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Moving to a new financial position, no matter what your starting point, is an ongoing process that happens over an extended period of time. Although people often dream of winning the lottery, inheriting a lot of money, or somehow being transported into a new economic reality, that happens only rarely.

The key: Do at least one thing every day that you haven’t done before. This can include activities such as:

• Reading a new financial publication or paying more attention to the stories in one you have read before.
• Learning something new about financial markets
• Paying more attention to your own finances by either keeping better records or, if you already keep good records, learning how to use the data strategically
• Improving the energy flow through your life by gradually eliminating clutter, toxic people, junk foods, complaining, and anything else that can negatively affect your energy.
• Replacing negative energy with positive people, food, exercise, and entertainment.
• Noticing your internal dialog and phasing out the critical parent in your head.
• Spending a few minutes each day either meditating or doing nothing

Your financial position can only change if you change it and you can insure your success by doing it one small step at a time.

Need more ideas for actions you can take to alter your finances? You’ll find plenty of helpful suggestions in Build Your Money Muscles. Read more about BYMM now.

Working Through Your Money Issues: A Fr ee Teleclass
July 31 at 2 PM EST, 11 AM Pacific, 7 PM GMT
I’ll be coaching at least one person and answering questions from our audience. Sign up and then ask your questions by clicking here

Join Me on Facebook!
If you are on Facebook, add me as a friend. I’d love to learn more about you. Include a message with your Friend Request that you are a subscriber. Also, check out our Build Your Money Muscles Prosperity Group on Facebook. It’s a great place to find a Prosperity Buddy. We’ve also been having some lively discussions that you are welcome to join.

The teleclass I gave on June 26 was a big success. Along with the information I presented, people appreciated the coaching I did with two participants.

Let’s do it again! I love doing these mini-coaching sessions because I know that lots of people can relate to any issue that is being discussed. There’s tremendous healing power when you learn that you are not the only one having a particular experience.

The next teleclass is Thursday, July 31th at 2:00 PM Eastern, 11 AM Pacific, 7 PM GMT. You can either call in or listen to the streaming audio online. You can also choose to listen to the recording at a later date.

The title of this class is Working through Your Money Issues. Once again, I’ll be coaching at least one person. I’m also going to leave time to answer questions about your issues.

To register for this class, go to
http://ProsperityPlace.com/teleclass/mi2.html

Once you register, you’ll be led to the seminar page. If you’d like me to discuss YOUR issues, send a question via the form on that page.

I hope you’ll join me for this class

Yesteday, I saw a promo on TV for an upcoming program and the announcer said, "Find out how to make the Law of Attraction work for you!"

That statement doesn’t make sense because the Law of Attraction always works and is working for you at this very minute. Whatever you are experiencing in your life is what you are attracting. You are never in a position of non-attracting.

The promo really should have said, "Find out how you can use the Law of Attraction to draw in a more comfortable life." Or more money, a better relationship, a healthier body. When most people talk about the Law of Attraction, they are thinking about bringing in more money–as if money is going to solve their problems and make their life perfect.

For me, it’s not about focusing on money. It’s about drawing in love, acceptance, acknowledgement, and appreciation. I know if the world is mirroring those for me, I’ll get paid because the money in my life is a reflection of how I feel about myself.

So the key to attracting more of what you want starts with loving, accepting, acknowledging, and appreciating yourself. All the positive affirmations, treasure maps, and goal setting will be of fleeting value if deep inside you feel alone, ashamed, angry, and deprived and if you can’t honestly imagine yourself–fully and completely–experiencing a positive life.

In addition, attracting what you want requires totally accepting the idea that you are the creator of your reality. Whatever is going on in your life is congruent with your throughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. Adjust those, and you will attract new energy into your life.

Where to start? There are step-by-step instructions in Build Your Money Muscles. There is also lots of helpful information in my podcast archives at www.TheProsperityShow.com.

With the global economy behaving the way it is, there’s no doubt in my mind that a new paradigm has to emerge in order for everyday folks to move into a more prosperous financial state of being. The system that exists now helps the big get bigger and the small get smaller.

To me, it looks as if the job market is becoming more and more narrow and that in order for  ordinary people to see their incomes rise, there has to be a greater movement towords self-employment. The problem is that many don’t have the skills or personality to succeed as entrepreneurs or solo practiontioners.

What has to change is the each-man-for–himself that prevails in our system. Competition from an individual mindset has to be replaced by cooperation with like minded people working together.

