2.2 Your Money Story Part 2
In Monday’s lesson, we learned that your thoughts and beliefs create your reality and that your money story is the result of beliefs and values of your parents, grandparents ~ your family money legacy.
Did you know that 95% of your daily actions, in our adult life, are anchored in the perceptions you formed before your 5th birthday?
According to Dr. Brian Weiss, this statistic goes largely unnoticed among adults and yet controls almost everything they do in their daily life.
Let me start by saying well those perceptions created patterns that helped us live in our world and the best way we knew how. However, I think I speak for all of us when I assume that none of us wants her five-year-old self running our world today.
And so it is with compassion that we speak the words of gratitude to the little girls we once were, knowing that it is time for us to become fully-empowered women who firmly, yet lovingly, take the reins over our life and destiny.
In today’s lesson, we are going to learn how to change your money story with a new affirming one that supports you, your divine potential and what you want to accomplish/achieve.
How to Change Your Money Story
Here are some ideas on how you can change your money story.
1. Take action to create change. Set an intention to focus on learning as much as possible about money.
2. Get clear about the story you are telling yourself and others about money. Get conscious of your thoughts, beliefs and fears around money and what you have been carrying around since childhood (your money legacy). Decide to change the story if it’s not empowering you. If you didn’t do the homework from Monday, I encourage you to go back to that lesson and complete it.
Remember I wrote that I decided that making money didn’t have to be hard and I looked for evidence in my life where I made money, sometimes lots of money in the case of selling my house and some other real estate holdings, when it wasn’t “hard” and didn’t involve “hard work”. Another piece of evidence where making money wasn’t hard was creating classes and programs where I did the work at the beginning but continue to get paid for them.
3. Start a Gratitude Journal. Start a ‘Prosperity Journal’ to explore your relationship with money. Write about what’s working, what feels good, and when and where do you feel frustrated and powerless or something is just not right. In this journal, write a list each morning of what you are grateful for. List as many things as possible daily.
4. What is the best way to improve your relationship with money? The answer to that is the same as the answer to how you would go about improving ANY relationship—through love. You can’t enjoy a good relationship with money unless you’re willing to love it, through thick and thin.
Love As Behavior, Not Emotion. Love is a choice and an intention–not only an emotion, but also a behavior. When we choose to love our cat even though she scratched us, that’s love. Or when we choose to help our child solve a problem with all of our patience, resources and energy—even though we might be running low on all of those qualities—that’s love too.
We know we’ve invested our love in the right way when our relationships continue to improve. And, our relationships with money will continue to improve too, as long as we honor it in the same ways that we honor the other important relationships in our lives.
Here are some ways you can work to improve your relationship with money through a loving relationship (pick one or two to start and then add more as time progresses):
1. Pay Attention. When your loved one comes into the room, you acknowledge him or her. Even if you don’t have time or your hands our full, you still pay attention. You would never roll your eyes and tell them, “I’ll deal with you later!” When you first start dating someone you really notice them, study them. You know what they look like, smell like, feel like, etc. I want you to do the same thing with money. Go get some money (dollar bills ~ any denomination will do to start) right now -- go ahead -- I’ll wait.
Got it! O.K. Now look at it! Take a good look at it. Notice the color, what President is on the front, what is the design.
Now feel it! What is the texture? Did you know that people who handle money constantly, like bank tellers, cashiers and waitstaff, can feel a counterfeit bill instantly - it doesn’t have that "feel of money". Paper used for money is made from cotton and linen fibers. This kind of paper is known as rag paper. One big advantage of using rag paper is the fact that it does not disintegrate if you accidentally run paper money through a washing machine.
During the printing process, the paper is squeezed with thousands of pounds of pressure which makes it even thinner than normal paper and gives newly made bills a special crispness. Got the feeling?
Now I want you to smell it! Go on! I know you smelled your significant other when you first got together. Let it fill your nostrils. Have some fun with it! Money, dollar bills, has a very distinct smell. Doesn’t it?
As you sit there with your dollar bills after just looking at its every detail, feeling and smelling it, repeat after me ...
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
Notice what feelings come up after you say these words. If it is anything but pure joy and excitement, you need to explore those feelings and go back to the limiting belief exercise.
