Steel Kitten

The Prosperity game

It's been a while since I've done a post about money beliefs. A few months ago I was very much into emotional tapping through the Money Beyond Belief course and manage to sort out some of my twisted thinking about money.

Since then I've been tackling my feelings about money in the scheme of learning about the Law of Attraction. Long story short, the Law of Attraction says you are what you think about most of the time. You attract into your life what you think about. If you think negative thoughts, even subconsciously, you sent out negative vibes which end up reflected back at you in the form of the very negative events you were worried about in the first place.

It is very difficult to stop thinking and speaking negatively about money because we're all so deeply entrenched in doing it. After all, we never seem to have enough money and everything is so expensive yadda, yadda, yadda. You see how negative those commonly spouted statements are? Those two little phrases are enough to stop you from ever doing anything that might change your situation. The words 'never' and 'everything' make you brain give up hope and you end up convincing yourself there's no point in trying anything.

Around the same time that I realised the positive thoughts in my brain were essentially being cancelled out by the stupid things that came out of my mouth, I came across the teachings of Esther and Jerry Hicks. Slightly scarily, Esther claims to vocally translate blocks of thought for a group of non-physical beings who call themselves Abraham. Now hang in with me here and don't disappear after reading that because that's as weird as it gets on this blog I promise!

'Abraham' claim that we create our own reality through our thoughts, that our emotions are constantly guiding us toward where we want to go and that life is supposed to be fun, which sounds very sensible to me.

Anyway, after trawling through some of Abraham's thoughts on money, I came upon a rather good game they teach called The Prosperity game. Every day you get a set amount of theoretical money to spend on anything you wish for yourself. I started off on Day 1 with £1000 and every day after it increased by £1000 ie by Day 8 I had £8,000 and so forth. You have to spend it all or you lose it the next day and if necessary you can borrow a few days in advance if it's something you really want.

I'm playing the game as part of one of their 30 day courses and I tell you it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. Your emotions get in the way and try and stop you from doing it. It's literally stunning to hear some of the things your brain tries to come up with to make you feel guilty for spending the theoretical money. I've been writing them down and pushing past them to spend it though.

I've search the net for items I want and print them off to go in a file. I've even go so far as putting them into a shopping basket and taking the transaction through as far as possible before having to confirm the order so I can print off that page and have a physical record in front of me with all the numbers. I'm sure the Egyptian Cotton Store would have been delighted to receive an order from me for £1057 for 500 count bedlinen. Likewise As So To Bed for the £8,000 carved sleigh bed, although if I'm honest I would have preferred wood from a sustainable source (oh shut up Sarah's excuse-making brain. Not to mention husband who claims it won't fit up the stairs. IT'S A GAME!)

Anyway, if you want to get a deeper insight into your negative feelings about money (not to mention those around you), try playing The Prosperity game for 30 days. You'll be astonished at the results.   

Money attraction

I'm doing that scary money attraction thing again.

I've had a load of writing projects come through recently and I promised myself a treat if I applied myself daily and without procrastinating to get them all done. Now a few days ago I made the mistake of wandering around Marks and Spencers - I was killing time while waiting for Martin to finish work and meet me you understand. I rarely do the shopping thing as I have an hourglass figure and nothing ever fits me. Anyway, experience has told me to stay well away from Per Una because the style is me down to a tee, most of their clothes fit me no problem and it's expensive, but of course my brain talked me into it. So quite unusually I found myself on an impromptu shopping trip and tried to do the casual browse thing.

You know, you pretend you're not really looking, you part the odd coat hanger without much apparent enthusiasm and look around the shop with big bored sighs. But really your brain is going ballistic and taking in every item of clothing, the sizes and the colours simultaneously (you can tell I don't go shopping much by how excited I sound). Anyway, to cut a long story short, I spotted another fab skirt to add to my growing collection of fab Per Una skirts. Green this time with patchworked panels and lace. And a shocking price tag of £45 (I swear they only used to be £35).

So I reluctantly ignored it and made myself leave the shop. Of course walking past a shoe shop a couple of doors down I spotted a perfect pair of 1940s style shoes in Lilley and Skinner that went amazingly with the skirt. Head down, I kept thinking, head down and walk away. Run if you have to.

That's when I decided that if I get all of the work done that I've been contracted to do for the next three weeks I'll treat myself to that skirt and maybe ask Martin to think about the shoes as a Christmas present to me. In the scheme of what I'm about to earn the skirt is really not that much.

Well, it seems that once I focused my energies on that plan, the universe decided to make it easier for me. Today in the post was a letter from Barclaycard. I recently took out a new credit card with them to get a 0% for 14 months deals, and they decided to say thank you by sending me £50 of Marks and Spencer vouchers.

Oh and did I mention that my bank refunded me £1600 as a result of mis-selling me some useless insurance on a loan several years ago?

Ahhhhhhh....the universe is shining in my general direction. 

My money beliefs are changing...