There’s a novel by science fiction wirter Theordore Sturgeon called More Than Human about a group of misfits who couldn’t survive alone in society, but together they formed a strong, viable unit. I read that story many years ago, and it keeps coming to mind as I think of where we have to go in order to prosper. Now that I’ve really gotten into networking on Facebook, a picture of how we can create a network of individuals working together in order to thrive is emerging.

Rugged individualism and extreme competition is on its way to becoming yesterday’s story as people will be forced to find more cooperative ways of building comfortable, sustainable lives.

At the same time, people who now  look to others to support them, keep them healthy, and offer them security will have to become more proactive and take responsibility for their own health and well-being. This will require a major but ncessary shift in consciousness–and behavior–for many.

Taking responsibiity for one’s own health and well-being, does not mean doing things alone. It requires working with others who have complementary talents and abilities so all can thrive.

Is this idealistic? Perhaps. But i see it as a necessary step in our evolution.

When Warren Buffet was asked by a TV interviewer about how he measures wealth, he answered, "By how much love a person has in their life." He said that he knows a lot of high net worth people who have few successful relationships. For Buffett, these people are not wealthy.

I agree. . In Build Your Money Muscles I say that when you feel loved, accepted, acknowledge, and appreciated, you’ll be open to greater cash flow. And experiencing these feelings depends on your relationship with yourself and others.

Feeling loved, accepted, acknowledge, and appreciated by others begins with loving, accepting, acknowledging, and appreciating yourself. Many people I talk to admit that their internal dialog is more critical than loving. When this is your internal state, people will reflect criticism rather than love, and it is difficult to generate acknowledgement in the form of money.

To alter your internal dialog, start focusing on treating yourself like someone you love. Here are some suggestions:

1. Listen to how you talk to yourself. When the critical voice comes into your head, tell it, "Thanks for sharing, but we don’t talk like that any more." Take a deep breath and tell yourself that you are a good girl/boy, followed by your power word.
2. Stand close to a mirror and look directly into your eyes. Say outloud, "(Your Name), I unconditionally love and accept you exactly the way you are." This can bring up a lot of emotion, don’t try to hold it back.
3. Buy yourself some flowers.
4. Stroke your body gently.
5. Give your body what it needs to function well.

You can also use the following statements with your power word to help overcome your resistance to loving yourself:

• I give myself permission to treat myself like someone I love. Power word.
• I release my resistance to loving myself. Power word.
• I am willing to treat myself in a loving way. Power word.
• I am willing to speak kindly to myself.Power word.
• I want to love myself. Power word.
• I am lovable. Power word.

Instructions for the power word

You can find many more ideas for altering your inner dialog in Build Your Money Muscles 

Give yourself an energy boost by getting rid of stuff you’ve been keeping "just in case" but never using. Stagnant energy in your home or office can keep you from opening doors to new opportunities.

Imagine that cash needs a clear energy pathway in order to flow through your life. When your desk, drawers, closets, or garage or stuffed with items that never move, the clutter acts as an energy dam, preventing a natural flow. At the same time, items that represent your past keep you mired in the energy of the past. Moving towards a new financial position means letting go of the past and creating openings for new energy to flow through.

The clutter many of my coaching clients have trouble dealing with is paper clutter–paid bills, invoices, bank statements, and other endless bit of paper that need to be sorted, filed, or stored. The problem is, the papers often pile up, never to find a resting place.

If you are surrounded by paper clutter, obtain some banker’s boxes from an office supply store and pile all of the papers you need to deal with into the boxes. If this makes you feel uneasy, label the boxes so you have some idea what is in them. You can sort by a range of dates or type of papers (although this might take too much time and attention). Keeping all receipts from a specific year in the same box can make getting ready for income taxes easier.

After all of the papers are stuffed away in boxes, get them out of your sight. Hopefully, that will also get them out of your mind. If you don’t go back into the boxes for a specified period, like six months or a year, then you can safely assume you don’t need them. They can stay in storage if you need the receipts, and get rid of a lot of the other papers.

A word of warning: when you get rid of the paper clutter, you will have to adapt to the open feeling that you will probably experience. There’s a good chance that papers will begin to pile up again so you can feel more like yourself. Decide that once a week or once  month you’ll clean up and start anew. Eventually you’ll adapt to the open feeling and the fact that there is nothing to criticize yourself about.

