The Breathing Prosperity blog

Have you ever heard that your job is to ask the Universe for what you want, then sit back and allow?

Part of the theory is that we must ‘get into the feeling place’ of that which we want, and once we do this, we will naturally align with those things which will bring us joy, and inevitably attract them.

Today, in discussion with a Law of Attraction group I belong to, this subject came up, and I added an exercise into the discussion that seemed to be very helpful. Because of this positive response, I am repeating this exercise here, along with a real-life example of how it has worked. Enjoy!

An exercise on getting into the feeling of something we wish to attract:

You know we are always told to focus on the feelings of having what we are wanting, thus aligning with it and attracting it easily. Here is a little something to help you contemplate what those feelings really are.

• First, consider something you feel you lack - you know, the thing or things you are desperately trying to manifest or attract, and that you feel frustration and impatience over. You think that when you finally receive this item or person or whatever the case may be, you will feel immense relief, happiness, freedom, absolute joy. These are the feelings you are going for when you visualize ‘having it.’
• Now, think of something you have in abundance at this time, such as Cheerios, or water. Let’s use water as it illustrates this perfectly. When you turn on your tap, or open a new bottle of water, you may feel grateful, but you are NOT feeling the intense relief of someone who has been without water and who has desperately wanted it. Instead, it feels like an everyday occurence: you are used to it and it’s just a part of your life.
• Now, turning back to that money or man or health or whatever you’ve been desperately longing for, you can see that the relief and excitedness you THINK you’d feel (and you may at first) is actually just the flip-side of the anxiety and desperation you have been emitting - it’s all the same energy, and really it is repelling the thing rather than attracting it. Instead, we need to get to a point where we can feel what it is to have the thing or circumstance we want and have it not be absolutely overwhelming and ‘too good to be true.’

EXAMPLE:

I did this exercise a couple of years ago with my partner, who is a pilot and was flying with a smaller, regional outfit. He desperately wanted to fly for our national airline (Air Canada), and would forever be standing on sidewalks looking longingly up at the jets as they flew overhead, landing and taking off at our international airport a few km’s away (we use metric in Canada!). His thoughts were that he knew he would get there someday, but there was deep longing, combined with (likely unconscious and unrealized) doubt that it would ever happen. I suggested he take the jet off the pedestal he had it on, and just start thinking as if him getting on to an Air Canada jet and flying it was an everyday occurence. It took a little changing, but this is what he did, and lo and behold did not Air Canada call him soon thereafter? He has now been flying with them for over a year, and while he remains extremely grateful and happy, he is no longer pushing the experience away by looking up at it like it’s a glittering, unattainable or barely attainable dream on a pedestal. He gets his uniform on and he foes flying. Period. I honestly believe that he was pushing it away with his longing, and as soon as he allowed it by accepting it as possible and just…normal…it happened for him.

We all know - and sometimes parrot - the saying that ‘Life is short.’

Whether we are using it as a platitude or have recently suffered the loss of someone close to us and been jarred into feeling our mortality, this saying has no doubt touched all of our lives. The question today is, knowing as we do that life is short, why do we continue to live our lives as if we will live forever?

We hold grudges, sometimes subconsciously, assuming that ’someday’ we’ll resolve the issue.

We put off doing what is good for our health by eating and living for today, assuming we can ’someday’ correct our habits and get on the exercise and healthy diet bandwagon.

We have ideas for a product or business which we do nothing about. (Doesn’t the world deserve your wonderful ideas?)

We figure that someday in the future our finances will improve, and everything will work itself out OK.

We act as if our behavior isn’t cumulative.

Do You Think This ISN’T You?

Today, look at your own life and seek out areas where you have a ’someday’ attitude.

Can’t find any right off the bat? Keep looking! These thought patterns are often so familiar they’re hard to notice, but if you make an effort you’ll be rewarded. When you see the ’someday’s you’ve been carrying around with you, you may be shocked.

