Five ways I stopped letting money get in the way
I run into this situation with clients somewhat regularly. Something having to do with money is the obstacle keeping them from truly living the wild and precious lives they want. There's not enough money, they have a giant mortgage, moving to the place of their dreams (often near water) or going back to school would cost too much, etc., etc. Of course, there are plenty of facts to support their concerns. Some clients have some kind of major debt on top of everything else. And while I wish I did, I don't have a magic wand to wave around to make debt disappear, replaced by giant cartoon bags of money with dollar signs on the outside! (That would be cool, wouldn't it?)
What I can offer are some tools to turn the whole money puzzle around. About ten years ago, I figured out what to do over a series of years and months. A "perfect storm" of books and resources all seemingly magically showed up at about the same time, and I was ready to dive into their wisdom.
Years later, here are the five biggest takeaways that I've figured out that made a difference for us. They might do the same for you!
1. Pay attention. Most spending that we're sorry about later happens when we purposefully stop paying attention. We really don't want to know. Have you ever taken a receipt for a meal or an outfit or a cart of groceries and not even looked at it? Either tossed it away or shoved it back into your wallet? Have you said aloud or to yourself, "I don't even want to know how much that cost." Well, there you have it. Like a scientist doing an experiment, you have to start paying attention to the data and collecting some information, or you'll have no idea what's happening and you can't make a conclusion or analyze your results, or make changes that will work better for you in the future.
2. Stop trying to impress people. I know, I know. You think you don't do this. You're a well-adjusted person who makes choices based upon what you want. You don't care a bit what other people think. Well, perhaps your evolved self doesn't care, but I can almost guarantee there's at least some very tiny part of your brain that's keeping a pretty interesting tally of where you fit in a never-ending comparison game with others. With their cars, or their homes, or their vacations. Or the quality and value of their holiday gifts. Once you really figure out what you want and get off the status hamster wheel to nowhere, you might be really surprised at the number of cartoon money bags accumulating around your feet!
3. Avoid "budgeting". Setting up budgets and deprivational systems that don't take into account the surprise root canal or cat vet emergency or hole in the roof or sink that won't drain or stolen bicycle or car that died completely - these systems are almost always doomed to fail. (By the way, all the examples above happened to us in the past eight months! They will really put a wrench into any budget, let me tell you!) There are other great options (see #1 above) that will work just as well as budgeting and won't make you feel like you've failed when the unexpected expenses for the month add up to more than you'd budgeted for all of your food and incidentals combined.
4. Make it a game. Solving your money issues is so much more effective when you can have fun while doing it! Contests with yourself or family members, charts, challenges, stickers - you'd be surprised how well these types of methods will work. How much fun can you have with just $5? Try that one today!
5. Figure out what's enough for you. You have to master #2 to really pull this one off. This is my favorite and most important step and it will completely turn around your money situation. Figuring out what's enough seems so simple, but you have to realize that there are outside forces all around you sending messages of lack and need, creating wants you didn't even know you had. It's called advertising, and no matter how smart you are, it works. On you.
These are just a few of the things we've learned (you can see they're common sense and don't involve anything creepy or complicated like a pyramid scheme or buying foreclosed properties.) And we have no debt whatsoever. Even our house is paid for. We have enough liquid to live on for a year or more if we really needed to. We have retirement funds. We have a really happy life with plenty of trips and vacations (This year, a conference in Arizona, hiking on the AT for a week, three different beach trips, a mastermind coach weekend, a road trip to the mountains of Colorado, a trip to see family in Baltimore, a fall camping trip, and a New Orleans staycation getaway!) Our fridge is full of delicious and indulgent food. You get the picture.
And we did this with a very moderate amount coming in - at first two teachers' salaries and now just one teacher salary and one entrepreneur income. You don't need to be making six figures or even half that to transform your relationship with money. Give these tips a try and see what happens!
And check out The Indulgent Path to Money Management - a course I offer both virtually and locally a few times a year - if you'd like more support in living a happy life with the money you have.
Manifesting Madonna
Have you ever heard of a vision board? It’s like a collage – a visual representation of what you’d like to have happen in the future. It’s a fun way to articulate your goals or dreams, and strangely, once you put it out there in words and pictures, circumstances begin to align to allow your dreams to actually happen!
Some people might call it magic, or harnessing the energy of the universe or angels – but it’s really quite practical. It’s just like when you learn a new vocabulary word – one you never even knew existed, and then you see it everywhere. You won’t notice something until you put your attention toward it.
