Okay, I’m setting an intention to remember and easily find you.

Hmmm…yeah, I’ve been playing around with those concepts of values and money. Heh, not a bad thought.

Thank you for the compliment! And thank you for bringing this topic to the forefront to begin with and letting us play with it. Same to Laura.

Totally agree with you on the values vs. money. That was a HUGE realization for me when I used to think (and I admit it, say,) that money was not important to me! I many times dated men who didn’t have money, created situations for myself when I never had money, even if I was earning a good living…

Once I looked at my values – not a formal exercise, just an awareness, I realized that 1) I LOVE nice things – whether I get them on sale or not…love beautiful things of quality. 2) Love to be pampered (my favorite vacation is going to a spa and getting massages 3) I love to travel 4) Love to be able to give gifts to people just because they would like something 5) Love education and being able to enroll in a class or program just because I want to…do you see the common thread here??? They all require money, so I actually DO care about money..I care about it alot. I care about what it can provide for me and most of the all the freedom to be able to do the things I want. It has nothing to do with status or competition…just the quality of life that I desire.

So, thank you for bringing that up, Dana. It is really something to look at and I agree with Jeannette, a class on this would be great!

xo
Laura

I also got value from Eker’s book and remember to thank checks (and their senders) before I deposit them.

And Amanda, thanks for such a powerful visual connection to clear focus and empowerment!! That’s inspiring!

Appreciation to both of you – for ALL of you – for sharing your wisdom and perspectives here!

Books

1. Secrets of a Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
2. The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth Ph.D
3. Ask and It is Given / Money & Law of Attraction by Abraham/Esther & Jerry Hicks

Tools to reprogram/remove resistance:

1. Whenever I feel resistance/anxiety creeping back in, recently I have been turning primarily to EFT and it has been helping tremendously. There are some youtube videos that have helped me a lot when I feel the need to be guided through it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_mdvmnvJo&feature=related)

2. Keeping a gratitude journal

3. Going through Ask and It is Given and picking exercises that resonate me to help me focus my vision, remove resistance, and move up the ‘emotional scale’.

4. Every night my boyfriend and I list what we are grateful for and feel abundant for.

5. Holding on to checks longer. Sometimes I tape them above my desk so I can admire them before putting them in the bank.

6. Keeping track of ALL MY SPENDING. Checking my bank account every day. Writing down everything I spend. This is something I really had to train myself to do because the idea of it made me feel restricted, but ultimately puts me more in control and helps balance me out.

7. Being as generous as I can with my time, energy, and money (within my means) — what goes around comes around. With healthy boundaries, of course.

8. Morning pages (from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron) — they help me clear my head each morning and get my fears out so they don’t keep swimming around my head.

9. MEDITATION (a huge “deprogrammer” in my experience)

10. Exercise / dancing / creative movement

11. Choosing better thoughts, but in small steps.

12. Allocating a percentage of my income that I spend on myself and having fun so I don’t feel deprived.

13. Writing down all the things that I want and playing a game with the universe to see how much of it I can get for free. Sometimes its amazing!

I am truly in the same boat as you. Though I have greatly improved my relationship with money since becoming financially independent of my parents and have identified many of the issues I absorbed from them, it still takes a great deal of daily awareness to keep myself in check. I still have plenty to learn and often go ‘how did I get back here? what am I doing wrong?’ and need to re-examine myself and what pieces of these lessons didn’t fully register the first go-around. However, I have seen the evidence that all of the above techniques work… so if any of them are new to you, good luck and have fun!

1) that would be a fun exploration call for you to lead around values and money! I think you’re on to something there!

2) I think we ARE (part of) God, so even though I talk about Universe as if it were separate from us, I believe it’s really just another aspect of US on the “other side.” And since everything that exists came from this creative power, that would mean everything is spiritual in nature – including money.

3) I learned from my mentor coach that all debt is not bad. There IS such a thing as good debt. That was an incredibly liberating realization for me at a time when I needed that freedom to change my life.

Thanks for sparking such fun thoughts, Dana! You are good at that!

What the preacher had to say was that all that we have and all that we are belongs to God and is one with God. He explained that God flows money to you, he gives it to you and trusts you with it. You are handling HIS money, not YOUR money. That is why he asks you to tithe, to see if you will show some gratitude for the money he’s given you to help others.

The test is to show God that you know how to be a good steward of the money he provides to you. If so, he will give you more. Ask yourself, are you handling the money God/Universe gives you in a way that invites more into your life?

I don’t know if this helps Laura at all. She’ll tell me here or on the forum or on FB.

I suppose this would translate to the tug of war between Mom and Dad, which I also grew up with. Mom worries that she doesn’t have enough. What would God have to say about that? God gives you all that you need and before he’s finished you say, “Omg, I’m worried that won’t be enough! What will I do? I might have to take this into my own hands!” LOL!

If you had a dad who bought things and hid them from your mom, he was shameful of how he spent his abundance. He felt that he had wasted it, or that someone might think he did. He was afraid his purchase would be judged. Is that the stewardship that Universe is asking of us in handling the money that comes through our lives? Or might it be nicer if we choose decisively and take pride in the values and priorities we have with money and then make decisions accordingly?

Iyabo and I talked about credit cards and how I refuse to pay bills with them. She challenged me to think of the credit cards as a plan B. I refused. I can see that they may be a very last resort, maybe plan Y. In applying this stewardship test I’d say that resorting to desperate measures, such as using a credit card or hocking jewelry or taking out a line of credit or cashing in a 401K is an act of great distrust. To me it sends the message to Universe that I do not trust that I will be provided for.

For a long time I didn’t trust, and my lack of trust was so deep that I did resort to those things to pay my way. I made a deal with myself that I will only pay cash and buy what I can pay cash for.

The next step, if I am following the gradient suggested would be to ask myself whether I can make a deal that I will pay cash and that I will trust fully that plenty of cash will be provided for me to responsibly take care of myself, my expenses, my wants and needs, and even to treat myself and help others while paying cash. Now, that’s stewardship of the flow of money I receive, if you ask me.

I really like the Abe quote you put up there because it feels like a lot of work to go through all the layers of crap that accumulated around money, not just from parents but also other family members, teachers, boyfriends, boyfriends’ family members, friends and on and on. Digging through it all doesn’t feel good and it sets off a bunch of fireworks I didn’t order.

What feels so much better is just asking myself whether the belief serves me now, being aware enough to see when beliefs are coming into play and then asking what thought would feel better. Sometimes just taking my hands off the wheel feels good too.

I think I just had an idea pop into my head when I was thinking about MissyB’s answer about her father’s boat. I was thinking well, we have to really be careful judging others’ money decisions because they decide based on their values and we decide based on ours…no good or bad about it. It made me think of a Thomas Leonard exercise I did around values. I chose my top five or six values, then wrote my goals down. I matched them up to see whether my goals were expressing my values. I’m wondering if this applies to money or makes money make more sense in terms of a deeper connection to self. No idea, but you know I’m going to try it.

Either way, maybe it’s helpful to ask yourself what your values around money are and then find ways to deal with money that both serve you and express your values. I’m totally thinking out loud to the group here. “Values” is coming through loud and clear, which is why I think this is such a sticking topic for people.