2. Make Time. Date night for couples is every bit as important as setting a date to make time for money in your life.
3. Prioritize. As we get older and our lives get fuller, we must choose how we spend our time. Whether this is conscious or unconscious, our priorities create our value system. If you want to place more value on money in your life, you have to make a conscious choice to prioritize it.
4. Celebrate. When a kid achieves something, you put the medal, certificate or piece of art on the fridge. When you feel like you’ve made some progress with your money relationship, you must allow yourself the same moment of recognition. You’d never tell your kid, “Well, I guess that’s okay, but I expect a lot more from you in the future!”
5. Forgive. When a loved one makes a mistake, you don’t flip out on them (I hope you don’t!); you acknowledge they did their best, forgive them and move on. When money doesn’t come soon enough, or you find yourself earning less than you hoped for, you need to remember that this is one blip in a relationship that lasts a lifetime . . . and move on.
6. Keep A Sense of Humor. Have you noticed that it’s more fun to be with someone when they are willing to laugh at themselves? Those characteristics of self awareness and the willingness to not take themselves so seriously is a killer combination for successful relationships. Money doesn’t have to be super serious; in fact, it’s better when it’s not.
7. Respect. With loved ones, you don’t simply take their voice or presence for granted—or if you do, you’re not going to get the kind of relationship you want. You money is always trying to tell you something, so you need to pay attention and look for the clues.
8. Don’t Manipulate It or Try Power Plays. With people and things you really love, you don’t really think about the balance of power. And if you love someone, you’d never want them to do something just because you manipulated them into doing it. If you’re hoping to get money from someone who you perceive to be in a power struggle with you, it will come very slowly. Eliminate the ideas of power from your thoughts about money and it will flow much more easily.
9. Don’t Blame It For Your Bad Mood. Money is never the reason you’re in a bad mood; it’s your perception of the situation that causes you fear and pain. When you think you’re mad at money, you need to pull back the lens and try to understand how your thinking got you to this place. You can’t heal your emotional life with intellectual thought, but you can start to understand your triggers.
10. Seek To Understand. When something happens in your family or friendships that you weren’t expecting, you find out all of the details before moving forward. When something happens with your money, you need to devote the same attention to understanding the dynamic before jumping to the wrong conclusion. You may find your knee-jerk initial response to the situation is wrong, once you review the facts calmly.
11. Don’t Lose Yourself. This is a tip for conscious spending; you need to know exactly how you feel about all of the different ways your money leaves your accounts. If you’re not happy about any one of them, you need to stop. If you’re unconscious about your money, then your relationship is on the decline. Another name for this is money fog.
12. Seek Clarity. If you’re not clear about what is happening in a relationship with someone or something else, chances are they don’t know either. You always have the choice to let a situation remain ambiguous or to choose clarity. The results of clarity may not be pretty (and you may have to move past some shame-filled thoughts), but it’s far better to be clear about the ugly truth than to be uncertain.
Bottom line, if you haven’t made a choice about how you feel about your financial life, it’s the same as when you put off making a decision about whether or not your current beau should stay or go. You think you’re on the fence because of something external, when in reality, it’s you, refusing to accumulate the data needed so that you can make an informed choice. Change can be painful—but on the other side of the pain is a money relationship full of love and freedom; it’s only waiting for you to decide.
Homework
1. Review the different ways to change your money story. Pick one or two (or maybe even three) ways to start adopting a different money story, a money story that supports your values and desires/wants.
2. Morning and Evening Homework:
The Power of Affirmations ~ we’ll learn more about the Power of Affirmations in one of next week’s lessons. But for know that professionals, athletes and business people all use a variety of powerful positive thinking techniques to help them achieve their goals. The mind is a powerful thing that, when used positively, can help you achieve whatever you want. Affirmations are generally repeated several times in order to activate the subconscious into action.
Pick one (or more) of these affirmations and repeat it first thing in the morning and just before going to sleep.
1. Money comes to me everyday in fun and easy ways.
2. I give myself permission to feel good about making the money my desires require.
3. The next step in creating everything I desire is easily expanding into giving and receiving more.
4. I have the answers and the courage to step into my next level of service and wealth.
What’s Next:
In our next lesson, we are going to look at what we need to let go in order to be the person we want to be ~ i.e. decluttering.