I like to play with vision boards. I like thinking about what I want and then finding the words and images to go with my vision. So about six months ago, I made a vision board about my business. And one of the images I put on it was Madonna. She was in dark glasses and red lipstick. She looked confident and composed. She’s Madonna, after all! I put her on the board because I wanted to channel Madonna’s fearless energy, her willingness to push boundaries, her total comfort in her own skin. Madonna is a badass. And I admire her for that.
A couple of days after I made the vision board I read somewhere that Madonna was coming to New Orleans in October. And I thought, “Huh. Maybe I can manifest some Madonna tickets too. Wouldn’t that be cool if I end up at the Madonna concert in October? Then I’ll really believe in this vision boarding stuff!” And then I looked up the prices and thought, “No way.” And I forgot about it for the summer.
October came. And nothing. Oh well. Then the night before the concert, I was having cocktails with a dear friend and she mentioned a friend of hers was trying to get rid of Madonna tickets. My ears perked right up – Madonna tickets? Say more! Did my friend want to ask about them? Did she want to go? Yes and yes. So she texted and asked if the tickets were still available. We continued to sip cocktails and snack and chat while we waited about 45 minutes to hear back.
Yes – they were ours! I thought, “Why not?” I never, ever, ever buy big arena concert tickets – the last arena show I saw was the Grateful Dead in 1990 or so and before that maybe Peter Gabriel in 1987. Seemed it was time to go ahead and go for it. I told my friend my cool vision boarding story. How I’d manifested Madonna.
She said, “That’s not manifesting. You still have to pay for the tickets!” And I said, “Hmm, that’s true.” And then I checked my phone. And about ten minutes after she had asked for the tickets from her friend, I’d received a PayPal payment for a class that had already begun the night before, from someone I’d never heard of – exactly enough to cover the tickets and a drink and food too! This felt like free money because the class was already going, new person or not . I thought, “Wow – the universe really is sending me a wink!”
It gets crazier. Unusual circumstances led to my friend not being able to go to the concert. So now – should I go alone? Hmmm. I went ahead and went. And I ended up sitting next to an old friend who I hadn’t seen ages! What are the chances of our tickets being near each other? And because Madonna didn’t come on stage until about 10:30 p.m. when the tickets said 8 p.m., it was good that my original friend wasn’t able to come – she would not have been happy waiting around for 2.5 hours! Somehow we heard through the grapevine that Madonna would be coming on very late, so we just settled in, relaxed, and people-watched.
Then, finally, Madonna. She still has it. She’s still pushing the envelope. We sometimes forget when we’re recalling the lace and the perky songs about stars and holidays that she’s always done some pretty edgy stuff and stretched her audiences past their comfort zone. This show was no exception. There was so much to see, so much to process – it was quite a spectacle! She's definitely still a badass.
You can call this whole set of circumstances coincidence or luck or whatever. I know that. But I love this story, and I love my vision board, and I love that I manifested Madonna! And I love that I can be open to great fun and amazing possibilities every day.
How about you? What do you dream of? Let me know what’s on your vision board, and if you have a great “manifesting” story, please share it in the comments! And enjoy the slide show of the concert and the fabulous outfits people wore to celebrate!
[slideshow]
Why go out in the rain?
You plan a walk or a hike and then it rains. So you stay inside and postpone the walk until the weather's better.
I've done it plenty - I've stayed inside because of rain. I like dry weather and blue skies and long views. But I've also learned to like fog and mist and rain and even a downpour here and there. I've learned to love raindrops dripping from flowers and leaves all shiny and wet.
While I've never been a fan of hiking in the mud- in fact walking in mud for fourteen miles on my first day on the Appalachian Trail in Vermont made me cry - I realize that a walk in the rain can often be lovely. It shifts the perspective closer- to the moss on the trail side, or a bark-darkened tree, or a puddle adorned with fallen leaves. Rain puts up a curtain around the long views so you notice what's right in front of you. Sometimes its a box turtle in the trail. Or a squirrel fixing up a nest for the evening.
Last night I hosted a wordless walk - it was supposed to be to enjoy the sunset and moonrise, but clouds and rain all day made visibility of the sunset unlikely. So people who'd planned to attend the walk mostly stayed away - rain tends to do that.
I learned from six months hiking the Appalachian Trail that if I only hiked when it wasn't raining, I would never finish the journey. It rains a lot in the eastern woodlands. Yesterday I had nowhere I needed to be and I could have easily stayed home and canceled the walk, knowing that people understand that you don't go out walking in the rain.
But I'd been inside too much this week. So I went. And I'm so glad I did. The quality of light as day shifted to night was magical.