Maybe we NEED to be shocked…out of complacency, out of procrastination, out of thinking that our days and weeks will last forever. Have you ever noticed how fast your weeks go by? What makes you think they are not ALL going to go that fast, leading more quickly than you anticipated to the last week - the last day - of your life? Don’t be someone who has regrets later in life - live your life NOW!

Here are some ideas to help you start digging. They’re simple, but not easy. Do them right, and you’ll have more than enough to start with:

• Picture yourself at the end of your life, even though you don’t really believe it will end. Look back at the person you are today, reading this article…how old are you? Do you feel you are too young, or too old, to do what you really want to do with your life? What does the older, wiser you think? Can you ‘look back’ at yourself and see the time - the opportunities in the form of minutes, hours, days - that you are wasting? FEEL the potential pain of regret. Haven’t you ever looked back ten or 20 years and said to yourself ‘Boy, if I knew then what I know now, I could have..blah blah…’? DO IT NOW, from your end-of-life perspective. Then get moving.
• Picture your ideal life 10 years from now - long enough out to imagine you could potentially fulfill all of your dreams and desires. Ideally, write down your thoughts in detail, from relationship goals to monetary and lifestyle goals. Get an EXACT mental picture of the wonderful life you want in every aspect. Now, ask yourself what the current you would have to do and be in the intervening ten years in order to get there. The more you can define this path, the better your chances of turning those dreams into reality.
• What do you do every day? What are your habits? Here’s the tough part: look at your day-to-day habits and follow them out into the next five and ten years. If you were to continue doing exactly what you are doing today, where will it lead you? Is it the pretty picture you are hoping for? … For most people, not likely. This can be a really jarring exercise, and a much-needed wake-up call if done right. Fear not - awareness is power! Now you can act to change what needs to be changed, and get yourself on the path YOU choose (rather than the unconscious, reactionary, habit-based path you have been on) - the path to your dreams!
• Imagine the people you love - and those you’re not too fond of - have passed away. It IS going to happen, you know…and who knows when? Are there things you wish you had said or done? What are you waiting for? These things don’t get easier over the years - they get more difficult. Deal with it and don’t let all those little running conversations in your head hold you back another moment.

The reason many of us procrastinate, live in denial, or play the ’someday’ game usually comes down to fear. We’re afraid we don’t know how to make our dreams come true; we’re afraid of failure, or of success; we’re afraid of so many things we don’t even know what we’re afraid of. The truth, however, is that if we really look at what we’re doing and where we’re headed, we’d be WAY more frightened of the reality we see than of our imagined ghosts and demons. This is why the pain of regret wieghs so heavily for some in late life - they see clearly what they’ve been avoiding all those years, and it is devastating to realize all they’ve missed and left undone. Don’t let this be you. Forgive. Act. Face your fears. Take chances. Live passionately and urgently. Love!

See also: Patience: Virtue or Trap?

HUG SOMEONE TODAY!

How do you feel about this sentence:

Money will not make you a better person.

?

The Proof

Think about someone you dislike (come on, we all dislike someone…) and now picture them with a newly acquired 10 million dollars in their pocket. Picture them walking around sporting fabulous new clothes, and perhaps driving around town in a fancy new car. Now, while you may love the new ’stuff’ they have, and you may (or may not) feel jealous, you should easily be able to see that a) they are NOT any different than they were without the infusion of cash, and b) if anything, the money is exaggerating who they were. For instance, if this person has/had a tendency to be arrogant, then a lot of money will only exacerbate this trait.

Got it? Now that we have seen that the person in our theoretical exercise is NOT made any better - no nicer, no more gorgeous, no more likable - by their money, no matter what they may think, it’s obvious that money is empty, hollow and cold. It is a tool for exchange and nothing more. It doesn’t care who has it, and it doesn’t improve someone’s personality no matter how many beautiful clothes and trappings they surround themselves with. Sooo…see where I’m going with this? What makes you think money will improve your life?

Your Truth

Many of us hold certain sacred beliefs about money - especially when we don’t have any. We secretly believe that if we had ‘enough,’ we would live exciting, different lives. WE would be more exciting, better and different. We would be better-looking, more likable, maybe more outgoing and popular. Even though we have read and been told that money doesn’t do these things, many of us still somehow think it will.