It's happening!!!! I'm really excited today because I can see the Money Beyond Belief course working! Woohoo!!!

For the last week I've seen proof of a shift in not only my money beliefs, but also my beliefs in general. I've been having problems with money recently that I now think were down to my own self-sabotage. For the moment, writing is how I make my money but try as I might I could not sit down and write a word. I've had jobs sitting there and I've been unable to even start them, let alone complete and bill them. All the time my brain is screaming "DO IT! Hurry UP! The mortgage is due at the end of the month. Just do the jobs and bill 'em."

A little bit of digging and I know the reasons why I'm having a problem writing.

1) Low self-esteem and negative money beliefs cause me to a) under-charge, so I have to do far, far more hours to achieve a good level of income b) feel guilt over being richer than most of the third world (as revealed by Money beyond Belief) so I unconsciously keep my income low c) not demand that people treat me according to my worth.

2) I have been working to only earn money. That has always been the end goal. But it shouldn't be. The end goal should be to help and serve people. Think about it. If you charge a hefty fee for what you do, but give outstanding service and help your clients and come up with lots of ideas to help them because you are genuinely interested in them and their business, do you think they're going to be reticent over paying you what you're worth?

Service, service, service

To illustrate this point, last week I had several possible jobs that just needed a signature on the quote for me to go ahead, but somehow I just couldn't get the client's to sign. Ordinarily I would accept their reason's for not wanting to go ahead and leave them to decide in their own time, thereby causing me to work overtime trying to find more work not to mention a great deal of stress. This week however something inside, my intuition I guess, told me that the reasons they were giving weren't the real ones and they needed help. So I decided to help them regardless of whether they signed or not.

1) One client wanted me to do a DVD script, but was hesitant to sign. Turns out it was the first time he had done anything like this and didn't know what to do. He was also a bit embarrassed to ask for help. I've done DVDs before and knew the score so I was able to advise him on what to do and how to find a good DVD production company and offered to talk them them directly so he wouldn't have to be the go-between. The next day a signed quote turned up in the post.

2) Another client wanted to do a website, but was just starting down the road of SEO optimisation and had high expectations about what could be achieved within a week of his new website going live. This was mostly due to the SEO company he was going to use promising him the earth, which those of us who deal with this everyday know is erroneous. It can take months and considerable daily effort to achieve high rankings with the search engines and keep them. It's not instantaneous. I spent some hours helping and advising him over this, giving him pointers on what to ask his SEO people and how to evaluate their skill. I then got the phone number of the SEO guy and requested more info from him. Next day a signed quote turned up in the post.

3) A small company desperately needed an emailer and company profile written, but didn't have the money at the moment and wanted to wait until they had. By taking the time to find out more about their business without the expectation of them signing I discovered an event was occurring in the second week of July that would give their bottom line a massive boost. I then realised that it would take me about two weeks to write the two pieces (given the work I had to do on the two jobs above) and maybe a further week to edit before sending my invoice. This take us to the second week of July.  I also gave them some quick and simple ideas on emailing targeted offers to their existing customer base to get some money into the bank quickly over the next few weeks. They were delighted with what I suggested and sure enough a signed estimate turned up in the post the next day.

Demanding your real worth

Once my negative money belief patterns had started to change all sorts of things started to happen. I found that several years ago I had been mis-sold a loan with very expensive insurance that wasn't needed and the sales adviser would have known this. This has prompted me to write a letter of complaint to my branch manager demanding to know why I wasn't treated according to the rules the Financial Services Authority lay down. The old me would never had done this! The old me would have rolled over and not said a word.

I've chased all those who haven't yet paid me for work I've completed and informed them I will add interest to their outstanding debts and then take court action if they don't pay. One lady in particular has strung me along for eight months now. Do you think the old me would have done this? Or would the old me have said: "well it's probably not worth the effort." By not demanding payment you're telling non-payers not to value what you do and that it's perfectly ok to treat you like this.

Finally, I went back through my finances for the last year and found instances where I hadn't invoiced someone for work I had done. They were only small instances, but collectively added up to about £300. Again, the old me would have said it wasn't worth the effort because deep down I was too embarrassed to ask for what I was worth.

The new me says "It's a few minutes of effort to send an invoice and a nice letter. What's difficult or embarrassing about that?"

Why I don't draw and frames freak me out

Ok....I promised a few days ago I would explain why I stopped drawing as a teenager and have a house bursting with posters and pictures that never get framed. Remember? I was talking about doing the Money Beyond Belief course and how negative money beliefs rule our lives?

This is a very personal memory of something that happened to me many years ago and I've decided to share this with you for two reasons. It illustrates beautifully the power of negative emotions and how they can control your life at a very deep, almost unconscious level, and it shows how money is turned into something negative during childhood and adolescence. It took the Money Beyond Belief course to release it.