The rain was only a sprinkle here and there. I really did watch a squirrel prepare its nighttime cozy spot.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN1hKoLdWBM&feature=youtu.be]
And the moon peeked out from the clouds for a moment!
The breeze was the absolute perfect temperature, and I got what I'd come out for - stillness for my soul.
Here's one more wordless video for you - raindrops on the bayou. Watch the ripples. So calming.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjnbPhnKIMU&feature=plcp]
So what are your thoughts? Will you go walking in the rain? What do you love about rain?
Just for fun - what kind of butterfly?
I'm testing something with my assorted technology, and to test it I need to publish a blog post, and I can't wait until tomorrow, so here's a question: Do you know what kind of butterfly this is?
If you answered monarch, you're close, but this is actually a viceroy. It has an extra stripe on its lower wings. I rarely see viceroys, and when I saw this butterfly it seemed a bit different from the monarchs that flit all over our yard, and my hunch was right! What a cool surprise!
Tricky brain and grass time
Ok, it's been four days and I've been listening closely to what kinds of little bon mots my brain tosses out there while I'm trying to get things done, stick to my plan and do my work. If you're just arriving at this post without the background, you might want to begin here: This is what I've been hearing. Prepare yourself - it's not pretty:
"You know, there's too much to do. Even if you worked all day, you'll never be done. And then you'll just be working all the time. Yuck to that!"
"Being efficient is soul sucking. It's only for boring people who don't have a rich inner life. Too much neatness is sterile and the sign of an empty mind."
"It's too hard. You don't have what it takes. Give up."
"There are too many steps! Aaaah! We don't know what to do!"
"Oh, see - that didn't work. You totally don't know anything about websites."
"Well- you missed doing your ten minute thing on the Fourth of July. You'll never catch up now. Might as well just avoid everything for another week."
"Wait until Wednesday. Wait until Thursday. Wait until tomorrow. Wait until after lunch. Wait until tonight. Wait until Monday."
"Oh my god. Look at that list of things you want to write/change/create/tweak. It's a mile long. You'll never get all that done in time."
"It's too late. Too late, I tell you!"
"Zzzzzzzzzz."
Ah, yes. My helpful mind! Despite its cries, I got some stuff done. I stuck with my ten minutes per day of working on my last little pile (I doubled up today since I didn't do it yesterday. It's smaller. My space is in order, overall.
But, there's stuff on the list that I was really planning to work on. It's bigger stuff, with multiple steps, and I avoided it. Here's why. Everything I've done so far to help myself be more productive is rational and ought to work, but it doesn't completely, just like when people try to lose weight with very reasonable rational diets, and their bodies freak out on them. My brain is in rebellion mode. Sabotage mode. It doesn't trust that I'm not going to become an all work, no play kind of girl. It remembers how tired we used to be when I was working all the time. It's panicked. It's resisting any form of discipline. And my body's not helping much either. It just wants to sleep. A lot. Whether I go to bed early or late.
If my brain and body feel deprived by my time management and task organization "plan", they're going to fight me. I need a new tool. As Martha Beck says, I just need to get my brain and body to "join up" with me, much like a horse will follow the lead mare in its herd. And that won't happen when we're in "famine" mode, and all my brain sees are rules about how we're going to spend our time and what we "can't" do, making my body anxious, fidgety and just plain tired.
Because when I'm not relaxed about how my day's going to go, when I'm gritting my teeth or dreading what I've put on my to do list, I'm not particularly productive. Sure, I can force it and just work anyway, but I'll pay later with that sense from my body and mind that I'm not to be trusted, that this isn't going well, and next time we might as well just go to sleep.
So, how do I get relaxed and get my body and mind to trust that all will be well - that we don't need to go into avoidance napping mode? By giving them what they want- a safe place to not have to do anything. I call it "grass time". Ten minutes of quiet out in the grass, with the cats if they happen to be around. And a couple of mantras - these borrowed or adapted from from Martha Beck's Four Day Win:
"Everything is OK." "I don't have do do anything at all for the next ten minutes." "In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter what I get done today. It's much more important to be kind than to check things off the to do list. I'll start by being kind to myself." "If I never changed anything at all about how I get things done, the world would keep revolving." "It's OK to rest."
I'm looking for a relaxation response - a sense from my body and mind that all is well, with easy breathing, relaxed muscles, and a general sense of wellness and peace. Nearby cats always help!
And then, with that peaceful state of mind, I can get to work.
Give it a try and see if ten minutes of really doing nothing gives your body and mind a little more reason to trust you, and a little more interest in happily going about your day with you.
