EMPOWERMENT

As we’ve been saying about every other area of life: We create whatever we direct our mental attention toward. But when applied to money, the metaphysics of thought gives us more tangible and quantifiable feedback. Are you mentally focused on abundance and prosperity—or lack and limitation? Do you believe that you will be prosperous—or do you believe you will always have to scrimp to get by? Your present financial situation is a direct reflection of your beliefs about money and your ability to create it. Your present financial reality can be traced back to specific beliefs you hold. We will start our journey by discovering what those beliefs are.

We live in a materialistic society and, for better or worse, money is the currency of this society. Because of its strong influence, we must have a clear vision of the role we want money to play in our life. Blindly pursuing it is not the answer, nor is denying its significance the answer.

Each of us needs to look carefully and honestly at the role money plays in our life. We need to sift through the different beliefs that we have developed through the influence of our parents, our peers, our religion, and our society. We need to consider our priorities and determine what type of material lifestyle we desire. While doing this sorting, we need to be particularly attentive to three areas in which we all receive a lot of programming.

The two most common negative beliefs about money are that there’s not enough of it—the fear of scarcity—and that you’re not good enough or capable enough to have or deserve it—the denial of your creative potential. These two beliefs are so prevalent in our society that they have come to be called poverty consciousness.

The opposite of poverty consciousness is prosperity consciousness—the belief in an abundant universe and your ability to fully partake of it. To have a prosperity consciousness means trusting that there will always be enough money to meet your needs and confidence that you can easily create more when you need it. In the past, when much of the world’s prosperity came from personal will applied to the manufacturing and exploiting of limited natural resources, this idea may have been more difficult to accept. Today, much prosperity comes from intellectual capital, which is a combination of intelligence, creativity, and personal will—all of which are unlimited.

You can determine how much money is right for you by asking yourself, “What will allow me to be satisfied and to learn the lessons I’m here to learn?” For one person, becoming skillful in manifesting money will most support his or her evolution. For someone with other lessons to learn, money may not be an important part of the curriculum. Each of us has our own classrooms; we have learned not to judge people by how much or how little money they have. The key, as in every other part of life, is that you are the creator of your reality. No one but you can decide the right amount of money for you.

Some people believe that money is unspiritual, so they avoid it. But money is neither good nor bad—it’s neutral. We consider it a form of energy. It’s our own thoughts that imbue this energy with destructive and manipulative power or with healing and transformative power. Money can be used to develop ourselves and to develop our society. For the world to evolve for the better, we need more people who are willing to overcome their distrust of money and begin using this very powerful energy for good. Most of your beliefs about money are unconscious and unexamined. When you begin to bring them to the surface, they may seem to be existential reality and not changeable. Nevertheless, if you want to change these beliefs, you can. First you must identify them, then you can change them. This next exercise provides you with an opportunity to do this.

As we said earlier, a limiting belief is like a weed in the garden. Unless you’ve cultivated your mental garden, it will have picked up weeds. Let’s look at some limiting beliefs about money and ways to turn them around. As you may recall, a turnaround statement is a new, expanded belief that reinterprets the way you view that aspect of reality. The turnaround process is a way of freeing up your thinking to be more creative, allowing you to see things from a wider vantage point. Many of the turnarounds below have come from participants in the Empowerment Workshop.

TURNAROUND: Money is neutral energy. It is my consciousness that imbues it with its power. I choose to imbue my money with healing and transformative power for me and the world.

TURNAROUND: I need to have spiritual development to take on the responsibility of having and working with money consciously. I commit to my spiritual development.

TURNAROUND: Managing my money is the means by which I channel and direct its power and energy consciously. I take responsibility for managing the energy I create.

TURNAROUND: Everyone has the potential to create prosperity. I am not intimidated by those who haven’t claimed their power yet.

LIMITING BELIEF: Let’s be honest and realistic: I’m not capable of earning the money I want.

TURNAROUND: I have successfully changed other parts of my life. I will successfully change this part as well.

LIMITING BELIEF: There is a limited amount of money in the world, not enough to go around with millions suffering. If I have money, it means others won’t.

TURNAROUND: There is as much money as there are ideas to create value in the world. I harness my ideas and create financial abundance as an act of self-love and as an example to others. I use my financial abundance to help myself and to help others.

LIMITING BELIEF: If I make a lot of money, I will become obsessed with it and my life will be out of balance.

TURNAROUND: I balance my material well-being with well-being in all the other parts of my life.

LIMITING BELIEF: I have too easy an access to inherited money and don’t feel I deserve it.

TURNAROUND: I accept the gift of abundance in my life and use it for my good and the good of others.

LIMITING BELIEF: My spouse earns the money, and I don’t feel I have the right to spend it.

