Just one word: OUCH!

You have me right on the sore spot, I laughed while reading some parts, and I cringed while reading others…

What I like most:
You give me practical, first small step guidance.

Tom, thanks for asking Egbert, and Egbert thanks so much for answering.

I have started tonight living Lightness and Lust

(this sounds so funny I will never forget).

The hunger to help others, the lightness to stop taking myself so seriously, taking the first small step into my spotless future (that was nasty LOL). You shook me up enough to get going and to kick out the Inner Maffia. (I’m a master practitioner NLP, blimy, so I’ll take myself on as a client :-))

I also read your post http://moneybymistake.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-do-you-want.html, I hope you don’t mind. Some pretty valuable advice too. (and enough giggles).

One thing which also helps me is allowing my anger&frustration to help me: I guess I have been playing the saint for too long already.

And sure, I won’t take you serious
I have enough long engrained patterns to shake up and change, and I feel I will be able to make it through this time thanks to your unconditional support.

Charlotte

Sonya … I love your spirit and your willingness to start now in pursuing what matters to you. Here are a couple of questions like to ask regarding any fears. 1). If I take this action now what’s the worst that might happen? This allows us to see that it’s likely not to happen and to consider if the risk is worth it if the worst did occur. 2). What evidence do I have that this (what ever the fear is) will happen or is occurring? Usually we have no evidence since fear is an imagined state. Try these two regarding your fears and come back and tell me if they cleared the way for action.

Carrie … Thanks for sharing your heart; it takes courage to do so in a public forum. Here’s what jumped out at me to respond to. Of your many interests you asked where to begin? That depends on what you want most. Sometimes our greater desires and needs are for fulfillment, sometimes for what money can bring and sometimes for joy. So first decided what are is greatest desire right now.

Also consider that you may naturally be a Renaissance Soul. I am such a being and we have too many passions to just pick one. If you think that’s who you may be, send me an email or call and I’ll point you in a direction to validate that you are or not.

I absolutely love what you said about not just settling. Go to my www.CoreU.com coaching website and read the very first line on my home page. It says…I coach those who have always believed that they were destined for greatness. Please don’t fight your natural urge for greatness – embrace it, celebrate it and even flaunt it. That’s who you are Carrie.

The other change I would make immediately is to change your language from self-judgment to possibility. Every time you use the word “should” change it to “could” and see how that feels.

Where do you go from here? Do everything you can to surround yourself with people who want to celebrate your greatness. Go out of your way to be championed in the Unconditional Support Experience.

Ok,so I said it was going to be a short list and as I got started it worked itself into a bit of a long “To Do” dream wish list. So, Tom, given my response, where do I go from here?

I encourage and look forward to any and all feedback! Thank you for the opportunity to revist my soul and the hopefulnes it holds on to. Take care, Carrie

“What really matters to me that I’m not doing anything about?” What a deep and intriguing question to ask! As I sit here, I realize that I am not doing what I really want to or should be doing.

I work full-time to support my family and sell for a party plan on the side to add extra income. My full-time job isn’t my passion and I don’t feel fulfilled in this position or feel like I am making a difference; while my side job is much more fulfilling. This question challenges me to think of “what I to be when I grow up” and how I can achieve those goals and successes.

I know for a fact that I must overcome fears of both failure and success, as well as step out of my comfort zone to achieve those goals.

I need to start now – no time better than the present!

Thanks for the experience!
Sonya

I’m excited about the experience as well. Keep thinking those powerful thoughts and it will pay off even more for you.

BTW, I am very excited for the Unconditional Support Experience.
Thank you!

Best regards,
Lance

Jan …. I applaud you for being a champion of authenticity. Like you, I used to be an evangelist for living an authentic life. But I found that a much more effective path is to forget about spreading the word and to just live the life. Actions count far more than mere words. Keep choosing those things that bring you alive. In big and small ways do more things that you are driven to do. That way you become the living legacy that you desire to be.

