Let's Talk About Money

Secret Message 1/31/08

A special 'Thank you!' to my Colleague Beverly for this article!


"It's so hot, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk!"

One hot summer day, my young hands reached into the refrigerator and sneaked a few eggs into my pocket. With great expectations, I cracked the shells open over a sidewalk and waited for them to start cooking.



Through the sting of disappointment, expressions are not always meant to be taken literally. My neighbor saw me playing with the eggs and mentioned it to my father. Our neighbor thought my experiment was funny. My father did
not! Dad casually asked me, "how much do you think those eggs that you took from the refrigerator cost?" I replied that I didn't know. Together, we calculated how much money I had wasted by ruining perfectly good eggs. The small amount was deducted from my allowance and I learned that next time I should be more secretive with my experiments. Okay, the bigger lesson I took away was that money is hard to come by and should never be wasted. I guess this is just one of the episodes from my childhood that shaped me into a "saver."


Usually, there is a core limiting belief that gets in a person's way of

accumulating money.



Often, the core belief is something along the lines of:

Love of money is the root of all evil.

I'll get my rewards in heaven, not now.

Money is scarce and hard to come by.

These perspectives are core limiting beliefs which are very effective at keeping money away from your bank account. Here are examples of positive perspectives around money.

Money is freedom and I deserve freedom.

I love money and money loves me.

I am a money magnet. I have the Midas touch!

Since we choose our perspective around money, why not choose a belief that is positive and affirming? You can reinforce your money magnetism by creating a structure that reminds you of your positive perspective on money. I recently moved into a new office and the window shade that was hanging on the window broke and fell to the floor. Instead of buying a new shade, I hung my money boa across the top of my window to serve as my reminder that money is abundant and constantly flowing to me.


I love looking at it and being reminded that money is always within my reach. Also, my money boa sparkles with joyful memories and energy because it was a gift from friend.

With a crazy stock market and fears of a recession floating around, it is even more tempting to fall into a negative perspective around money. Why not reflect on your core beliefs about money and see how they are working for you? If you find you are operating out of a limiting belief, try updating your belief and see what happens. There's not much to lose and everything to gain!

The #1 Mistake People Make When Using the Law of Attraction

Secret Message 1/24/08

Whenever you form an intention, that intention has two primary components. The first component is the content of the intention. The content is the information part of your desire. It's whatever you decide you want, such as a new career, a better relationship, or an extra $10,000. That part is pretty straightforward.

The second component of an intention is the energy you bring to the intention. Some people describe this as a feeling, like passion or gratitude, but the feeling is actually the result of the energy, not the energy itself. However, you know there is energy in your intention when you connect strong feelings to it.

I'll explain the energy component in more detail in a moment, but first let's address:

Failure experiences with the Law of Attraction

I often hear people complain that they've dutifully and correctly applied the Law of Attraction, but their intentions just aren't manifesting. Some of the more stubborn believers will continue beating their heads against the wall, using the same ineffective approach even though it generates no results week after week. (Please don't do that to yourself.) Others give up within a matter of hours when their cappuccino grande fails to manifest, concluding that the whole Law of Attraction concept is bogus. (Please don't do that to yourself either.)

Content alone is not enough

Here's the #1 mistake people make: They mistake content for complete intentions. The problem is that content alone isn't enough because energy is an essential component of every intention.

Great content + no energy = an intention that won't manifest anything but frustration.

Consider all the content that's available to you on the Internet these days. Does that content just whiz around the world by itself? Of course not. Electricity is required to deliver it to you. Without electricity that content is dead in the water.

Suppose I write a new article for this web site, and before I can post it, my electricity goes out. Initially I'm frustrated that my content isn't getting delivered to my readers. How do I solve this problem? Is the problem with the content itself? Do I need to improve the quality of the content - to write more content - or to post it on my wall? Those would be pretty stupid solutions, wouldn't they? But that's exactly what many people do when trying to "fix" their intentions that don't seem to be working.

If you're nitpicking the verbiage of your intentions, you're like a writer nitpicking the wording of a private journal entry that no one else is going to read. It just doesn't matter.

What is the energy component of an intention?

The energy of an intention isn't the same thing as electricity, but it's a good metaphor for understanding the concept. Don't get hung up on the exact term - it's the concept that's important.

Many people refer to energy as the emotional juice you bring to an intention. That's part of it, but strong emotions are the result, not the cause, of that energy.

If you want to see some high-energy intentions, look no further than children. Kids are intention-manifestation masters. When they really want something, there's no mistaking it. They'll ask for it, they'll jump up and down, and they'll drive everyone crazy expressing their desires. And assuming they don't give up, kids are pretty darned good at manifesting what they want.

What kind of energy do you bring to your intentions? Do you speak of them like you're talking about a piece of burnt toast? Or are you so juiced that you're just dripping with enthusiasm?

I'm not suggesting you should behave like a kid throwing a sugar tantrum, but if you get more excited about the coming weekend than you do about your intention, well - the weekend will be the only thing you manifest.

Emotions measure intentional energy

As I mentioned earlier, strong emotions are actually the result of energy, not the cause of it. The value of emotions is that they let you know how much energy you've managed to pack into your intention. If you're so gushingly enthusiastic about your intention that people keep telling you to shut up about it, you clearly have plenty of energy behind it.

So what's the real source of this energy then?

The source of this energy is actually the universe itself. The energy is already there. You just need to connect some of it with your intention.

Consider how electricity works. The electrons are already sitting there in the wires of your home, and they start flowing when you flip a switch to complete the circuit, thereby creating a current and providing usable electrical power to your appliances. Although the electrons as particles move at a fairly slow pace, the electric field moves at the speed of light, so your appliances turn on right away.

Your intentions work much the same way. The energy is already there. You just need to get the current flowing in the right direction. And this has virtually nothing to do with the actual content of your intentions. Electricity doesn't care whether it's powering a computer or a coffee maker, nor does intentional energy care whether you're building a business or a bomb.

Polarity

So how do you get this energy current flowing? First you need to understand the concept of polarity.

Going back to the electricity example. Imagine a battery. It has two terminals which are polar opposites of each other, one positive and one negative. If you hook the battery up to a circuit, electrons will flow in one direction, thereby creating a current. If you flip the battery around and hook it up the other way, you'll reverse the flow of electrons through the wires, thereby creating an identical current in the opposite direction. (I'm trying to keep this analogy simple, so if you feel the need to out-nerd me by bringing up things like differential resistance, manifest a life.)

Now what if you wanted to increase the current flowing through your circuit? You could do that by adding more batteries, right? But in order for this to work, the batteries must be aligned to create a current in the same direction. If you put batteries into a device with some facing the correct way and some facing the wrong way, the device won't work because you'll screw up the current.

So what does this have to do with intention-manifestation? Well, the energy you apply to your intentions also has polarity, much like a battery. It can flow one way or the other way. You'll know you have a strong intentional current when you experience strong emotions. No emotions means you have no current.

Many people screw up their intentional energy flow by trying to use both polarities in the same circuit. You can't do that and expect to get good results with the Law of Attraction. It just won't work. You must use either one polarity or the other, and you must remain congruent in your usage.