TURNAROUND: I contribute my energy to creating well-being in the other parts of our relationship, and we freely share in the fruits of our mutual creativity.

LIMITING BELIEF: Working to earn money requires me to subjugate the spiritual and creative aspects of my life.

EXERCISE | LIMITING BELIEFS ABOUT MONEY

The limiting beliefs and turnarounds above should have warmed you up. Now it is time to go into your mental garden and do some weeding. This limiting-belief exercise is similar to the one you did for sexuality. First you identify your limiting beliefs, then you replace them with turnaround statements.

The primary purpose of this exercise is to mentally clear your limiting beliefs. Don’t fret over getting the turnaround worded perfectly. Right now you will remove weeds; later you can focus on planting.

As you bring your beliefs to the surface, you may discover that some are deep-rooted and difficult to turn around. You will probably find some that ultimately have very little to do with money. By all means take advantage of some of the turnarounds listed above. If they don’t directly address your issue, spend some time thinking about your most positive vision for this aspect of your relationship with money. If this still doesn’t produce a turnaround, be gentle and patient with yourself—it will come in time. The process of collecting these beliefs has taken a whole lifetime; the process of removing them may take a little while.

Some of the most common places to look for weeds in your money garden are in your attitudes about the following issues:

• abundance versus scarcity

• your ability to create prosperity

• religious and spiritual programming

• parents

• your cultural belief system

• male and female programming

• personal spending patterns

• the nature of money itself.

Allow twenty to thirty minutes to do this exercise. You will need your journal. Space has been left in case you don’t have it handy.

Write down your limiting beliefs about money. Concentrate only on your limiting beliefs and do not think about their turnarounds. Number them as you go.

When you feel you have written down all the limiting beliefs you can find, begin turning them around. Start with the ones that you consider the most important to turn around. Don’t worry if you can’t turn them around perfectly; just do the best you can.

Now that you have some clarity about what you believe about money, you’re ready for the next step—creating a financial vision and setting up a plan for manifesting it. The questions you need to answer are these: How much money do you want? How much surplus do you need to feel secure? Who can support you in manifesting this vision? What is the next step you must take to manifest your financial vision?

Easy questions, right? As you consider these questions, notice what feelings surface. For some, the thought of creating a financial vision using real numbers is scary. Some common fears include:

• If I go for what I want and don’t succeed, I’ll be a failure, so I’d better not try.

For others, the prospect of taking control of the financial part of their lives is highly exciting and motivating.

During this exercise, notice what you’re feeling each moment. What beliefs are being triggered in you? Be attentive to your inner process and use it to further uncover your beliefs about yourself and money. You will learn volumes if you’re attentive. If you discover that you have more mental clearing to do, write down your limiting beliefs and create turnaround statements. If questions about work and career come up, hold them for the next chapter. Your purpose for now is to clarify what material well-being looks like to you. When this is clear, you can then develop a strategy for manifesting it.

One way to decide how much money you want is by determining what you want to spend it on in the next year. Your list might include things such as home furnishings, travel, clothes, personal development, children’s education, health care, and the ability to contribute to or create activities that are making a better world. You may also want to earn enough money so you can take time to do non–income-producing activities, such as retreats, extended travel, service projects, and artistic creation. Money can represent free time for personal development or social development. This is one of our favorite uses for our money. It’s a reverse of the old saying that “Time is money.” In this case, money is time.

To determine the dollar amount you want one year from today, you must work from your present sources of income. However, don’t be afraid to choose a number that is a little daring and adventurous. As we noted in the manifestation section of this book, the universe operates in unseen and mysterious ways. As soon as we believe in our vision, we find ourselves attracting the worldly “nutrients” we need to manifest it. Money can come to us in ways that we could never imagine or dream up.

Jill was a banker with a fixed salary. She did this exercise and decided to really stretch. She didn’t know where the money would come from, but she affirmed that it would come. At the end of the year there was a change in her bank’s bonus policy, and bonuses were awarded strictly on merit. Jill was determined to be the most worthy and received 40 percent of the money in the pool. With this extra bonus, she received exactly what she had been affirming.

A similar situation occurred for Alan. He ran a rock and mineral retail store and affirmed and visualized that his sales would double in the next month. He put his full intention and belief behind what he was affirming. Suddenly, expensive crystals that had been lying around his store collecting dust began selling. At the end of the month, he counted up the totals and discovered that his sales had doubled.

Because money is the most quantifiable area of life, the manifestation process is most obvious here. It doesn’t work any more powerfully here than in other parts of life; it’s just more recognizable. We have many letters from people who attended our workshop, opened up their vision of what they thought was possible for them financially, and manifested what they affirmed. Anyone willing to clear away their limiting beliefs and believe in their financial vision will set the internal and external forces in motion to manifest it. The key idea here is to clear your limiting beliefs and believe firmly in your vision. Everything unfolds from this foundation.

