Putting Your Best Foot Forward
On meeting another person for the first time, we are judged (fairly or otherwise) by our appearances and then when we open our mouths.
When you think of ducking down to the local 7Eleven for milk and the newspapers on a lazy Sunday morning, the dress code is informal-think jeans, sneakers and a sweater.
In an amusing account by an Australian woman living in France with her French beau, she described the horrified look on his face, when she was about to step out to the boulangerie for breakfast provisions (dressed in a casual manner).
French women would not dream of going to the shops sooo unprepared to face the world. Oh no, they present themselves in their best possible light and ladies that means make up and co-ordinated fashion and accessories, at the minimum.
If you work on the principle that any and everyone you meet is a prospect and potential client, ask yourself how you want them to see you?
I will pre-empt you by saying that the previous statement does not imply that you are going out there with an ulterior motive of taking financial advantage of the unsuspecting. This is hardly the case.
As an illustration, if you are tired, grumpy in the grocery store check out queue, you may be forgiven for being a bit short with the young person packing your groceries.
However, that young person’s parents may also require your services or business should you meet them socially at a barbeque, for instance.
Imagine your surprise when you enter their home to find that young check out person lives there.
There can be a couple of scenarios here,
i) there is awkward silence when you recall how you spoke to that person at the store or
ii) absolute delight that he/she remembers you as the nice person who took the time to have a little chat with them as they were scanning your box of Cheerios.
So this is what I usually do: 1) smile and make eye contact, 2) comment on how busy or quiet things are in the store, 3) engage them in a conversation, usually around the fact that they are earning whilst studying at university or college, and 4) say bye bye.
Now, that wasn’t so hard and it certainly made me feel better. Try it.
Yours in health, wealth and happiness
Financial Freedom, Mindset and You Part 4
Financial Freedom Mindset and You Recapping Part 3
(Parts 1-3 were titled, “You and Your Money”)
I described a real situation where a young Australian couple realized that it was their old mindset that had prevented them from accepting that they could become wealthy by receiving passive income. When the penny dropped, they quickly found a technique to smash past that obstacle and today are millionaires and are continuing to grow their multi million dollar business.
We have all heard of affirmations. Pick up any self development book that line the shelves of your bookstore and you can bet that there is at least a chapter devoted to this topic.
In essence, these are short positive sentences stated in the present tense, that when repeated daily are designed to bring about change for the better in your life.
Well, if this is so easy to do, why aren’t more people using affirmations to become happier, healthier, wealthier individuals?
When you are instructed to spring out of bed first thing in the morning with unbridled enthusiasm, and told to recite, “I am making $100, 000 a year” (when you are currently earning $30, 000 per annum), a little voice in your head says “Dream on, buddy. What makes you think you can make $100, 000?”
Herein lies the rub: Your thoughts and feelings determine your actions and your actions repeated become habits. In turn your habits drive your daily activities, which determine your results (in every facet of your life).
The key here is how you see yourself.
Remember, you cannot outperform your self image.
If you think and feel (that is the operative phrase) that you do not deserve something in life, then you will not get it. This is despite your conscious mind saying that you do want to do well in your career, life, relationship etc.
The analogy I use is that of a ship with sails (conscious mind) that has dropped anchor (subconscious mind).
If both conscious and subconscious minds are not in harmony or in sync, all the effort and good intentions (think wind in your sails=conscious mind) will not get you from where you are presently to where you want to be simply because you are still anchored (sub conscious mind) to the spot.
The programming you picked up well before you turned 7 is the basis for the behaviors that still drives you today. In other words, a 7 year old runs your life, and this may explain why you do the things you as an adult do today that might not be too helpful in achieving your life goals.
So, back to the couple I mentioned in Part 3, or more specifically the husband who we shall call Andrew.
Andrew, as a child broke his arm whilst playing on the monkey bars in a park, after being told not to (which kid does as he is told?). He then found himself in the hospital corridor waiting to be examined by a doctor.