Because of cultural influences, people rarely reach adulthood with a clear understanding of their authentic selves. More often than not, identities are formed more out of the need to please caregivers than from authentic self-expression.

As a result, people experience a holding back, not just of who they are, but how they express themselves financially. Thus the common thought, "I should be earning more than I am" or a longing to reach a perceived true potential.

The prevalent feeling of being trapped in a particular financial position is the result of feeling trapped in an inauthentic persona. This also often stimulates feelings of abandonment (of self), deprivation, anger, and shame, all of which people tend to blame on external circumstances.

Self-help literature is filled with prescriptions for finding your authentic self. In this limited space, I can only give a few suggestions to move you forward:

• Remember the slogan: If one of us has to be uncomfortable, it doesn’t have to be me. Express your needs and give yourself permission to fill them.
• Learn how to express your feelings. I can’t stress how important this is to being in integrity with yourself.
• Do something today that you have always wanted to do but were afraid that others might judge you harshly for.

These three suggestions will point you in a new direction and help you create a new financial identity.

My book Build Your Money Muscles and the CDs Let Go of the Aloneness Blocking Your Prosperity and Healing Your Financial Shame have specific instructions for learning to express feelings without having to rekindle a lot of old hurts.

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If you’ve been working and playing hard, keeping track of your money is probably not something you look forward to doing. But the simple act of writing down what you spend and earn can help you move to a better financial position.

Money, like people, goes to those who love and take care of it. And what money likes best is to be counted. Financial Vagueness Syndrome, which many people suffer from, does not encourage cash flow.

Taking care of your money stimulates feelings of empowerment as well as increased self-esteem and self-trust. Avoiding the task does the opposite and often enhances feelings of shame.

If you’d like to improve your cash flow and can see the benefit of paying attention to your numbers, it can take a while to build up a habit. The decision you have to make is to start and to do something with your money as many days during the week as possible. Five minutes a day is often enough to keep things up to date.

On ProsperityPlace.com, you can download a PDF file with instructions for Basic Money Management.

My book Build Your Money Muscles also has instructions and can help you work through the shame that may be coming up when you think about your financial situation. That shame can be what is holding you back.

There was a story in our local newspaper yesterday with the headline, "Prices rising faster than income," and I thought about how many stories about difficult times I’ve been reading about.

Here’s a different way to deal with these stories so you don’t get caught up in fear:
We live in a dualistic reality where for every plus there’s a minus, and for every up there’s a down. It’s a world of opposites.

Imagine that you are holding in your hand a coin–heads on one side, tails on the other. When you look at the coin, you only see one side. Turn it over and it looks entrely different.

It’s the same with whatever it is you are looking at. Turn it over, and you’ll see the opposite:

• On the other side of debt is solvency
• On the other side of evil is good
• On the other side of miserable is happpy

And on the other side of financial discomfort is financial comfort. All you have to do is turn over the coin and see it from a different point of view.

Because of the downturn, people are becoming more aware of their financial values, and many are getting past financial vaguenss and learning new cash managment skills. Consumerism is down, group activities are up. There is always a plus on the other side of a minus.

Look for the plus in what seems like a minus and you can turn your life around.

In my book, Build Your Money Muscles, I talk a lot about connecting to others in order to create prosperity. After all, money comes from people, and if you want more money, you need more people in your life.

I’ve been taking the time to learn Facebook and other networking sites, usually referred to as social media. I’ll admit  that I avoided this for a long time because it seemed too time intensive. But I can see that it has great possibilities.

The whole social media universe can seem quite daunting. Start with one and let your network grow. I think Facebook is a good place to start, There are a lot of business people congregating there now and it’s a good place to promote yourself and/or your business.

I’m reading Facebook for Dummies, which is simplifying the learning process and giving me a lot of good ideas. 

If you aren’t  on Facebook yet, follow these steps:

1. Set up an account (it’s free) and be sure to upload a picture and fill in your bio information. What’s great  about Facebook is that only your "friends" can see your profile, if that’s what you choose, so you don’t have to fee vulnerable.  
2. Read Facebook for Dummiesor go through the Help file on Facebook
3. Add to your Friends list. You can look for people you know by searching for their name. Or go to my page (search for Joan Sotkin) and add me as a friend, then you can see who I’m friends with and ask them to be friends. Once you check their profiles, you can decide if you want  to keep them on your friends list.

This is a good way to start. I’ll have more to say as I move along on this path. Take it slowly, so you’re not overwhelmed.