. Don’t take on new, risky projects or investments–unless, of course, you thrive with uncertainty.
•  Don’t take on any new debt.
•  Breathe. Whenever you feel anxiety building up, take a series of deep breaths and repeat your power word.

In Month 1 of the new six-month program, Build Your Money Muscles for Financial Strength & Security, there is a helpful audio called Overcoming Financial Fear. The first month of the program also includes detailed instructions for using EFT and the Power Word to help you through difficult times.
 Learn more…
 
Because of the current turmoil, members of the BYMM Program will be able to paticipate in weekly teleconferences.