part0016

In my book “It Is Done!”, I talk about the 4 major manifestation blocks and how they prevented my good from coming to me until I was aware of them and worked actively to release them from my life. Similarly, because money is such an emotionally charged subject, many of us are actually walking around with strange , unfounded beliefs about money that seem so natural… until we really stop to examine them. I walked around with these beliefs floating around in my head for years and could never really understood why none of the manifestation techniques I tried for money worked. When they worked, the results were sporadic at best. It was little wonder they did not, since I was walking around with a whole bunch of weird beliefs about money gathered from various places! Until and unless these beliefs are brought to light and thoroughly examined, an individual can jump from one technique to another in vain and still not achieve lasting results.

If you are serious about manifesting money and achieving financial abundance in your life, know that you have to first eliminate the negative feelings you have associated with money. Very often, our negative feelings are caused by our erroneous beliefs. Therefore, until we work to remove the root cause of these negative feelings (which are the beliefs themselves), we cannot free ourselves from the negative grip these beliefs have over us.

Now all of these beliefs are very pervasive and at first, you may deny that you have them. Or you may not even recognize that you have them at all. As mentioned, because you have been walking around with these beliefs for so many years (possibly since your teenage years), they seem to be such an integral part of your life and world view. As such, there may be the tendency to just dismiss the existence of these beliefs at first glance. Thankfully, I also include a few behavioral cues that are associated with each belief. This is to allow you to identify whether any of these hidden beliefs are actually at work, by checking to see if you display any of the underlying behavior. Our behaviors are usually easier to spot since they are “out in the open” for all to see. But sometimes it takes another person to alert us to our self-defeating behaviors, like how my business partner had to alert me to the fact that I was constantly passing the same remark about wealthy people.

The first hidden belief associated with money is one of shame . “Why would anyone feel ashamed about money?”, you may ask. But this belief is actually more common and deeply-rooted than it seems to be. Initially, I did not realize I was walking around with any feelings of shame about money… until I discovered I had a whole lot of it! I was ashamed about having too little money! I was ashamed about the amount of money I had in my bank account. And I was ashamed about the fact that I did not have as much money as I wanted to.

Check for a moment to see if you are walking around with a sense of shame about money. You may not have exactly the same issues as I did, but look within now to see if you exhibit any shame-related feelings when it comes to money. Some people may feel ashamed that they are in debt, or they may feel ashamed that they are unable to pay their bills. Others may feel ashamed of not having enough money to provide a good life for their family. Whatever reasons you are feeling ashamed for are not important. Those are merely triggers leading to the negative feelings and emotions. But the first step is to recognize that these negative emotions exist.

One of the questions I get asked often by avid readers of self-help and positive thinking books is whether feeling negative feelings (as you do these exercises) will “attract” more of it. They are afraid to admit that they even have negative feelings about money, and they do not wish to “attract” any undesired reality!

Two things must be mentioned here: First, you do not attract anything unless you think and feel it chronically . I never ask that you repeatedly “feel” and immerse yourself in these negative feelings in any of these exercises. All that you need to do is to check if they are there, not to dwell continuously on these feelings. Second, if you do not take the first step to do these exercises, all you are doing is to deny the existence of these negative feelings… which means they’ll continue to be there and continue to affect you. In my early days of learning about the “Law of Attraction”, I was so fearful of even feeling negative emotions for a single second! As a result, I walked around in a constant state of denial about my negative feelings. Of course, my state of denial did me nothing good, as those negative feelings continued to cloud my perception and continued to be there chronically, until I did something about it. So the short answer is this: Do not be afraid to try any of the exercises in this book, even if they seem to be stirring up negative feelings for you! Our intention is not to dwell on these negative feelings, but to identify them, bring them to light and move past them quickly such that they will not recur again for you.

Again, the purpose here is not to judge or be critical of yourself, but simply to ask yourself whether any of these beliefs apply to you. One major giveaway is that these statements make you squirm and feel uncomfortable as you read them.

Remember that a belief is simply a thought which you keep thinking over and over again, and a belief can be changed. There are no true or false beliefs, but simply resourceful beliefs that serve us, and unresourceful ones that do not. For many years, I walked around with feelings of guilt or shame about money, believing that I should be making more money than I was. Therefore, I was constantly trying to manifest or “attract” more money through the desperate use of manifestation techniques! Since my basis of trying to manifest more money was one rooted in shame, none of those techniques worked for me. We will explore this point deeper in an upcoming chapter, but for now, let us focus on getting these beliefs out of the way.