Egbert … Thanks for answering the call my friend. I appreciate your comment. Here are the powerful points that I got out of your response to Charlotte.

1). Playfully focus on one goal. Hold it lightly and take actions for the heck of it.

2). Progression works. Start small and build confidence each step of the way as you choose bigger and bigger objectives.

3). Lighten up. Love yourself and let go of all the self-judgment.

4). Do many different things in many different ways but always do these in pursuit of one objective until it is met.

5). Make that objective a thing that you hunger for. Choose something that you are driven to do. Then do it.

I promised Tom I would pretend to be a civilized person. I love Tom and I feel honored he asked me to mess with your mind, but he lied shamelessly about my qualification. I am not a ‘money expert.’ I’ve just made more mistakes with it than others. My skills match those of the average monkey, employed by the Wall Street Journal to pick stocks by throwing darts. At any rate: Beware my advice, and do not take me seriously!

Tom concludes his post with a call to “delightfully taking action,” after you are getting sore and bored imagining. “Then pick one small step and take it without delay,” he said.

If I understand Tom correctly, his emphasis is on “doing” the possible and not on all the stuff we may want to “have.” In your response, you don’t talk about one small step you’d be delighted to take. You’re piling up half a dozen of problems in front of you, each one of them at least as huge as a house–literally. “Convenient flights at convenient times to convenient airports?” Forgive me, but to mention ‘flight’ and ‘convenience’ in the same sentence sounds so 20th century. Compared with that, I consider the task of acquiring a new house and more money a minor exercise. How hard do you want to be on yourself?

Looks like you don’t have goals. Your goals have you … by the throat. You don’t have the freedom to drop one–or all of them–playfully, and pick up another one just for the fun of it. Obviously these things matter to you a great deal and I can easily understand why.

Here lies the problem. The reason you give for each of your wants sounds like a demand to me. A new house closer to your daughter’s school is reasonable and not at all impossible, for instance. DEMANDING it from yourself is so utterly impossible and yes, impertinent (would you please forgive me, again?). Wanting/demanding everything your first paragraph describes simultaneously, leaves me breathless.

Suggestion: Define a small and simple goal (or desire) you would like to accomplish for its own sake. Just because you want to, for NO particular reason, for YOURSELF as enjoyment. Then, as Tom said, take a SMALL step towards it. I am not a religious man, in fact I am a bloody infidel. Anyway, I ask you to think in terms of the ‘mustard seed’: “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of a mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.”

In short, the attempt to get everything you demand of yourself and of the universe at once is doomed. It won’t happen–not now, not later. Caring for yourself and for the smallest of your desires, using buckets of love as fertilizer, you got a great chance to reach the small stuff. Something larger after that, and maybe–at that time even playfully–your greatest goals. By then, you will have put them in perspective. With your continued successes in small and easy steps, you will “shrink” the overblown importance of your great goals. For now, the BIG ones are a bit too cocky.

“It seems that I am blocked.”

That would make you the first blocked person I know of. YOU are not blocked. You are capable of building blocks, as you have proven beyond a doubt in your first paragraph. That stuff would be a road block for the best of us. Nope, you don’t have a block, but you know how to make them. Don’t.

May I ask you an intimate question? Do you like pain? Nothing to be embarrassed about, because we all do in various areas and with different levels of intensity. Each of us is her own most treacherous and vicious judge. I know we are magnificent and all that but when it counts, we look at ourselves with murder in our hearts:

“If I would learn to make the LOA work for me, if I would actually start to make more money tomorrow (no, better: NOW).”

That’s an “experience of positive excitement to you?” Really? From where I am sitting, it looks like a threat delivered by a couple of muscular mob guys in shiny suits. “More money tomorrow (no, better: NOW)” translates to leg breaking if you don’t comply. Your smiley face after the NOW means: ‘Nothing personal, just business.’