The sooner you can clearly separate your emotions from the subject of money and see it as the tool it is - and nothing more - the sooner you will be able to take postitive action and create more for yourself. You will also be able to take a look at areas in your life which you wish to improve, and work on those as well. You know, those places where you have been waiting for money to fix things…your fitness level, your relationships, your communication skills. If you have been harboring fantasies forever about your ‘wealthy’ future self being fit, gorgeous, socially savvy and popular, but in reality you sit at home eating ice cream and watching TV, you are not facing the truth. Even if you won that theoretical $10 million tomorrow, you would not miraculously be any better at connecting with people, nor would you be fit, well-groomed and confident IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY.

Today could be the day you take a hard look at reality and begin making some changes. This is a good thing! Sometimes we hide behind our illusions our entire lives and then realize, too late, that we’ve messed it all up. Eye-openers are always good for us, even when they’re tough. If this post has done anything to make you think differently about money and your life in general, then I am indeed blessed.

Thanks for visiting. We hope you are inspired to get out there and create what you want!

Additional posts you may enjoy:

• Wealth: Mindset vs. Education
• Wealth: The Progression of Views
• Are You Looking Prosperous or BEING Prosperous?
• Wealth: Your Financial Education

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Today we have a small task; an exercise, if you will.

We are going to take an everyday word…a word that many of use very often - daily, I suspect - and look at its underlying implications with respect to our beliefs and our lives.

The word is EXPENSIVE.

A seemingly innocuous, innocent little word, isn’t it? It comes in quite handy; we use it to label just about anything we can’t afford, or that we think is a ‘rip-off.’ And here we begin our exploration…

When we use the word expensive, the beliefs we are expressing are not objective; they demonstrate our perception not just of the item in question, but of the world around us and ‘how it works.’ Here are just a few of the common ways in which this word is meant:

• Too much money
• Decadent, or ‘over-the-top’ in a way that is frivolous
• Not worth it
• Someone is ripping you off
• It would take selfishness to get it
• There are better things to do with your money
• Dear, as in it costs too much life and heart - too much of your time went into earning your money to spend it on ‘just this one thing’
• It’s wrong to spend ‘that much’ on something
• It should be cheaper
• I can’t afford that
• Who am I to think I can/should have that?
• It will take all of my money, then I can’t have anything else

As you read to this list, you may even find yourself mentally adding to it. Hopefully you will also begin to notice all the underlying garbage that is insinuated in these common thoughts. This is just ONE example of ONE word that is used in everyday language…and look at how much it tells you that you can’t have and can’t do! By nonchalantly using the word expensive, you are inadvertantly reiterating to yourself that:

• Something can be out of your reach
• You lack: money, resources, hope for more of the same
• You are limited in what you can do and have

By uttering this simple little word, you are stating to the Universe that you live in lack and limitation. You are pinching off the flow of energy, love, life force, joy, happiness…both for yourself and for the person or company that created the ‘expensive’ thing. For if they are not deserving of the money that would flow to them from their creation, then no one is. Either we are all deserving, or no one is. When we judge, which we do by using words like expensive, we try and preclude someone else from experiencing abundance…and this never works.

Thanks to my friend Lexi Sundell at Energies of Creation for reminding me of this post, which I had written some time ago and never published. She sent me a link to Steve Pavlina’s great post about Money & The Law of Attraction which is bang-on and which re-iterates and fills out even further what I am trying to say here.

Enjoy, and prosper in every sense of the word!

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“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.”~ Jim Rohn

Patience is a virtue, my mother always told me…and I’ll bet your mother (or someone else close to you) may have told you the same thing.

But is it really?

The Good

Patience can serve us in many circumstances, both personal and professional. When we are likely to jump to erroneous conclusions, for instance, or when we react in a panic and almost do something against our own good…these are times when patience is a virtue. A prior commitment to - and practice in - patience allows us to calm down, assess a situation and react with calmness and dignity. It prevents us from ruining relationships and from making rash decisions we might later regret.

