Since somehow the New Year got to be about change, I thought I’d chime in with my ten cents worth (inflation…advice has gotten more expensive but still only worth what it means to you:-).
Almost every human being alive has something he or she would like to experience in life…we call these things dreams, goals, wishes, wants or even desire. Whatever you call them, they are usually things you don’t currently have.
These ‘things’ can be literal things, like a new car or a relationship, or they can be experiences, like travel, fun, play, or even emotions like joy, happiness or love.
Whatever they are (I’m about to tell you something zillions of people have said before), they’re fairly easy to have. And all it takes to have them is one thing. Well, maybe not just one thing…but basically one thing followed by one other thing to support the first thing.
Wanting What Other People Have – Life Mistake #1
Here you are, living your life. You look around at other people living their lives and you think you see something that THEY have that YOU don’t (first big life mistake). You see…most of the things that you think other people really have, they don’t. Or they don’t enjoy them and guess what? THEY secretly want something YOU have.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with wanting something you don’t have. It’s just that I want you to want it for the right reasons…not because someone else has it. I want you to really have thought out WHY you want whatever it is so that you are very clear because it takes clarity to create this new thing in your life.
Thinking That Other People Have It Better Than You – Life Mistake #2
We often think that bad things only happen to US and that those OTHER people are living better lives (with all the things that they have that we don’t – see Mistake #1). Not so and no one has ever said it better than Josh Shipp. Here he is for your enjoyment!
No Where To Go
One of my favorite ah-hahs in life has to be when I discovered years ago that there was no where to go. Literally! There’s no place to get to. But human beings strive to ‘get there’ anywhere.
We want to get to financial freedom.
We want to get healthy.
We want to get fit, lean, strong, whatever.
We want to have that job title.
We wan to earn that certain salary.
We want to be in the most romantic relationship with the best looking person.
We want to have the perfect kid.
Whatever it is, once we have it, we’re there! Right? Wrong.
This is what I noticed in my late 30’s and into my 40’s…OMG, there is no place to go. I was simply where I was and it was up to me to make it great! To this day, I love being where I am…most of the time. When I’m not, I have simply forgotten the lesson and have to be reminded.
Creating Change Is Just One Thing (Followed By One Other Thing)
Are you ready for the one thing that’s required for any change to ever happen in your life? I mean really ready? OK, here is is. All change requires is a strong, well-thought out, clear…
DECISION
Yup, that’s all it takes. Yes, there’s having an awareness that something needs to change or having a desire to experience something new in your life, etc. But once you know what it is you want or want to change (which is wanting something other than what you have), you simply have to make a decision to get it or make it happen. Once you make the decision, and I mean really make the decision, it seems like things just fall into place naturally. At least this is my experience and hey, that’s all I can speak from.
The Thing That Follows The Decision
OK, you know how sometimes you live your life paying attention to what you’re doing and other times you’re don’t?
Have you ever noticed that during the times you are very present that life seems to go smoother and you sail through minutes and hours and days effortlessly?
Well, the thing that supports the DECISION is simple…and I call it…
MINDFULLNESS
When you’re mindful of what you’re doing, you’re making choices that support the decision. Often when you’re not mindful, you don’t. I wrote about something I call “pre-decisions” a few weeks ago. Pre-decisions are simply steps that ensure mindfulness in the future, even if you’re not:-). If you missed that post, click on the link and wonder over and read it.
So, here’s your Happy New Year Gift…Let’s call it The Gift Of Change.
If you do these couple of activities, and use this wisdom, I promise you’ll have a lot more success at changing things in your life than you will if you try and follow processes with zillions of steps that so many other people read about. Those articles always just cause me to roll my eyes and not finish reading the information because it’s so overwhelming.
The zillions of steps you’ll need to take for change will happen naturally and organically if you just do these couple of things.
First…
Change Activity #1:
Write down ONE thing you want and WHY you want it. Be as crystal clear about the WHY as you can possibly get. And if there’s any hesitation in your gut about wanting it…you don’t want it badly enough to make it happen. It has to so strong and so clear that nothing will cause you to change your mind.
By the way, did you notice I didn’t ask you to write down all of your goals? Or write down 10 things? Just one at a time is plenty.
Change Activity #2:
Find a place to sit quietly by yourself. Think about this thing. Think about what it will take to make happen…not in terms of the amount of work but the amount of surrendering to it you’ll need to do. Think about this thing in terms of your clarity and your why from activity #1.