If you are creating your financial vision for five years from today, the possiblities open up dramatically. If you come up with a new business idea in Chapter 10, “Work,” in five years it could be phenomenally successful.

The next question asks you to think about your long-term vision for material well-being. Having a clear vision will help you considerably in deciding how to invest your energy over the next five years. It is important to recognize, however, that committing yourself to creating a lot of money means committing yourself to investing a lot of your energy in income-producing activity. Money returns to you as a result of the investment of your energy. It is a crystallization of your physical, mental, and psychic energy. If you do decide to create financial prosperity, the knowledge you have learned and tools you have will assist you greatly.

Inherent in the idea of investment is surplus. It means you have generated more money then you need for your basic needs. Developing surplus income is like a farmer building a grain bin. The farmer expects a surplus and plans for it. If the farmer does not plan for surplus, he will not harvest beyond his basic needs. It’s the same with us: If we don’t have a plan for how we will use money beyond our basic needs, we won’t expend our energy beyond that point. We unconsciously stop the flow of our psychic and mental energy when we reach the limit of our vision. If our vision is just enough money to get by, that’s what we create. If our vision is one of surplus, then that’s what we create. Our thoughts create our reality, a mantra you should know by heart by now.

One of the most graphic examples of this phenomenon of generating just the amount of money you expect and no more is in the field of sales. It is a well-known in the sales industry that salespeople sell just enough to meet the goal they set for themselves. They pace the output of their mental and psychic energy to create the amount of money they expect. The key is expectation.

Once you decide you’re going to create surplus, you need to determine a definite amount that you want and a definite place to put it. To come up with this amount, ask yourself, “How much money beyond my basic needs do I require in order to feel secure?” One equation people find helpful is to have at least enough to cover their basic needs for six months in case they get ill. Beyond a minimal surplus, what amount would give you the most security? If you doubt your ability to manifest money, you might need a lot of money to feel secure. If you feel very confident of your moneymaking abilities and have a high degree of trust, you may feel secure with considerably less.

After you have come up with a number that represents how much, then you need to decide where you will invest this money. The most secure investments provide a modest and safe rate of return. If you want to invest more speculatively, make sure that the money you use for this is above and beyond what you need to feel secure. Then carefully educate yourself and seek advice from a competent financial advisor.

It’s also important to recognize that your surplus money is your surplus energy. How you invest it is a personal statement about what you want to support with your energy. Today, many people are putting their money in money market funds that invest in socially responsible businesses. These money market funds produce comparable and, in some cases, better yields than ordinary money market funds. Consider carefully what your money is being used for when you’re deciding where to invest it.

The better your personal growth support system, the more you enhance your capacity to grow. Likewise, the better your prosperity support system, the more you enhance your capacity to grow financially. To create a prosperity support system, you need to ask yourself this question: Who can enhance my ability to be more prosperous? Some of the kinds of people you should consider including are people you know directly or indirectly who are prosperous, a financial advisor, an accountant, people who can help you work with your beliefs about money, clients and prospective clients, and people in your field who are financially successful. The primary criterion for selecting these people is that they can support you in becoming prosperous and successful, either by example, by offering advice, or by sending future business your way.

If you are seeking someone to act as a role model, approach people who could serve this purpose for you. Tell them you’d like to learn what allowed them to become prosperous and successful. In most cases, they will be quite cooperative, honored to be held in such high esteem by you. As you listen to them tell their stories, always keep in mind your own unique truth. You are seeking to cull their wisdom and apply it to your personal style and way of being in the world. You are not attempting to become a copy of them.

My life is filled with people who are helping me become prosperous and successful. Describe both the types and specific people.

You’ve set your sights on how much money you want to create and who can help you. What is the next step you need to take to translate your vision into action? It may be to seek out a financial advisor to help you explore your financial options. It may be to assess how what you are presently doing can generate more money. Perhaps you can increase the number of your clients, become more entrepreneurial, raise your fees, ask for a raise, or start another business on the side. If your next action is work-related, you will be well-primed for the next chapter.

Take time to consider the next action you will take. Let this action provide the momentum to generate the next action, and so forth. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Let your first step on the path to abundance be one that begins making your goal real to you.

