love money

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Five Things I Thought I'd Never Be Thankful For

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Five Things I Thought I'd Never Be Thankful For

race yourself.

This isn't going to be a typical Thanksgiving post full of positivity-lite and generic gratitude.

Ironic, because I find myself in a place in my life where I have never been more happy. Or more grateful. And I could easily write a piece on how beautiful my life is and how thankful I am for that. To which you could roll your eyes. Or burn with jealousy. Or give me a standing ovation.

And I honestly don't think it would do either of us any good.

So, I thought about what I'd really like to share with you. What gratitude really means to me. And what giving thanks actually looks like in my life.

It's easy to be thankful for the "good stuff." A loving and kind man. Healthy kids. Career success. Strong body. Great friends. Beautiful home. 

It's easy to be thankful for the "simple stuff." A hot cup of coffee. Warm fuzzy socks. The song of the black bird outside my window. Amazon Prime. 

Why Money Matters

I know what it feels like to be broke. Worried. Scared. To feel out of control. And to feel like a fraud.

I know what it feels like to find out that the check didn't clear. Or that the $5 in my pocket needs to stretch all the way until next Tuesday. To cross my fingers, wishing that a client will come out of nowhere. Or to feel completely crushed when I didn't get the job.

I know what it feels like to be disappointed in myself. To feel burning shame. And to wish I could pretend hard enough to make the fear go away.

I know what it feels like to feel unworthy. Stupid. Confused. To think that  money would fix my problems. Or make my stress go away.

And I was wrong. Money wasn't the problem.

I was.

$571,817.68 Down And $0 To Go

571,817.68 is a lot of dollars.

On January 18, 2009, this is how much I owed in debt.

After a decade of living beyond my means.

A couple of lousy real estate transactions.

And a failed marriage.

 

I have carried this debt for nearly three years.

Watching each month as the numbers crawled toward zero.

And yesterday, I made my very last payment.

New balance: $0.00.

 

If I stacked 571,817 dollar bills into a pile and weighed it - it would be 1,167 pounds.

 

That's literally HALF a ton.

The debt I carried weighed as much as a grizzly bear.

Three Types Of Earning

Three Types Of Earning

I am so fortunate and incredibly smart (if I may say so myself) to have chosen a career that I like.

Actually, I don’t just like it. I friggin’ love it.

I love opening up my MacBook and checking my email.  I love a full inbox. I love my clients. I love writing my blog. I love the students I train. I love answering emails. I love reading new material. I love creating classes. I love working on my website.  I love invoicing my clients. I love “Notification of Payment Received.”  Best. Subject line. Ever. 

To tell you the truth, I would do this job whether or not I was paid, because I love the work itself, but shhh… don’t tell my clients that.

I love to kick ideas around with my colleagues. I love the challenge of a difficult thought.   I love working from home in my yoga clothes. I love that I don’t have to be pretty, have my hair brushed, or even have shoes on to make money.

I’m pretty sure I’ve made my point. But, for clarity, let’s just say: I love my job.

After reading my little rampage, I’m guessing that you’re either happy for me or entirely nauseated by me.

Either way, I want this love-fest for you, too.

Because if you don’t friggin’ love the way money comes to you, you’re never going to reach your full earning potential.

How we feel when we earn our money has an enormous impact on our financial results.

Four Types Of Spending

I really never used to give much thought to my spending. In my mind, it was a means to an end. I liked paying for some stuff and hated paying for other stuff. I liked shopping and buying stuff. Especially stuff from Macy’s, Nordstrom and Target. And, I hated paying for things like car repairs, taxes, and my retirement. But, I never really broke down how I felt about the actual spending of the money. The verb. The exchanging. 

Instead, I focused on trying to make more money and tried not to focus on the spending. To be honest, thinking about my spending would just send me into a tailspin of feeling stupid, dishonest, entitled, childish and guilty. So, I did my best to avoid that subject.

Now, I give careful consideration to each money exchange and I help my clients do the same thing. We pay attention to how and why we spend our money. We recognize what type of spending that we’re engaging in. We know where we are on the Abundance Scale. We recognize our patterns and deliberately keep our focus on the result that we are trying to relate.

We all spend money. We pay our bills. We pay the parking meter. We buy things. We go to the grocery store. We put gas in our car.

It’s very rare to find a day that we don’t spend money.

Each time money leaves our hands, or our debit cards, or our credit cards, or our bank accounts – we have an opportunity to learn about our relationship with money.

