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
Health Benefits of the Recession
A recent article in Fortune magazine http://bit.ly/6AXo0R indicated that there are fewer deaths during a recession because people apparently “adopt smarter lifestyles in recessions, especially those people with the worst health habits.”
One reason is that as work hours are cut back or people are laid off, they have more time to spend going to the gym, preparing meals, and getting more sleep.
There’s something else happening too. People are becoming much more conscious about how they spend their money. Consumer sales are decreasing because many are deciding against excess and for frugality. Instead of thinking, “It’s only $20!” and making an unnecessary purchase, often the decision is to not spend the $20 and save it instead. That’s good for a person’s economic health. Continue reading
Learning to Wait
This is the season when the “I-have-to-have-it-now” syndrome often appears. Symptoms include hyperactivity, overspending, excessive debting, and lots of shopping, often for unneeded items.
Seeing something you like and putting off the purchase is more difficult now when every message from the media is buy, buy, buy. After all, we are told, we help the economy by being consumers.
Yet this is the perfect time to learn how to wait, a skill that eludes most people in this culture that encourages instant gratification. Learning to wait actually increases your chances of manifesting what you want without overspending or debting. In the case of non-consumer goods or events, learning to wait can increase your general comfort level in life. Continue reading
Get Real about Your Finances
If you want to thrive in this economic environment and prepare for a prosperous 2010, it’s time to pay attention to your finances and create a strategy for the new year. Even if you already keep good records, you can learn to go even deeper into what you can learn from your own numbers so you can get the most value from your money.
I hope that if you suffer from any level of Financial Vagueness Syndrome, you will decide that this is the time to hunker down and get real about your finances. One thing is for certain: Money doesn’t take care of itself. Without care, it’s like a wild child that needs to be tamed.
I’ll have to admit that I avoid talking about this because I know that people would rather have a magic bullet that fixes something and makes their money fine. But without money management, you limit your own prosperity.
Here’s what I suggest: 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.
Is Prosperity A Threat to Your Identity?
I have always wondered why so many people have such a hard time permanently altering their financial position. Time and time again. I see improvements followed by declines. Or, no matter how much work people do on themselves, their struggles continue.
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that any major life change can be a threat to a person’s identity. If deep down inside, you do not perceive yourselves to be a prosperous person, then if you achieve a level of financial success, this would be a threat to your self concept.
This kind of threat causes behavior that is often called “self-sabotage.” I call it self-protection. Seemingly sabotaging behavior serves to protect your old, familiar identity. No matter how dysfunctional that identity might be, it’s the one you know.
This is the Identity Factor, a mechanism that kicks in any time you make a significant change. If you alter how you think, how your feel, and/or how you behave, your life is going to become unfamiliar and you will most likely become a bit disoriented.
If you’re moving in a positive direction, there’s a good chance that you’re going to find yourself making more money. Although this is a desired result, the increased inflow will feel unfamiliar and you are going to have to make unfamiliar decisions about how to handle the funds. The uncertainty of the outcomes can make you uncomfortable.
Although you might feel good about your increased income, within a few months you may find yourself moving back towards your old income level because of the Identity Factor.
I haven’t written about this much in these Tips because the Identity Factor is fairly complex. The idea is simple, but how it operates in your very complex subconscious is not. Yet understanding this concept can be the difference between your staying stuck forever or permanently creating a new financial position.
The Identity Factor is discussed at length in Build Your Money Muscles. If you already have the book, I suggest a re-read so you can gain a deeper understanding of the Identity Factor.
I did a teleclass a while back on this topic called Understanding the Identity Factor, and it’s now available on Prosperity Place.com at http://ProsperityPlace.com/catalog/cd_understandIF.html.
Also, on October 1, the teleclass for the Peace of Mind & Prosperity Program (POMP) was all about the Identity Factor. This recording, plus Understanding the Identity Factor are available immediately when you join the POMP program. For more information visit http://ProsperityPlace.com/catalog/pomp.html
Become a Fan on Facebook!
You don’t have to belong to Facebook to access my Facebook Page and the daily prosperity tips I’m posting. If you are on Facebook, you can visit the page and become a fan so the tips show up in your newsfeed. You can also make comments and interact with me. Visit my page at http://facebook.com/sotkin or use your cell phone to text “fan Sotkin” to 32665.
If you send me a friend request on Facebook, be sure to include a message that you are a subscriber.
If you are new to social networking, visit Facebook & Twitter for Newbies
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
A Container for Your Income
Let’s assume, as I suggested last week, you’ve set an income goal that includes an amount you’d like to earn and you have set a date by which you’d like to reach your income goal. Now it’s important to make sure that you have a realistic container into which the money can flow.
If you are a business owner or practitioner, what is the designated income stream into which the money can come? A coach, for example, needs to have a website to draw people in or some sort of marketing that makes it clear what that coach has to offer. There also has to be a clear way for potential clients to contact the coach as well as an established payment system.
With products to sell, an entrepreneur needs distribution channels for the products and a manufacturing system that ensures prompt delivery. Without these, maintaining an increasing cash flow is difficult.
For those who have a job, have you upgraded your skills or done what is necessary in order to earn more? If you are on commission, do you have a system in place for increasing your client base or selling more to existing clients? Continue reading
Don’t Miss Thursday’s Teleclass
Are you concerned about your financial future?
Do you crave peace of mind?
Financial fear and peace of mind don’t go together. Find out how you can deal with the fear, find solutions to your financial problems, and much more.
Register today for the Free teleclass I’ll be giving called
Finding Inner Peace in the Midst of the Chaos.
Thursday, August 13 at 3 PM Eastern, noon Pacific, 8 PM GMT
http://ProsperityPlace.com/teleclass/find-inner-peace.html
As part of this class, I’ll be doing an energy healing which will give you some instant relief from whatever emotional discomfort you are feeling about your finances. Try it, you’ll like it.
I will be taking questions and doing some coaching during the 90 minute call. You can listen on the phone, to the simultaneous Webcast, or by downloading after the class is completed.
Register now. it won’t cost you a dime.
http://ProsperityPlace.com/teleclass/find-inner-peace.html
Hope you’ll be there.
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
Subscribe to our blog
Click to
subscribe in a reader
Coaching Program
Let's Connect!