Doing Nothing Is Doing Something
Last week, I posted a tip to my Facebook fan page suggesting that people take a few minutes each day to do nothing. As I’ve thought about this, I realized that if you’re alive, it’s impossible to do nothing. You are always breathing and usually thinking. And doing nothing is actually doing something.
That led my mind to think about how we really do get to choose our moment to moment activities and point of focus. We can choose to be ultra-busy, highly stressed, in fear, or acting compulsively (eating, drinking, shopping, etc.), or the choice can be to pace ourselves carefully, approach everything in a relaxed manner, trust in a positive outcome, or make deliberate choices.
Some people seem to thrive in high stress situations. When I was younger and working for a nightly network television show, I loved the fast pace and daily pressure, but was taking lots of Valium and eating more than my share of sugar and junk foods. In the long run, it proved to be disastrous physically and emotionally. Continue reading
Fear of Being Seen – A Block to Prosperity
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.
You Can Help the Planet Heal
A number of people have told me that they deal with the current world situation by not listening to the news. That’s like saying, “If I close my eyes, I won’t feel the pain of my broken leg.”
Each of us is part of the whole. We are cells in the body of the planet. The country we live in could be considered one of the organs. As cells, we are affected by the health of the entire body, and in the case of The Earth, the body is ailing — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Imagine, if you will, that every time someone ingests something that harms the physical body, like refined foods, cigarette smoke, or drugs, it affects the health of the entire organism.
And because emotions are the creative force behind our life stories, imagine that every fear reaction adds to the total amount of terror, and this brings into manifestation terrorist cells, such as Al Qaeda.
How to Have a Happy & Prosperous 2010
I wish you all the best in 2010. And to help insure that you experience a healthy financial year, here’s what I suggest:
- Without delay, set up a system for keeping careful financial records. Use software such as Quicken, Quickbooks for your business, one of the many apps available for the IPhone or ITouch, or one of the online services such as mint.com. If you deal with multiple currencies, try AceMoney
- If you already keep good records, analyse the data. Determine your best source(s) of income, your highest expenses, and how your monthly income in 2009 compared to your monthly income in 2008. Be aware of changes in your sources of income and expenses. Continue reading
Choose Love!
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.
The Connection between Anger, Underearning, and Debting
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. Continue reading
The Importance of Connecting to Others
When people feel uncomfortable — for any reason — they tend to keep things to themselves. Solopreneurs especially rarely share their financial pain or fear of the future with others.
In addition, with all of the positive-thinking propaganda that flies about these days, no one wants to admit that they aren’t super positive about what they expect for the future. Here again, people often hide their thoughts and feelings, often to the point of dropping out of group activities.
Consider these facts:
1. Keeping fears and concerns to yourself can be self-defeating. Connecting to trusted friends and allies and sharing from an authentic place allows you to feel less alone, which always helps to increase income. This doesn’t mean you have to tell all of your troubles, but you can be honest about having some concerns. .
2. If you share some of your thoughts with others who you trust, chances are that that either they share your concerns or they have a very different way of looking at the same situation and can help you see things from a more positive point of view. In either case, connecting to others allows you to feel less alone.
Why does connecting to others matter? Because feelings of aloneness stand behind most financial problems. From my point of view, you can’t run out of money, you can only run out of people because money is always attached to people. So the solution to a financial problem may seem to be more money, when in fact, it could well be more people. Continue reading
Finding Inner Peace & Prosperity in the Midst of the Chaos
Last week I received more reaction to the piece I wrote called Don’t Quit Before the Miracle than for just about anything else I have written. Some people were glad that I reached out to a troubled soul who wasn’t sure he wanted to go on because he hadn’t been able to find a job and was out of resources.
Others shared stories with me of their struggle to go on because of their feelings of hopelessness and fear for their future. The problems were almost always financial. I had so much response that I couldn’t answer all of the emails.
The reactions got me to thinking and I arrived at this conclusion:
Most people have no idea how to cope with the current world situation. For so many years advertisers led us to believe that the good life is all about what you can buy. But the consumer economy is shrinking and it isn’t going to go back to what it was because what it was depended up large numbers of people borrowing their way into a false sense of prosperity. Continue reading
Focused Intention, Attention, and Action
People who teach about the Law of Attraction often speak about focused intention and attention and suggest the use of affirmations and other techniques for staying focused on what you intend to create. When you do this, the theory goes, what you want to have happen will.
Great theory, yet not necessarily what happens in real life. Continue reading
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