When you’re ready, make THE DECISION.
Then smile. Know that you’ve taken the next best step to creating that change in your life, bringing that experience into your life, having that thing that you really want.
Once you’ve made The Decision, it’s time for the mindfulness. Notice how you feel, notice what you say about the thing (maybe best at first to keep it to yourself rather than spread it around. Just see how THAT feels. This helps make sure you made the decision for YOU).
Then start to notice how you take little steps toward this thing each day without even really thinking about it.
Mindful Sticky Note
Tips To Stay Mindful
This may sound silly but just put notes up around your house, in your car, on your desk, in the bathroom that say, “MINDFUL” on them. All I can say is thank goodness for sticky notes!
Once you get the hang of it, you won’t need so many of these reminders but they are the most wonderful thing.
They will remind you to think before spending money on something you don’t need or want (you knew I’d get that in there somewhere…after all it IS a blog about financial wisdom), think before you choose something other than what will move you toward the object/subject of your decision, etc.
Change…In Summary
It’s simple…
If you live in a country where you’re free to make changes in your life, then you have the power to change your life and have something you want. (And though inherently we are all born with the ability to be free thinkers, we’re not all raised to understand and believe this and if you don’t believe it..well…it isn’t so.)
Choose something you want to change or something you want to experience or something you want in your life.
Be crystal clear about wanting it and why.
Make the decision to make it happen.
Be mindful as you take the steps to bring it about.
Enjoy the process along the way (which is the main reason behind the mindfulness in the first place).
MOVIE TIP: If you have Netflix, rent The Flowering of Human Consciousness with Eckhart Tolle. He is the author of The Power of Now which I loved and recommend often.
So, Happy New Year. Happy Today. Happy Moment and all the moments that will follow for you.
How does it make you feel? What goes through your mind?
Do you enjoy setting goals? Do you dread setting goals?
Do you do anything to keep from having to think about, talk about or write down your goals?
Depending on the type of person you are, goals can be helpful or hurtful. They can help direct your energy toward an accomplishment you’d like to experience or they can make you feel all tied up in knots.
For me, it’s the latter. I’ve never understood them. I’ve never enjoyed doing them. I’ve never found them useful and I certainly don’t judge my success as a living, breathing, human being by them. But many people do.
Now don’t get me wrong, I DO actually sit down fairly regularly and think about what I’d like for myself, my business, etc. I write these thing down and even look back over them on a fairly regular basis. After all, if Stanford University says that it takes writing goals down on a regular basis in order for them to come true, well, by all means, let’s write them down! 🙂
The thing is, for me, they don’t drive me. For other people that I know, they are indeed the driver. These goal-oriented people strive each day to reach closer to their goals. It seems to give them a sense of purpose each day. But for people who don’t ‘get’ the whole goal thing, there is another way.
First, you have to understand that if you’re not a goal-oriented, goal-centered person, you’re probably what I call a process-oriented, process-centered person. You love the process of life, you enjoy learning and doing and creating and noticing and smelling and, well, you get the idea. And you know which kind of person you are just by reading these words.
Regardless of which type of person you are relative to goals and goal setting, I’m going to invite you to try a different process this year.
All Important Life Question
Instead of setting goals this year, ask yourself one simple question:
Do you want to DO the following year like you’ve done this year
or would you like to do the coming year differently?
If you DO want the next year to be like the last, then proceed to do things like you did them last year. And if this is your choice, great work knowing that you like what, and how, you’re doing life and all that it entails.
If you DO NOT want to do next year like the last one, well, you have a few steps to take. And the first step is another question:
What DO you want to be doing next year?
For many people, this simple question can bring up a myriad of emotions:
Fear
Anxiety
Stress (which Eckert Tolle says is simply not wanting to be where you are)
Dread
Overwhelm
Or any number of other emotions.
Why the emotions? Because we don’t LIKE goals. We don’t UNDERSTAND goals. In high school and college, when my teachers came in and said we were going to learn how to set short and long-term goals, I just rolled my eyes and said, under my breath, “Oh, goody. Here we go again with the goals.”
I’d do the activity but I’d never really DO the activity. Even back then my gut told me that setting goals weren’t important FOR ME. But they are for others.
