FIND YOUR HAPPY: An Inspirational Guide to Loving Life to Its Fullest (10 page)

When I was in Chicago, I lived in a giant loft three blocks from the Sears Tower. I had a larger-than-life lifestyle that needed a large salary to support it. Once I shifted and realized my depression was attached to my current lifestyle, my needs changed. I no longer needed a big loft in a big city, working at a big advertising agency. All of it seemed so forced and unnatural to me. As soon as I realized this, my outside world shifted to match my internal state because I was laid off. Suddenly, my lifestyle could not be supported by the drastic shift in my income level. The lifestyle no longer served my higher good and me, so the large income disappeared simply to show me a more acceptable way to live my life. Moving from making $70,000 a year to being unemployed can do some damage to the ego, but I used this opportunity to propel me into my future dream self. I knew that advertising and its fancy green dollars no longer helped me fulfill my mission in life. The money became secondary and was no longer a driving force in my life. Once I moved to Portland, I happily took a job for $10 an hour. I noticed all of my bills were still paid, and I had even more money, because I was making an effort to save. By not having such high overhead, I could afford to make smarter choices and have a lower income to support my new outlook on life. It is not about money. With such a drastic shift, I learned money did not buy me security.

Money does have a funny way of driving our decisions in life. Often the more money we make, the more we spend. In order to feel like you have more money, look at where you are spending your money and ask if that serves your highest intention. For example, if one of your dreams is to take a cruise with your sweetheart but you spend over $25 a day on Starbucks and eating out, ask yourself, “Is this what I really want?” Your daily habits could add up to nearly $700 a month that could go towards your dream vacation.
Our
choices
make
the
biggest
difference
in
how
we
relate
to
money.

Perhaps you have said, “If only I could win the lottery.” Well, winning millions of dollars may still not provide security. Many lottery winners would say, “Be careful what you wish for.” We have all heard the urban myths about people winning the lottery and losing it all. Luke Pittard won 1.9 million the UK lottery. A year and a half later he had blown through the money and was forced to take a job at McDonalds. Any quick Google search of lottery winners’ stories will bring up pages of people who had it all and lost it to drugs, alcohol, handouts, and other poor choices. This simply proves that more money does not always provide more security, and may potentially lead to greater insecurity.

Money Is Energy

My challenge was to let go of the mindset that money could provide anything more than a means of exchanging one good for another. When we take a step back and look at money for what it really is, we can release all emotional attachments. Money in itself brings up a lot of things for many people, but if we learn to look at it as energy and a simple form of payment for one good or service in exchange for another, then we can lessen its burden on our emotional state. By focusing our attention on what we want and spending our time doing what we love, we will attract money to ourselves.

When we are in a state of lack or fearful thought patterns money cannot come to us because we are in a needy state, and when we need something the experience is strained. Think about a situation in your life when a person needed your help. There are different types of needs. Sometimes people ask others for help because they are at a crossroads or need some guidance on how to proceed forward. Naturally, they may reach out to their support system to ask for help, and it will be easy for people to help them. When the help needed involves desperate demands, it is harder to help.

Recently, my friend asked if I could help her plan some wedding stuff. She spent nine months procrastinating and not listening to anyone’s advice or guidance to help her plan an awesome wedding. Every time I had asked her how I could help, she would blow it off and ignore the offer. Four weeks away from the wedding, she finally began to have an “Oh crap” moment and began making rather demanding requests of everyone who wanted to be there for her earlier. Because her energy was desperate and stressed out, it was hard for me to give her the help she needed.

The same energy that occurs in relationships happens with the exchange of money. If you are in a desperate state of needing money because you feel the lack, money cannot come to you. You cannot be abundant if you feel poor. However you can be poor and feel abundant. It is a matter of perception and shifting your mind to focus on what you want. How much money do you need to do the things you want to do? How much money do you want to save? Asking and answering key questions will allow your mind to expand and move out of a state of depression.

When money flows to us, it is important to accept it and let it flow through us, which means letting it leave us just as comfortably. One way to know what your energy is towards money is to ask yourself if you are comfortable spending money. If you answered no, then you are like I used to be. I had to learn that money would always flow and come and go. People who worry about spending money or freeze up and stress out when it is time to whip out the money for the bill fall into a category I like to call the “lack lusters.” The fear of lack takes over and stirs their thoughts to worry about the future. Esther and Jerry Hicks teach from the Abrahams and described this experience in the book,
Money
and
the
Law
of
Attraction.
The authors suggest, “When you believe that money is coming to you because of your action that you are offering and you also believe that you will not always be able to offer that action, you would want to hold on to your money and spend it sparingly to make it last. However the feeling of shortage slows down the process of money flowing to you.” If you are feeling uncomfortable while spending money, do not spend money. Always find a way to ease your discomfort and transform each transition into a peaceful experience. Understanding that money flows and goes is one thing that helped me.

Money Flows and Goes

We do not focus on taking in all of the breath we need for the entire year to survive, but rather breathe constantly in and out. We can look at money the same way. By releasing our energetic hold on money it loosens its superficial power. Just like breathing in and out easily, money can flow in and out of our experience with the same gentle ease as life itself.

This is the ultimate goal of success and feeling abundant: to allow money to enter in and exit with ease and no expectations. From personal experience I know that money flows in and disappears within seconds. Remember, I was making over $2,500 a week with what I thought was comfortable job security, but all of it disappeared.