The Bad

However, what about situations where we are waiting for something good to happen, where instead of creating what we want in life, we sit back and hope they will happen the way we envision? What if ‘all good things’ don’t come to those who wait? What if, instead, the only thing that comes to those who wait is regrets at the end of life?

The Ugly

I have come to believe that ‘All good things come to those who wait’ isn’t necessarily true.

With respect to meeting life’s hopes and goals, this is definitely mis-guidance. (Sure, that’s not a word, but it works!) As anyone who has lost someone close to them or perhaps experienced a life-threatening illness or incident truly knows, LIFE IS SHORT. 

It is extremely easy to get complacent, and also to save our dreams for ’someday.’ For many sad and regretful people, someday comes when they are nearing the end of life and wondering how all that time slipped by so quickly. Someday comes and the realization of so many lost and forgotten dreams hits like a blow to the heart and soul…and the sense or urgency that should have been present all along becomes painfully apparent. We have all heard the adage about how much better it is to look back and be proud of everything we’ve done and tried, rather than to look back and wish we had done and tried things…yet many of us do not take this into account in our everyday lives. Even now, for instance, as I look back on my twenties I think to myself that if I had only known and practised then what I do now, I’d be much farther ahead financially by now.

The pain of discipline Jim Rohn speaks about is that of making the effort to do the little things every day which ensure our dreams are met, and do not instead fall by the wayside. The weight of regret truly  is far heavier.

The question then becomes, What will the future me look back and say to the woman I am today?…

I can see this because I am asking clearly: She will wish I was more consistent with my fitness, more proactive with my goals, and even more appreciative of loved ones. She will remind me to be kind to myself, while at the same time asking more from myself on a daily basis. 

The Beautiful

When we open our minds and perspective in this way, we can see opportunities and storylines to which we are now blind. We view our lives from a higher and wider place, and admit that someday is not only now, but is also coming sooner than we think. We bring our actions and our goals into alignment, and in doing so we enrich our current lives and our future days beyond measure.

Life can be a beautiful balance between being patient with ourselves and being impatient with our intentions, between passionately and actively pursuing our dreams and having the humility to allow the Universe to show us the way.

If you have clutter - in your home, your car, your office, or anywhere you spend time regularly - it’s hiding more than the occasional dustbunny. Behind that real clutter is some metaphorical junk, and you are in avoidance mode.

This may sound superficial, but it goes reaaallly deep. Don’t believe me? Consider the following:

Pretend with me for a moment…you have just spent a full weekend cleaning out your car, your home and your office…including the garage and the basement (insert your personal ’scary’ areas here). You have now inherited the money to get help in keeping everything spic and span. Everything is organized, and everything you own has its place. When you need something, you will now know exactly how to find it. Time will be saved on all fronts…and you will have agreat weight lifted from your shoulders as the ‘I should’s’ leave their familiar place in your mind. I should clean the kitchen…I should organize that junk drawer…I should organize the closets…

Now, the question becomes: what will fill that void? This is the real scariness that many of us are avoiding, often without consciously realizing it. We have a list of things we think we’d do with all our extra time if/when we become rich, but we spend out REAL lives avoiding extra time. Clutter is the tool we use.

If we had extra time, what would we REALLY do with it? We’d have to think about our lives, our goals (or lack of them) and what we want to do with this precious asset. By having to-do lists and I should lists, we create the illusion that all of our time is used up, indefinitely into the future. In this way, we can avoid really thinking about things we want and perhaps why we don’t have them. Thomas Edison is quoted as saying, ‘There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.’

If you think a life-changing, confronting challenge would do you good, look no further than your own life as it is. Clean everything. EVERYTHING. Pare down, organize, throw out, donate…and when all is said and done, spend a little time thinking about what you want to do with your life. The thoughts which will come to you will be FAR clearer than those you now entertain - the ‘I should’s’ will be about the really important stuff, which you have been avoiding. Try it and see!

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You do, that’s who. And so do I.