What is your growing edge for money? Maybe it’s to turn around a particularly challenging limiting belief. Perhaps it’s to further develop some part of the work you did on your financial vision and plan. To help you determine your growing edge, we’ll share some stories of how other people worked on their money growing edge. Chris was constantly struggling with money; he knew this would be an important part of the empowerment journey for him. As he did the limiting-belief exercise, he was astonished at how many deeply felt limiting beliefs he uncovered. They all seemed to boil down to the idea that there wasn’t enough money and so he’d better hold on to what he had. He came to realize that his poverty consciousness had a profound impact on how he lived his life. He kept a job he didn’t really like because it was safe and secure; lived in a house he had long outgrown; never took a vacation because he needed to save the money. Chris realized that he was holding back, afraid to live his life fully for fear that there wouldn’t be enough money later. With this awareness came sadness and a yearning to change his attitude.

Chris understood that he needed to overcome his fear of scarcity. He crafted this affirmation: “I am abundant and live my life fully trusting in an abundant universe.” His visualization was seeing himself in a beautiful house in the country. About a year after Chris created this affirmation and the accompanying visualization, we received the following letter:

Since I last saw you, the most dramatic change in my life has come from changing my beliefs from scarcity to abundance. Over and over I have used my affirmation, “I am abundant and live my life fully trusting in an abundant universe.” With this belief as my new friend, I have exceeded the projections in my financial plan and have made the following changes in my life. I resigned from my job of nine years and quickly thereafter received three job offers. One of them was exactly the kind of job I wanted, and it was double my former salary. I sold my home and bought a new home in exactly the place I had always wanted to live. I furnished it just as I had visualized it. Furthermore, between leaving my old job and taking my new one, I took a six-week vacation. Thank you for helping me change my life!

When people open up to living in abundance rather than the fear of lack, dramatic changes are set in motion.

Linda had absolutely no relationship with money. She struggled through the limiting-belief and turnaround exercise and was overwhelmed by the notion of creating a financial vision and plan. In her journal she tells her own story:

Dealing with money is earth-shattering for me. Having to think about it has touched such a raw nerve. I am intimidated and afraid of it. I have lived my whole life thinking I don’t have to deal with money. It is not a reality for me. I have never thought of planning any kind of financial future for myself. It never occurred to me that I could have any control over this part of my life.

Linda decided that before she could create a financial vision, she needed to learn to think positively about money. Her affirmation was this: “I have a positive relationship with money and it empowers me.” Her visualization was walking down a pathway lined on both sides by money trees, which increased in size and number the farther along she went. Linda found her growing edge in money and took the appropriate first step.

Larry was someone who just managed to get by financially. He believed that thinking about money eroded his spirit, so he never thought about it and never had any. His insight after doing the limiting belief and turnaround was that desiring material well-being was a healthy, normal part of living in a material world. It was as important and not more important than caring for the emotional and spiritual parts of his life.

This was a breakthrough for Larry. He became excited as he worked on his financial plan and began to devote positive energy to this ignored part of his life. He crafted this affirmation: “I generously nurture the money part of my life and create a materially and spiritually balanced life.” In his visualization he was standing on a mountaintop basking in the radiant sunshine in his best hiking gear.

About a year and a half after he took the Empowerment Workshop, he sent us a letter. He fulfilled the projections of his one-year financial prosperity plan and, as a result, he was experiencing a newfound sense of self-confidence. In his own words, “With this deeper self-confidence I notice my work as a therapist is clearer and more transformative than ever, my relationship is more alive and growing, and we’ve just bought a dream house I wouldn’t have even considered a year ago.”

Beth was the mother of five children. Caring for her family was a full-time job, and she felt very good about her role as a mother and wife. However, when it came to money, Beth felt confused and stuck. During the limiting belief and turnaround exercise, she became aware of her belief that it was not okay to spend money on herself because she didn’t earn it. Furthermore, she believed she had to ask her husband, , for permission whenever she wanted to spend money on the household and on the children.

As Beth worked on turnarounds for these limiting beliefs, she was struck by the concept of money as green energy. She wrote this in her journal:

If money is green energy, that means Jim generates the green energy in our family. I generate love, caring, support, and a healthy, nourishing home environment for Jim and our family. I generate the white energy in our family. We need both green and white energy in order to have a high-quality life. I know Jim feels he deserves the white energy that I generate, and he uses it freely. Yes! Of course I deserve the green energy he generates, and I can use it freely.

Her affirmation read: “I create an abundance of white energy and Jim creates an abundance of green energy; we share equally in these energies.” Her visualization was great shafts of green and white light pouring forth and mingling together.

EXERCISE | MONEY AFFIRMATION AND VISUALIZATION

These stories demonstrate the range of issues people work on in this part of life. It’s now time for you to address your growing edge and create your affirmation and visualization for money. Go back to your work on limiting beliefs and turnarounds and your plan for financial well-being. Also remind yourself about the action step you wrote down earlier. Take this information and condense it into a succinct statement of the next place of growth in the area of money. Refine this statement to its essence and write your affirmation and visualization in your journal or in the space below.