Some people refer to “the child in you.” A pleasant image and pretty to deal with, but at this point way too fuzzy for you. You need to handle your “Inner Mafia” first. You must tell these guys to back off. You got to pack heat to be believable for these goons. And it’s about time you LAUGHED heartily in their scared faces. Laughter is the most efficient and the quickest weapon against your “demons”, this impossible weight on your shoulders.

“No Pain, no gain,” was something our parents, school teachers and preachers believed in passionately, and for the average sadomasochist it’s the daily bread. Unless you enjoy it in controlled environments, it’s poison my dear and monetary issues are not at all what I call a controlled environment.

“Maybe money is not a “worthy” objective for me, that is why I don’t make it come true…”

You appear to be an extremely intelligent person and you are making the right connections, but I ask you to be a step more radical. It is no secret why you “don’t make it come true.” Maybe money is not a worthy objective? No, no, no! You are on the right path but it is much worse: Money is not only not a worthy objective for you, that stuff is outright horrifying. Let me explain.

Think of each and every association you have about ‘money.’ Exciting and frustrating experiences of your past. Times when you were cheated out of money. Arguments over money with parents, (ex)-spouses, siblings. Lawsuits, attorney’s fees, court dates. Hospital visits, the cost of dental work. Worries, hopes, wants, fears, anger, trauma in relationship with money. Money gifts you received or made. Hard work, demands of your children, cost of living. Stories you heard about lucky lottery winners, for example. More stories about those who have lost more than they had won. Stockbrokers jumping out of windows over a market crash. Every positive AND negative idea you connect with money. Add to that the following: “I WANT more money: I want a new house, because I live much too far from school for my daughter. I want to be able to buy flights on convenient times and to convenient airports, so I have not to drive 250 km to get my love when he comes over for a couple of days.”

What does that make you feel like? Beautiful? Not so much, or does it?

For the majority of people, money is an experience attached to more negative thoughts and emotions than positive ones. Now, your conglomerate of feelings, thoughts, and experiences about money is what you are really talking about when you drop the word ‘money’. I call this mixed bag of stuff ‘your personal currency’.

Guess what happens when you get more of that? Exactly, you get more of everything that’s in this ugly bag. Most people believe in the magical number, a sum of money so tremendous, that it will miraculously change their overall negative experience with money into something glorious and wonderful. $40,000 annually is drudgery and struggle (Could be worse, couldn’t it?). $40 million must be like heaven on earth. Rubbish, of course.

Fortunately, you know that. Hence your “Maybe money is not a “worthy” objective for me.” The Law of Attraction works perfectly for you. Knowing that you are a bit hard on yourself, it saves you from 1,000 times more torment to deal with, considering you had a 1,000 fold increased income. I think you can thank yourself for that. Nagging is not appropriate.

“So, creating a link between my money-objective and my real purpose in life.. that would be great.”

I agree!

Here’s what I have found out. We cannot control what we want to have, not directly anyway. Neither can we control what we want to be. But we have plenty of control over literally thousands of things we can do.

Most people get too attached to things they want to have, yammering away while they could seize the moment and be happy doing something worthwhile. Believe me or don’t: the things you wish to have, “need,” or think you must have–the house, the toys, the conveniences, the luxuries–it’s all legitimate and enjoyable, but NONE of it will make you happy. None of it will make you feel as good as you think or imagine you will feel once the dream is realized. You may be excited to get things, but as you know since childhood, all presents you have gotten (and you were after them like the devil after the soul) were grand for a week or so. A month later they started to collect dust.

Durable happiness can be derived only minute by minute by LOSING YOURSELF in something you DO.

Once happy, you can add toys, houses, and what have you. It will not take your happiness away. But without DOING what “makes you happy” FIRST (another can of worms I shan’t open now), things you crave to own are worthless garbage.

You mentioned you passions, Charlotte:

“Weird, I think I would love to do many things too, I would love to sing inspiring songs for people, I would love to give people hope and insights in how to create their own happiness, I would love to contribute to a higher awareness, I would love to show people their angel inside…”

First, drop the idea that any of your ideas are weird. Get rid of the “I think I would love to …” Which one is it? You love to or you don’t. See, I don’t care what people “love” to do. They are never certain, and just as a lover can never prove his/her love, neither can the things we love to do.