In his impressionable young mind he saw the doctors and nurses who hurried by as people who were obviously intelligent, and remote. They were formidable and daunting figures to a young child who was also in a great deal of pain.
Andrew made the association that he wasn’t bright compared to these people. He then proceeded to prove that by failing his high school exams.
His circumstances changed when he met Paul and Mary Blackburn, founders of Beyond Success, a personal development company.
Through a 20 minute exercise and meditation, Andrew took himself back to that point in time, as a frightened distressed child in a hospital, and re scripted his experience of the event to one which was positive and calming.
The change in his self image was startling, as Andrew then went on to law school and completed his degree with distinctions.
Similarly, when Andrew and his wife were not making headway with their goal of becoming financially independent, they applied this exercise to identify the obstacle that was in their path to realizing their dream.
They made the paradigm shift from having to toil for money and that making money demanded hard graft, to being okay with receiving income passively. It was as simple as that.
Please contact me for more details regarding this exercise and meditation.
Yours in health, wealth and happiness
You and Your Money: Part 3
Recapping Part 2
You were asked to note how you felt when you wrote down your current income on a piece of paper. When you multiplied that number by 5 lots of feelings came up, and you might have been surprised that not all those feelings were exciting or positive.
That simple exercise was a subtle as a sledgehammer indicator of where your income thermostat is set.
We will start by looking at why there is a resistance to increasing that level.
In order to be financially independent, you need to be able to leverage your time such as setting up businesses that can run like clockwork without you working 80 hour weeks.
One area where you can do this is on the internet where it is possible to set up perfectly legitimate businesses that generate passive income.
I know of an Australian couple who set a goal of becoming financially independent within a 5 year period and they did just that with 6 months to spare.
They wanted to quit their day jobs so that they could spend more time with their two young kids.
They tried different business vehicles and for 4 and ½ frustrating years they felt like they were not getting anywhere and then, Bang! the big bucks came in. They finally made it. How did they do this?
Firstly by their own admission, they had to get over the emotional and subconscious hurdle of making passive incomes.
They came from families with a strong work ethic; it meant that their subconscious minds could not accept a scenario where they made money passively ie without working hard for it, without exerting themselves, without making an effort; it was not from the sweat of their brow.
That was definitely an “aha!” moment for them when they put two and two together. They were then able to work through the subconscious blockage, and they haven’t looked back since. Today they are multi millionaires.
So, are you curious to know how they did this? Let’s just say, most if not all of it can be found in Part 4.
Trust me, you’ll really love this one.
Yours in health, wealth and happiness
You and Your Money: Part 2
Recapping Part 1
Your emotional money profile determines your current level of wealth.
So, if you think you should be doing a whole lot better than your present circumstances, chances are that you have had sub consciously programmed into your mind, the money beliefs you picked up from your parents or other figures of authority when you were a child that do not support your conscious waking goals for becoming financially independent and/or wildly successful in your business ventures. This I referred to as the X Factor.
If I was to ask the question “Do you want to be rich” the immediate response of 99.9 percent of the population would be a resounding “Heck, yeah!” But for a majority, there is the internal conflict that arises with being in the position of having a lot of the green folding stuff handed to them.
It is well known that most people who win hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars through lotteries end up losing the lot and have in their wake a string of broken relationships. WHY?
Because these people do not have the mindset of a wealthy person, instead they are poor people with a lot of money.
But before you become indignant and start hitting the reply button let me elaborate.
We all have a “money thermostat” programmed into our subconscious; we are comfortable with having a pre-determined amount of money in our bank account. This is in direct proportion to our sense of self worth or self esteem.
For example, there are people who feel that earning $50, 000 a year is the all time high of a level whilst others are comfortable with being $35, 000 per annum type of guys and gals.
Being creatures of habit, we gravitate towards what makes us comfortable and some people will do just about anything to return to their comfort zone. They will subconsciously rid themselves of the excess money by making poor investment choices or recklessly spending on expensive trinkets such as fast cars, and boats that depreciate in value over time. They also tend to attract people into their lives who will help them spend it quickly!