How we feel when we spend our money has an enormous impact on our financial results.

The Abundance Scale

The Abundance Scale

There have been very few moments in my lifetime that definitively and completely changed the trajectory of my life.  Of course, most moments in life have this capacity, but in general, when I look back over my life to date, my top life-altering moments can probably be counted on one hand.

One of the moments on this short list was the first time I was shown how my thinking created my feelings. 

Until then, I was stuck in a mind that believed its own stories. I didn’t know that I could question what my mind said. I didn’t even know that my mind said things that weren’t true. I had no concept of the bondage that I was experiencing by my own hand. 

In tandem to this, I really had no recognition of what an emotion really was. I only really knew if I felt bad or… not bad.  I knew what intense stress, worry or fear felt like. And I knew the absence of that. 

Words like happiness, peace, calm, joy, jealousy, regret, boredom, really only had a conceptual meaning to me. I knew, in my head, what they meant, but I had no idea what they felt like in my body.

Most of the time I either felt bad or numb. Or badly numb. Or numbingly bad. 

7 Beliefs That Enable The Discovery Of Truth

7 Beliefs That Enable The Discovery Of Truth

We all have a breaking point. A rock bottom. A last straw.  Some of us are smart enough to change course before we hit that point.

I am not one of those people.

I am stubborn. Self-righteous. Denial expert. Story-spinner-extraordinaire.

I would love to tell you that I was on the path of self-realization. That I was working on my own spiritual enlightenment – and came to these beautiful truths about money. I would love to tell you that my relationship with money changed due to my intelligence, my inner peace, and my amazing-ness.

But that would be a lie. The truth is, after years of mistreating my money, it finally walked out on me. It had had enough. And hit the road.

In other words. I was broke. For the first time in my life.

And not just a little broke. Broke and broken.

I had no other choice. I was either going to give up (never) or radically change my approach to money.

I knew that I needed to start with the truth. Figure out how and why I ended up where I was. And then, belief by belief, start building a new infrastructure for abundance.

The same is true for you. Our financial results depend on the thoughts that we believe. If we believe thoughts that avoid the truth, we will never create lasting abundance in our life. We will never be free from anxiety and worry.

10 Common Beliefs That Justify Avoiding The Truth

10 Common Beliefs That Justify Avoiding The Truth

We all know that we should pay attention to our finances. We should know what we spent our money on. We should know how much is in our bank. Or how much we need to save. Or how much we need to pay.

For years, I avoided my own financial truth. I postponed checking my accounts. Thoughts about logging into my online banking would produce a painful pit in my stomach. I just didn’t want to know. I wouldn’t open letters (over draft notices) from my bank. I knew what they were – and I’d just file them.  I wouldn’t open my investment statements. I’d let my credit card statements sit there until the due date, never looking at the finance charge I was paying, ignoring the list of transactions, only looking at the minimum payment amount. Crumpled up dollar bills would find their way through the laundry. I’d throw away important receipts. I’d misplace warranty information I had no idea how much cash I had (or didn’t have) in my wallet. 

Money And The Truth

Money And The Truth

To permanently change our relationship with money, we have to be willing to open our eyes. We need to know - in detail - where we stand financially. We need to take responsibility for our past and present behaviors. And, most importantly, we need to understand why we have created this financial reality in the first place. As you can probably imagine, unveiling these truths and digging through our money beliefs can be difficult, time consuming, scary, disappointing, and exhausting.

But the alternative is so much worse. Believe me. I know because I’ve done it.

Pretending that we know where we really stand. Keeping ourselves in the dark from the truth. Hiding from our own money. Trying to fudge the details, guessing, estimating, or fantasizing, only prolongs our dysfunctional relationship with money.

Where Money Problems Start

Whether we want to earn more, or spend less, or get out of debt, or save more, or worry less. If we want to have a better relationship with money, there’s only one thing we need to do to create lasting change.

Change our mind.

It’s not more complicated than that. We don’t have to understand investments, banking, real estate, business, dividends, stocks, ROI’s, percentages, budgets, spreadsheets, or exchange rates. We only need to understand the way our mind works.

And, by the way… that’s a big ‘only.’

Money is a neutral thing. It can be proven to exist or not exist. It’s a fact.  It’s a number. It can be a number on paper. It can be a number on your computer screen. It can be a number on a receipt.  It can be a number on a dollar bill in your wallet.