Answering the first question:
For me, I have answered the main question above, “No, I want to do life differently next year.”
Answer the second questions:
I want more movement. I want to be outside more. I want to swim in the ocean (a warm ocean). I want to write more and create more. I want to do more of what makes people happy (make gluten-free cookies and muffins, believe it or not:-).
OK, that’s all for now.
How will YOU answer the question? Just something else to think about this holiday season. I wish you all of the happiness you can be aware of between the spaces of everything going on.
Since I was a little girl, I have been active. Growing up on a farm with horses and gardens and lawns, a lake near by and a mysterious, murky pond within wondering distance, lent itself to never ending physical activity, exploration and play.
Then, in college, I found my way into Oregon State University’s entertaining weight room (hello…young men, tank tops, muscles?) and the pool and discovered my first passion…fitness and nutrition. I was enthralled with learning about foods, what exercise did to the body and how, what vitamins we needed to stay healthy, and began to form what I now recognize as my ‘purpose’ in life…empowering others to be responsible for themselves.
So even though you think that my focus is financial education and teaching people about money, my focus is always, first and foremost, inviting you to think differently about money AND life. I love providing you with tools that help you continue to take ownership of your entire life and how it shows up for you.
Though Pay Yourself First usually has to do with money, today’s article involves ALL of the ways we need to pay ourselves first. Not just in the realm of money, but health, exercise, time to think, and more. I hope you enjoy this invitation to think a little differently today.
Pay Yourself First with Time to Think
If there’s one thing I know it’s that we all think too much. The problem is that we often think too much about the wrong stuff. The reason for this is two fold:
1. We haven’t learned how to control our thinking, and,
2. We create lives that are so busy that we don’t take time to practice controlling our thinking.
And yes, I do mean we create busy lives. We all have the same 24 hours in our days. It’s a matter of making priorities about how we SPEND that time. I haven’t met a human being alive that can’t find 15 minutes in his or her day to stop and just think.
The thing is…unless you have learned that you can, and must, control your thoughts, that 15 minutes won’t be productive or enjoyable for you. One of the best and easiest books to read on the power of controlling your thoughts is “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. I read it years ago and it was great. It’s short and easy to digest.
Do yourself a favor and grab this book. Then go find make some time to read it so YOU can start taking time to think the right thoughts for you and YOUR life.
Pay Yourself First with Time to Eat Well
Let’s face it…if there is one believe, it’s that ‘we are what we eat.’ We’re also what we put on our skin, and what we breath, and what we drink. We can’t NOT be.
One of the situations that has always confused me is when parents are eating a great healthy salad but the kids are eating French fries. After all, they’re ‘just’ kids. What part of the fact that those kids grow into adults do some parents not understand. If you want to make a healthy adult, you have to feed the little adult healthy food. I mean, if you were growing tomatoes and feeding the plant poison, I promise you’d never get a single healthy tomato on that plant!
If you find yourself saying, “I don’t have time to eat well,” my suggestion to you is to ask yourself what part of you isn’t important enough to feed well? Do you not love yourself enough to feed that beautiful container you get to move about the planet in what it needs to be healthy?
Eating healthy isn’t rocket science and doesn’t take any more time that eating unhealthy food. And not knowing how to cook isn’t an excuse either. If I’m traveling and hungry, I can just as easily choose a piece of fruit, a container of yogurt, a roll and some carrots. And this is always less expensive than eating out.
So find a way to say thank you to your body by providing it with healthy nutritious food.
Pay Yourself First with Time to Move Your Body
As you already know, my first love is fitness. Anyone who knows me knows that before I do anything else, I take time in the morning to move my body. Sometimes that may only be 15 minutes of yoga, but I put my body through a routine of stretches that invites my brain to wake up and my joints to move. This frees up my creative juices as well and allows me to go into my day ready to receive whatever I’m attracting into it that day.
Our bodies aren’t meant to be stationary. This machine I’m typing on is one of humanities biggest double-edged swords. It has allowed us opportunities and information that was difficult at best before we invented the computer. On the other hand, it is changing the way we think and function with not only the world but each other.
Again, exercise isn’t rocket science. Stretch a little (buy a beginning yoga DVD), walk every day for half an hour, get an exercise ball to work those abs and back, do some pushups, etc. And you don’t have to go to the gym. Simply pay yourself some time every day to move your body and I promise it will pay you back in the long run.