When we attach the amount of money we make to our own importance we will always fall off the throne. I had convinced myself that I was a big shot because I could afford all the social luxuries. I was using money to define my own identity. I made X amount, but I wouldn’t be happy until I made X amount. I could never figure out that money doesn’t want to control us or lead us into the path of temptation. The little voices in our heads make money the hero in our lives, but money is not a superhero. It will not solve all of the world’s problems or fix what is broken inside of us.

Many people use retail therapy as a form of masking and covering up the holes in their hearts. Not wanting to look at our emotions or feel them, we shop over them, spend money over them, and maybe even lose all of our money over them. Money cannot buy happiness. The only thing that can is love. The love we try to buy with money is always temporary and fleeting. Money can’t buy love, but we believe the pretty new clothes, the makeup and fancy dresses, cars and homes will make us happier. So we whip out the credit card to pay for what we can’t purchase now. According to
www.mutualimprovement.com
, the average American household is $15,000 in credit card debt. With interest, that will take over 25 years to pay off or 40 years if you are just paying the bare minimum. Imagine a life without debt, loans, or paybacks. What if your world was debt free? What would you be able to do with your time, money, and energy if you weren’t focused on paying off larger debts? That is one of the points of
Find
Your
Happy
. In order to live a happy, free and fulfilled life, we need to free ourselves of what confines us.

If you have bills that seem overwhelming, there are certain steps you can take to make yourself feel free on the journey to pay them back. Instead of focusing on all of the money you owe and the things you can’t buy because you have to make payments, focus on what you want. For the past few years one of my big goals has been to travel to Brazil, so I started to create a mental field trip on manifesting this Brazil trip. A mental field trip focuses on what you want, sets up an intention and describes why you want it. Then you take action steps towards it. The universe will respond to your desires if they are aligned to your higher good.

The specific trip I want to take will be $3,500-$4,500, and I just didn’t know where that money would come from. But I continued to focus on what I wanted and did not let the fact that I did not have the money stop me. I sent in a deposit on the trip to move my goal into action. By taking steps toward your goal you will show the universe you are serious and things can align to help you reach your dream. For me, after I sent in my deposit for the trip, things started to flow. All of a sudden more coaching clients were coming to me, along with more design and publishing clients, and my business started to double in revenue. Less then two months later I had mad enough to pay for my trip to see Jon of God, a healer in Brazil. I share this story to demonstrate the power of intention. I did not let the fact that I “did not have” enough money stop me from pursuing my dream. Look at your own life and see where you are using “not enough money” as an excuse. You can recognize it as an excuse and take action, despite of the fact, and move towards your dream. It worked for me, I know it will work for you.

Spending Money Is Just as
Important as
Saving It

When I was making a lot of money, I didn’t focus on saving it. It wasn’t until I started to make less money that I found a balance between saving and earning. I remember my sophomore economics teacher telling us that if we saved 10% of every paycheck from the moment we turned 18, we would retire multimillionaires. That notion of saving 10% stayed in the back of my mind whether I actually saved or not. There is a balance of money-in and money-out. Sometimes people have subconscious fears concerning spending money. Remember when we discussed the difference between people who don’t feel comfortable spending money vs. those that spend with ease? The people who are uncomfortable with spending money may have a deeper underlying fear that there is never enough to go around. By worrying about a lack of money, these fears can manifest into either saving all of their money and being fearful of where to spend it, or spending it all and feeling ashamed for having nothing in the bank and bouncing yet another check. There is no difference between saving and spending money if your energetic state is in fear of losing it all. People who worry that there is not enough to go around cannot receive more money or allow abundance to flow until they learn to accept that the universe is plentiful and generous with its gifts. I know this from personal experience; I have been on both sides of the spectrum. I worried that money would disappear and then it did disappear and I had no idea where my next paycheck would be coming from.

This is why focusing on saving 10% of everything you make will help you feel more comfortable in unplanned situations. If you have a little bit of savings you feel empowered and more secure with the ability to make choices. You could use that money for that vacation to Belize, for French lessons, or just keep it to spend on a pack of bubble gum. It doesn’t really matter what you spend it on if you spend it for you. You save it for yourself and treat yourself. Don’t give it all away, or spend it on every other person but youself. You are the most important person in your world. If you are not cared for, loved and treated with kindness by you, yourself, then no one else can do that for you.

Spending money is just as important as saving it. Sometimes people worry about job security and where their money will come from, so they tend to hoard all of their money. They don’t spend it and this creates the same energetic static that happens with people who are worried about spending all their funds, and then lose it all because they go out on a shop-a-thon. Spending money on things you really care about is the goal with exchanging money. If you really want to go skydiving but tell yourself it is too much money, while every day you are spending money on parking meters, coffee and gas for your car, then maybe there is a better way to get what you want. If the things you are spending your money on don’t align with what you want out of your life then you can change the outcome. Simply switch your spending habits. The first step is to look at your habits to see if you need a shift.

Awesome
Opportunity:

1. What is something you really want but don’t have yet because you keep saying you don’t have enough money? It could be something material, or an experience.

2. Each day, what do you spend most of your money on right now?

3. How much money per month do you spend on disposable things? Pull out a bank statement and look at where your money is going. Separate your expenses into three categories: bills, disposable (coffee, meals out, new clothes material goods, manicure, social life, etc.) and dreams.

Bills

Disposable

Dreams

The dream category is the fun category that includes your hopes, goals, money towards learning something new, a cooking class, or language lessons. Money in this category is for things on your list of things to do in your life. These are experiences; therefore they are investments in your life.