In Monday’s lesson, we learned that your thoughts and beliefs create your reality and that your money story is the result of beliefs and values of your parents, grandparents ~ your family money legacy.
Did you know that 95% of your daily actions, in our adult life, are anchored in the perceptions you formed before your 5th birthday?
According to Dr. Brian Weiss, this statistic goes largely unnoticed among adults and yet controls almost everything they do in their daily life.
Let me start by saying well those perceptions created patterns that helped us live in our world and the best way we knew how. However, I think I speak for all of us when I assume that none of us wants her five-year-old self running our world today.
And so it is with compassion that we speak the words of gratitude to the little girls we once were, knowing that it is time for us to become fully-empowered women who firmly, yet lovingly, take the reins over our life and destiny.
In today’s lesson, we are going to learn how to change your money story with a new affirming one that supports you, your divine potential and what you want to accomplish/achieve.
How to Change Your Money Story
Here are some ideas on how you can change your money story.
1. Take action to create change. Set an intention to focus on learning as much as possible about money.
2. Get clear about the story you are telling yourself and others about money. Get conscious of your thoughts, beliefs and fears around money and what you have been carrying around since childhood (your money legacy). Decide to change the story if it’s not empowering you. If you didn’t do the homework from Monday, I encourage you to go back to that lesson and complete it.
Remember I wrote that I decided that making money didn’t have to be hard and I looked for evidence in my life where I made money, sometimes lots of money in the case of selling my house and some other real estate holdings, when it wasn’t “hard” and didn’t involve “hard work”. Another piece of evidence where making money wasn’t hard was creating classes and programs where I did the work at the beginning but continue to get paid for them.
3. Start a Gratitude Journal. Start a ‘Prosperity Journal’ to explore your relationship with money. Write about what’s working, what feels good, and when and where do you feel frustrated and powerless or something is just not right. In this journal, write a list each morning of what you are grateful for. List as many things as possible daily.
4. What is the best way to improve your relationship with money? The answer to that is the same as the answer to how you would go about improving ANY relationship—through love. You can’t enjoy a good relationship with money unless you’re willing to love it, through thick and thin.
Love As Behavior, Not Emotion. Love is a choice and an intention–not only an emotion, but also a behavior. When we choose to love our cat even though she scratched us, that’s love. Or when we choose to help our child solve a problem with all of our patience, resources and energy—even though we might be running low on all of those qualities—that’s love too.
We know we’ve invested our love in the right way when our relationships continue to improve. And, our relationships with money will continue to improve too, as long as we honor it in the same ways that we honor the other important relationships in our lives.
Here are some ways you can work to improve your relationship with money through a loving relationship (pick one or two to start and then add more as time progresses):
1. Pay Attention. When your loved one comes into the room, you acknowledge him or her. Even if you don’t have time or your hands our full, you still pay attention. You would never roll your eyes and tell them, “I’ll deal with you later!” When you first start dating someone you really notice them, study them. You know what they look like, smell like, feel like, etc. I want you to do the same thing with money. Go get some money (dollar bills ~ any denomination will do to start) right now -- go ahead -- I’ll wait.
Got it! O.K. Now look at it! Take a good look at it. Notice the color, what President is on the front, what is the design.
Now feel it! What is the texture? Did you know that people who handle money constantly, like bank tellers, cashiers and waitstaff, can feel a counterfeit bill instantly - it doesn’t have that "feel of money". Paper used for money is made from cotton and linen fibers. This kind of paper is known as rag paper. One big advantage of using rag paper is the fact that it does not disintegrate if you accidentally run paper money through a washing machine.
During the printing process, the paper is squeezed with thousands of pounds of pressure which makes it even thinner than normal paper and gives newly made bills a special crispness. Got the feeling?
Now I want you to smell it! Go on! I know you smelled your significant other when you first got together. Let it fill your nostrils. Have some fun with it! Money, dollar bills, has a very distinct smell. Doesn’t it?
As you sit there with your dollar bills after just looking at its every detail, feeling and smelling it, repeat after me ...
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
I am at one with having a tremendous amount of money.
Notice what feelings come up after you say these words. If it is anything but pure joy and excitement, you need to explore those feelings and go back to the limiting belief exercise.