Bottom line…move it or use it. The more active you are now, the more active you’ll be later.
Pay Yourself First with Time to Do Something Nice for Someone Else
After 52 years on this beautiful planet, another thing that I know is that when I do something nice for someone else just because I want to, it affects me as much as it affects the person I’m helping. And everyone who has ever attended my Train-the-Trainer workshop has always agreed.
You know that warm, yummy feeling you get when you do something nice for someone or make them feel great in some way? That’s your body telling you that you were just doing your purpose. And that warm, yummy feeling pays your body wonderful rewards in the form of stress reduction and happiness hormones.
So take a couple of minutes every morning and think about what you can do for someone else. Once you’re in the habit of doing for others, you’ll be amazed at how your world turns into a world where other people do things for you as well. Try it!
Pay Yourself First with Time to Love Someone
This might seem pretty obvious but it’s one of the hardest things for people to take time for. Again, our busy, busy, busy lives interfere most often with our most basic emotion, and need…love.
Loving someone doesn’t have to mean going out to dinner, taking them to a movie, making dinner for them, etc. Loving someone could be visiting someone in the hospital, reaching out a hand and rubbing a back for a few minutes, saying I love you, tucking a child in at night without your cell phone.
If love really is all there is, then if you’re not taking time for love in your life, you’re missing what is.
Pay yourself the opportunity to experience love today.
Pay Yourself First with Money for Your Older Self
This is the most obvious place to pay yourself first and the first place in your life where the practice can slip between your finger tips. We let all myriad of events and situations get in the way of providing for our older selves.
In our adult programs, we often do a visualization where we take people forward to talk to their older selves. It’s a profound experience for most people because they simply haven’t thought about it in the way we present it.
Pay Yourself First is the first lesson our campers learn when they play The Money Game and it’s reinforced with every round of the game. Over and over again, they get paid and pay themselves first. By the end of the game, they’ve got the idea!
There IS an older version of yourself waiting inside of YOU for you to do the right thing financially. If you don’t, that older person could be living a life of poverty, ill-health and unhappiness…all because you didn’t pay yourself first while you were young enough to do so.
If you’d like to listen to an audio of one of this visualization, click here.
OK, you’re on your own now to pay yourself in all sorts of yummy ways. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly.
Just something to think about…
COFFEE TIP I PROMISED YOU: How to get a .99 cent iced coffee!
Stop by one of those little convenience stores at a local gas station. Do the following:
1) Grab a plastic container they offer for the soda machine.
2) Fill it with whatever you want in your iced coffee: milk, specialty creamers (I LOVE the Irish Cream flavored ones:-), syrup if they have them.
3) Fill the container to the brim with ice from the soda machine (yes, to the brim…remember, you’re going to pour hot coffee over the ice).
4) Choose the type of coffee you want and just fill it with coffee instead of soda.
I did this last week at a gas station by the LAX and it was .99 and it was huge!
Have you ever been one type of person, yet know that being that type of person wasn’t going to ever get you where you ‘said’ you wanted to actually be? Financially or other wise?
Well, changing seems to require some magic on our parts and often we’re just not equipped with the right tricks up our sleeves to do the changing.
But then along comes a book…a fabulous book. And in that book, you begin to see what it actually takes to change yourself, change your relationships, change the culture, even change the WORLD!!!
I just finished one such book and I have to thank Stacey Sherman, one of our wise Creative Wealth Coaches, for the suggestion. THANK YOU!
The book is SWITCH: How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Financial changes seem to be particularly hard for people which made the book all that more fascinating.
Riders and Elephants
This is the main theme of the book and it’s taken from University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Though it seems to the onlooker that the Rider is the leader, he can’t really accomplish any change without the willingness and effort of the Elephant.
The book goes into great depth about what has to happen in order for us to change ourselves, our organizations and even the world. I loved the book so much that the next few articles are going to explore different aspects of the book.
Finding The Bright Spots
One of the things that I really loved was their piece on looking at WHAT IS ALREADY WORKING to find clues on how to make change happen more organically and easier. They call this “Looking for the bright spots.”
So, this is where we’re going to start and I need your help to get the ball going. This blog post is a participatory post and I need your help.