What are you LUSTING after? I know, lust is not that popular but to hell with etiquette. Lust is pretty distinct and definite, is it not? Leaves you no choice. You feel it in the marrow of your bones or you don’t.

Here is how you “create a link between your money-objective and your real purpose:”

You say you’d love to do many things. Forget the “many” also for now. For the next year pick one activity you are lusting after, ONE.

Create a product out of that activity, a sellable product. Take your idea of “I would love to give people hope and insights in how to create their own happiness,” for instance. What services and products can you generate from this? Define ONE product, come up with a price, and SELL it. Start selling one week from today. There is time to refine your product when you are in exchange with your first customers.

DO NOT SPEND ANY MONEY BEFORE YOU SOLD YOUR PRODUCT.

You need a sale (to create a link between your money-objective and your real purpose). Nothing else. You know, cash is the link and the only link! If you don’t ask for it, nobody will give it to you. Make money first, then spend as much as needed to increase and multiply sales. Once your first product works–FINANCIALLY that is–you can and you should add another.

If your first product is a dud and with all your efforts you can not find a single buyer, don’t despair. We can never control what the market demands and what kind of product it rejects. Try another, and the next, and more of it. With an INCREASED FAILURE RATE you will find a product “the market,” individuals you approach, will love to spend money on and tons of it.

That’s how you “create a link between your money-objective and your real purpose,” and the Law of Attraction has no choice but to limp with you, trying to keep up.

“Remember: No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future!” Nasty sewer rat that I am, I stole this quote from you, of course! But you needed to hear it, NOW.

That, my dear Charlotte, is true for money also. We must change our past. Fun-filled and brand new experiences with money and–God forbid–CASH can change the past, dollar for dollar. Yep, old dark money memories fade into the background with fresh crisp banknotes.

It’s lust, remember? The Law of Attraction thrives on lust. Pure lust.

Egbert

Now I’ll take a shot at the rest of your questions and comments.

If you think you are visualizing exactly the wrong thing you probably are. Trust yourself and change your picture now.

Regarding the Law of Attraction the best way to make it work is to think things that make you feel good, do things that make you feel good and be in states that make you feel good. Don’t over think it.

Money can be a worthy objective but not if you think it isn’t. It’s a very emotionally charged concept so if you aren’t feeling good when you think of money think of something else.

As for the link to your real purpose it’s most likely very close to one of those desires you shared in your other comment on what will I be when I grow up? I wonder. Think about each of them and see which makes you feel better. Then start doing that one.

Thank you for sharing so much.

Clem, excellent inspiration is my aim. I’m glad this post hit the target for you. Enjoy following through and taking that next small step. It will make you come alive.

You asked. What advice can you offer to busy individuals to not only help them make doing this kind of work and answering these kinds of questions and really studying the kind of material you create a PRIORITY, but also to help us not feel like other matters ARE more important and to not feel guilty as if we are shirking our responsibilities by dedicating time to this type of endeavor?

This is a huge question. Since I routinely ignore those other matters in favor of what really matters I guess I can answer your question by sharing how I got this way. I have a deep faith in walking the path I’m meant to walk. I’ve bet everything on it so I can’t ignore these deeper questions. So what gives me this faith?

The evidence is everywhere that each of us is unique. I believe in a kind and loving God that would not make me unique without supporting me when I decide to walk my unique path. This is the only thing that makes sense to me. So when we authentically differentiate ourselves we are walking the path we were meant to walk. Once you make that decision and decide to keep your awareness high regarding staying aligned it gets much much easier.

Those other things that you feel guilty about do they give you deep gladness? Do they give you the promise of delight? Do they feed your energy or drain it? That’s the evaluation I give to each project. If it feeds my energy I honor it. What do you think? Care to try this for a week and see what might happen?