Money is so fundamental a tool in our modern society that we literally cannot live without it. We would die of thirst or hunger, or exposure, if we didn’t have at least the minimum amount of money required to trade for the meeting of our basic needs. We need money just to survive…and who wants to just survive?

Knowing this, an objective observer would assume that as a species we would teach our children basic money-making and -management skills. Since money is our form of currency, used worldwide, we as humans must all have basic skills in obtaining, growing and using it wisely … right?

Things could not be further from the truth, as you and I know. The subject of money is, instead, entangled hopelessly within a web of wide-ranging emotions, beliefs, taboos, rituals, denials and accusations. We’ve made a mess out of something that is entirely inert and should have nothing attached to it except for the values we give it.

Can we change this as a society? Perhaps - perhaps not. What we CAN do is to help ourselves individually, and in doing so set examples for our friends, colleagues and children.

We can begin by trying to extricate ourselves from the complex topic of money; to separate ourselves mentally from it and begin to observe our habits, patterns and beliefs with objectivity. We, as observers, can see that although our beliefs don’t affect money itself, they affect how we act around money, thus affecting whether we attract it or send it away; whether we thrive financially or suffer.

We all have our own unique set of beliefs and practices when it comes to money, based upon our upbringing, the myriad influences of a lifetime and any opinions - skewed or not - we have formed on our own. In separating ourselves to ask what is valid, what is working and, most importantly, what makes sense for us today, we can take the first step to a brighter, more abundant financial future. Here is some food for thought to help you begin.

• Ask yourself, ‘What do I believe about money?’ You may want to start a list, and you’ll notice that this list will get longer as you go about your daily life and realize how many beliefs and thoughts pop up - you may just surprise yourself. Armed with this knowledge, you can then begin to ask yourself;
• ‘Is that true?’ With each belief, for instance that rich people are corrupt, see if you cannot find one - or many - ways in which you have personally witnessed it NOT being true. If you’d like to follow the brilliant and simple work of Byron Katie, another question to ask would be ‘Who would I be without that thought?’ 
• When you catch yourself hearing a message or belief about money in your head, ask: ‘Whose voice said that?’ This small step can be very revealing, as we discover that what we thought was our own voice is actually - often - that of our mother or father, or another influential person in our early lives.
• Importantly, when we discover beliefs we have about money, it is crucial to decide if this belief serves us NOW. Given where you want to go in your life, does this belief help take you there, or does it lead you astray, blind you to possibilities or perhaps limit you from believing you can even get there?…If the thought doesn’t serve you, discard it, and if possible, replace it with something that does. Repeat your new belief - even if it seems somewhat foreign to you - as often as needed until it feels like a part of you. Using the example above, you could replace the thought ‘rich people are corrupt’ with ‘Magnificent wealth is possible for all of us, and I am going to do wonderful things with my abundance,’ or ‘Millions of people are doing wonderful things with money, and I can, too.’
• Now that you have begun exploring  -and hopefully purging - your limiting beliefs around money, you can begin to learn new ones. Be open to learning from any source which presents itself; a well-off potential mentor you know but had never thought of in that way; your local library; cd and tape sets from successful people; personal development websites and blogs…the list is limited only by your own ingenuity.
• Now for the very personal work of defining your own financial future. An abbreviated outline of this task goes something like this (see our E-Courses for more on this): Ask yourself the key question: What do I want my future to look like? … This, of course, is a big question. If you have never really sat down to define your ideal future, this may initiate a work in progress. That’s OK. It is the beginning of your new life - the way YOU design it. Do not allow what you think is possible to limit you, because you cannot really know what is possible in the larger picture. Simply state what you WANT. As you work to define your ideal future, and to listen to your own voice, hunches about what to do will come to you…you can then take inspired action such as starting a new business, taking some courses or other tasks which just seem ‘right’.

These few ideas may seem overly simple, but they are NOT easy. Self-discovery is one of the most difficult, and yet most rewarding, pursuits available to us as human beings. Few of us explore our true potential, and even just in the field of finances, there is much you can do to learn, grow and prosper. Enjoy!