I’m going to pose a 3 questions and if you would do me the honor of posting your valuable answers via the comments section, I’d appreciate it very much! This way the bright spots will be here for all to see. Here goes…
Question # 1:
When is saving money easy for you? In other words, do you need to be in a particular situation, have a certain type of job, live in a certain type of place, be making a certain amount of money, be in a special mindset, have a powerful goal to work for? Whatever it is, WHEN is the act of SAVING easy for you?
Question # 2:
When you have made changes in your financial habits in the past, what was the motivating factor? Did you set a goal, take a class and learn new information, get a lecture from a parent, etc. What exactly motivated you to actually make that change?
Question # 3:
What financial habit comes easy for you and why? Is is saving a percentage of your paycheck, shopping sales, using coupons, etc.? And it can be any habit that involves money.
OK, that’s all we’re going to do today. I can’t wait to read all of your answers!
Most of us have taken a walk around town or along a path and come across a breed of dog that we didn’t recognize. If we’re curious, we look at the owner and ask, “What kind of dog is that?”
Most dog owners, if they are of the proud dog parent group, will happily stop and tell you the breed of their dog (even if he’s a mutt or a mix:-), a little history, where they got it, etc. We listen, happy to learn a little bit about a new type of dog, pet the dog a bit if we’re so inclined and then say our goodbyes. We then walk one way and the dog and owner(s) walk the other way, probably never to meet again.
Human’s habitual need to classify
Imagine if we did this with people? Ah, you see where I’m going? We DO do this with people. (My boyfriend, Steve, despises it when I use two do’s in a row:-).
When we see someone with a strange looking face or we hear an accent or language we don’t recognize, we’ll often ask him or her, “So where are you from?”
Hammer of Financial Justice
Now there’s nothing wrong with this. As long as our curiosity stops short of the judgments that often (not always) follow.
For instance, I have several Jewish friends and they can’t stand the stereotypes that say that all Jewish people are spendthrifts.
I have an Indian friend who tells me that people ‘expect’ him to have a ton of money because so many tribes are involved with casinos these days. However, he is a hard-working man, just like most of us and doesn’t have a ton of money, yet.
Financial judgments are hard to overcome
Our subconscious financial beliefs, e.g., I could never be rich, making lots of money takes a lot of hard work, rich people are greedy, etc., have so much control over how much money we end up having or not having in our lives. And making these financial judgments about others plays right into those beliefs because it is the beliefs that cause the judgment in the first place.
A personal example:I’m not sure if I’ve shared this before, but last year while visiting my mother, I heard her say, in response to an article in the paper, “Those rich bitches…” I was shocked and had no idea where this came from. I also noticed my nauseous response to her words.
After a similar response while I was visiting her recently, I decided to bring it up…if nothing but for my own edification and curiosity as it relates to growth around my OWN financial beliefs.
I said, “So I have a question. Why is it that you have this ‘thing’ against rich people when you yourself actually grew up as the rich girl in your town?”
She was sort of shocked by my question. She didn’t rebuke it. She wasn’t defensive. She just sort of sat there pondering the question. The end result was that she wasn’t really sure.
We didn’t go into it any further though the question led to her telling me several stories about how her mother helped many of the neighbors in the little town where she drew up. At 76 years old and unhealthy an unhealthy 76 at that, I didn’t see any need to probe further. I suspect, however, that she will ponder if further on her own.
Your financial belief wealthwork (i.e., homework)
1. Simply watch what you think and say and feel about people who have more money than you. Notice I did not say RICH or WEALTHY. We often have powerful judgments about any who (we suspect) has more money than we have.
2. When you catch yourself in one of these moments, stop yourself and ask, “Wow, I wonder where THAT came from?” Thought it’s not necessary to always know where the unsupportive belief came from, it can be quite enlightening if you can figure it out.
3. Take a piece of paper and a pen and create a more supportive, dare I say positive, belief around what you were thinking, saying or feeling. Example: If you think rich people are greedy, think instead, “Rich people donate a lot of money to others in need.” Because they DO!
4. Give yourself some time to let your beliefs change. Old habits, and judgments are essentially habits, die slowly and must be replaced with new habits, i.e., supportive thoughts replacing the unsupportive thought.
OK, now go out there and start paying attention to yourself. I promise you’ll be very interesting. We all are.
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery…….if you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”.
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot……they “didn’t have a pot to piss in” & were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ….. .. Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof… Hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.
(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would
Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive… So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
And that’s the truth…..Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !
