Thriving in The New Economy
I hear a lot of people saying that they are having a hard time financially because the economy is so “bad.” The question is, is the economy bad or is it just different? I think it’s different, and waiting for it to return to what was before the recession is an exercise in futility.
Yes, it’s frustrating that, statistically, income levels for all but the highest earners are stagnating or dropping. But that doesn’t mean you can’t thrive financially in this economy, which is likely to remain stagnant for a long time.
To succeed, there are steps you can take to proactively shift how you generate income and how you manage what you generate. Here are some suggestions: Continue reading
The Anger-Money Connection
Because our life stories are fueled by our emotions , the path to prosperity requires recognizing the emotions that may be interfering with our progress, expressing them, and replacing them with new emotional habits.
In the past, I’ve examined at depth shame and aloneness, and for the last year, I’ve really been looking at anger and its effect on finances. Now, I’m ready to share what I’ve learned.
Anger is a complex emotion that finds many different avenues of expression. The obvious expression of anger is what we usually think of as rage. But the form of anger that is most often expressed through finances is passive aggressive behavior, which is often difficult to recognize and release.
However, I can assure you that underearning, debting, compulsive shopping, late bill paying, financial vagueness, and other behaviors frequently have anger as a motivating force. Continue reading
Getting Ready for a Prosperous New Year
In the next week or so, you’re going to hear a lot about New Year’s resolutions, and I’m not going to suggest that you make any. What I am going to suggest is that you think about what you would realistically like to accomplish financially in the next year and what first steps you might take in order to reach that goal.
People often set unrealistic goals, which is why they procrastinate and avoid taking action. It’s important that the goals you set be congruent with who you are at this moment in time.
Also important is in awareness of your own emotional relationship with money. If you are fearful about your financial future, ashamed of your current financial situation, or feeling powerless to change your situation, those feelings can interfere with your ability to alter your financial position.
So any action plan has to include both what you were going to do to shift your internal and external environments as they relate to your finances.
Here are some suggestions: Continue reading
Prosperity Tip: Is Fear Your Default Emotion?
Recently someone asked me why I didn’t include fear in my book Build Your Money Muscles as one of the basic emotions that people act out through their money. I explained that fear is the cover-up emotion, the emotion that people default to when they are unsure of themselves and their future.
Fear is often used as an excuse for not moving forward. Yet those who are willing to work through their fear and risk what might seem like failure are the people who are most successful.
Fear in the Current Economy
There’s no doubt about the fact that we are living in uncertain times. The recession, unemployment, foreclosures,
lack of available credit, and debt problems in Europe all add to an environment of uncertainty.
Even though large companies are earning healthy profits, the uncertainty is keeping them from adding jobs or making big investments. Instead of hiring people, companies are buying machines that allow them to replace people. Continue reading
Breaking through Your Financial Set Point
Here’s a question I received recently: “How do I break through my financial set point? I seem to be stuck at my current earning level and no matter what I do, I can’t sustain a higher level for any length of time.”
Your financial set point is actually an income and/or net-worth limit that you have subconsciously established for yourself. Feeling stuck at this set point is a common dilemma that I’d lke to address here.
As a review: Our finances are a result of our thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors, with the emotions acting as the creative force behind our life stories. So, when trying to alter a financial condition, it is necessary to examine the emotions behind the condition. (This is fully explained in Build Your Money Muscles.)
If you have trouble breaking through to a new financial level, one of the feelings you may be acting out through your money is constrained, which is related to a sense of being trapped — one of the five main money feelings. Continue reading
Getting Beyond Not Enough and Into Prosperity
I hear it over and over again, “I don’t have enough money for _____________ (fill in the blank).” The lack may relate to funds for expanding a business, improving one’s wardrobe, fixing one’s house, or perhaps just paying the rent and monthly bills on time.
Many people function at a chronic non-enough level. Although there may be brief periods of healthy cash flow, these are often followed by the familiar state of lack when unexpected expenses seem to appear out of nowhere or income unexpectedly drops.
Interestingly, I hear the not-enough complaint from people at all income levels. I’ve had clients with millions of dollars of net worth who felt they needed more in order to feel successful. It’s not unusual for me to hear the not-enough complaint from people earning six figures a year.
At the same time, I know people who seem to be satisfied no matter what they are earning. I remember reading a story about a school janitor who managed to save enough money from his salary to help fund a college education of a number of students. He perceived his life as abundant and experienced great satisfaction. 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.
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
Clearing Your Uncomfortable Emotions
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
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