The first step is to realize that none of your beliefs are inherently “true”. Realize that you have formed these beliefs as a result of making certain inferences and observations about money, some of them which were formed when you were too young to question them. For example, my belief about having “too little money” was probably influenced by external signs and yardsticks of wealth. I have believed, erroneously and in a self-defeating manner, that I had to earn $X in order to be seen as successful. But then again, where did that $X come from? It was nothing more than a figure plucked out of thin air. And even if I did manage to earn that $X, who would it please? In whose eyes would it make me more successful? I now know that other people can’t care less (or more) about how much money I am making. Therefore I was walking around all those years, trying to make X dollars to make myself feel important, and to please people whom I didn’t even know! Where did I even get that belief to start with?

Now all that is not important. It is not important to trace your beliefs and try and find out who you inherited them from. The most important thing is that you see how ridiculous and baseless some of them really are, and break free from the grips of them. Once I began to reason it through and see for myself that my “feeling ashamed about not having enough money” was really due to the fact that I had established some ridiculous external yardsticks about money, those guilt and shameful feelings started to fade away.

I was once ashamed of walking into the bank because I did not have $X of money, an amount that I saw as prestigious and wealthy. Then I realized that even if I did have $X, I would still feel inadequate because I did not have $Y! Therefore, realize that this is really an insidious trap. You might think, “Well, I am not successful enough because I still do not have one million dollars!” Let’s also suppose that you work your back off and finally achieve one million dollars. What do you think you will now say if the same belief is still at work? That’s right! “Well, I am still not successful enough because I should really be having TWO million dollars, and I only have one!”

Those whom I have worked with on this issue think it is a problem with the amount of money. They think it is the amount they are currently making or having that is causing their negative feelings. Therefore, you may be observing the amount of money you have in your bank account right now and thinking that it is what causes you distress, misery, guilt, or frustration. But get this. This is truly an important breakthrough in beliefs which you can make. It is never about the physical amount of money you have. The physical amount of money you have this very moment, which you perceive as causing you distress, is NOT really the true cause of your negative feelings. The TRUE CAUSE of your negative feelings are your underlying beliefs which cause you to perceive an issue with this dollar amount. Please read it once again and be sure to get it: The TRUE CAUSE of your negative feelings are your underlying unresourceful beliefs about money, and not the actual amount of money you have. Until and unless you deal with the true cause, these issues will always recur and crop up for you, over-and-over again, throughout your life.

I have counseled individuals with money and debt issues when they were making five thousand dollars a month. When they somehow increased their income to ten thousand dollars a month, those very same issues of guilt, shame and unworthiness or debt stayed. Think about that for a moment! They had thought that more money would solve their money problems forever! They had thought that more money would eradicate their debt… But what happened? Why were they re-creating the exact same problems on a ten thousand dollar income, as they did on a five thousand dollar income? What exactly is happening here? The answer is simple. The dollar amount is never the issue. It is your own beliefs about the dollar amount that either empower you, or sabotage you.

Once you understand this key principle, you are well on your way to manifesting money because first, you would be free of the social conditioning and prevailing beliefs about how much money you “should” have. Once I truly internalized and applied this principle in my own life, I dropped all feelings of guilt and shame about money. Whereas before I was ashamed to walk into a bank for fear of being judged based on how much money I had, I had absolutely no qualms about doing it thereafter and everything went just well. All this time, everything was only happening in my head. I thought I was being judged, but truth be told, those who work in a bank handle so many customers each day that they can’t care less! And they can’t care more either! So what if they come across a customer with “little”, or a lot of money? All the yardsticks and benchmarks are imaginary anyway. What can they do even if they “judge” you for it? It will not change anything one bit! And yet I was letting my own ludicrous thinking delude me and shame me for years! When I finally realized the folly of it all, I was completely free for the first time in my life. Suddenly, my relationship with money evolved and shifted even more inside of myself, and the outer reality matched up to that beautifully. I encourage you to do the same and eliminate these baseless guilt and shame about money from your life today.

As I mentioned several times in this book, the only person you have to be accountable to at the end of the day is yourself. Have you performed to the best of your ability? Have you led a full life of self-expression? Have you lived and loved? If you have done all of the above to the best of your abilities, then why does it matter whether you did it with a lot, or very little money? Hopefully I have convinced you enough by this juncture in the book that money has very little to do with your own highest self-expression.

Money may allow and facilitate a few of these things, but cannot help you do them. Some of us find that we need very little money to do a lot, while some of us may need more, according to our circumstances. Therefore, give up any of your self-sabotaging beliefs that you should have a particular sum or level of money in order to be “successful”. Success is never judged by your physical possessions (others can’t care less about them except yourself), and at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether you have been yourself.