The very last sketch I ever did was of a horse. I had been given a art book for Christmas and the sketch I drew was actually very good. What I know today which I didn't know back then is when I wandered dreamily downstairs into the kitchen to show my parents this picture shortly after I'd finished it and remarked on whether it was worth framing, I'd walked into a battleground where everyone had literally just paused for breath. So of course, my question of whether it was worth framing was met by possibly one of the most over-exaggerated responses in the history of hissy fits. My father hit the roof. He ranted and raved like a man possessed (and needing a touch of thorazine) about how expensive frames were, that I had no concept of how much things cost and walked around all day with my head in the sand playing around with silly bits of nothing.

My brain immediately tried to digest the hissy fit. What just happened? What was its meaning? It came to this conclusion:

a) Getting a frame is expensive and whatever went into it would have to be really good to justify the expense

b) My picture was referred to as a silly bit of nothing so obviously the picture wasn't very good.

c) There was not going to be a frame even discussed because the picture wasn't very good.

d) If the picture wasn't very good why would I want to keep drawing mediocre crap?

My brain decided that the rational course of action was to a) not bother continuing to draw and b) never buy a frame unless you earn a lot of money. I stopped drawing and to this day I have never bought a frame unless it was for a present for someone else because I have never considered that I earnt enough money to be able to afford one. Not even during my darkest hours where I ran around shopping with credit cards falling out of my purse at the feet of grateful retailers. Nope - not even then!

Thanks to Money Beyond Belief I now know that my parents were probably fighting about money (my mother's description of a lean 'money' period seems to coincide with about the right time of this event) and having just had a humdinger about it didn't want someone wandering into the picture and mentioning buying something. I was a bystander that's all. My brain just went into protective mode and as brains are designed to do made meaning out of something essentially meaningless and should have been ignored.

So go have a think about your beliefs about money and your memories of money and see if you can link the two. If you find your brain won't let you, go buy Money Beyond Belief to help you start. I'm now going to try and find a sketch pad and see if there's anything left in these fingers that can be brought back to life again.

Getting rid of negative money beliefs

...a whole week has passed since I posted. I've been so preoccupied with this negative money beliefs issue that I've only just raised my head and realised we're in June!!!!

Where is the year going? We're six months in and I'm still no closer to being a millionaire ;-))) Actually that's not true. I have taken a significant step towards achieving financial independence. I've decided to address my money beliefs by investing a small amount of money (£30) on a American, fairly well-reviewed informational course called Money Beyond Belief. It's created by Brad Yates, who is a practitioner of something called Emotional Tapping, and a copywriter that I greatly admire, Joe Vitale.

It goes a little like this. When you have an issue, a problem, an illness that causes a negative emotion it disrupts the flow of energy round your body and you get clogged up at your most vital energy points. Repeated rounds of targeted tapping with your fingers to these points while verbalising problem releases the negative energy. A bit like acupuncture does, but without the bloody great stabby needles.

So the course is made up of several recorded tele-conferences where Brad Yates talks the listeners through and helps corrects many of the common negative beliefs people have. Actually he completely debunks them. He throughly explores the emotions and feeling around each negative belief as affirmations. You repeat what he says and tap exactly where he tells you to. Each session finishes with a mini hypnosis/relaxation session which is very nice and calming (I'm such a sucker for hypnosis...anywhere I can get 40 winks)

Has it worked? Too early to say. but I will say this. Many issues that cause us emotional pain will give us physical twinges when talked about or thought about, hence the reason why we never sort them out and let them fester. The EFT course makes you work through those feelings and boy did I have some to work through judging from my emotional reactions!!! The money beliefs that we've addressed so far include:

1. Money is the root of all evil
2. The people who have the most money are the ones who are disliked the most
3. I am already rich compared to starving people in the third world
4. Will other people like me if I have money?
5. There's not enough to go round
6. I am not deserving enough to have money
7. I am not good enough to have money

Out of all of them, two made me feel physically bad - number 2 and number 7. Number 2 made me very upset as we worked through the tapping - all tearful and guilty - and number 7 made the back of my throat close up for about 10 minutes. All the others I didn't seem to have a problem with.

In all I must have spent about 2.5 hours tapping over the last few days and ended up stopping half way through one phone call as I was exhausted. Interestingly, soon after I stopped all my negative memories of money from childhood came out and I frantically scribbled them down. There were things in there I really never thought would have contributed towards my feelings about money, but when written down in black and white it's so obvious where I got them from and I can't dispute it. In fact, one incident relates to me sketching and appears to be the very reason why I stopped doing it back when I was a teenager (literally stopped one day and never picked up a pencil again). I was so shocked when I saw the connection my mouth hung open! In fact, it's the very reason why I've accumulated numerous unframed prints and photographs but never framed them. The only framed prints in the house are ones that belong to Martin or I have been given.

That's got you intrigued hasn't it ;-)))) I not going into it yet, as I want to explore it a bit further and see if it's something I can permanently reverse. For that period of clarity and insight alone I think I would recommend Money Beyond Belief. It's very cathartic and certainly an eye opener.