2. Make Time. Date night for couples is every bit as important as setting a date to make time for money in your life.
3. Prioritize. As we get older and our lives get fuller, we must choose how we spend our time. Whether this is conscious or unconscious, our priorities create our value system. If you want to place more value on money in your life, you have to make a conscious choice to prioritize it.
4. Celebrate. When a kid achieves something, you put the medal, certificate or piece of art on the fridge. When you feel like you’ve made some progress with your money relationship, you must allow yourself the same moment of recognition. You’d never tell your kid, “Well, I guess that’s okay, but I expect a lot more from you in the future!”
5. Forgive. When a loved one makes a mistake, you don’t flip out on them (I hope you don’t!); you acknowledge they did their best, forgive them and move on. When money doesn’t come soon enough, or you find yourself earning less than you hoped for, you need to remember that this is one blip in a relationship that lasts a lifetime . . . and move on.
6. Keep A Sense of Humor. Have you noticed that it’s more fun to be with someone when they are willing to laugh at themselves? Those characteristics of self awareness and the willingness to not take themselves so seriously is a killer combination for successful relationships. Money doesn’t have to be super serious; in fact, it’s better when it’s not.
7. Respect. With loved ones, you don’t simply take their voice or presence for granted—or if you do, you’re not going to get the kind of relationship you want. You money is always trying to tell you something, so you need to pay attention and look for the clues.
8. Don’t Manipulate It or Try Power Plays. With people and things you really love, you don’t really think about the balance of power. And if you love someone, you’d never want them to do something just because you manipulated them into doing it. If you’re hoping to get money from someone who you perceive to be in a power struggle with you, it will come very slowly. Eliminate the ideas of power from your thoughts about money and it will flow much more easily.
9. Don’t Blame It For Your Bad Mood. Money is never the reason you’re in a bad mood; it’s your perception of the situation that causes you fear and pain. When you think you’re mad at money, you need to pull back the lens and try to understand how your thinking got you to this place. You can’t heal your emotional life with intellectual thought, but you can start to understand your triggers.
10. Seek To Understand. When something happens in your family or friendships that you weren’t expecting, you find out all of the details before moving forward. When something happens with your money, you need to devote the same attention to understanding the dynamic before jumping to the wrong conclusion. You may find your knee-jerk initial response to the situation is wrong, once you review the facts calmly.
11. Don’t Lose Yourself. This is a tip for conscious spending; you need to know exactly how you feel about all of the different ways your money leaves your accounts. If you’re not happy about any one of them, you need to stop. If you’re unconscious about your money, then your relationship is on the decline. Another name for this is money fog.
12. Seek Clarity. If you’re not clear about what is happening in a relationship with someone or something else, chances are they don’t know either. You always have the choice to let a situation remain ambiguous or to choose clarity. The results of clarity may not be pretty (and you may have to move past some shame-filled thoughts), but it’s far better to be clear about the ugly truth than to be uncertain.
Bottom line, if you haven’t made a choice about how you feel about your financial life, it’s the same as when you put off making a decision about whether or not your current beau should stay or go. You think you’re on the fence because of something external, when in reality, it’s you, refusing to accumulate the data needed so that you can make an informed choice. Change can be painful—but on the other side of the pain is a money relationship full of love and freedom; it’s only waiting for you to decide.
Homework
1. Review the different ways to change your money story. Pick one or two (or maybe even three) ways to start adopting a different money story, a money story that supports your values and desires/wants.
2. Morning and Evening Homework:
The Power of Affirmations ~ we’ll learn more about the Power of Affirmations in one of next week’s lessons. But for know that professionals, athletes and business people all use a variety of powerful positive thinking techniques to help them achieve their goals. The mind is a powerful thing that, when used positively, can help you achieve whatever you want. Affirmations are generally repeated several times in order to activate the subconscious into action.
Pick one (or more) of these affirmations and repeat it first thing in the morning and just before going to sleep.
1. Money comes to me everyday in fun and easy ways.
2. I give myself permission to feel good about making the money my desires require.
3. The next step in creating everything I desire is easily expanding into giving and receiving more.
4. I have the answers and the courage to step into my next level of service and wealth.
What’s Next:
In our next lesson, we are going to look at what we need to let go in order to be the person we want to be ~ i.e. decluttering.