So, how do you shift this “money thermostat” into the region of $100, 000’s instead of $10, 000s? I could have said $1, 000, 000’s but that would seem like leaping into the realms of the impossible, so baby steps first.
Number 1- work on your self esteem (this is a given, folks).
Number 2- get comfortable with earning and receiving more than you are currently getting. For the sake of the illustration, grab a piece of paper and write down the figure you are getting or earning. Note the feelings that surface; now multiply that number by 5 and note again how you feel when you write that new number down.
If you cannot feel comfortable with this new number, we will explore why this is in Part 3.
Till then,
Yours in health, wealth and happiness
You and Your Money: Love, Hate, Give, Take (Part 1)
Question I
Answer Yes or No to the following statements:
1. Money doesn’t grow on trees
2. You got to have money to make money
3. No matter how hard I work, there are more bills than money I have to pay them
4. Rich people are arrogant
Please tally up the number of yes’s and no’s.
Question II
Right now without looking in your wallet/purse do you know how much money you have (to within a couple of dollars). No peeking.
Ok now take a look; is the folding stuff neatly stacked and organized according to the denomination. You know, picture of the important historical figure is always face up, starting with George Washington through to Ben Franklin. Or are the one’s, five’s ten and twenty dollar bills crumpled, a bit grubby and just shoved into your pockets.
Why all these questions. Well, this short quiz quickly illustrated how you presently relate to money.
Let me ask this: do you treat your money the way you treat your spouse/partner. Conversely would you treat your partner/spouse the same way you treat your money.
At this juncture, I suspect some people would start to feel a bit uncomfortable and maybe even begin to squirm in their seats.
Let’s be honest. You are on this site primarily to network, to promote and do business with other like-minded women. So, we are talking about money and making money here. You literally cannot afford to shy away from this subject (pun intended).
The point is this: unless you are comfortable with talking about and making money, and keeping the money you’ve made, your blood sweat and tears and physical efforts are going to achieve less than optimal results.
In business we look closely at the ROI (Return On Investment) ie how much profit you make on the amount of seed capital you put into your business. Any sane person would expect a 15-20 % minimum return on their investment. There are neat mathematical formulas that spit out a number that show the percentage profit you would make.
When calculating the ROI your accountant will plug in the cold hard cash investment dollar amount minus the costs and overheads eg rent, stock on order, utilities, wages, state and federal taxes associated with running a business.
However, what your accountant has not included in this ROI equation is the missing X Factor.
And this X Factor sits between your ears.
Now, getting back to the yes/no responses to the opening statements. If you said yes to even one of those statements, I hazard that your business is not growing at the speed and the direction you would like. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that those above statements are old conditioned beliefs. Let me say it again, they are not set in stone facts but conditioned beliefs.
As kids, we had no internal reference point (life experience) with regards to money. We adopted the belief system of the adult authority figures around us, namely our parents and teachers. Conditioned beliefs are what you picked up from these people when you were at your most impressionable. They were subtle messages you absorbed by osmosis (that is science speak for effortlessly picking up the words and actions transmitted by adults who are in your immediate environment and incorporating them into your psychological money profile without being able to discern as to whether these are true or false beliefs).
You grew up observing they way your folks handled, talked about, saved, spent, argued and fought over money and now as an adult you model this belief system.
They had either a scarcity or abundance mentality when it came to money and more importantly wealth (and yes, there is a difference between being rich and being wealthy, and it’s not the dollar amount).
The X Factor is principally is how you relate to money on an emotional level that is determined by your current conditioned beliefs. These unspoken systems are so powerful and deeply embedded within your sub conscious that you probably do not realize that you have them!
Ok, now that you are aware, you can make the decision to deal with and change these negative conditioned beliefs that you acquired early on in life.
In doing so you can start to power towards your business goals and hit the mark.
How are you going to do that?
That will be the topic of discussion in Part 2.
Until then, yours in health, wealth and happiness